Sage eReference is worried about competition from Wikipedia. In response, it's asking Google to produce 100-word abstracts for the SeR articles. For details, see Mark Chillingworth's story in the May 8 Information World Review.
Comment. I assume that Google will use text-summarizing software to produce the abstracts. If so, the important news here is that Google is starting to apply these tools to scholarly content --a welcome development, especially if competitors drive up the quality for users. But I don't get it: how will this help SeR compete with Wikipedia? The abstracts won't improve the quality of SeR's articles or make their existing quality more evident. Moreover, SeR is is not OA. People who turn to Wikipedia don't always want to edit but they do always want OA.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/10/2007 05:09:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
