There are two repositories specializing in library and information science and technology. The other resource is the much smaller dLIST repository maintained by the School of Information Resources and Library Science of the University of Arizona. Neither comes close to the huge open access indexing/abstracting and partially full-text LISTA database that EBSCO has made very generously available to the public.
However, both E-LIS and dLIST have many documents not available in LISTA....
E-LIS...has been maintained by volunteer information professionals who do know the value of metadata not just the joy of full text....
The most remarkable feature of E-LIS is its genuinely international coverage....
There were 5,800 papers in the repository at the end of May, 2007. 2,045 of them are in Spanish; about 1,900 in English; and the rest are in more than a dozen other languages....This linguistic internationalism also implies a strong coverage of authors from countries beyond the usual Anglo-Saxon world, especially those from Spain (1,131), Italy (682), Cuba (465), India (395), and Mexico (219). The presence of Turkish, German, Argentine, Serbian, Croatian, Austrian and Swiss authors’ work also is significant....
[I]n E-LIS about 20% of the papers are the unedited pre-print versions....
The service is based on version 2 of the excellent open source GNU E-prints archiving software developed by the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton to promote self-archiving....
My words in this case may not have enough credit, however, because so far I have not posted my own papers at E-LIS. Given the usage statistics, and the quality of the archive, I promise that I will try to catch up with this by the end of the summer, and join many of my peers who have contributed to this outstanding resource, which apparently is of great and constant interest for many in the LIS field.
There are not many options for open access indexing/abstracting databases about computer science and technology. Records related to the topic are scattered among many databases even in the subscription-based arena, and are especially dispersed in the open access domain, where several dozens of publishers offer bibliographic records and abstracts about papers in their own journals and other serials publications. Of course, there are many open access records and even full-text papers about computer science-related articles and conference papers also in the entirely open access databases such as PubMed Central, EconPapers, arXiv, etc.
The ACM Digital Library is part of the ACM Portal, which also includes the open access indexing/abstracting database of Guide to Computing Literature. Together, these two collection represent the largest, partially open access indexing/abstracting records about dedicated to computer science and technology....
The content of the open access records is similar to the ones you would find in many other publishers' digital collections, consisting of a bibliographic citation and often an abstract. It is the set of open access extras that makes ACM stand out....
The software offers the usual options of exact phrase searching, mandatory term searching, field-specific searching and the like – but most of the features are available only for subscribers as the advanced search template requires a paid user-id and password (not the free or limited alternative). This is quite unusual, although the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) and the Elsevier ScienceDirect sites have similar limitations. It alleviates the problem somewhat, that the ACM Digital Library is also accessible through the advanced template of the IEEE Computer Society Web site....
In spite of some of the unusual software limitations, this is an excellent resource for researchers, practitioners and computer science students – even if their library does not have a subscription to the full repository of the ACM Digital Library. Chances are good that some of the digital repositories would offer the full-text version of many of the articles identified through the open access segment of the ACM Digital Library (and the companion Guide to Computing Literature).
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/19/2007 03:00:00 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.
