An online tool which will allow people all over the world to access research at the click of a button has been launched by the University of Glamorgan.
Glamorgan's online Research Repository is the first in Wales to be launched as part of the Welsh Repositories Network programme, which began in April 2007.
The newly launched digital repository gives worldwide access to the University's published research and already the system has attracted some 450 visits from 30 countries across the world....
Dr Douglas Houston who manages the repository project at Glamorgan said, "Online research repositories are emerging as a worldwide phenomenon aimed at giving open Internet access to published research in order to accelerate the dissemination of information. As such, they extend the original purpose of the Internet, which was developed by Tim Berners-Lee in the early 1980s as a global information resource for researchers. The network of repositories in Universities throughout the world gives free access to research that would otherwise only be available in journals which in many cases have prohibitively high subscription rates." ...
The system is very easy to use and a research paper can be uploaded along with the bibliographical information search engines look for in as little as two minutes.
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.
