Jane Secker, Supporting researchers in the social sciences, Social Software, libraries & distance learners, July 29, 2008. Blog notes on Supporting Researchers in the Social Sciences (July 24-25, 2008, Belfast).
... Paula Divine spoke about the service funded by the ESRC called ARK (Access, Research and Knowledge). They host some fascinating data, for example CAIN - the Conflict Archive on the Internet - which is material on the troubles in Northern Ireland since 1968. They also have a lot of survey data from Northern Ireland. ....
The final speaker of the day was Niamh Brennan from Trinity College Dublin who spoke about open access repositories and the extensive work that is going on in Ireland in this area. The breadth of her talk was quite incredible, starting with the 1847 famine in Ireland and the work of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland to tackle this issue. She brought it right up to date, citing how the journal of this society now being on open access. She had some insights such as less than half of NHS funded research reports are available to those who work in the NHS! And how important it is that research gets to policy makers, using an example of how the cure for scurvy (citrus fruit) took over 150 years to become Naval policy. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 7/29/2008 06:54:00 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.
