The development of the “Open Access” (OA) movement since early 1990s has been radically changing the scientific communication landscape. Within the last decade more universities and research institutions are recommending their scholars to make their works freely accessible through their web sites and/or institutional repositories (IRs). The research impact of OA articles as measured by the number of citations is much higher than that of printed ones. Several universities have developed policies to mandate OA and set up IRs to guarantee public access to the output of publicly funded research projects. Refereed journal articles, conference papers, theses and dissertations, and courseware (i.e., lecture notes, audio and video records of lectures) can be given as examples of such research output. This paper defines the concepts of OA and IR and briefly reviews the current situation of IRs in Europe. It then chronicles the development of IRs in Turkey. The paper concludes with some recommendations.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 7/12/2008 01:49:00 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.
