This week, Elsevier is officially launching its Scirus Topic Pages under the new brand name SciTopics....The company says that this is now a fully developed product, not just a beta offering, and this is the "right moment" to bring it to a broader audience. The newly expanded SciTopics offers additional functionality and features and...some 650 live topic pages with many more in draft format.
Scirus Topic Pages made its debut in June 2007....The main improvements, according to company representatives, are in the workflow processes and in quality controls....
The new SciTopics is a free, online expert-generated knowledge-sharing service for the research community that offers scientific, technical, and medical knowledge (STM) on a variety of subjects. Designed to complement the traditional peer-review process, the site allows invited experts to develop topic pages offering research summaries with the content moderated through 14 subject editors to ensure high standards and relevancy. The easy-to-use, wiki-like resource aims to give authors a platform to showcase their works and to facilitate scholarly debate....
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.
