Scholas is a newly-launched beta service which brands itself as "Social File-Sharing for Academics". The site is run by an Oxford-based company. From the about page:
Scholas is a service that enables academics to list their publications and share work quickly and easily via the web. This can be a list of existing publications including journal articles, books etc. As well as any other items, such as research notes, presentations, posters and data-sets.
Each publication created by the user has its own user-item page, which can be linked to using a short, unique URL e.g. http://schol.as/9I-3UJV82 (called a Scholas ID). The user-item page allows bibliographical information to be associated with the user-item, as well as facilitating discussion through a comments section.
Scholas also provides users with a Scholas ID for their profile page, which links to all the publications they have listed on the service. This enables the user to provide a single short and unique link to all the work they wish to share on Scholas.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 8/20/2009 06:41:00 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.
