This article outlines the tradition of scholarly communication in four East and Southeast Asian countries. It compares the similarities and differences in history and current conditions of research and publication practices in China, Japan, Korea, and Myanmar. It discovers that each country has its own characteristics of scholarly communication, making the world diverse and colorful.

This is the first in a series of studies emanating from the UK JISC-funded RoMEO Project (Rights Metadata for Open-archiving) which investigated the IPR issues relating to academic author self-archiving of research papers. It considers the claims for copyright ownership in research papers by universities, academics, and publishers by drawing on the literature, a survey of 542 academic authors and an analysis of 80 journal publisher copyright transfer agreements. This paper concludes that self-archiving is not best supported by copyright transfer to publishers. It recommends that universities assert their interest in copyright ownership in the long term, that academics retian rights in the short term, and that publishers consider new ways of protecting the value they add through journal publishing. This article has been published in the Journal of Documentation, 59 (3): 243-277.

This is the instrument of the complete 68 questions used in the dLIST 2005 study of LIS scholarly communication behaviors, specifically those related to self-archiving. It is being made available here, in an attempt to help improve the comparability of open access/self-archiving studies. That is, studies of self-archiving in other disciplines or about the use/non-use/value of specific archives and repositories can also use it. Note: Sections are conditional depending on whether participants had self-archived in dLIST, self-archived anywhere, or not self-archived at all (thus participants did not have to answer more than 50 questions). Besides non-use, there is also a section of questions about the value/use of dLIST.

Authors from the ALIA New Librariansâ Symposium held in December 2006 in Sydney, Australia were surveyed about their experiences of writing and presenting early in their career. The author of this paper was the symposiumâ s programme coordinator. The majority of authors were working in Australia, and few were required to write or present as part of their work role. In the absence of this requirement, factors that motivate new professionals to write can be difficult.

Purpose: This paper proposes explaining institutional repositories (IRs) and open access, discussing the relationship of open access to IRs, and examining the possible roles of reference librarians in IRs. Design/methodology/approach: Key IR and open access concepts are clarified and critiqued. New organizational roles for reference libraries are suggested that build on their current functions. Findings: The IR concept is defined, and IRs are shown to be different from scholars' personal web sites, academic department/unit archives, institutional e-print archives, and disciplinary archives. Open access is defined and examined. While the vision of open access is clear, the implementation of the vision is less pure. Open access and IRs are not synonyms: IRs are best seen as an enabling technology for open access. Reference librarians must play a key role in IRs, and ten potential IR support activities for them are identified. Originality/value: This paper orients reference librarians, library administrators, and others to IRs and open access, providing a context for understanding how reference librarians' jobs may be transformed by the emergence of IRs.

This paper has been published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (. A study of Thomson-Scientific ISI ranked Library and Information Science (LIS) journals (n=52) is reported. The study examined the stances of publishers as expressed in the Copyright Transfer Agreements (CTAs) of the journals, towards self-archiving, the practice of depositing digital copies of one's works in an OAI-compliant open access repository. 62 % (32) do not make their CTAs available on the open web; 38 % (20) do. Of the 38 % that do make CTAs available, two are open access journals. Of the 62 % that do not have a publicly available CTA, 40 % are silent about self-archiving. Even among the 20 journal CTAs publicly available there is a high level of ambiguity. Closer examination augmented by publisher policy documents on copyright, self-archiving, and instructions to authors, reveal that only five, 10% of the ISI-ranked LIS journals in the study, actually prohibit self-archiving by publisher rule. Copyright is a moving target but publishers appear to be acknowledging that copyright and open access can co-exist in scholarly journal publishing. The ambivalence of LIS journal publishers provides unique opportunities to members of the community. Authors can self-archive in open access archives. A society-led global scholarly communication consortium can engage in the strategic building of the LIS information commons. Aggregating OAI-compliant archives and developing disciplinary-specific library services for an LIS commons has the potential to increase the field's research impact and visibility. It may also ameliorate its own scholarly communication and publishing systems and serve as a model for others. Author's addendum: This preprint incorrectly states that ISI-SSCI was source (p. 9-10). Actual final source was JCR 2004 with SSCI serving as a cross-check.

Many versions of an article are now visible on the web, including not only open access (OA), but also paid access, preliminary versions, abstracts, and mere references or citations. The purpose of OA requires not only that the article can be read without the barrier of payment, but also that the reader can find the article to be read without the barrier of extensive searching. We will demonstrate the dubious validity of one prominent system for identifying OA and measuring the amount of OA and the OA Advantage. We will then briefly discuss the remaining alternatives.

This bibliography presents selected English-language articles, conference papers, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). It emphasizes formally published works. Where possible, links are provided to sources that are freely available on the Internet.

This webliography presents a wide range of electronic resources related to the open access movement that are freely available on the Internet as of April 2005. It covers resources such as bibliographies, directories, guides, journals, mailing lists, organizations, projects, publishers and distributors, search engines, and Weblogs.

This is the text of an invited presentation (available in two versions, 9 pages narrative paper, and 26 slides presentation) given at the Berlin 4 Open Access Conference, March 29th-March 31st, 2006, Albert Einstein Institute, Potsdam (near Berlin). Abstract: India, the second most populous nation in the world, is emerging as an important player in the world economy and geopolitics. In the nearly six decades since Independence, India has made considerable progress. A number of leading corporations, especially in the areas of automobiles, information technology and chemicals, have set up shop in India for manufacturing, business process outsourcing and R&D. Advanced countries look at India as a huge market to be tapped and a reservoir of English-speaking workforce that can be hired at a fraction of the cost they pay as wages in their home countries. About a million people work in software industry alone. And now India is increasingly looked up to for outsourcing R&D. In the past few months, many heads of states and governments â including President Bush - came calling and President Bush even spoke about the rather sensitive subject of cooperation in nuclear energy. Both the Vice chancellor of Oxford in the UK, the Rt Hon Chris Patten and the President of Harvard University Lawrence Summers in the US visited India recently and are keen to set up centres of excellence devoted to Indian studies. Indeed Harvard is planning to institute a dozen chairs in the new centre. Despite a long history of science, scholarship and philosophical inquiry dating back to millennia before the emergence of modern European civilization, India is struggling to keep pace with the West in science and technology. Although there are about 300 universities, and about the same number of government funded research laboratories under agencies such as the Departments of Atomic Energy and Space and the 1 Ministries of Defence, Agriculture, Science & Technology, and Ocean Development, Indiaâ s research output in science and technology, as seen from the Web of Science, is barely 2.5% of the worldâ s journal literature. What is more, in none of the subjects Indian papers on the whole are cited as often as the world average. It will not be wrong to conclude that India is contributing to growth of knowledge in the sciences sub-optimally. There is a crying need for strengthening higher education (and, indeed, education at all levels) and promoting excellence and innovation in research. India is investing millions of dollars to set up three institutions of excellence in science on the lines of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and six world class medical colleges and hospitals of the quality of the All India Institute of Medical sciences in underserved regions.