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PurposeThe present paper is compilation of open access resources in the subject area library and information science (LIS) and their usefulness in the LIS teaching and learning process. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachResearcher compiled list by visiting library science department web sites, library web sites, OA forums/blogs, etc.FindingsThe library science subject area is rich in various forms of open access literature which is reported in the paper.Originality/valueOne of the first studies to report various forms of open access literature in the library science subject area.

PurposeThe article aims to explore the changes taking place over time in the scholarly communication process.Design/methodology/approachWith the help of available literature, the traditional scholarly communication process is compared and contrasted with the open access driven scholarly communication process/model.FindingsIt has been observed that the Web 2.0 has affected the way knowledge is created and disseminated. New avenues of the peer review process are taking place, which is an integral part of the scholarly communication process. The article ends with some thoughts on the future of scholarly communication and the challenges ahead.Originality/valueThe present paper attempts to summarize the scholarly communication process from two different perspectives, i.e. traditional and open access driven.

PurposeThis study aims to understand key features of existing multilingual digital libraries and to suggest strategies for building and/or sustaining multilingual information access for digital libraries.Design/methodology/approachA case study approach was applied to examine four American multilingual digital libraries: Project Gutenberg, Meeting of Frontiers, The International Children's Digital Library, and the Latin American Open Archives Portal. This examination used a framework derived from digital library evaluation practice. The missions, goals, funding, partners, users, collections, services, and technologies of these digital libraries were analyzed to present their key multilingual features. The collaboration and crowdsourcing characteristics were highlighted and discussed.FindingsThese four multilingual libraries benefit substantially, both in the creation of the library and in its access, from the collaboration of groups domestic and international with different language expertise. For building the multilingual collection and services, some libraries involved both staff and users. For multilingual access to the collection, however, none of the libraries used machine translation or cross‐language information retrieval technologies.Research limitations/implicationsThe four cases are all publicly available digital libraries in the USA. Their features may not be applicable to digital libraries in other countries or to commercial digital information services.Practical implicationsWith the advancement of machine translation technologies and the wide application of social media, multilingual digital libraries may have even better opportunities to sustain their multilingual capabilities through crowdsourcing and the application of new technologies.Originality/valueThis study summarizes the key features of four existing multilingual digital libraries. It provides insights into important factors for building successful multilingual digital libraries. The suggested strategies may help digital library developers to design appropriate multilingual information access services.

PurposeThis paper seeks to focus on the problems of integrating information from open, distributed scholarly collections, and on the opportunities these collections represent for research communities in developing countries. The paper aims to introduce OntOAIr, a semi‐automatic method for constructing lightweight ontologies of documents in repositories such as those provided by the Open Archives Initiative (OAI).Design/methodology/approachOntOAIr uses simplified document representations, a clustering algorithm, and ontological engineering techniques.FindingsThe paper presents experimental results of the potential positive impact of ontologies and specifically of OntOAIr on the use of collections provided by OAI.Research limitations/implicationsBy applying OntOAIr, scholars who frequently spend many hours organizing OAI information spaces will obtain support that will allow them to speed up the entire research cycle and, expectedly, participate more fully in global research communities.Originality/valueThe proposed method allows human and software agents to organize and retrieve groups of documents from multiple collections. Applications of OntOAIr include enhanced document retrieval. In this paper, the authors focus particularly on document retrieval applications.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to evaluate the interoperability of ten open access repositories in the field of computer science and IT.Design/methodology/approachThe repositories are identified from the OpenDOAR directory of OA repositories. Five documents from each repository are searched in ten search engines/data discovery tools (OAIster, Scirus, Google, MSN, Yahoo, All the Web, Ask, Altavista, AOL and Gigablast) for determining the visibility of repositories. The documents from each repository are selected randomly using the function sample ( ) of R software.FindingsNone of the repositories in the study are fully interoperable (the visibility of repositories in search engines/data discovery tools range from 4 per cent to 92 per cent). OAI‐PMH compliance enhances the visibility of the repositories considerably. Google and MSN retrieved the highest number of documents from the repositories and Gigablast the least.Originality/valueThe paper will encourage the repository administrators to improve the visibility of their repositories keeping in view the indexing policies of various search engines to ensure maximum research impact.

This study analyses self-archiving of articles by those of the French researchers in mathematics and computer science who work in relation with the French National Network of Mathematics Libraries (RNBM). The survey was performed by sending a questionnaire to the researchers via libraries of the RNBM. This paper tries to identify the causes of the difficult development of open archives in France., Cette étude analyse l'auto-archivage des articles d'une partie de la communauté mathématique et informatique en France liée aux bibliothèques du Réseau National des Bibliothèques en Mathématiques. L'objectif du questionnaire qui a été envoyé via certaines bibliothèques du RNBM visait l'usage des archives ouvertes institutionnelles en France, en l'occurrence, le Hal.

The second of three features on the Open Archives Initiative data providers, focusing on the areas of science and technology. Outlines the services provided by Bioline International, CERN Document Server, Digital Library for Earth System Education and Organic Eprints.

In universities, research labs and the libraries that support their work, a revolt against current journal publishing prices and policies is rapidly growing. Underlying the revolt are the new capabilities offered by computer networks, particularly the Internet, to make information easily and widely available. Research work can be posted, reviews can be processed and users can view the results, all online and at very low cost. Framed by these generous online capabilities, the spectacle of libraries unable to pay for needed journals has become unbearable. Faculty, researchers and others who depend on journals for information and professional prestige are coming to feel that their needs are not being met by current journal publishing practices. Universities have begun to realize that they no longer have to accept the terms offered by journal publishers.

This is the final study in a series of six emanating from the UK JISC‐funded RoMEO Project (rights metadata for open‐archiving), which investigated the intellectual property rights issues relating to academic author self‐archiving of research papers. It reports the results of a survey of 542 academic authors, showing the level of protection required for their open access research papers. It then describes the selection of an appropriate means of expressing those rights through metadata and the resulting choice of Creative Commons licences. Finally, it outlines proposals for communicating rights metadata via the Open Archives Initiative’s Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI‐PMH).

The MetaScholar Initiative is a collaborative endeavor to explore the feasibility and utility of scholarly portal services developed in conjunction with Open Archives Initiative (OAI) metadata harvesting technologies. The MetaScholar Initiative comprises two projects, the MetaArchive and AmericanSouth projects, both funded by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation totaling $600,000. These two projects have created two metadata aggregation networks connecting some 24 libraries, archives, museums, and electronic text centers. Each network has an associated portal being created under the guidance of teams composed of scholars, librarians, archivists, and technologists. The MetaScholar Initiative is studying issues such as metadata normalization, alternative forms of scholarly communication through portals, and the process of facilitating smaller archival institutions in providing better access to their collections through the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI‐PMH). The MetaScholar Initiative is based at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

This article discusses issues surrounding the move towards electronic delivery of journals within the UK. Ayris looks at the problems faced by academics, libraries and institutions as a whole and examines the need for anational electronic archive in the UK. Current development towards new models of electronic provision are highlighted, and future options suggested.

Overview of the EC‐funded Open Archives Forum (www.oaforum.org) which supports the dissemination of information about European open‐archives initiatives. This article describes the forum’s activities which consist of workshops, reports, an e‐mail list and Web site.

This article examines the growth of the invisible Web, and efforts underway to make its contents more accessible. Dynamic Web publishing is described. The Open Archives Metadata Harvesting Protocol is reviewed, as are projects related to OCLC’s implementation of the Open Archives Initiative. Recent Dublin Core activities are reported.