The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) combines an online encyclopedia of philosophy with peer-reviewed publication of original papers in philosophy, freely accessible to Internet users. It is maintained by Stanford University. Each entry is written and maintained by an expert in the field, including professors from many academic institutions worldwide. Authors contributing to the encyclopedia give Stanford University the permission to publish the articles, but retain the copyright to those articles.
An institutional repository is an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution.
The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) is a public statement of principles relating to open access to the research literature, which was released to the public on February 14, 2002. It arose from a conference convened in Budapest by the Open Society Institute on December 1–2, 2001 to promote open access which at that time was also known as Free Online Scholarship. This small gathering of individuals is recognised as one of the major defining events of the open access movement. The text of the initiative was translated to 13 languages.
PubMed Central (PMC) is a free digital repository that archives open access full-text scholarly articles that have been published in biomedical and life sciences journals. As one of the major research databases developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), PubMed Central is more than a document repository. Submissions to PMC are indexed and formatted for enhanced metadata, medical ontology, and unique identifiers which enrich the XML structured data for each article. Content within PMC can be linked to other NCBI databases and accessed via Entrez search and retrieval systems, further enhancing the public's ability to discover, read and build upon its biomedical knowledge.
The term serials crisis has become a common shorthand to describe the chronic subscription cost increases of many serial publications such as scholarly journals. The prices of these institutional or library subscriptions have been rising much faster than the Consumer Price Index for several decades, while the funds available to the libraries have remained static or have declined in real terms. As a result, academic and research libraries have regularly canceled serial subscriptions to accommodate price increases of the remaining current subscriptions. Increased prices have also led to the increased popularity in shadow libraries.
The California Digital Library (CDL) was founded by the University of California in 1997. Under the leadership of then UC President Richard C. Atkinson, the CDL's original mission was to forge a better system for scholarly information management and improved support for teaching and research. In collaboration with the ten University of California Libraries and other partners, CDL assembled one of the world's largest digital research libraries. CDL facilitates the licensing of online materials and develops shared services used throughout the UC system. Building on the foundations of the Melvyl Catalog, CDL has developed one of the largest online library catalogs in the country and works in partnership with the UC campuses to bring the treasures of California's libraries, museums, and cultural heritage organizations to the world. CDL continues to explore how services such as digital curation, scholarly publishing, archiving and preservation support research throughout the information lifecycle.
INASP is an international development charity working with a global network of partners to improve access, production and use of research information and knowledge, so that countries are equipped to solve their development challenges.
A data library, data archive, or data repository is a collection of numeric and/or geospatial data sets for secondary use in research. A data library is normally part of a larger institution. established for research data archiving and to serve the data users of that organisation. The data library tends to house local data collections and provides access to them through various means. A data library may also maintain subscriptions to licensed data resources for its users to access the information. Whether a data library is also considered a data archive may depend on the extent of unique holdings in the collection, whether long-term preservation services are offered, and whether it serves a broader community. Most public data libraries are listed in the Registry of Research Data Repositories.
Ann Shumelda Okerson is an American librarian and expert on the place of new digital technologies in libraries.
The International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) is an informal, self-organized group of library consortia from around the world; it exists for strategic and practical discussion of issues of common interest among the consortia members. The ICOLC first met informally as the Consortium of Consortia (COC) in 1997. Over time, its name was adjusted to reflect its increasingly global character.
Jean-Claude Guédon is a Quebec-based academic.
UKSG is an international association that exists to "connect the information community" and "encourage the exchange of ideas on scholarly communication". The name UKSG originally stood for United Kingdom Serials Group, but the association is now known simply as UKSG as it has expanded beyond the UK and beyond serials to include e-books and other electronic resources.
Scholarly communication involves the creation, publication, dissemination and discovery of academic research, primarily in peer-reviewed journals and books. It is “the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use." This primarily involves the publication of peer-reviewed academic journals, books and conference papers.
African Journals OnLine (AJOL) is a South African non-profit organisation dedicated to improving the online visibility of and access to the published scholarly research of African-based academics. It is headquartered in Grahamstown. By using the internet as a gateway, AJOL aims to enhance conditions for African learning to be translated into African development.
The Center for Research Libraries is a consortium of North American universities, colleges, and independent research libraries, based on a buy-in concept for membership of the consortia. The consortium acquires and preserves traditional and digital resources for research and teaching and makes them available to member institutions through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery. It also gathers and analyzes data pertaining to the preservation of physical and digital resources, and fosters the sharing of expertise, in order to assist member libraries in maintaining their collections. The Center for Research Libraries was founded in 1949, as the Midwest Inter-Library Center (MILC). The traditional role of CRL was as an aggregator of tangible collection materials, however this has been updated in the digital age into the CRL's current role as a facilitator of collection development, digitization, and licensing collections by individual libraries and interest groups. This transformation required CRL to adopt new funding models from partnerships with key organizations, and an updated use of current technology to support community outreach and engagement. The funding was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the IMLS.
A library consortium is any cooperative association of libraries that coordinates resources and/or activities on behalf of its members, whether they are school, public, academic, special libraries and/or information centers. Consortia exist on a variety of levels, e.g., local, state, regional, national or international. Libraries commonly belong to multiple consortia. The goal of a library consortium is to amplify the capabilities and effectiveness of its member libraries through collective action, including, but not limited to, print or electronic resource sharing, reductions in costs through group purchases of resources, and professional development opportunities. The “bedrock principle upon which consortia operate is that libraries can accomplish more together than alone.”
The Lebanese Academic Library Consortium (LALC) was created in 2002. It started with five members, and has grown to nine Lebanese academic institutions by 2011. LALC's mission is “to cooperate in the selection, pricing negotiations, and access methods of electronic resources” for the best interests of the universities and their library users. An example of a resource that all members of the LALC can access is Elsevier's ScienceDirect database, which the LALC signed an agreement with in 2002. It is the first ever library consortium to be established in Lebanon. LALC is part of a larger group of libraries called the International Coalition of Library Consortia.
The Library and Information Resources Network (LIRN) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit consortium of approximately 284 educational institutions that share access to information resources. LIRN, formed in 1996 and incorporated in 1997, was initially a project of the Advisory Council of the (Florida) State Board of Independent Colleges and Universities. It is now an independent, multi-location, virtual organization, with business offices in Clearwater, Florida, United States and its officers, trustees, with technical staff located at various locations around the United States.
Open access to scholarly communication in Italy has grown since the early 2000s. During an academic conference in Messina in November 2004, Italian universities joined the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, in Italy thereafter known as the "Declaration of Messina".
The African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA), commonly referred to as AfLIA, is an international not-for-profit organization headquartered in Accra, Ghana. The Association is registered under the laws of Ghana as an NGO. It is managed under the general guidelines of its Constitution and by-laws.
