Open Access Africa 2011

A BioMed Central and Computer Aid International event, was hosted at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana, during Open Access Week 2011.

You can access the presentations and posters online from the Biomed website. 

Presentations include:

• Open access developments in Africa - the Google persepctive.
  
• Why open access benefits researchers in Africa.  
• Case Studies of open access initiatives in developing countries in Africa.

OAPEN

Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN) is an initiative in Open Access publishing for humanities and social sciences monographs http://www.oapen.org 

Coverage is broad incorporating economics, politics, anthropology, and finance. There are currently 100s of titles but coverage is growing quickly!

Several European university presses are contributing. The full list of contributers is here: http://project.oapen.org/partners.asp 

Sudan Open Archive

The Sudan Open Archive aims to provide free access to a digital archive of materials about Sudan. It is a special project of the Rift Valley Institute with support from UNICEF, UNEP and the Southern Sudan Centre for Census, Statistics and Evaluation. Topics covered include: economic, social and political development in the region, the civil war and peace process; conflict in Darfur. There is also general country information about the history, culture, politics and economy of Sudan. Materials published between 1920-2009.

http://www.sudanarchive.net/

See more on the Sudan referendum http://electionsinthenews.blogspot.com/

Open Access World Development Reports

A new online collection of all World Development Reports since 1978 has been launched by the World Bank. The Complete World Development Report Online, which allows users to easily access and search across these World Bank annual flagship publications, is free and open to the public and may be accessed at http://wdronline.worldbank.org.

For over thirty years, the annual WDR has provided a window on development economics to a broad international readership. The report has served as one of the principal vehicles for encapsulating the World Bank’s knowledge of and policy recommendations on key global development trends. From agriculture and the environment to economic growth and international trade, the WDR has tracked theoretical and empirical findings as well as policies in the field of international development.

The  search engine of The Complete World Development Report Online optimizes search both across and within all WDRs with the click of a button. In addition, the background papers upon which the most recent reports were drawn are also available.

A free optional individual user account allows users to take advantage of tools such as bookmarking and saving selected chapters or reports, saving searches, and taking notes. A custom eBook feature lets users select chapters from multiple reports for future reference, sharing with colleagues, or creating course packets. The custom eBooks may also be downloaded, printed, or easily shared through social networking sites. In addition, the site features quick links to World Bank open databases, RSS feeds, and new content alerts. 

Open Access Week

This week is Open Access Week. 

What Open Access is: free online access to research output such as journal articles, conference papers, working papers, book chapters and PhDs; making publicly funded research publicly available; an important way of increasing the visibility and impact of researchers’ work.

What it isn’t: subject to barriers such as subscription costs; self-publishing or a way of by-passing peer review and publication.

Open Access repositories, such as SOAS Research Online, are a key way to make research material available to all.

SOAS academics and researchers – to reap the benefits of making your work Open Access, please submit your papers to the Institutional Repository. Instructions are available here.

Still want more information? Check out JISC’s OA Week microsite: http://openaccess.jisc.ac.uk/ for a week of hot topics in Open Access.

REPEC

REPEC provides free access to information on more than information on more than 585,000 economics items (working papers, preprints). It has upgraded its site and has a number of new features. See the full blog entry at http://blog.repec.org/2010/08/30/a-few-new-features-on-repec-services/  for details.

Key items include: RSS feeds for new citations, for specific articles, papers, series and journals. You can now easily set up a feed to receive information on new papers issued within a specific services  - for an example see http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/eabwpaper/

http://repec.org/ 

> Has upgraded its site and now has a number of new features. Se the full blog entry at http://blog.repec.org/2010/08/30/a-few-new-features-on-repec-services/  key items include: RSS feeds for new citations, for specific articles, papers, series and journals. For example you can easily set up a feed to receive information on new papers issued within a specific services for instance see http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/eabwpaper/
> There is also the option for users on face book to use the RePEcfb <http://blog.repec.org/2009/09/09/repecfb-an-integration-of-your-repec-data-into-your-facebook-profile/> , to add listings of publications to profiles.

PQDT OPen

PQDT Open is a new open access service from Proquest. You can read the full text of open access dissertations and theses free of charge and view the complete text in pdf format:

http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#

Top tip: OAIster is a great source of open access material, including theses and dissertations.

Oxford University Economics Repository

The Oxford University Economics Repository contains bibliographic and full-text articles by University of Oxford economics academic staff and researchers from 1970 onwards. You can find articles by browsing or carrying out a simple or advanced search. Access the repository here: http://economics.ouls.ox.ac.uk/