Welcome to the March issue of ScieCom info

[Ingegerd Rabow <Ingegerd.Rabow@lub.lu.se>]

[Apologies for cross-postings]

Dear Readers,

Welcome to ScieCom info. Nordic-Baltic Forum for Scientific 
Communication. March 2011

Two articles present national publishing patterns in Lithuania 
and in Iceland:

Eleonora Dagien?, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, 
describes the "Changes in Lithuanian Research Journal Publishing 
in 2009-2010."   The new publishing models only reached Lithuania 
a few years ago, although Lithuanian libraries had been informing 
about OA and its advantages for many years. How are Lithuanian 
scholarly publishers adapting to the new publishing environment?
[http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4906/4406]

Solveig Thorsteinsdottir, Medical and Health Information Centre, 
Landspitalinn National University Hospital, has studied 
"Scholarly publishing at Landspitalinn", a major life sciences 
research institution. Her topics:  citations, publication 
languages, publishing affiliations, number of OA-articles, 
coverage in international databases, and if  the library budget 
cuts during the recession will affect research at the hospital.
[http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4907/4398]

We reported earlier on the OA policy adopted by the University of 
Troms  (LANK), Norway. New developments are reported in two 
articles by Jan Erik Frantsvag:

In "The Open Access publication fund at the University of Tromso 
" he tells the story of how the fund was established shortly 
after the OA policy decision. What are the rules and procedures 
for the fund? What does the fund hope to achieve in the 
competitive world of publishing?
[http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4908/4399]

While preparing for the publication fund in Tromso, they realized 
that they did not know enough about the level of OA publishing by 
authors at the university.

"Open Access publishing - a status from the University of Tromso" 
reveals how they found two sources that could provide some 
interesting - and surprising - information.
[http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4909/4400]

In four articles from Sweden, both local and international topics 
are covered

  "A new open access policy for Malmo University" by Jessica 
Lindholm and Peter Nilen at Digital Information Services, Malmo 
University, describes both the work leading up to the policy, and 
its conditions.  Publishing at Malmo University, and future 
developments are discussed
[http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4910/4401]
  Paving the way for researchers is essential for successful 
parallel publishing,

"Bibliofil  makes parallel publishing easier" by Aprile Clark and 
Yvonne Hultman-Ozek at the Library & ICT Unit at the Faculty of 
Medicine, Lund University, describes how they since 2002 have 
been assigned to support researchers in the scientific 
communication process. The Bibliofil tool was created to 
facilitate this work.
[http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4911/4402]

DOAJ, the Directory of Open Access Journals, has for many years 
been the internationally established tool for finding OA 
journals.

Linnea Stenson, member of the DOAJ team at the Head Office of 
Lund University Libraries, Sweden, gives us the story of "The 
development of Directory of Open Access Journals." Focus is on 
the period 2008-2011. Changes and the reasons for them are 
discussed, and so is the complicated question of what quality 
criteria to use.
[http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4912/4403]

Finally, a report from an important conference in Berlin:

Jan Hagerlid,  the National Library of Sweden, reports from the 
first OAPEN conference: "Open Access to monographs in the 
Humanities and Social Science." The EU-funded OAPEN (Open Access 
Publishing in European Networks) aims to develop and implement an 
OA publishing model for academic books in the Humanities and 
Social Sciences.
[http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4913/4404]

Have a good read. As always, your comments and ideas are very 
welcome

Ingegerd Rabow
Editor-in-chief