The advent of open access (OA) has changed the scholarly communication landscape resulting in disruption of traditional relationships between different stakeholders. Thus, the gatekeeping role of academic librarians has been impaired. However, by assuming the role of gate-openers, librarians have become facilitators of OA uptake in the United Arab Emirates. Results of the UAE librarians survey show that they are aware of OA routes and predatory journals; they are using different instruction methods to educate users on OA resources and publishing; and they harness OA resources along the traditional subscription-based products. Readers of international library journals need to be aware of efforts undertaken by their peers to advance OA mandate outside the Eastern European and North American context, often dominating scholarly communication studies.
Category Archives: oa.arab
Librarians as gate-openers in open access publishing: A case study in the United Arab Emirates – ScienceDirect
The advent of open access (OA) has changed the scholarly communication landscape resulting in disruption of traditional relationships between different stakeholders. Thus, the gatekeeping role of academic librarians has been impaired. However, by assuming the role of gate-openers, librarians have become facilitators of OA uptake in the United Arab Emirates. Results of the UAE librarians survey show that they are aware of OA routes and predatory journals; they are using different instruction methods to educate users on OA resources and publishing; and they harness OA resources along the traditional subscription-based products. Readers of international library journals need to be aware of efforts undertaken by their peers to advance OA mandate outside the Eastern European and North American context, often dominating scholarly communication studies.
Library of Congress and Harvard University Form Historic Collaboration on Islamic Law Collections | Library of Congress
“The Library of Congress and Harvard Law School have initiated an unprecedented, multifaceted joint collaboration to identify, select and assess the copyright status of materials focusing on national legal gazettes.
The effort, initially set for three years, will coordinate access to, knowledge-sharing, and legal analysis of Library of Congress’ collections related to Islamic law, including national legal gazettes, manuscripts and other materials. It will also improve a reader or researcher’s ability to search those sources, using new data science tools and faceted searches tailored to Islamic collections. The joint objective is to expand scholarly analysis of and greater public access to relevant legal materials….”
Partnership Announcement: ADRI and CORE – Research
“We’re delighted to announce a new partnership between CORE and Arabic Digital Reform Institute (ADRI), providing services to researchers to store, share and access Arabic academia online.
The partnership will provide ADRI with unlimited access to millions of open access articles to provide research platform and repository services to academics all over the world.
ADRI is a social enterprise from New Zealand and Bahrain that aspires to revolutionise the current practices in creating knowledge in Arabic. In doing so, ADRI aims to address the social issue of limited availability of Arabic scientific content online. Arabic academia is currently dispersed across many locations, ADRI aims to share knowledge and consolidate Arabic academia into one online platform allowing academia to grow.
Using CORE’s API, ADRI will search the largest database of open access content — 210 million metadata records and counting — to bring and translate Arabic content to their users. In gathering this open access data from CORE, ADRI will be accessing the most up-to-date research content to help share and translate knowledge, and grow Arabic academia which is key for global development….”
Partnership Announcement: ADRI and CORE – CORE
“We’re delighted to announce a new partnership between CORE and Arabic Digital Reform Institute (ADRI), providing services to researchers to store, share and access Arabic academia online.
The partnership will provide ADRI with unlimited access to millions of open access articles to provide research platform and repository services to academics all over the world. …”
Digital Library of the Middle East Implements Major Upgrades • CLIR
“The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), Qatar National Library, and Stanford University Libraries today announced several major improvements to the Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME).
The public, open DLME platform, released in July 2020, aggregates digital records of published materials, documents, maps, artifacts, audiovisual recordings, and more from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Viewers can access nearly 134,000 digital records of materials spanning more than 12 millennia held in museums, libraries, and archives worldwide. The site is fully navigable in Arabic and English….”
Gulftimes : QScience journals continue to have global impact
“Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press (HBKU Press) continues to publish quality research that meets globally-recognised academic publishing standards on its online, open access platform, QScience.com, since its top medical journals, Qatar Medical Journal and the Journal of Emergency Medicine, Trauma and Acute Care, were indexed on Scopus in the early 2000s.
Other QScience journals, articles and books are also indexed in top recognised indexing bodies such as the Directory of Open Access Journals, Scimago, the Directory of Open Access Books and PubMed Central….”
What is “Open Access,” Really? – A Comic – HAZINE
“As a movement in information sciences, [OA] has been praised, but in our particular contexts, in mine as someone who lives in the Arabic-speaking world, I wonder about its limitations. What does “available for all” truly mean?
What open access is can be defined by cultural factors, like language, history and even the significance of computer literacy. I presented on this with N.A. Mansour at the Digital Orientalisms Twitter Conference in 2020 in both Arabic and English. But we thought a visual medium might help us provoke thought on this issue even more. …”
What is “Open Access,” Really? – A Comic – HAZINE
“As a movement in information sciences, [OA] has been praised, but in our particular contexts, in mine as someone who lives in the Arabic-speaking world, I wonder about its limitations. What does “available for all” truly mean?
What open access is can be defined by cultural factors, like language, history and even the significance of computer literacy. I presented on this with N.A. Mansour at the Digital Orientalisms Twitter Conference in 2020 in both Arabic and English. But we thought a visual medium might help us provoke thought on this issue even more. …”
SPIE announces three-year Read and Publish agreement with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
“SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, is pleased to announce a three-year Read and Publish agreement with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).
The new agreement began on 1 January 2021. The agreement includes unlimited, open-access publishing in SPIE journals with no article-processing fees for affiliated authors. It also incorporates read access to all SPIE journals, proceedings, and eBooks in the SPIE Digital Library which comprises more than 530,000 publications covering topical areas ranging from biomedical optics and neuroscience to physics and astronomy-related technology….”
SPIE announces three-year Read and Publish agreement with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
“SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, is pleased to announce a three-year Read and Publish agreement with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).
The new agreement began on 1 January 2021. The agreement includes unlimited, open-access publishing in SPIE journals with no article-processing fees for affiliated authors. It also incorporates read access to all SPIE journals, proceedings, and eBooks in the SPIE Digital Library which comprises more than 530,000 publications covering topical areas ranging from biomedical optics and neuroscience to physics and astronomy-related technology….”
Full article: Open Access Initiatives in Western Asia
Abstract: This paper highlights open access activities and resources from Western Asia. The development of open access journals from this region is analyzed through regional listings in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and information about the development and implementation of open access repositories is taken from the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) platform. Additional information about OA resources and development projects was found through UNESCO’s Global Open Access Portal. The study’s findings show that, even with support from international groups like EIFL and OpenAIRE, the region’s open access market lags behind that of more developed countries. Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) stand out among Western Asian states, and Cyprus took the important step of instituting a national public open access policy. Awareness projects and workshops will be a vital step in helping the countries of Western Asia to see the value of open access and to build a stronger OA infrastructure.
Arabic manuscripts at World Digital Library: a few notes – Damascus Anecdotes
“Recently, I discovered, probably later than many others, that the World Digital Library (WDL) is hosting 57 Arabic-script manuscripts, many of whose originals are kept at the Egyptian National Library (EGL). This post is kind of a review of their online presentation….
What is dearly missing from these entries, however, is the manuscript reference number. Why is it not given in the description in addition to the images? As described above, you can work around this lack in some cases. But if you happen to be interested in the history of a work that is only available within a larger manuscript, the WDL digital images might not be helpful at all, simply because you cannot reference them….”
Biomedical Data Sharing Among Researchers: A Study from Jordan | JMDH
Abstract: Background: Data sharing is an encouraged practice to support research in all fields. For that purpose, it is important to examine perceptions and concerns of researchers about biomedical data sharing, which was investigated in the current study.
Methods: This is a cross-sectional survey study that was distributed among biomedical researchers in Jordan, as an example of developing countries. The study survey consisted of questions about demographics and about respondent’s attitudes toward sharing of biomedical data.
Results: Among study participants, 46.9% (n=82) were positive regarding making their research data available to the public, whereas 53.1% refused the idea. The reasons for refusing to publicly share their data included “lack of regulations” (33.5%), “access to research data should be limited to the research team” (29.5%), “no place to deposit the data” (6.5%), and “lack of funding for data deposition” (6.0%). Agreement with the idea of making data available was associated with academic rank (P=0.003). Moreover, gender (P-value=0.043) and number of publications (P-value=0.005) were associated with a time frame for data sharing (ie, agreeing to share data before vs after publication).
Conclusion: About half of the respondents reported a positive attitude toward biomedical data sharing. Proper regulations and facilitation data deposition can enhance data sharing in Jordan.
Copyright and protection of scientific results: the experience of Russia, the United States and the countries of the Near East
Abstract. In this article, the authors analyze the legal regulation of the copyright protection of the results of scientific activity in Russia, the United States and the countries of the Near East. Considerable attention is paid to the review of key regulatory acts of the states operating in the designated area, as well as international treaties affecting aspects of the copyright protection of intellectual rights in the field of science. The authors consider the main ways of protecting the scientific results by means of copyright. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the judicial practice of the states, which plays a vital role in defining approaches to the legal regulation of the scientific results. The authors emphasized the similarity and difference between the systems of copyright protection of the results of scientific activity, the role of the judiciary in the functioning of such systems. In the end the conclusion is made about the prospects for harmonization of the approaches to the legal regulation of the results of scientific activity by means of copyright. The article will be relevant to practicing lawyers, researchers, students and everyone who is interested in IP law.