Doha Institute set to hold Arab Open Access Forum

“The library of Doha Institute For Graduate Studies is set to hold the third Arab Open Access Forum via videoconferencing during October 29-31, 2022, in collaboration with Arab Community of Open Access (ACOA). The forum will constitute an opportunity for the academic and research community to get familiarised with the merits and advantages of free access and its developments at the global level, in addition to enhancing the Arab content and provide it freely on the internet, supporting the relevant educational programs and monitoring the distinguished experiences and initiatives, in terms of scientific and practical aspects in the overall tracks of free access in the Arab society.

In addition, the forum will spotlight the current and vital topics through its seven themes that will be discussed, where the first theme will discuss the information openness for climatic justice, the second theme will address the role of free access in countering pandemics and crises through focusing on some successful experiences at the Global and Arab levels, the third theme will discuss the directions in the open science, while the fourth theme will focus on the scientific journals.

In the fifth theme, researchers will discuss the digital repositories, the disciplinary and institutional digital repositories in the Arab region, the sixth theme will discuss the various sources of free access and the seventh theme will spotlight the information institutions and their role in supporting free access.

The forum will be held for the third time at the Arab region level respectively, and is hosted by the library of Doha Institute For Graduate Studies.”

Celebrating the 50th Issue of Qatar Medical Journal: Editorial Letter | QScience.com

It is with great pride that we celebrate the 50th issue of Qatar Medical Journal (QMJ) that has achieved significant growth recently. Our mission is to encourage authors to submit high-quality and innovative research promoting medical advancements. In the past two years, manuscripts submissions have tripled in number and were enriched by a more diverse pool of authors with global representation, resulting in an increase in the number of published issues moving from being a biannual to a triannual journal. Additionally, the number of articles published in an issue has doubled. QMJ continues to be an open-access peer-reviewed journal, publishing original research work, reviews, editorials, and case reports that are particularly relevant to medicine and free of charge to authors. It is indexed in several renowned and highly ranked platforms such as PubMed Central, Scopus, Scimago, Google Scholar, and the Directory of Open Access Journals. It was also recently indexed in the World Health Organization’s Index Medicus for the Eastern Mediterranean Region (IMEMR). We look forwards to becoming the highest-rated medical journal, in terms of impact factor, regionally.

 

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….”

Making two million images freely available online – Living Knowledge blog

“Ten years ago the British Library and the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development started exploring possible areas of collaboration. For some time the British Library had been working on an international engagement strategy to make our collections more accessible in partnership with other organisations.

Fast forward to 2021, and our partnership with the Qatar Foundation and Qatar National Library has gone from strength to strength, this week hitting the major milestone of making our two millionth image freely available online via the Qatar Digital Library.

Under the British Library’s Living Knowledge strategy we have sought new partnerships and collaborations, particularly when it comes to digitisation and digital scholarship.  Our aim is to open up the collections to a global audience and the British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership is a prime example of this endeavour….”

 

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….”

Qatar National Library joins Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services – The Peninsula Qatar

“Qatar National Library (QNL) has joined the Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS), thus furthering its commitment to helping researchers in Qatar and beyond publish their findings on international publishing platforms. 

The Library was named as a representative of the Middle East on the board of SCOSS as part of its continuing commitment to sharing knowledge and information across the world through open access. The Library will join a network of influential organizations committed to helping secure open access and open science infrastructures worldwide.  These infrastructures include scholarly communication resources, services and software that help researchers collect, store, organize, access, share and assess their research….”

Qatar National Library joins Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services – The Peninsula Qatar

“Qatar National Library (QNL) has joined the Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS), thus furthering its commitment to helping researchers in Qatar and beyond publish their findings on international publishing platforms. 

The Library was named as a representative of the Middle East on the board of SCOSS as part of its continuing commitment to sharing knowledge and information across the world through open access. The Library will join a network of influential organizations committed to helping secure open access and open science infrastructures worldwide.  These infrastructures include scholarly communication resources, services and software that help researchers collect, store, organize, access, share and assess their research….”

[1612.07863] Anatomy of Scholarly Information Behavior Patterns in the Wake of Social Media

Abstract:  As more scholarly content is being born digital or digitized, digital libraries are becoming increasingly vital to researchers leveraging scholarly big data for scientific discovery. Given the abundance of scholarly products-especially in environments created by the advent of social networking services-little is known about international scholarly information needs, information-seeking behavior, or information use. This paper aims to address these gaps by conducting an in-depth analysis of researchers in the United States and Qatar; learn about their research attitudes, practices, tactics, strategies, and expectations; and address the obstacles faced during research endeavors. Based on this analysis, the study identifies and describes new behavior patterns on the part of researchers as they engage in the information-seeking process. The analysis reveals that the use of academic social networks has remarkable effects on various scholarly activities. Further, this study identifies differences between students and faculty members in regard to their use of academic social networks, and it identifies differences between researchers according to discipline. The researchers who participated in the present study represent a range of disciplinary and cultural backgrounds. However, the study reports a number of similarities in terms of the researchers’ scholarly activities. Finally, the study illuminates some of the implications for the design of research platforms.