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Friday, November 9, 2012

Thomson Reuters Tackles Open Access Datasets With Data Citation Index

Over a year ago, I spent months working on what I hoped would be a comprehensive guide to Open Access repositories for data in Anthropology & Archaeology. The resulting list is impressive in size if nothing else (see it here). After getting it on the web and appropriately linked, I checked back recently to see what kind of traction the site has gotten - little. Folks in my departments were thrilled to have - many, in fact, helped create it - but their information seeking behavior just didn't allow for rummaging around the web - even with a guide.



In an environment of research - and in a time of decreased financial support - getting the best information is what is essential. Just as with web searching, I've found people in my departments will rarely go beyond the third page of results....The answer with web searching is to become much more skilled in the search so you don't have pages and pages of potentially great results to shift through.



I think that is also true for data discovery. There are fabulous resources for Open Access - or not OA but just great sources - of data out there. So how do we help researchers in this quest?



I think that Thomson Reuters has it right with their new Data Citation Index product. I was asked to write a quick summary as a NewsBreak for Information Today on the product - and you may want to give it a look. Even if you loathe the idea of a commercial company's involvement, the critical issue today is sorting out the wheat from the chaff in terms of finding quality data for research. Even ICPSR and other esteemed repositories are on-board with this effort. Since there isn't an alternative, I'm just happy that someone is willing to invest in giving this the due diligence that it clearly deserves.



Would you agree?

Random House and Penguin Merge to Meet the Digital Imperative

What do you think of the changes in book publishing today? It seems like the only common denominator in the industry is change. Options range from the death of books or chaos to comments like this from blogger "Passive Guy:"


"Twenty-five years from now the creative destruction of legacy publishing we are witnessing today will be regarded as a major cultural turning point, a literary renaissance. We will celebrate countless brilliant books created by authors who would never have been published by the corporate cretins that slithered into control of the levers of Big Publishing."


Where do you stand?



The latest chapter in this cultural shift is the contraction and/or reinvention of publishing itself. The 'Big Six' will be the 'Big Five' next year - if not less as Random House and Penguin merge. I was asked to cover this as a NewsBreak for Information Today. You might want to give it a read.


One image that I can't get over comes from long-time Penn State University Press editor Sandy Thatcher. In an email to me, jokingly noted that "they missed a real opportunity at renaming: this should have become Random Penguins in the House!"



I love the image in my mind that could have become the logo!