Biological databases: A new scientific literature

Biology is entering a new era in which data are being generated that cannot be published in the traditional literature. Databases are taking the role of scientific literature in distributing this information to the community. The success of some major biological undertakings, such as the Human Genome Project, will depend upon the development of a system for electronic data publishing. Many biological databases began as secondary literature—reviews in which certain kinds of data were collected from the primary literature. Now these databases are becoming a new kind of primary literature with findings being submitted directly to the database and never being published in print form. Some databases are offering publishing on demand services, where users can identify subsets of the data that are of interest, then subscribe to periodic distributions of the requested data. New systems, such as fordable while offering a powerful search tool to the scientific community. Although many questions remain regarding the ultimate interactions between electronic and traditional data publishing and about their respective roles in the scientific process, electronic data publishing is here now, changing the way biology is done. The technical problems associated with mounting cost-effective electronic data publishing are either solved, or solutions seem in reach. What is needed now, to take us all the way into electronic data publishing as a new, formal literature, is the development of more high-quality, professionally operated EDP sites. The key to transforming these into a new scientific literature is the establishment of appropriate editorial and review policies for electronic data publishing sites. Editors have the opportunity and the responsibility to work in the vanguard of a revolution in scientific publishing.     

A new generation of grey literature: The impact of advanced information technologies

A basic challenge of the Weinberg Report addressed the question of information overload. The Weinberg Panel was extremely concerned with the proliferation of scientific literature and the specific issue of how to sift through reams of data to find the “gems” of wisdom, or that which is truly new and useful. In the early 1960s when the report was being written, computers were not part of the information access and retrieval infrastructure. Writing twenty-five years later, in 1988, Dr. Weinberg recognized that the panel had not adequately taken into account the impact of the computer and the growth of the information industry. Today we have a new world of microcomputers and networked information which is fundamentally shifting the paradigm of scientific communication. We have new capabilities, including electronic publishing, visualization techniques, even virtual reality. Without getting into a great debate about the definition of “grey literature,” the main characteristics have traditionally been described as: rapid publication, wariable formats, no public peer review, and no commercial source of general availability. With networked information and multi-media technology, the new world of grey literature is emerging with an interesting set of new and revived challenges. This article looks at the most interesting characteristics, and based on them, presents the thesis that in the 1990s we are facing a new generation of “grey literature”.     

The internet as a global search system for scientific articles on information and communication

The peculiarities of searching for scientific articles on information and communication over the Internet are described. The object and tools of the search are selected. An object search refers to the Internet resource, which provides the necessary information. The means of searching include tools with the help of which the user may locate the object of the search.     

The editorial boards of scientific journals as a subject of scientometric research: A literature Review

This paper presents a review of publications that explore the role of editorial boards for scholarly journals. Such studies are rather limited as the role of editorial boards of scientific periodicals has not yet been fully gauged by information experts as a subject of scientometric research. However, the study of the publication activities, as well as the geographic, linguistic, and gender distribution of editorial-board members offers a new perspective on several issues of relevance to scientometrics. Such issues include the assessment of research performance at the country, organizational, or research-group level; research and publication ethics; journal quality; and internationalization of a scientific discipline.     

The use of grey literature in health sciences: a preliminary survey

The paper describes some initiatives in the field of grey literature (GL) and the activities, from 1985, of the Italian Library Association Study Group. The major categories of GL are defined; a survey that evaluates the use of GL by end users in the health sciences is described. References in selected periodicals and databases have been analyzed for the years 1987-1988 to determine the number of articles citing GL, the number of GL citations found in selected periodicals, the various types of GL found, and the number of technical reports cited and their country of origin and intergovernmental issuing organization. Selected databases were also searched to determine the presence of GL during those same years. The paper presents the first results obtained.     

Government as a platform,orchestration, and public value creation: The Italian case

E-Government literature has discussed how the adoption of the Government as a Platform (GaaP) can help public administration to produce more efficient public services. However, since little attention has been given to the impact of GaaP on public value creation more research is needed to analyse whether the GaaP is effective to help the government to deliver public services that fulfil social expectations and, hence, public value. Indeed, efficiency does not guarantee public value. Besides efficiency, public value incorporates citizens' variegated expectations and needs that change over time and that are sometimes rival. For these reasons, the delivery of public value is often challenging for public agencies. The aim of this paper is to explain how the GaaP configuration can help public administration to deliver public value better. The paper finds that the modularity of the platform configuration and different ecosystems that support public agencies need to be orchestrated to support the effective creation of public value. The authors analyse the case of the Italian GaaP initiative to discuss the importance of the orchestration of the GaaP characteristics to improve the coordination among public agencies and enable the co-production of services with external actors, in order to deliver public value better. The findings show that the orchestration of the GaaP configuration characteristics can enable Italian public administration to deliver public value, but also that, if the GaaP is not properly orchestrated, it can constrain the creation of public value.     

The ubiquity of grey literature in a connected content context

Publishing Research Quarterly -     

A megajournal as a new type of scientific publication

The megajournal is a new form of an academic open-access journal that is peer reviewed for scientific and methodological soundness. Thus, the perceived importance is not assessed, leaving it to the readers to decide whether an article is of interest and importance to them. After the highly successful launch of the PLOS ONE megajournal, other publishers followed this path. The current paper undertakes a review of the articles published internationally on the megajournal criteria defining its concept. It also traces how the new type of scientific publication has been developing and expanding since the PLoS ONE launch in 2006.     

Rise of the phoenix: A review of new forms and exploitations of grey literature

In the field of scientific, technical, and business information a new legend has arisen. Grey literature (GL), thought by many to have become dormant, has witnessed a rebirth. Grey literature, like the phoenix of ancient legend, has been enkindled by its own resources. New producers and publishers of grey literature have provided us with new forms and types of grey literature. New methods and mediums of storing and distributing grey literature have created new uses for these resources, and in turn, new users of these resources are demonstrating its further capabilities. Government organizations, business and industry, as well as academic institutions have come to view themselves as publishers of grey literature. Their reports, working papers, and policy statements are no longer available only to a limited few in printed form, but are published electronically and are available in networked environments for unlimited retrieval. These new resources, stored in a host of electronic formats, have lured new user groups worldwide, and the exploitation of these resources have not only been made for economic gain, but have greatly contributed to the knowledge base in many fields and disciplines, to the decision making in local and (inter)national government agencies, and in information forecasts for businesses. The rise of this new grey phoenix has emerged over the past quarter of a century from an uncontrolled mass of information to new meta-information applicable for science and industry. phoenix n: A bird of ancient legend said to be the only one of its kind and to live more than 500 years, at the end of which it built for itself a funeral pile, lighted it with the fanning of its wings, and rose again from its ashes; hence, an emblem of immortality; a paragon. this article was adapted from a paper presented at the second U.S. Workshop on Grey Literature (GreyWorks’96) held at College Park, Maryland, USA on November 18, 1996.     

Medical literature as a potential source of new knowledge

Specialized biomedical literatures have been found that are implicitly linked by arguments that they respectively contain, but which nonetheless do not cite or refer to each other. The combined arguments lead to new inferences and conclusions that cannot be drawn from the separate literatures. One such analysis identified one set of articles showing that dietary fish oils lead to certain blood and vascular changes, and a second set containing evidence that similar changes might benefit patients with Raynaud's syndrome. Yet these two literatures had no articles in common and had never before been cited together; neither literature mentioned the other or suggested that dietary fish oil might benefit Raynaud patients. Two years after publication of that analysis, the first clinical trial demonstrating such a beneficial effect was reported independently by others. A second example of literature synthesis, based on eleven indirect connections, led to an inference that magnesium deficiency might be a causal factor in migraine headache. A third example calls attention to implicit connections between arginine intake and blood levels of somatomedins, a potentially fruitful but neglected area of research with implications for the decline with age of thymic function and protein synthesis. A model and an online search strategy to aid in identifying other logically related noninteractive literatures is described. Such structures are probably not rare and may provide the foundation for a literature-based approach to scientific discovery.     

互联网:民意表达新通道

网络舆论开辟了反映民意的新通道 ,并将互动扩展到媒体之外 ,促进了政府与公众的沟通。它不仅为政府了解民情民意开启了一个视野宽阔的窗口 ,也为社会主义民主建设架起了一座桥梁。它使政府领导者能够更多地倾听群众呼声、了解世间百态、发掘民间智慧、看到来自网上的建议和批评。然而 ,网络舆论不可避免地存在着其不平衡的一面 ,它代表民意的程度还毕竟有限     

Exploring FOI publicity patterns: The case of Italian municipalities

This paper aims to study FOI publicity implementation patterns by Italian municipalities' (>30,000 inhabitants). The analysis relies on data collected through an original survey of the municipalities' websites. Data allow inspecting the information that local governments disclose about the procedures for the presentation of FOI requests and how the FOI requests received in the past were managed. Cluster analyses reveal that the municipalities are rather heterogeneous in managing FOI publicity. Some of them provide full disclosure of relevant information; instead, others show non-compliance with the guidelines issued by the Italian central government. Regression analyses suggest that municipalities' size and income positively correlate with more elevated publicity. Civic capital is also positively connected with information about the procedures for presenting FOI requests. Factors affecting the demand for information about FOI, such as education and access to the internet, do not seem to be linked with publicity patterns.     

CERN document server: Document management system for grey literature in a networked environment

Conclusion In this paper we briefly described the current status of research in the field of digital libraries interoperability, mainly with respect to federated data processing such as permitted within the Open Archive Initiative framework. We then presented the CERN Document Server Software suite that is a free software package main-tained by CERN providing an online digital library solution for mid- to large-sized document repositories. The set of CDSware modules was described and the differ-ences with other existing tools briefly mentioned. Finally we have mentioned a typical usage statistics illustrating the scope of grey literature and networked con-ditions of the CERN Document Server. We pointed out that the current trend in grey literature management goes toward institutional repositories build upon the distributed and federated model. Further research is going on within the CDS collaboration in this area, focused particularly on (i) semantic interoperability using ontologies in distributed and federated data processing and (ii) ranking technologies when searching grey literature in OAI compliant repositories.     

研究型大学文献信息服务新模式

信息化时代大学图书馆文献信息服务,已经从网络化、数字化的读者自主服务模式,逐步转变和延伸为高层次的知识服务。文章叙述了科学院图书馆信息化机制和中国科学技术大学图书馆文献信息服务的新模式。     

The present and future of qualimetry as a scientific discipline

The status of qualimetry as a science is substantiated. The interrelationships between qualimetry and systemology are defined. The place of qualimetry among quality-control methods is identified. Trends in qualimetry are formulated.