Journal editors get guidelines

Blackwell Publishing, a major publisher of medical, academic and professional society journals with more than 800 titles, has launched guidelines covering the ethical principals of the sector.

The guidelines, Best Practice Guidelines on Publication Ethics: A Publisher’s Perspective, provide advice to editors on the major ethical principles of academic publishing.

Topics covered include transparency, disclosure, research integrity, peer review, conflicts of interest and plagiarism while a best practice resource is included to help editors develop their own approaches to issues.

Dr Andrew Robinson, director of medical publishing at Blackwell’s, said: "Today’s editors confront a vast range of ethical dilemmas, and as a leading publisher for societies…we have a duty of care to provide them with the tools to deal with these issues. We hope the guide will be a useful tool for editors looking to develop or refine their ethical frameworks."

Reading lists with OPML

Do you, or your colleagues, need to share up-to-date reading lists with others? And are those lists a mix of online and offline resources? If you do, then you might want to investigate the Outline Processor Markup Language (OPML) as your means of sharing.

Mark Chillingworth blogged a bit about it from the Online Information conference session, "Strategies for using rss to deliver content". Here are some more details.

As the name suggests, OPML content can be arranged as an outline. Each entry can be text, an HTML link, an RSS feed or another OPML file. This last function has real power - include links to the reading lists of all the people you respect. Aggregators, such as NewsGator, give the option of publishing RSS subscription lists as an OPML file. Then you can see, in real time, what a person's interests are.

Of course, you'll never have time to do your job if you spend your life browsing this stuff, but it's great to have it on tap.

Because it's XML, an OPML file can be read and edited. It's best to build it with other programs though - several offer OPML output. And there's always the free OPML Editor which works on both Macs and PCs. This can also be used to read the resulting files, but my favourite is Grazr, which is also free.

Here's a snap of a Grazr three-pane view. On the left you can see an HTML link, folders revealing the outline structure, text only entries, some RSS feeds and an OPML include (the blue icon). On the right, one of Andrew McAfee's RSS feed items is selected and its content displayed.

If you want more, search for tebbutt opml screencast in Google.

Strategies for using rss to deliver content, track 1, Online Information Conference 2006

This is a re-posting of one of our stories from the Online Information Conference, we had to make some ammendments from the original text due to accidently confusing some of the facts.  We've also included Peter Griffiths slides.  Download 20061129_blogs_wikis_and_feeds_slides_only.ppt

IWR columnist David Tebbutt chairs this discussion at the Online Information Conference 2006 in London on using Really Simple Syndication (RSS) technology.  The session is packing out, no wonder, this technology is important to all three spectrums of the information community: users, information services departments and information publishers.

Peter Griffiths, Head, Information Services Unit, Home Office, UK joins the debate, he’s an author as well.

“Reputation is an issue for every business”, he starts, “Some companies like Sun openly encourage blogging but there can be problems, such as when disgruntled employees have a grudge or overenthusiastic people give away trade secrets.  In the public sector we could inadvertently breach security or Freedom of Information rules.”  Matthew Taylor, outgoing political advisor at No 10, spoke at a recent conference on e-Democracy about political blogs.  Political commentators and groups increasingly use blogs as a campaign tool.  “Blogs were influential in the recent US mid-term elections and will no doubt be important in next year’s French presidential elections” says Griffiths.  The most visited political blog is as popular as Private Eye magazine.  He publishes server statistics on his site to show the range of users who visit, like politicians and the media. “Bloggers are now a serious political force in the UK.
“Government uses traditional media monitoring services like cuttings agencies but these don’t pick up bloggers comments or news stories from the Internet that don’t reach the national press or tv news bulletins, so we built on our existing current awareness service to close the gap.”
Karen George, head of the Home Office Library, has come on to present how the monitoring is done.  In July 2005 they set up a service on a trial basis for six months.  By Christmas 2005 they were providing information to lawyers, IT and a range of policy makers and services.  There was a rise in 2005 when a number of issues like ID cards happened at the same time and the number of current awareness alerts rose from 408 in November 2005 to a total of 1462 in November 2006.
There are two librarians part of whose job is monitoring internet based information each day.  Feeds are coming in 24/7 from a wide range of sources – websites, blogs, newsgroups – these feeds are processed through an increasing number of filters which select relevant information matching the key terms in the filters but although these tools make the job easier they cannot replace the skills of information professionals.  The professionals make it possible for example to highlight different aspects of the same story for different users.  The fundamental info pro skills of knowing your audience really come to the fore.

In just over a year this has become an essential part of the library’s current awareness portfolio.  The Office’s public enquiry service can be made aware of what callers are likely to be asking about, so they can be better prepared, and the library staff themselves are also well informed which helps them deal better with enquiries.  All this helps the Office to have a better relationship with its stakeholders.
“We add value and context to what we find, and the librarians are developing new skills like political sensitivity – knowing when a story is likely to develop into something big.”
Peter is back on : “The sheer volume of information means that we need high speed access and the ability to read a variety of file formats – for example our stakeholders like West Midlands Police are using advanced features such as mp3 for their Plodcast podcast.”  He concludes, “it’s unlikely we will ever be able to go back to providing just a conventional current awareness service, and this is likely to be the same for any corporate organisation.”

Patent Office reform urged by Gowers report

The UK Patent Office should be reformed as the UK Intellectual Property Office and an independent Strategic Advisory Board on IP Policy should advise the government, according to the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property.

"In today's global economy, knowledge capital, more than physical capital will drive the success of the economy. Against this backdrop, IP rights, which protect the value of creative ideas, are more vital than ever," Gowers said as he delivered the report to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown  and the Secretaries of state for Trade and Industry and Culture, Media and Sport.

Gowers, a former editor of the Financial Times, has identified three areas for reform, including increased strength for enforcing IP, extra support for British businesses using IP abroad and a balance to the law to encourage innovation. "The ideal IP system creates incentives for innovation, without unduly limiting access for consumers and follow-on innovators," he said.

Gowers suggests restructuring the patent office to provide better support for British businesses and to improve support, especially when dealaing with India and China.

UK IP laws should enable private copying for personal use and libraries will be allowed to copy material for preservation. 

Full analysis of the paper will be in the next issue of IWR, click here to receive a copy.

Microsoft book search engine goes Live

Live Search Books from software giants Microsoft has gone live as a Beta version. The search engine includes content from the British Library which has received significant funding from Microsoft to digitise 25 million pages of out-of-copyright material.

Live Search Books, a rival to Google Book Search which has courted so much controversy, will feature collections from the University of California and Toronto alongside the British Library (BL) archives. A set of new collections are likely to join the service in January 2007. 

Unlike Google Book Search, Live Search Books will only feature non-copyrighted material at launch. In-copyright material that publishers have chosen to add to the service will join next year.

Microsoft has made sure the publishing and information industry is clear about its good intentions towards copyright and cites its own experiences with copyright as a software producer constantly fighting against pirates.

Book search results will not be available on the Windows Live Search page initially, but will be integrated next year.

Chancellor Gordon Brown announces copyright reforms today

Gordon Brown is set to announce radical changes to the intellectual property and copyright laws in the UK this afternoon as he delivers his Pre-Budget Report.  The Treasury has confirmed to IWR that the report will be available at 1.15pm today.

Reports in today's newspapers expect Brown adopt the majority of the proposals set down by former Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers in his report. Brown commissioned Gowers exactly a year ago to review Britain's copyright and intellectual copyright laws.  It is known that the British Library and search giants Google were amongst those that sent submissions of evidence to Gowers.

According to the Times newspaper Brown will be tougher on copyright criminals, appeasing the music industry which has tried to dominate the copyright debate, but will also liberalise the law to promote new business models and make it easier for the information industry to archive and preserve material.

The Trading Standards agency will an extra £5m to police copyright infringements and the penalty for online copyright infringement is expected to be increased from a two year jail terms to 10 years.   Gowers is believed to argue in his report that effective enforcement of copyright law is crucial.

The Chancellor may also announce that the law will be modified to include "transformative works", allowing copyright protected work to be used in new ways as long as it does not detract from the original material.

Snippets from Online Information 2006

Here's an utterly warped and biased take on the Online Information Conference. Biased because I only attended seven out of the thirty one sessions. Warped because I'm only plucking out a few bits that interested, amused or surprised me.

Let's start with Tom Stewart from Harvard Business Review. He was talking about knowledge and where it resides. He gave the example of a company that installed a comprehensive customer solution programme and then ran a test to see who knew most about its products and services. Carlos scored highest, which was puzzling because he refused to use the system. He relied on his own knowledge. The second most highly placed operative was also surprising, until the company realised that she sat next to Carlos.

Nic Newman from the BBC's Search Futures showed a great example of pictures sized by the number of people currently connected to them. (Incidentally, during his 11:30 slot, he referred to Michael Grade as the "ex-chairman of the BBC" and the man had only resigned that morning.)

Stuart Kauder, of Accoona, made the interesting observation that, "good content works against the advertisers' interests - people read that instead of the ads". Oh dear.

Geoffrey Bilder, of Scholarly Information Strategies, was commenting on Web 2.0 hype. He showed a graph - red is perceived risks, blue is perceived benefits. The letters A, B and C refer to Venture capitalists/Management, Helpdesk/IT people and Gurus/Alpha geeks, respectively. When industry hype is peaking, the As only talk to the Cs, missing out the people who really understand the issues. Benefits get exaggerated and risks get minimised.

PodTech's, Robert Scoble thought that, because word of mouth is so rapid in the blogosphere, bloggers are becoming as powerful as the BBC.

At the end of the 'Future of Social Software and Web 2.0' session, audience member Steve Gibson of Cranfield University asked, "How does what you do relate to organisational objectives?" Good question and only one of the speakers (Ewan McIntosh from Learning and Teaching, Scotland) even referred to value. Mainly, the focus was on direct communication with customers and disintermediation of anyone who gets in the way (bosses, PR, marketing, journalists...).