Academic Research and Publishing - Improvements and Transitions Keep on Coming

If ONLY the choices and ease of academic research existing today were available when I was knee-deep in graduate studies! Tonight's post is loaded with informative links (for those interested in learning more about academic research and publishing). 

Today, for example, integrated digitised modules allow academics and librarians to locate, bookmark, publish, manage and observe/analyze by tracking the usage of learning resources for students - These modules also enable the learning resources (content) to be stored while simultaneously ensuring authenticated student access and providing copyright compliance.

Before I forget and for those who are not too familiar with (or simply forgot) here is a definition of academic publishing (for academic pros the last paragraph discusses transition to electronic format and two types of open access):

'Academic publishing describes the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in journal article, book or thesis form. The part of academic written output that is not formally published but merely printed up or posted on the Internet is often called "grey literature". Most scientific and scholarly journals, and many academic and scholarly books, though not all, are based on some form of peer review or editorial refereeing to qualify texts for publication. Peer review quality and selectivity standards vary greatly from journal to journal, publisher to publisher, and field to field.

Most established academic disciplines have their own journals and other outlets for publication, although many academic journals are somewhat interdisciplinary, and publish work from several distinct fields or subfields. There is also a tendency for existing journals to divide into specialized sections as the field itself becomes more specialized. Along with the variation in review and publication procedures, the kinds of publications that are accepted as contributions to knowledge or research differ greatly among fields and subfields.

Academic publishing is undergoing major changes, as it makes the transition from the print to the electronic format. Business models are different in the electronic environment. Since the early 1990s, licensing of electronic resources, particularly journals, has been very common. Currently, an important trend, particularly with respect to scholarly journals, is open access via the Internet. There are two main forms of open access: open access publishing, in which a whole journal (or book) or individual articles are made available free for all on the web by the publisher at the time of publication (sometimes, but not always, for an extra publication fee paid by the author or the author's institution or funder); and open access self-archiving, in which authors themselves make a copy of their published articles available free for all on the web.' --- Wikipedia

This little ditty from Knowledge Speak.com, the daily resource for the STM publishing industry: 

EBSCO and Talis partner to integrate EDS into Talis Aspire reading list and copyright compliance solutions

Library resources provider EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) (EBSCO stands for Elton B. Stephens Co.) recently announced a partnership with Talis. As a result of this partnership, more libraries will have the ability to optimise their individual discovery experience. The partnership enables EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) to be seamlessly integrated into Talis's cloud based Talis Aspire Reading List and Talis Aspire Digitised Content modules.

EBSCO works continuously to expand the number of library technology platform/ILS partnerships in order to give libraries more choices for greater integration of their library resources. EDS provides a full-featured experience for end users bringing together a comprehensive index and a single search approach while also offering a true academic and powerful environment in order to facilitate a comprehensive discovery experience. 

Talis is a UK based business whose mission is to apply software and data to help transform education. The Talis Aspire Reading List module enables academics and librarians to find, bookmark, manage, publish and track usage of recommended learning resources for students. The Talis Aspire Digitised Content module enables digitised content referenced on reading lists to be managed and stored, whilst ensuring authenticated access to students and providing regular copyright compliance reporting. 

The data in the Talis Platform consists of over 100,000 reading lists containing over 2 million references to learning resources including textbooks, ebooks, journals, documents, videos and web pages. These are teaching resources recommended by academics from over 50 universities, and used by over 1 million students at campuses around the world. 

Go here for original article

My past posts (10) on Academic Publishing