Around the blogs

Here are a few things found via other blogs which should be of interest to members of Heriot-Watt University.

1. Via the Englibrary blog, I noticed news about Bentham Publishers, who are launching more than 200 peer-reviewed Open Access journals. The list of journals by subject shows a number of titles relevant to subjects taught at Heriot-Watt, including The Open Civil Engineering Journal, The Open Construction & Building Technology Journal, and The Open Chemical Engineering Journal, to name but three. Content is already available in some cases. Open Access means that all articles are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication.

2. Science Library Pad, a blog written by Richard Akerman, reviews the new free 2collab service from Elsevier which is currently in the news. Akerman writes, “A strength of 2collab is the ability to create an manage groups”.

2collab is a social bookmarking site where you can store and organize your favorite internet resources – such as blogs, websites, research articles, and more. Then, in private or public groups you can decide to share your bookmarks with others – stimulating debate and discussion. Members of groups can evaluate these resources (by rating bookmarks, tagging and adding comments), or add their own bookmarks. You can browse public groups and bookmarks, but must register (your name and email address) to access the full functionality – such as creating groups, adding comments, and adding bookmarks.

3. Via the Update blog from the University of Worcester, I noted the Creative Review blog, from the writers of Creative Review, which is a print journal held at the Scottish Borders Campus Library (more details here).

4. Finally, I noticed a story about Scitopia, mentioned previously in a June spineless? post, in a news item from the Information World Review.  Scitopia is a federated search gateway to more than three million science and technology documents, and has been officially launched. Scitopia can be used to find publications from 15 societies, such as the Acoustical Society of America, American Society of Civil Engineers, SPIE, etc.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian