An Intellectual Property System for the Internet Age, James Boyle

Excellent review of copyright issues being reviewed in the UK currently.
An Intellectual Property System for the Internet Age, James Boyle
In November 2010, the Prime Minister commissioned a review of the Britain’s intellectual property laws and their effect on economic growth, quoting the founders of Google that “they could never have started their company in Britain” because of a lack of flexibility in British copyright.. Mr. Cameron wanted to see if we could have UK intellectual property laws “fit for the Internet age.” Today the Review will be published. Its conclusion? “Could it be true that laws designed more than three centuries ago with the express purpose of creating economic incentives for innovation by protecting creators’ rights are today obstructing innovation and economic growth? The short answer is: yes.” Those words are from Professor Ian Hargreaves, head of the Review. (Full disclosure: I was on the Review’s panel of expert advisors.)

The Review makes 10 specific recommendations covering patent, copyright and the policy-making process. Some examples: Patent law needs reform to prevent the formation of “thickets” that actually impede innovation, while patents should never be extended to non-technical software inventions or business methods. We found that while patents are working well for standalone innovations, such as a particular drug developed to treat a particular disease, there are problems in technical fields marked by “sequential innovation” such as information technology.
Read the full article here: http://www.thepublicdomain.org/2011/05/18/the-hargreaves-review-is-published/

The Value of Libraries to Research and Researchers

RLUK/ RIN Report 'The Value of Libraries to Research and Researchers'. Press Release and key points at http://bit.ly/mPz3R1

Guide for Researchers on Using Social Media for Research

Excellent Guide for Researchers on Using Social Media for Research by the Research Information Network
http://www.rin.ac.uk/system/files/attachments/social_media_guide_for_screen.pdf

New Guide to Web 2.0/Social Media for Arts and Humanities

Chances are, if you are reading this post, then you are already familiar with Web 2.0 tools that can facilitate you in your research. But if not, you might like to check out Web 2.0 for arts and humanities researchers which is a resource created by Newcastle University Library to show academic researchers (particularly in arts and humanities) how web 2.0 (or 'social media') can help at all stages of the research process. The site contains brief web tutorials illustrated with real-life examples. Worth a look!

NUIG's Library Research Week timed to coincide with International Open Access Week

October 18-22 will be the first Library Research Week at National University of Ireland, Galway. There will be a series of talks and seminars throughout the week, both in the Library and in research centres to promote library services and collections supporting researchers. The event has been timed to coincide with International Open Access Week, so there will be talks covering open access publishing, including our own institutional repository, ARAN. There will also be an exhibition of material from the Archives and Special Collections. For the full programme please see http://www.library.nuigalway.ie/support/supportforresearchers/researchweek/

To check out the other events being organised internationally to celebrate International Open Access Week have a look at http://www.openaccessweek.org/

Gwen Ryan
Research Support Librarian for Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
National University of Ireland, Galway

Impact and Value of International University Rankings

From this week's THE:
Measured, and found wanting more
International comparisons of universities still have their detractors, but the appetite for them continues to grow. Phil Baty traces their roots and looks at how they are increasing in number and quality, while Ellen Hazelkorn considers their impact and value

Ellen's original article is available at http://arrow.dit.ie/cserart/2
Hazelkorn, E. (2009) 'Rankings and the Battle for World-Class Excellence: Institutional Strategies and Policy Choices', Higher Education Management and Policy, 21 (1)

They’re Here! E-Mail Alerts for Google Scholar Now Available Direct from Google

Until now, Google Scholar users had to use a variety of methods to create alerts to notify them of new content in Google Scholar. Well, the wait is over and as of this weekend, Google Scholar E-Mail Alerts are now available. It’s Google, of course they’re free.

NOTE: This post was update at 10 P.M. on Tuesday, May 11, 2010 after ResourceShelf chatted with Anurag Acharya, the founding engineer of Google Scholar.

Creating Alerts

1. For a “simple” alert, just run a Google Scholar search, click the search button, and get your results.

2. Click the “Envelope” icon (top left side of the page). Here, you can make changes, if needed, click “update” button and a sample of results using 2010 results with the modified search query appear below. When you’re set after deciding the amount you want returned, click “Create Alert.” You’re then taken to your page of “Google Scholar” Alert page. If you want to modify the alert at this point, you’ll need to click the cancel button and begin again.

3. Alerts appear to work with all three content options:
A) “Traditional” Google Scholar Content (with patents or without patents)
B) Legal Documents and Journals

4. For advanced Google searchers, most advanced syntax should also work in Google Scholar. The same goes for legal materials and patents. However, date limits do not work. We’re still trying to figure out a search limiting to only patent applications or awarded patents.

However, if you or those you’re working with aren’t syntax users or just want to try something different, Google Scholar alerts created by using a more complex query can also be created using the advanced search interface.

Because alerts are to find new material (independent of publication date) that has just “entered” the database, the date range limits do not work.

You can’t create an alert for only a source (at least at this time. For example, only send alerts for new entries from “The Journal of X” a no go. Anurag Acharya told us that part of the challenge in offering this feature is that Google is that a “large portion” of the Google Scholar database is built by crawling the open web and, “automated identification of articles and extraction of metadata.” Of course, others have written about major issues they have with metadata and automated identification particularly when it comes to using Google Scholar as a tool for citation counts.

5) Alerts limited by an authors name or part of a name and prebuilt “collections” (look for them on the advanced search page) appear to work correctly. Btw, Google Scholar names (with or without an alert) do not have to be inverted and as an example, these are all variants of the same name: “m cutts’” or “matt cutts” or “matthew cutts.” However, if you do get a significant number of false drops due to name issues, it’s probably time to build a new query.

6) One of the great Google info blogs is Google Operating System. There we read that Google Scholar alerts will do automatic query modification.

Google Scholar’s email alerts feature is special because Google changes your to get better results (for example, [statistical speech recognition] has been changed to [statistical intitle:"speech recognition"])
Read the full discussion here: http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/05/10/there-here-e-mail-alerts-for-google-scholar-now-available-direct-from-google/

Sources: Google, Garrett Eastman, Google Operating System, and A Computer Scientist in a Business School