The project Arabic Collections Online (ACO) is an online library specialized in providing Open Access to Arabic books and manuscripts in several scientific domains. ACO started its digitization project with the aim of providing free and global access to Arabic language content, which is currently not widely available. The project already offers access to over 16.000 volumes, however the goal of the project is to digitize 23.000 Arabic volumes. The topics range from philosophy and religion to political sciences and…
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Finding an Open Access journal with the DOAJ
Looking to publish in Open Access but not sure how to find a suitable Open Access journal in your specific discipline? The easiest way to start your search is browsing through the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which was created to increase the accessibility, usage, and impact of quality OA resources. The DOAJ indexes academic journals across all disciplines that are peer-reviewed and only have the Full OA-option, not the Hybrid OA-option. If you already have a specific journal…
Read moreThe Belgian War press: de Belgische pers gedigitaliseerd
The Belgian War press website biedt gratis tal van Belgische kranten aan die gedurende de twee Wereldoorlogen verschenen, al dan niet klandestien of gecensureerd door de bezetter. Op initiatief van CegeSoma (Studiecentrum Oorlog en Maatschappij) met financiële steun van Belspo (Federaal Wetenschapsbeleid) werden deze kranten – waarvan de consultatie in diverse archieven en bibliotheken vaak problematisch is – verzameld en gedigitaliseerd. De website, die geraadpleegd kan worden in het Nederlands, Frans en Engels, biedt ook achtergrondinformatie aan met betrekking tot…
Read moreOpen Access terminology (bis)
A previous post shed some much needed light on the complex world of OA terminology. It certainly helps to be familiar with these names, although we cannot claim that all possible questions can be answered with one post. What about Black OA, Rogue OA, Radical OA and Platinum OA? Can Bronze OA actually be called OA? And is Elsevier really talking about the same approach to Diamond OA as the early advocates for community-driven, APC-free OA do when they plan…
Read moreNot Only Transformative Agreements
More and more institutions and consortia of libraries conclude so-called read-and-publish deals or transformative agreements with legacy publishers. But this new incarnation of the big deal is not without its critics. The hard line opposition argues that transformative agreements hamper progression and should therefore be avoided at all cost. A less radical approach is to make sure that the available budget is not spent exclusively on transformative agreements but is also used to support alternatives, fostering diversity of business models…
Read moreThe Open Access color palette
When navigating your way through the Open Access publishing landscape you will quickly learn that a color system is used to distinguish between the different types of business models for OA publishing. But what does each color stand for and what does it allow in terms of publicly sharing your work? In this blog post I will give a quick recap of the most commonly used “color categories”. This information is based on the definitions you will find on the…
Read moreOpen Access Books Toolkit: A guide to OA book publishing
Do you want to publish your monograph in Open Access but you are not sure where to start? The freely accessible OA books toolkit will help you to navigate the landscape of OA book publishing. Launched by the OAPEN Foundation, in collaboration with Springer Nature and The University of Glasgow, the toolkit aims at increasing the understanding of OA books, while at the same time promoting trust in OA publishing. The toolkit consists of numerous articles that address common concerns…
Read moreUnpaywall plug-in
Unpaywall, a service that indexes OA content from scholarly repositories and archives, offers a browser extension that allows you to read millions of scientific papers which are normally locked up behind a paywall. Sounds too good to be true? On the contrary, Unpaywall operates on a completely legal basis. How it works is that Unpaywall harvests papers from OA repositories (such as our own institutional repository Lirias) from all over the world, which have been self-archived by authors with the…
Read moreWhat’s in a number? A closer look at Open Access readership data
Whereas academic journals that offer Gold OA options have become widespread in the last decade, the transition to Open Access for academic books is lagging behind, despite the fact that monographs are still the leading publishing format in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In order to boost the publication of OA books, KU Leuven Libraries reserved a substantial part of the KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access, established in 2018, to help finance OA books published by Leuven University Press (LUP). We…
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