Most Indian Bio-Medical Journals with Top Impact Factors are Open Access Journals

Few days back I got an email giving latest (2010) Impact Factors for Indian Journals according to JCR. I selected Bio-Medical Journals out of these and ranked them according to their Impact Factors.

Journal	ISSN	IF (2010)	Access Type
J BIOSCIENCES	0250-5991	1.888	Open
INDIAN J MED RES	0971-5916	1.826	Open
J POSTGRAD MED	0022-3859	1.589	Open
J GENET	0022-1333	1.338	Open
INDIAN J VIROL	0970-2822	1.133	Closed
ANN THORAC MED	1817-1737	1.06	Open
INDIAN J MED MICROBI	0255-0857	1.006	Open
INDIAN J MICROBIOL	0046-8991	0.938	Closed
INDIAN J DERMATOL VE	0378-6323	0.932	Open
INDIAN PEDIATR	0019-6061	0.9	Open
NEUROL INDIA	0028-3886	0.834	Open
INDIAN J OPHTHALMOL	0301-4738	0.827	Open
J CANCER RES THER	0973-1482	0.825	Open
ALLELOPATHY J	0971-4693	0.635	Closed
INDIAN J PATHOL MICR	0377-4929	0.57	Open
NATL MED J INDIA	0970-258X	0.541	Open
INT J DIABETES DEV C	0973-3930	0.509	Closed
INDIAN J PEDIATR	0019-5456	0.502	Closed
INDIAN J PHARM SCI	0250-474X	0.455	Open
PHARMACOGN MAG	0973-1296	0.432	Open
ANN INDIAN ACAD NEUR	0972-2327	0.415	Open
INDIAN J PHARMACOL	0253-7613	0.303	Open
INDIAN J ORTHOP	0019-5413	0.285	Open
INDIAN J PHARM EDUC	0019-5464	0.163	Open

Contrary to the common myth that open access journals lack quality - the top journals, as can be seen from above table, are Open Access Journals.

Venturing into DSpace

After using EPrints for a repository that has earned me a bit of fame among Indian LIS professionals, I am now venturing into DSpace. Well this does not imply my preference to either of these.

So, the news is that I managed to install DSpace (1.6.2) on a RHEL 5 box.

Well, to admit, it was not smooth. However the following did helped me:

• DSpace Installation (Manual) in Redhat Linux

• AN ALMOST IDIOT'S GUIDE TO INSTALL AND UPGRADE TO POSTGRESQL 8.4 WITH YUM

• Howto Install Sun Java (JDK, JRE) on Fedora, CentOS, Red Hat

• JDK Installation

• DSpace 1.5.2 installation procedure on CentOS 5.3

• Installing DSpace on CentOS 5

• Apache virtual hosting with Tomcat and mod_jk

I got struck at two places. First it was problem with 'xml-commons-apis'. It was missing. When I installed it by

'yum install xml-commons-apis', Yum automatically removed Sun Java. I had to re-install Sun Java. Second time I got struck with 'ant fresh_install'. The problem was with

Downloading http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz

The server was not able to download GeoLiteCity.dat.qz file. I had to cheat 'ant fresh_install' by downloading the file from alternative location and placing it on my server and then tweaking the installation script.

Now finally the DSpace 1.6.2 is working for me. But, I have yet started.

Where do Indian Open Access Repositories stand in world ranking?

January 2010 Edition of the "The Ranking Web of World repositories" is now available. Cybermetrics Lab has been bringing out such ranking of open access repositories for past few years.

Ranking of Indian Repositories in top 400 world's repositories is given below:

82 - Indian Institute of Science Bangalore ePrints

148 - Openmed

180 - Indian Statistical Institute Digital Library

218 - Indian Institute of Astrophysics Dspace

245 - National Institute of Oceanography India Digital Repository

278 - Raman Research Institute Digital Repository

370 - National Aerospace Laboratories Institutional Repository

Visibility occupies more weight in their methodology as compared to number of documents in repository.



So, how does India score - Good, bad or just OK?

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009

Found this on SlideShare.

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009

View more documents from Jane Hart.

Text Translation on Google Translate

Google Translate is a tool that allows you to translate text, documents and webpages between over 50 languages.

Not Just Another Brick in the Wall: Engaging 21st Century Learning Through Participatory School Librarianship

Not Just Another Brick in the Wall: Engaging 21st Century Learning Through Participatory School Librarianship

View more presentations from Buffy Hamilton.

Handwriting fonts.

Was wondering how people make PPT slides with handwritten fonts. Then I came across this useful post on Rapid eLearning Blog - "Over 100 Free Handwritten Fonts". I am yet to try fontcapture.com to create a font for my own handwriting. Anyway, there are few common handwritten fonts readily available from other sources.

in reference to:

"Over 100 Free Handwritten Fonts"
- Over 100 Free Handwritten Fonts » The Rapid eLearning Blog (view on Google Sidewiki)

YouTube Video: Social Media Revolution

A writeup on limitations of Google Scholar for academic citing.

Newswire Analysis: Google Scholar’s Ghost Authors, Lost Authors, and Other Problems - 9/24/2009 - Library Journal

Via Mallikarjun Dora on Lis-Forum

Why Libraries should use and adopt Open Source Software?

I am just back from 12^th NATIONAL CONVENTION ON KNOWLEDGE, LIBRARY AND INFORMATION NETWORKING (NACLIN 2009) of DELNET. There, I argued that Open Source Software is best candidate for being used in Libraries. Both Library as well as Open Source Communities have similar ideologies. Computing history has shown us that both hardware and software have very short life span. They tend to get obsolete in no time when compared to Libraries - which are long term entities. Open Source software is a community effort. Thus there would be someone from community to take place of original developers in case they leave the project. Using Open Source Software is as good as legally owning it. Even libraries can sponsor further development. Thus it is worth to use and adopt open source software for long-term gains and continuity.

Digital Research Tools (DiRT) Wiki

Digital Research Tools (DiRT) Wiki collects information about tools and resources that can help scholars conduct research more efficiently or creatively.

Pazpar2

Pazpar2 is a metasearching middleware webservice featuring merging, relevance ranking, record sorting, and faceted results.

Twitter Hindi Reference

Twitter:
`Chidiyaghar` ya phir `Chahchahati Bahar`

Tweet:
Chahchahana

Tweetup:
Chahchahata Milan

VT:
Yeh Bapu ne bola hai. VT bole toh Vaapis Tweet

Trending Topics:
Ubharta Vishay

Hashtag:
Soochak Shabd

LOLZ:
MKH=Mogambo Khush Hua(Ho Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha)

ROTFL:
MLLKH=Mogambo Lot Lot ke Khush Hua

Via Jai Hind: Proud to be an Indian in 'Twitter Hindi Diwas'

24 new features planned for the next release of EPrints

Leslie Carr in his post EPrints and its Development talks about new features planned for the next release of EPrints.

Access to the scientific literature in India

A paper Access to the scientific literature in India uses an evidence-based approach to assess the difficulties faced by developing country scientists in accessing the scientific literature. According to this paper Indian scientists have shorter references lists; they are more likely to cite articles from open access journals and are less likely to cite articles from expensive journals.