Slide 1

International visibility of local content

Workshop 3: Local content

INASP/ODI Symposium 2006

Pippa Smart

Head, Publishing Initiatives, INASP

psmart@inasp.info

Slide 2

Research discovery

• Online– Online indexes (e.g. Google, PubMed)– Alerts, listServs, social bookmarking sites (e.g.

Connotea, Furl)

• Word-of-mouth• Library (main or faculty library)• Personal subscriptions• Other media

– Newspaper, magazines, radio, TV

Slide 3

Trust

• Known journals / authors / institutions • Peer reviewed• Impact factor journals

Slide 4

Journals listings

• Ulrich’s is considered the definitive list of serial publications

• Over 180,000 active serials• 43,500 refereed/academic titles

– Carol Tenopir, 2004, Library Journal www.libraryjournal.com

Slide 5

Does this pick up every one …

• Ulrich’s– Not all journals know about Ulrichs (e.g. only 327

African-published titles)

• ISSN agency– Not all journals have an ISSN– Some journals have multiple ISSNs– Many items with an ISSN are not journals

• 1123 publications from Sri Lanka – truer number of journals published c.50

Slide 6

Where else do people search …

• ISI and ISSI– Selected list of high quality journals: “impact

factor”• Highly selective – biased towards already-

recognised titles• 27 titles from sub-Saharan Africa

Slide 7

Author representation in impact factor journals

Region and country/economy

1988 1990 1995 2000 20032003 percent

of total

All countries 466,419 508,795 580,809 632,781 698,726 100.00%

Eastern Europe/former USSR

41,597 42,836 36,390 35,844 35,0675.02%

Other Asia (exc. Chin, S.Korea, Sing, Taiw)

10,116 10,566 11,355 12,294 15,7792.26%

Near East/North Africa 7,896 8,241 9,647 11,111 13,4651.93%

Central/South America 5,632 6,886 9,547 14,747 18,9332.71%

Sub-Saharan Africa 4,544 4,355 4,161 3,973 4,2190.60%

Slide 8

Regional research

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, December 2004

Slide 9

Other trusted indexes

• Medline (PubMed)• Number of titles

– Europe/USA/Australasia: 6708 (90.55%)– Africa: 30 (0.40%)– Asia: 359 (4.85%)– China: 209 (2.82%)– Central/South America: 102 (1.38%)

• High impact index

Slide 10

Regional listings

• CLACSO– Journals, books, grey literature

• Latindex– Approx. 2000 journals

• SciELO– 279 high quality journals

• AJOL– approx. 250 peer reviewed African journals

Slide 11

Local listings – grey literature and published research

• Library catalogues– Paper, Intranet, online?

• Institutional and discipline repositories– See Repository of Open Access Repositories

(ROAR) http://archives.eprints.org/

• Harvesters – e.g. OAIster

Slide 12

Finally …

• Where is local content – Can it be discovered– (Can it be trusted)– Can it be accessed

– How can it be made more influential?

Slide 13

1. What format does local content take?

2. What existing rewards and values are placed on this content creation? (how do you measure impact?)

3. How is the content captured and published?• Who owns the content?

– How is it disseminated locally and internationally?

4. What is the audience for this work – what potential audiences should be targeted?

5. What are you experiences?

6. What recommendations would you make for improving the influence of this content throughout the information chain, especially on policy makers?