Open Access to E – Resources

Open Access to E – Resources
Venkatarama Reddy C S
Email: venkat_222002@yahoo.co.in
Introduction:
The Open Access movement is the world wide effort to provide free online access to Scientific and Scholarly research literature, especially peer – reviewed journal articles and their preprints.
Many Libraries, faced with budgetary crunches and the resultant lack of technological resources, have opted for open source solutions to some of their Information technology problems.
Open Access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
“Resources those are openly available to users with no requirements for authentication or payment.”
The first OA Initiative is Budapest Open Access Initiative, and it was big initiative in the world (http://www.soros.org/openaccess/index.shtml).
Major E – Resources of Open Access
Open Access Journals
Open Access Journals are primarily electronic journals, these journals allow the authors to retain their copyrights. Three organizations play a major role in the publication and archiving of Open Access Journals, they are BioMed Central, the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and PubMed Central. Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) is an inovative Sceintific Electronic Publishing Cooperative that focuses on providing open access to Latin and Caribbean Journals.
Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org/): It covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals (2609 journals), and aims to cover all subjects and languages.
Open J–Gate (http://www.openj-gate.com/): It is an electronic gateway to global journals literature in Open Access domain, it is world’s biggest open access English Language Journals portal and it covers more than 3000+ journals.
Open Access Journals in the field of Education (http://aera-cr.asu.edu/ejournals/): American Educational Research Association Special Interest Group has been given the links to peer reviewed electronic Journals in the field of Education.
Free Medical Journals (http://www.freemedicaljournals.com/htm/index.htm): It is maintained by Bernd Sebastian Kamps, around 400 E – Journals are free to access in the field of Medical Sciences.
Indian Journals.com (http://indianjournals.com/ijor.aspx): it is a product of Divan Enterprises to provide single platform to Indian Journals and highlight Indian contributions internationally.
E – Books
E – Book is a electronic book, it is cheaper and easier to produce than a paper book. E – Books can be updated, rewritten, corrected and kept fresh. E – Books will offer a rich learning experience, audio, video, 3D animation and collective learning tools. There are good number of electronic books are available on the internet for free of cost. They are available in most of the subject areas. Some are available for browsing and many titles are for download.
Bartleby.com (http://www.bartleby.com/)
Provides free full text online access to reference, literature and verse books.
Computer Books (http://freecomputerbooks.com/)
It is a free collection of computers and Information Technology related books from all over the world.
Computer and Internet Books Online (http://hogan-productions.com/books/)
This database contains links to free ebooks available online.
Ebrary (http://shop.ebrary.com/)
It holds a collection of e-books on various subjects, here only viewing is free. To browse one has to download their plugin.
Freebooks4doctors (http://fb4d.com/)
FreeBooks4Doctors is dedicated to the promotion of free access to medical books over the Internet. There are good number of titles available on different aspects of medical sciences. It provides links to free of cost e-books available on different sites.
Free online Books (http://onlinesapiens.com/books.html)
It provides links to online full text of educational and technical books. Also provides links to online course, workshops, etc.
Free Programming and Computer Science Books (http://www.techbooksforfree.com/)
Here we can download programming and computer science books for free.
Free Tech Books (http://www.freetechbooks.com/)
It lists free online computer science and engineering books, and also Lecture Notes.
World e-book Library (http://www.netlibrary.net/Public.htm)
It is a global coordinated effort to preserve and disseminate classic works of literature, serials, bibliographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference works in a number of languages and countries around the world. Provides free access to collection listed under 'Public'.
For further information on free E – Books is available in the following web address http://www.infolibrarian.com/ebook.htm
Institutional Archives Repositories
Institutional Archives provide access to the world wide literature of one or more fields. An Institutional repository includes a variety of materials produced by scholars such as e-prints, technical reports, theses and dissertations, data sets, teaching materials, e-books, and e-journals etc. Dspace at MIT is a good example of an Institutional Repository (http://dspace.mit.edu/).
Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR), it is an directory of Open access repositories of the world. In this directory we can search all the leading repositories of the world.
(http://www.opendoar.org/)
eScholrship Repository (http://repositories.cdlib.org/escholarship/), is a service of the eScholrship initiative of the California Digital Library. The Repository includes the Journals, Seminar Series, Postprints etc.
Some of the important Indian Institutional Repositories
Ø Indian Institute of Astrophysics Repository (DSpace@IIA) (http://prints.iiap.res.in/)
Ø DSpace at Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (DSpace@IIMK) (http://dspace.iimk.ac.in/ )
Ø Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode Scholarship Repository ( http://eprints.iimk.ac.in/)
Ø Electronic Theses and Dissertations at Indian Institute of Science (http://etd.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/)
Ø Open Access Repository of IISc Research Publications (http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in/ )
Ø Digital Library at Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore (ISI Library)http://library.isibang.ac.in:8080/dspace/
Ø Librarians' Digital Library (LDL) (https://drtc.isibang.ac.in/ )
Ø DSpace@INFLIBNET (http://dspace.inflibnet.ac.in/ )
Ø National Aerospace Laboratories Institutional Repository (NAL Repository) (http://nal-ir.nal.res.in/ )
Ø DSpace at National Chemical Laboratory (DSpace@NCL) (http://dspace.ncl.res.in/dspace/ )
Ø OpenMED@NIC (http://openmed.nic.in/)
Ø DRS at National Institute Of Oceanography (DRS@nio) (http://drs.nio.org/)
Ø Dspace@National Institute of Technology, Rourkela (http://dspace.nitrkl.ac.in/dspace/ )
Ø OneWorld South Asia Open Archive Initiative(http://open.ekduniya.net/)
Ø Raman Research Institute Digital Repository (http://dspace.rri.res.in/dspace/ )
Ø University of Delhi (http://eprints.du.ac.in/ )
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) (http://www.ndltd.org/) is an international organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination and preservation of electronic analogues to the traditional paper-based theses and dissertations.
Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) (http://etd.vt.edu/) at Virgina Tech is a cooperative effort between the Graduate School and the University Libraries. Since 1997, there has been a move from paper theses and dissertations to electronic format which is now a requirement for graduation.
Vidyanidhi (http://www.vidyanidhi.org.in/) is a repository for Indian doctoral thesis. At present it provides access to metadata of Indian thesis and dissertations of all the Universities, few full text theses [ETDs] are presently available in its database. It started as a project in 2000 with support from NISSAT, Govt. of India. It welcomes Universities and Researchers to participate in this Programme. The project is based at Dept of Library and Information Science, Mysore University, Mysore, Karnataka.
E Reference Sources
Dictionaries
Dictionary of Difficult Words (http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/dictionaries/difficultwords/)Roget's Internet Thesaurus (http://thesaurus.reference.com/)Cambridge Dictionaries Online (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/)WWWebster Dictionary (http://www.m-w.com/netdict.htm)WordNet (http://wordnet.princeton.edu/main/)Acronym Finder (http://www.acronymfinder.com/)
Rogets Thesaurus (http://asadz.com/thesaurus/)
Encyclopedias
Encyclopedia of the Orient (http://i-cias.com/e.o/index.htm)Medline Plus Medical Encyclopedia (http://medlineplus.gov/)Encarta Encyclopedia (http://encarta.msn.com/)Encyclopedia Britannica (http://www.britannica.com/)Encyclopedia (http://www.encyclopedia.com/)Discovery online (http://www.discovery.com/)Tech Encyclopedia (http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/)World of Mathematics (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/)News Papers
Online Newspapers.com (http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/) is offering thousands of world newspapers at your fingertips. We can access by country wise.
Maps and Atlases
Rare Maps (http://www.raremaps.com/)Maps and Atlases (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/gnrlhome.html)MAPS (http://www.mapquest.com/)Freeality Online Atlases, Maps, and Travel Directions (http://www.freeality.com/maps.htm)
Atlas (http://go.hrw.com/atlas/norm_htm/world.htm)Geography : Atlases (http://www.adelaide.edu.au/library/guide/gen//Atlases.html)