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ICSTI news for members

Dear Members

Please find attached news from Executive Director Barry Mahon.

Kind regards

Sarah Byrne, Administrator
ICSTI
51, boulevard de Montmorency
75016 Paris, FRANCE
Tel: 33 1 45 25 65 92  Fax: 33 1 42 15 12 62
********************************************

News for ICSTI Members June 26th 2001

1. GetCITED http://www.getcited.org/

This site is an ambitious project to facilitate searches for book
chapters, working papers, conference papers, and other types of
publications and academic research not commonly indexed. The project is
off to a running start with over 315,000 identities and 3,250,000
publications indexed, but the site creators are requesting the
cooperation of "the entire academic community." Scholars are encouraged
to register with the site (for free) and enter in the details of their
publications. Anyone may search the database for publications,
identities, institutions, or departments, but only registered members
may add or edit content. A free database created solely by and for
researchers and scholars is an attractive idea and deserves support. It
must be noted, however, that like so many other free online services,
getCITED is searching for advertisers and sponsors and does not appear
to have long-term guaranteed funding. A strong showing of support and
interest from the academic community may make this task easier. (from
the Scout Report). 

It seems to me that there is a risk of this becoming a big repository
without much coherence. The first question to ask: will it be 'citable'?
in the sense of pointing to a reference in it from a publication? What
does "not commonly indexed" mean?? Conference proceeding are indexed.
There is a BIG risk that this will be a mishmash of material without any
review process. Is the rise of electronic media to mean that everything
is to be dumped in big stores??

2. The Copyright Directive is published in the Official Journal of the
EU

The Directive, 2001/29/EC, of the European Parliament and of the Council
of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and
related rights in the information society was published on the Official
Journal on 22 June 2001 (OJ No 2001/L 167/010 p10), available at:
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/

This means that the clock is now running for the Member States to
incorporate the Directive into their national law within the time limit,
which expires on 22 December 2002.

For those of you interested in the 'justification' of the exemptions for
libraries, etc. I recommend reading articles 31 to 45 of the
preliminaries of the Directive. In my opinion they provide a succinct
summary of the situation and the difficulty of harmonising the situation
in fifteen countries. 


-- 
Howard Flack        http://www.unige.ch/crystal/ahdf/Howard.Flack.html
Laboratoire de Cristallographie               Phone: +41 22 702 62 49
24 quai Ernest-Ansermet             mailto:Howard.Flack@cryst.unige.ch
CH-1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland                   Fax: +41 22 702 61 08

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