scholarly journals Open Polar

Ravnetrykk ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamer Abu-Alam

Data from the Polar Regions are of critical importance to modern research and decision makers. Regardless of their disciplinary and institutional affiliations, researchers rely heavily on the comparison of existing data with new data sets to assess changes that are taking effect. However, in a recent survey of 113 major polar data providers, we found that an estimated 60% of the existing polar research data is unfindable through common search engines and can only be accessed through institutional webpages. This raises an awareness sign of the need of the scientific community to harvest different metadata related to the Polar Regions and collect it in a homogenous, seamless database and making this database available to researchers, students and publics through one search platform. This contribution describes the progress in an ongoing project, Open Polar, started in 2019 at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. The project aims to collect metadata about all the open-access research data, articles and other scholarly documents related to the Polar Regions in a homogenous and seamless database. During the first six months of the project, the beta version of the user-interface was established, with a search by map and an advanced search function. An extensive geo-database that includes thousands of polar locations and their geographic information was collected from different sources. The geo-database together with a list of keywords (i.e. on sources, indigenous peoples, languages and other polar-related keywords) will be used in the filtration process. A Reference Board was formed, and the first board meeting took place in April 2020. The geographic definition of “Polar Regions” was defined in order to include most of the current geographic definitions of “Arctic”. The project is still facing some challenges that include for example integration with non-standard data sources who do not use Dublin Core Metadata schema, or are not harvestable through the Open Access Initiative’s standard protocol for harvesting (OAI-PMH).

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leif Longva ◽  
Tamer Abu Alam ◽  
Per Pippin Aspaas ◽  
Noortje Dijkstra ◽  
Lars Figenschou ◽  
...  

Research activities and research output, in general, have increased, and keep increasing vastly, and so too is research on the polar regions including Svalbard in the Arctic. Major commercial publishers have built subscription-based services which present research literature for a fee. As Open Science and open access to literature and data is gaining momentum, there is a distinct need for powerful discovery tools that can harvest and present research literature and datasets in open access form - free of charge. Moreover, sharing of underlying data in open access form is becoming the new norm. So, to integrate research papers and datasets in the same search, helps speed up the discovery processes as well as fostering the transparency of research, and minimize duplication of fieldwork and experiments. Open Polar (https://openpolar.no/) is developed by UiT The Arctic University of Norway, and is a free to use discovery tool for open access publications and research data specifically targeting research output on the polar regions, across all subject areas, and irrespective of where the research originates. Through a carefully designed algorithm, Open Polar is extracting metadata (including URL to the landing page of the full text) from more than 4600 sources worldwide and making these accessible through a user-friendly search service - including an option to search via geolocations on a map, and with systematic search features. The algorithm used picks up relevant research located in the most remote content providers and sources. Thus, searching in Open Polar will result in records purely of relevance to the polar regions. In this contribution, we will present the many advantageous features of Open Polar, and show how Open Polar is supporting Open Science and research integrity-enhancing procedures, by enabling search and access to research data as well as research papers.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamer S. Abu-Alam ◽  
Per Pippin Aspaas ◽  
Leif Longva Longva ◽  
Karl Magnus Nilsen ◽  
Obiajulu Odu

Data from the Polar Regions are of critical importance to modern polar research. Regardless of their disciplinary and institutional affiliations, researchers rely heavily on the comparison of existing data with new data sets to assess changes that are taking effect. However, in a recent survey of 113 major polar data providers, we found that an estimated 60% of the existing polar research data is unfindable through common search engines and can only be accessed through institutional webpages. Moreover, a study by Johnson et al. (2019) showed that in social science and indigenous knowledge, the findability gap is around 84%. This results in an awareness of the need of the scientific community to harvest different metadata related to the Polar Regions and collect these in a homogenous, seamless database and making this database available to researchers, students and the public through one search platform.This contribution describes the progress in an ongoing project, Open Polar (https://site.uit.no/open-polar/) started in 2019 at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. The project aims to collect metadata about all the open-access scholarly data and documents related to the Polar Regions in a homogenous and seamless database. The suggested service will include three parts: 1) harvesting metadata; 2) enriching and filtrating of the harvested metadata relevant to Polar Regions; and 3) making the collected records available and searchable to the end-users through an interactive user interface. The service will help to make the polar related research data and documents more visible and searchable to the end-users and thereby reducing the findability gap.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamer S. Abu-Alam

Access research data and research documents (e.g. publications) and make it more visible and findable through the internet is coming up as one of the major challenges for future development of the next generation of Digital Libraries. This challenge becomes more complicated when data producers (e.g. research institutes) are not aware by the needs of the scientific community for visibility and findability of their data or when the data producers lack the technology or the motivation to make their data available online.Although the Open Arctic Research Index pilot project focused only on the open-access research data and the open-access research documents published on Polar regions, the OpenARI found 60% of these open-access records are unfindable through searchable platforms outside the institutional webpage itself. This raises an awareness sign of the need of the scientific community to harvest the metadata of these open-access records in a homogenous, seamless database and making this database available to researchers, students and publics through one search platform. At present, neither Google Scholar nor any other search platform provide this service.Based on the fact that around 60% of the open-access polar records are unfindable through one search platform, we strongly suggest launching a full-scale management service at the University of Tromsø – the Arctic University of Norway (UiT). This new service will be built on existing experiences from High North Research Documents (i.e. an existing service at the UiT). OpenARI has concluded fifteen needs that are required for the full-scale management model. In addition to the main service (i.e. make open-access polar records more visible and findable through one search platform), we suggest to add three new services: 1) hosting of original data from the Polar regions; 2) creating a research platform; 3) creating an education platform. A new process including four stages of filtration is suggested in order to reduce the time and the overhead costs of using the UiT’s server. End-users will be able to perform search using a map. In addition to the classical way of presenting the results of a search, the end-users will be able to see the search results on a map and/or as a timeline.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamer Abu-Alam

Data from the Polar Regions are of critical importance to modern research. Regardless of their disciplinary and institutional affiliations, researchers rely heavily on the comparison of existing data with new data sets to assess changes that are taking effect. In turn, knowledge based on as broad and comprehensive a selection of polar data sets as possible is used to inform politicians and decision makers. Although individual researchers and their institutions are aware of the importance of making collected data openly available through institutional websites, the infrastructures that are used for these purposes at many institutions, are often poorly interoperable, and therefore make valuable data difficult to find and reuse. In a recent survey of 113 major polar data providers, we found that an estimated 60% of the existing polar research data is unfindable through common search engines and can only be accessed through an institutional webpage. This findability gap limits the ability of researchers to establish robust models by which changes in the polar regions can be predicted. In this contribution, we present a new, free-to-use discovery service covering the global output of openly accessible polar research data and publications, with the purpose of rendering polar research more visible and retrievable to the research community as well as to the interested public, teachers and students and public services. The new service is currently under construction and will be hosted by UiT The Arctic University of Norway in close collaboration with the Norwegian Polar Institute.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamer Abu-Alam ◽  
Karl Magnus Nilsen ◽  
Obiajulu Odu ◽  
Leif Longva ◽  
Per Pippin Aspaas

<p>Research data plays a key role in monitoring and predicting any natural phenomena, including changes in the Polar Regions. The limited access to data restricts the ability of researchers to monitor, predict and model environmental changes and their socio-economic repercussions. In a recent survey of 113 major polar research institutions, we found out that an estimated 60% of the existing polar research data is unfindable through common search engines and can only be accessed through institutional webpages. In social science and indigenous knowledge, this findability gap is even higher, approximately 84% of the total existing data. This raises an awareness sign and the call for the need of the scientific community to collect information on the global output of research data and publications related to the Polar Regions and present it in a homogenous, seamless database.</p><p>In this contribution, we present a new, open access discovery service, Open Polar, with the purpose of rendering polar research more visible and retrievable to the research community as well as to the interested public, teachers, students and decision-makers. The new service is currently under construction and will be hosted by UiT The Arctic University of Norway in close collaboration with the Norwegian Polar Institute and other international partners. The beta version of the Open Polar was made available in February 2021. We welcome comments and suggestions from the scientific community to the beta version, while we plan to launch the stable production version of the service by summer 2021. The beta version of the service can already be tested at the URL: www.openpolar.no</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 283-311
Author(s):  
Clive R. Symmons

It is generally accepted that UNCLOS applies to polar seas. However, particular problems can arise thereunder in such seas because of their ice-bound environment. One such regional problem is because global warming causes particular issues for insular formations there; not only in terms of the very definition of ‘islands’ (e.g., is frozen sea water equivalent to “land” in terms of above-surface appearance under Art. 121 [1] of UNCLOS?); but also in terms of their lawful use in generation of maritime zones therefrom. For example, in recent years new above-surface formations have been discovered in the Arctic (such as ‘Yaya Island’) because of glacial melting and sudden visibility. These formations may potentially generate new maritime zones for their owner State (albeit not EEZs/continental shelves because of Art. 121 [3] of UNCLOS); and may be opportunistically used in negotiation of maritime polar boundaries (as in the case of Tobias Island off Greenland). Where tips of glacial capes have been used as straight baseline points, any remaining terrestrial formations may be a useful ‘fall-back’ position on ice melt-down. Typically low-lying new terrestrial features (now uncovered by glaciers) may have no prospect of long-term existence above sea level; and some may have inherent mobility (as is a particular Arctic problem with ‘barrier islands’). The other side of the coin of polar ice melt-down is that existing low-lying and small islands will likely disappear with increasing sea levels; so causing problems of continued use as basepoints for generation of maritime zones; and a potential duty to retract maritime claims.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helene N. Andreassen ◽  
Erik Lieungh

In this episode, we are discussing how to teach open science to PhD students. Helene N. Andreassen, head of Library Teaching and Learning Support at the University Library of UiT the Arctic University of Norway shares her experiences with the integration of open science in a special, tailor-made course for PhD's that have just started their project. An interdisciplinary, discussion-based course, "Take Control of Your PhD Journey: From (P)reflection to Publishing" consists of a series of seminars on research data management, open access publishing and other subject matters pertaining to open science. First published online February 26, 2020.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eder Ávila-Barrientos

El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en analizar los principios teórico-metodológicos relacionados con la descripción de los datos de investigación. Se realizó un análisis sobre el estado de la cuestión de los datos de investigación, en cual se abordan aspectos de su citación, descripción y sistematización. Se identificaron y analizaron los elementos de metadatos para la descripción de conjuntos de datos de investigación que se incluyen en el DataCite Metadata Schema, con el propósito de crear una propuesta de perfil descriptivo aplicable a estos conjuntos. Se estima que, si los datos de investigación se encuentran debidamente descritos, entonces se fomentará en mayor grado su accesibilidad y reutilización. Para ello, es necesario que las instituciones académicas y de investigación participen en la generación de políticas de acceso abierto a sus datos de investigación. The objective of this work is to analyze the theoretical-methodological principles related to the description and accessibility of research data. Hermeneutics and discourse analysis were applied to literature specialized in: research data; access and description of research data; data repositories. Metadata elements for the description of research datasets that are included in the DataCite Metadata Schema were identified and analyzed, in order to create a descriptive profile proposal for research data sets, which can be applied in the data repositories. If the research data is properly described, then its accessibility and reuse will be further promoted. To do this, it is necessary for academic and research institutions to participate in the generation of open access policies for their research data.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
B.S. Shivaram ◽  
B.S. Biradar

Purpose This paper aims to examine the grey literature archiving pattern at open-access repositories with special reference to Indian open-access repositories. Design/methodology/approach The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) was used to collect data from different document types archived by open-access repositories across the world. Data were collected by advanced search and browse features available at the BASE on document types, the number of repositories by country wise and Indian academic and research repositories. Data were tabulated using MS Excel for further analysis. Findings Findings indicated that open-access repositories across the world are primarily archiving reviewed literature. Grey literature is archived more at European and North American repositories compared to rest of the world. Reports, theses, dissertations and data sets are the major grey document types archived. In India, a significant contributor to the BASE index with 146 open-access sources, reviewed literature is the largest archived document types, and grey literature is above world average due to the presence of theses and dissertations at repositories of academic institutions. Originality/value Grey literature is considered as valuable sources of information for research and development. The study enables to get insights about the amount of grey content archived at open-access repositories. These findings can further be used to investigate the reasons/technology limitations for the lesser volume of grey content in repositories. Furthermore, this study helps to better understand the grey literature archiving pattern and need for corrective measures based on the success stories of repositories of Europe and North America.


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