China tops first BRICS and emerging economies ranking

China has dominated the first BRICS and emerging economies ranking published by Times Higher Education, or THE, taking 23 slots in the top 100 universities followed by Taiwan with 21. Peking and Tsinghua universities came first and second, and the University of Cape Town third.

5 South African universities are included in the listing.

17 Essential Altmetrics Resources (the Library Version)

Compiled by Stacy Konkiel:
“required reading” related specifically to altmetrics and their use in libraries. These articles and blog posts actually comprise a majority of the writing out there on altmetrics in libraries–there’s surprisingly little that librarians have written to date on how our profession might use altmetrics to enhance our work.

 Stacy Konkiel is the Science Data Management Librarian for the IU Libraries--Bloomington. Learn more about data management at http://libraries.iub.edu/data.

View all posts by Stacy Konkiel →

Google Books again

Harvard's Head Librarian Is Delighted That Google Books Will Expand Fair Use

 Interview with Robert Darnton, a celebrated book historian and Harvard University's head librarian, ... a strong advocate for the public's access to literature in the digital realm. ...

MOOCs: Fad or Revolution?

MOOCs: Fad or Revolution? by Jon Billsberry

Over the past 12 months, MOOCs have arrived like an alien invasion threatening to overturn centuries of tradition in education. And just like a scene from Mars Attacks! there are supporters waving “Welcome to Earth” banners while others are lining up the tanks. Yet there is one strange feature of MOOCs, despite the cacophony in the corridors and at conferences; there has been silence in the academic journals. This is simply because data are scarce and only just becoming available, and the necessary time required for thinking, writing, reviewing, and production.

Next year, and probably for several years after, MOOCs are likely to dominate the pages of education journals and the Journal of Management Education in particular. In this editorial, I want to explore the initial hype and hyperbole about MOOCs as a way of setting the scene for the future.

Google Scholar Library - Google Scholar Blog

From GoogleScholar: Today we’re launching Scholar Library, your personal collection of articles in Scholar. You can save articles right from the search page, organize them by topic, and use the power of Scholar search to quickly find just the one you want - at any time and from anywhere. You decide what goes into your library and we’ll provide all the goodies that come with Scholar search results - up to date article links, citing articles, related articles, formatted citations, links to your university’s subscriptions, and more. And if you have a public Scholar profile, it’s easy to quickly set up your library with the articles you want - with a single click, you can import all the articles in your profile as well as all the articles they cite.

Social Media Brings Academic Journals to General Readers

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association: Dermatology shows that a handful of academic journals have successfully leveraged social media to reach many times the readers of the journals themselves. But the majority of journals have yet to embrace social media and so lag behind professional organizations and patient advocacy groups in their ability to disseminate information in a culturally relevant way.

Open Access Button - track attempts to access articles behind a paywall

This has just been developed - give it a try!