[open-bibliography] Fwd: News release: Referencing made easy

Mon May 17 15:59:21 UTC 2010

This does not appear to be a step towards open biblio data: this is some promotion of 
RefWorks, a proprietary reference management system which functions by enclosure,
restriction, repackaging and licensing of open biblio data.

--Jim Pitman
----------------------------------------------
Jim Pitman
Director, Bibliographic Knowledge Network Project
http://www.bibkn.org/

Professor of Statistics and Mathematics
University of California
367 Evans Hall # 3860
Berkeley, CA 94720-3860

ph: 510-642-9970  fax: 510-642-7892
e-mail: pitman at stat.berkeley.edu
URL: http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/users/pitman
----------------------------------------------

> This looks very interesting. I wonder whether/how the project
> currently supports sharing reference/citation data?
>
> David: do you know whether there are any plans to encourage
> institutions/researchers to open up reference data? Or anything about
> the IPR management model? Seems like potentially a big opportunity to
> share citation data more effectively...
>
> All the best,
>
> Jonathan
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>
> News release
> 17 May 2010
>
> Referencing made easy
>
> A new piece of software to help students and universities manage
> academic references more easily has been developed by the Open
> University and its partners.
>
> Funded by JISC, and made in collaboration with RefWorks, the web-based
> research management, writing and collaboration tool, the OU has
> developed MyReferences to simplify referencing.
>
> Lawrie Phipps, programme manager at JISC, said: “Writing up references
> can be a really time-consuming activity for the student and researcher
> – but it’s essential to avoid plagiarism, develop robust scholarship
> and lead the reader to other relevant work.  This resource is one
> aspect of a huge investment from JISC which aims to spark innovative
> solutions to issues like referencing that affect people working up and
> down the country, in order to inspire and help other UK colleges and
> universities.”
>
> MyReferences integrates tools from the widely-used RefWorks reference
> management software into the Moodle virtual learning environment which
> is used in academic institutions across the UK to support online
> learning.
>
> Nicky Whitsed, director of library services at the OU, said: “For
> students, this means helping them to adopt good practice in organising
> and managing references and using citations appropriately in their
> work. And for universities this new and easy reference management
> system will help to tackle plagiarism by making referencing easier;
> encourage information literacy; and help libraries to improve
> reference management for courses”.
>
> The MyReferences software is open source, making it free for any
> institution to download, tailor to their own needs and integrate into
> their own learning environments.
>
> The software is part of the 'technology enhanced learning supporting
> students to achieve academic rigour' (TELSTAR) project.  Owen
> Stephens, project manager, said: “These new tools are invaluable to
> the 21st century educational institution and student. There is an ever
> increasing wealth of resources available and hence a real need for
> students, course and programme teams to be able to create, manipulate,
> organise and store a range of citations and bibliographic references
> for easy use."
>
> There are already a number of general referencing tools available to
> students, but MyReferences takes the usability of these tools a step
> further by integrating them into online courses so the materials
> students commonly need to reference are already available in the
> format they need. Students simply select the sources they need to
> reference, the referencing style their institution requires and then
> copy and paste the result into their assignment.
>
> Owen continued: “From now until July we’ll be working with other
> institutions to implement the software, as well as continuing to pilot
> it with staff and students at the OU. The response we’ve had so far
> from students and staff alike has been overwhelmingly positive and
> we’re looking forward to working with more and more organisations in
> the UK and across the world to spread the benefits of this new
> referencing tool.”
>
> "RefWorks is proud to be a part of the MyReferences project – it not
> only provides users with an effective and easy-to-use research
> management tool, but it takes another step towards educating them
> about information literacy,” said Colleen Stempien, executive director
> of operations, RefWorks-COS.  “Any institution that currently
> subscribes to RefWorks may easily adapt the added Moodle integration
> functionality using the RefWorks API.”
>
> See a visual demonstration of MyReferences at
> <http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/telstar/telstar-quick-demonstration/>
>
> Find out more about events planned to share information about TELSTAR
> and developments in the field of reference management at
> <http://www.open.ac.uk/telstar/event>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Jonathan Gray
>
> Community Coordinator
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://blog.okfn.org
>
> http://twitter.com/jwyg
> http://identi.ca/jwyg
>
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