جرائد : a database of Arabic newspapers of Ottoman and mandatory Palestine

Arabic Newspapers of Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine جرائد [Jara’id] is a database of Palestinian newspapers published between 1908 and 1948. This initiative, led by the National Library of Israel, consists in digitizing periodicals from its collections to make them widely available. If the first phase of the project focused on two date ranges: 1908-1920 and 1945-1948 -which explains why only a few years are currently accessible for some titles- but the goal is to continue digitizing in order to provide an exhaustive archive of the Ottoman and mandatory Palestine period.

The database currently gives access to 27 titles published in Jaffa, Jerusalem, Haifa, Bir Zeit, and other places. Among those, the visitor will find al-Nafais al-asriyah which is available from year 1908 to 1924, or Mir’at al-Sharq which is available from years 1919 to 1939. The viewer has interesting features:

  • a menu on the left hand-side of the screen to navigate journals and issues
  • two sets of arrows allowing to go from issue to issue, and to turn pages
  • a thumbnails view
  • the possibility to zoom in and out
  • a series of buttons to share (Twitter and Facebook), print, mail, download (in PDF), pin, link to a specific journal.

The website is trilingual: Arabic, English, Hebrew.

MIDEO: Miscellanies of the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies in Cairo

MIDEO –Miscellanies of the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies in Cairo– is a living periodical started in 1954 by the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies’ first members. The IDEO was established in 1950, in Cairo, and focuses on the study of the sources of the Arab and Islamic civilization. Today, it has become a well-known research center.

MIDEO – Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies

The Miscellanies include essentially academical contributions,in French, English or Arabic, from members of the Institute and from scholars collaborating with them. The tables of contents of volumes 1-30 are available on the IDEO’s website, and volumes 31 onward are full-text available on revues.org.

Numéros

The call for contributions for next issue (vol. 33 / 2018) focusing on Muslim theology of religions is accessible here. Deadline for submissions is April 1st, 2017.

 

 

Islam and Civilisational Renewal (ICR) Journal now in Open Access

icrjournalThe International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies (IAIS) in Malaysia has now made all issues of its e-journal Islam and Civilisational Renewal available in open access.

“Islam and Civilisational Renewal (ICR) is an international peer-reviewed journal published quarterly by IAIS Malaysia publishing articles, book reviews and viewpoints on civilisational renewal and aims to promote advanced research on the contribution of Muslims to science and culture. The journal seeks to propagate critical research and original scholarship on theoretical, empirical, and comparative studies, with a focus on policy research.  It plans to advance a refreshing discourse for beneficial change, in the true spirit of the Islamic principles of tajdid (renewal) and islah (improvement and reform) through exploring the best contributions of all school and currents of opinion. Islam and Civilisational Renewal (ICR) centers around a number of selected areas: Islamic jurisprudence, Islamic finance and banking, Islamic family law, politic, philosophy, Halal standards, inter-faith harmonisation, science & technology and social aspects of Islam in modern Muslim societies.”*

Islam and Civilisational Renewal (ICR) Journal can be accessed at www.icrjournal.org.

For more information about the journal, or the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies (IAIS) you may contact Razi Ahmad at razi@iais.org.my.

Tri-Agencies Open Access Policies

In recent news, the Canadian Tri-Agencies granting programs have introduced a new policy for researchers: Open Access. What does this mean for you? McGill Library has created a FAQ section to help with the details of the implementation and meaning of this change in policy. The policy, it should be noted is effective 15 May 2015. Below is the official announcement.

“On February 27, 2015, Canada’s three major research funding agencies – the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) – announced a new harmonized “Open Access Policy on Publications” that requires research publications supported by public funds to be made openly available for the benefit of the community at large.”

The policy requires that “any peer-reviewed journal publications arising from Agency-supported research are freely accessible within 12 months of publication.” It applies to NSERC and SSHRC grants awarded May 1, 2015 and onward, and continues the pre-existing open access requirement for CIHR grants awarded January 1, 2008 and later. Researchers holding grants awarded before May 1, 2015 are also encouraged to follow the policy. NSERC, SSHRC and CIHR grant recipients must ensure that any peer-reviewed journal articles be freely accessible within 12 months of publication through one of the following options:

  1. Online Repositories: Grant recipients can deposit their final, peer-reviewed manuscript into an institutional or disciplinary repository that will make the manuscript freely accessible within 12 months of publication.
  2. Open Access (OA) Journals: Grant recipients can publish in an open access journal. For journals that use Article Processing Charges (APCs) as a means to fund open access, these APCs are allowable expenses for Tri-Agency grants.

Through services and resources like the eScholarship@McGill repository and research consultations, McGill Library & Archives will continue to support researchers as the open access movement evolves. For more information regarding the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy, compliance information, and how the Library & Archives can help to make your work open access please visit: https://www.mcgill.ca/library/services/open-access.

On McGill Library’s Open Access page. there is an array of further information for quick answers. Perhaps the most burning question for this new policy is: How to comply with the OA policy? In the section from the above link entitled “How to make your research open access” one particular paragraph will prove extremely useful:

“Standard publishing agreements for many journals already allow repository deposit of the publisher’s PDF or of the final manuscript after peer review. However, not all do. Carefully review your publishing agreement or learn about a given publisher’s standard policies in the SHERPA/RoMEO database to determine what rights you are signing over to the publisher and how these affect your ability to deposit your work in a repository. If you would like to deposit your published work in a disciplinary or institutional repository, and the standard agreement from your preferred publisher does not allow this, you can negotiate the details of your publishing agreement.”

For the fields of Islamic and Middle East Studies there are many different OA journals already available whose publishing agreements comply with this new Tri-agencies policy. One source, in particular for OA journals pertaining to Islamic and Middle East Studies is AMIR (Access to Mideast and Islamic Resources). It provides a complete list of all Open Access journals pertaining to these fields of inquiry.

Remember also to be aware of predatory OA journals. These journals can be quite convincing and aggressive in striving to obtain your manuscript. If you have any doubt, Jeffrey Beall of the University of Colorado maintains an impressive blog on known predatory journals. On the same blog, he also lists questionable publishers.

Should you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us.

A cautionary tale

A colleague reminded me the other day of predatory journals. These types of journals look to take advantage of new scholars looking to publish. They are difficult to detect and, well who doesn’t like receiving an email offering to publish a presentation. Luckily, Jeffrey Beall has amassed Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers. Please have a read through from time to time and ahead of submitting to a journal you are unfamiliar with.

Sources for further reading:

Scholarly Open Access Critical analysis of scholarly open-access publishing (Jeffrey Beall blog)

Research Intelligence – ‘Predators’ who lurk in plain cite (THE)