REVENCYT and BDTV: Venezuelan Initiatives on Digital Libraries

N. Fabiola Rosales Universidad de Los Andes. Servicios Bibliotecarios (SERBIULA). Biblioteca Digital. Mérida, Venezuela Universidad de Los Andes, Núcleo Universitario La Hechicera, Edificio C, BIACI Nivel 1 (Sótano), Biblioteca Digital - Mérida - Venezuela rfabiola@ula.ve Marlene Bauste Universidad de Los Andes. Servicios Bibliotecarios (SERBIULA). Biblioteca Digital. Mérida, Venezuela bauste@ula.ve Fernando Rodríguez Universidad de Los Andes. Servicios Bibliotecarios (SERBIULA). Biblioteca Digital. Mérida, Venezuela frodrig@ula.ve Francisco León Universidad de Los Andes. Mérida, Venezuela fleon@ula.ve

Abstract Since 2002 in Venezuela, creation of digital libraries has been discussed and promoted in order to diffuse the historical, cultural, audiovisual, and scientific-academic heritage. Projects such as “El Zulia en el Tiempo” and “Luces de Bolívar” treat cultural and historical matters, “Artistas Populares del Estado Sucre” works on audiovisual legacy, and for the scientific-academic areas, the index “SciELO-Venezuela”, both, the index and the digital library of “Revistas Venezolanas de Ciencia y Tecnología (REVENCYT)”, and the Digital Library of Venezuelan Theses (BDTV). This article will focus in the last two mentioned projects of the scientific_academic area, in one hand, for being the first to be completed with the participation of research and academic institutions, and in the other hand, for offering the greater amount of contents. REVENCYT has approximately of 8.776 full text articles and the BDTV has approximately 22.240 thesis and undergraduate and graduate projects from eight (8) national universities.

Introduction

The presence of Digital Libraries in the world is increasing. This is evidenced by the great

quantity of projects that go forward with the supports of governments, communities,

foundations and universities. Our country is part of this reality, the government and the

national universities support, promote and develop projects orientated to the consolidation of

Digital Libraries. Since 2002 in Venezuela, creation of digital libraries has been discussed

and promoted in order to diffuse the historical, cultural, audiovisual, and scientific-academic

heritage. Projects such as “El Zulia en el Tiempo”i and “Luces de Bolívar”ii treat cultural and

historical matters, “Artistas Populares del Estado Sucre”iii works on audiovisual legacy, and

the scientific-academic areas are represented by the index “SciELO-Venezuela”iv, the index

and the digital library of “Revistas Venezolanas de Ciencia y Tecnología (REVENCYT)”v, and

the Digital Library of Venezuelan Theses (BDTV). This article will focus in the last two

mentioned projects of the scientific-academic area, in one hand, for being the first to be

completed with the participation of research and academic institutions, and in the other hand,

for offering the greater amount of contents. REVENCYT has an approximate of 8.776 full

text articles and the BDTV has approximately 22.240 thesis and undergraduate and graduate

projects from eight (8) national universities.

Initiative: REVENCYT

REVENCYT is a citation index as well as a Digital Library that guarantees search services,

publication, diffusion, preservation and evaluation of the Venezuelan scientific-academic

journal under national and international standards. As the only Venezuelan national index,

Revencyt looks for increasing and improving the national scientific and academic

publications.1 With this objective, it is framed within the open access initiative (OAI),

promoting at level of publishers and authors the free and open access to all journal produced

with governmental funds. This objective was obtained with the accomplishment of several

activities such as

• Diffusion of the Open Access Initiative (OAI) to journals publishers and governmental

agencies.

• Workshops about intellectual property and copyright to journals publishers.

• Meetings and permanent advising to journals publishers.

i El Zulia en el Tiempo: http://www.serbi.luz.edu.ve/portal/zulia4.htm ii Luces de Bolívar: http://www.bolivar.ula.ve/ iii Artistas populares del Estado Sucre: http://bibliotecadigital.udo.edu.ve/artistaspopulares/ iv SciELO Venezuela: http://www.scielo.org.ve/scielo.php v REVENCYT: http://revencyt.ula.ve/scielo.php

• Modifications of the procedure of enter the Index, allowing the publication of any scientific

magazine, as long as it allows access to plaintext articles without economic restrictions.

• Change of the technological platform, considering plaintext publication and the interchange

of metadata using standard OAI-PMH.

REVENCYT: Philosophy of work REVENCYT have three types of journals, investigation, scientific and technical diffusion, and

technical-professional. El ingreso y permanencia están sujetos a una política de admisión y

evaluación.

Admission Policy REVENCYT allows the entry of all Venezuelan journals that complete a request. The entry of

the journal is done through a format that publishers send by email or regular mail together

with the copies of the last two published numbers. Electronics journals requests must

indicate the URL of the journal. (http://revencyt.ula./informa/requisites.html).

Evaluation of the editorial quality All new entry journal, as well as those already indexed, are submitted to a process of

constant evaluation with the purpose of contributing to improving its editorial quality. In that

manner, REVENCYT advises editors on the aspects that they must improve or take in

consideration in their next issues.

The national and international scientific communities have established certain parameters

and criteria for identifying and classifying editorial quality, depending on their level of

observance and compliance with them. Following a similar policy, REVENCYT establishes

selection criteria, measurement of normalization, and journals presentation. It does not focus

on the content of each article, taking into account that this must be evaluated by the

Commission of Referees of the journal, whom are specialists in the area and are the

adequate people to describe and to decide if an article fulfills the requirements to be

published.

Parameters of editorial quality

REVENCYT contemplates a total of 33 evaluation criteria. Depending on the result obtained

by a journal in its evaluation, it can qualify as certified or not certified. The 33 criteria used by

REVENCYT to evaluate editorial quality are grouped into seven aspects:

1. Normalization: presentation and proper identification of both, the journal and its

articles are evaluated.

2. Duration: evaluates discontinuity or interruption of the publication in the last two

years.

3. Periodicity.

4. Distribution: evaluates different means used by the journal to distribute their copies.

5. Collaboration: evaluates publication of articles from foreign authors.

6. Content: publication of original articles.

7. Editorial committee and council of arbitrators: its existence is evaluated.

Certification

The application of the evaluation criteria to journals in REVENCYT, allows its classification in

four categories: Very Good, Good, Regular, and Deficient. Only the journals in the two first

categories obtain the REVENCYT Certification.

Admission promise (Commitment of renewal) As soon as the journal is admitted into REVENCYT, the editor is committed to:

1. Send periodically print and electronic format of the last published issue.

2. Keep updated the journal data.

3. Authorize the publication of articles in full text.

REVENCYT Facts: The analysis is done from the year 2003 which is the date on which REVENCYT began to

publish full text articles. The results are shown in the following table:

Table 1. REVENCYT Facts

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Full Text Articles 0 552 2105 4443 5498 8776

Abstracts 2152 2152 2401 2449 2465 2465

Current Journals * * 50 110 132 158

Outdated Journals * * 90 80 77 75

Certified Journals * * 91 84 79 34

* No Information available for these years

Until the year 2002 REVENCYT only offered referential information in CD-ROM. Full text

publication began in 2003. Results show a constant growth of the full text publication and

the elimination of the abstracts reception in 2007. In addition, a growth in the requests to

enter to the index is observed. Adjustments toward higher requirements to journals

certification in 2007 resulted in a drop in this item.

REVENCYT is not only in charge of the evaluation, certification and dissemination of these

publications, but it is also constantly promoting and raising awareness on open access

initiatives. Consequently, REVENCYT is actually the only recognized national index by

Venezuelan researchers and publishers, alongside government agencies and university

programs such as the Researcher Encouragement Program (PEI) and the Researcher

Promotion Program (PPI).

It was pointed out that editorial quality evaluation results done to any publication by

REVENCYT are used in their certification and classification in one of the four repository’s

established categories, however, they are also used to show to editors which features and

elements of the publication are needing improvement. Journals that comply with standards

are included in the Accredited Publications Registry from the National Fund for Science,

Technology and Research (FONACIT) and other worldwide indexes, databases, registries

and electronic libraries, such as SciELO.

Initiative: BDTV The initiative for the creation of The Digital Library of Electronic Thesis of Venezuela begins

in 2002 with the participation of 12 universities. These universities reached an agreement

that allowed the consolidation of the model of such digital library, which contemplates: free

full text viewing, training of human resources, examination and further consulting on the

technology platform, use of standards to guarantee the interoperability of the digital library,

revision and adaptation of free software for the project’s implementation and revision of the

laws of Intellectual Property and copyright. Last but not least, the revision of the institutional

standard for the delivery of theses and degree projects. It was considered important to

include the publication of degree projects; however, users are warned on the characteristics

of this production, and allowed to have it for specific needs.

General Data of the BDTV Project Starting Date: 2003

Number of institutions: 21

Institution responsible: Los Andes University

Thesis Project Results A free, fully functional platform for the electronic publication of thesis is offered to the

institutions that request its installation. This platform was developed by IBICT of Brazilvi, and

adapted, improved and translated to Spanish by the University of Los Andes, Venezuelavii.

Currently, 11 institutions are executing ETDs projects with a total content of 22,240 full text

theses. Three of these institutions are metadata providers.

The following table illustrates the total amount of thesis published from 2003 to 2007 by most

of the 11 Universities that are participating in the venezuelan ETDs initiative.

Table 2. Number of ETDs by Institutions

Conclusions REVENCYT is an initiative that compiles most of the scientific and technological journals of

Venezuela. Additionally, it guarantees national and international visibility of the journals and

its preservation for future generations.

The BDTV initiative is an ongoing project with satisfactory results as part of a work of

national joint investigation of 11 universities. Participation of professionals from several

disciplines along with an updating process on training and development of capabilities of

human resources guarantee the viability of the project. This is supported by the high number

of electronic theses and dissertations available to the general public. vi Sistema de publicação eletrônica de teses e dissertações (TEDE), http://tede.ibict.br/ vii Sistema de publicación de tesis http://tesis.ula.ve

Institutions Total

Universidad de Los Andes(ULA) 362

Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV) 13

La Universidad del Zulia 148

Universidad de Carabobo(UC) 7.311

Universidad de Oriente(UDO) 79

Universidad Centro Occidental Lisandro Alvarado(UCLA) 1125

Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB) --

Universidad Nacional Abierta(UNA) 619

Universidad Nacional Experimental del Táchira (UNET) 123

Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas (IVIC) 787

Universidad Rafael Belloso Chapín 11.673

TOTAL 21.240

References

1. Maldonado O., Xiomara y Rodríguez Fernando (1997), Índice de Revistas Venezolanas

de Ciencia y Tecnología, Los índices de citas bibliográficas, Presented at the

Internacional Congress of Information 1997, La Habana Cuba. [date of entry:

12/01/2007]. http://www.congreso-info.cu/UserFiles/File/Info/Info97/Ponencias/061.pdf

2. ANABISAI (2004). Proyecto de Red Nacional de Bibliotecas Digitales. Presented at

CNTI in May 2004.