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National Library News |
Louise Tousignant,
Electronic Publications Acquisitions Section,
Acquisitions and Bibliographic Services
In the seventh edition of the Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters and Academic Discussion Lists, published by the Association of Research Libraries, the compilers list 1 465 titles of periodicals available online, 1 002 of which are peer reviewed.
Although procedures vary from one periodical to another, the process of approval by colleagues or reviews by reading committees can be defined as an editorial stage in which articles are reviewed by people who are known or unknown to the author and who work in the same field. The reviewers then make their recommendations, which may range from acceptance of the article, or acceptance with minor or major corrections, to its rejection.
Publications that undergo this editorial process are generally highly regarded by researchers because they are considered more rigorous and more serious than those that do not. This is as true in the world of online publications as in the print environment.
The National Library Electronic Collection has several periodicals whose articles are approved by colleagues or reviewed by a reading committee.
Published three times a year, in HTML format, by the English Department of the University of British Columbia, Early Modern Literary Studies (EMLS) deals with English literature of the 16th and 17th centuries. EMLS is indexed by services such as MLA International Bibliography, the Canadian Index, Lycos <http://www.lycos.com> and InfoSeek <http://infoseek.go.com>.
Published quarterly, in HTML format, by S. Tötösy de Zepetnek of the Department of Comparative Literature, Religion and Film/Media Studies at the University of Alberta, the academic journal CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal deals with comparative literature. Book reviews are also available. This title is indexed in the MLA International Bibliography.
Published three times a year, in a combination HTML and PDF format, by Biological Procedures Online and under the direction of Mark Reimer of the University of Western Ontario's Faculty of Medicine, Biological Procedures Online covers biological and medical research. This journal focusses on technical advice and reviews of new recognized research techniques.
It is also possible to search the full text of the above HTML titles from the Electronic Collection's Web site: <http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/wsi-ecoll/wsi_srch_bas_ecoll_e.html>.
These titles are also found in the international ISSN register, which is now available on the Web at <http://www.issn.org/ISSNONLINE.html>. Their ISSNs are 1201-2459, 1481-4373 and 1480-9222, respectively. To date, over 900 000 periodicals, published in 180 countries, are listed in the database.
The online publication records for Canadian titles in ISSN Online contain the URL of the copy archived in the National Library of Canada, thereby making it possible to access the content of the publication through this service.
It is also interesting to note that the publishers’ Web sites contain hypertext links to the Library's Electronic Collection.
In the first case, the publisher of EMLS has inserted the following note:
"Archive (NLC)" 1
In the second case, the note reads as follows:
"CLCWeb is archived by, and mirrored at, the National Library of Canada at its Electronic Collection site <http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca>; the mirror site of CLCWeb is <http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/201/300/clcweb/index.html>; its bibliographic record can be searched via the National Library of Canada's bibliographic database resAnet <http://www.amicus.nlc-bnc.ca/wapp/resanet/searche.htm>" 2
In the case of Biological Procedures Online, the following note is used:
"Archived by the National Library of Canada" 3
These examples are just a sample of the peer-reviewed titles that are available at the Library . We invite you to come and discover these and more.
For more information on the Electronic Collection, please contact
Louise Tousignant
Electronic Publications Acquisitions Section
Acquisitions and Bibliographic Services
National Library of Canada
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0N4
Telephone: (819) 997-9565
Fax: (819) 953-8508
E-mail: e.publications.e@nlc-bnc.ca
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Notes
1 <http://www.shu.ac.uk/emls/emlshome.html>
2 <http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/clcwebjournal/> under the heading Procedures of publication
3 <http://sciborg.uwaterloo.ca/bpo/>