I ran into my normal problem of discovering the uni doesn't subscribe to the journals I want to read articles in today.  I mumbled about it on Twitter, and was sent a copy - which has some copyright issues associated with it as a mechanism for getting hold of things, but which was also very useful.  The author of the paper has also responded very quickly to an email, so I have a legitimate copy now too, so I can use it without feeling (or being!) guilty.

I'm in two minds about this.  I firmly believe knowledge shouldn't be locked up in repositories for some crime it hasn't committed (or has it? duh duh duuuuuuuh) but on the other hand, I have no desire to breach other people's copyright (though, I have to admit, I am morally much less concerned about companies' copyright).  I don't even provide staff from other universities who get in touch via TurnItIn with copies of material I know are copyrighted, and if there is one thing I hate more than knowledge being incarcerated it is plagiarism.

But the thing is, when I want access to a paper, either for studying in general, or as in this case so that I can do a peer review properly, I want access now - I don't want to wait for ages, and I certainly don't want to (and can't afford) to go around paying for access to something which, let's face it, may or may not be worth $n.  Yes, I could order it through Uni channels, but not on a Sunday, and the Uni is feeling a little strapped for cash too.  

And while I am on the topic, what is it with the permissions issues when ordering a copy of a paper via inter-library loans?  It is for personal use only (fair enough) but you can't order it if you think your colleagues may have had a copy recently.  But... their copy will have been for personal use... so presumably you have to order everything that might be vaguely interesting before team mates do if you want to read it.  Is this a way of enforcing us to use 3rd party filtering mechanisms rather than read things ourselves?  It confuses me...

So, anyway, once again I have managed to foil the mechanisms in place to stop knowledge from being shared.  Now I guess I will have to also review the resource I managed to get hold of (it was rather good) so that others can get more of a gist of what it is about than is provided in the abstract.  Now where did I leave that spare month/year I need so I can read as well as code, and write, and meet, and think... and, ideally, play occasionally?

Cohere is a useful looking tool from the Open University.  It is quite like the MeAggregator tool, in that the user builds up an ontology or concept map from ideas which can be related to URLs.  MeAggregator focusses less on the user thinking about how the concepts work together, and more on making it easier to find and organise the resources, but the same ideas are there - nodes (or resources), URLs which they link to, relationships between them (which are handled by tagging in MeAggregator).  It looks good, though auto-discovery of its RSS feeds doesn't work.  On the other hand, they have code snippets for embedding a view in another web page, and another aspect I haven't tried yet is that they have a tool for creating web pages from within the web app.

 Amplify is fromthe same people as Clipmarks.  It provides users with a 'clog' - clip log - which is essentially a slightly enhanced blog.  You can put entries in to your clog manually just as you would with blogging software.  This service is currently in a private beta, but I managed to blag a login from the nice chaps at Clipmarks.  I like it - and it gave me the idea of clipping Tweets (micro-blog posts in the Twitter service) and using them for the basis of a clog post which then has a comment thread attached, allowing for discussion of a resource between a group of people.  Coming soon, the service will also provide a system of groups, which will allow a collaborative clog to be run, which could be an excellent tool for group projects to use.  Privacy currently is either public or private, but presumably with groups there will be a group setting too.

Academia.edu is another interesting one - essentially it is Facebook for academics, (and uses the Facebook log in methods so you can link directly in to Facebook with it) and has universities and departments within its hierarchy, along with research interests.  I am not sure I was meant to really select all the areas I have a research interest in (I ended up with 240, and I deliberately didn't select some - although, to be fair, some things in the list appear more than once as I selected them as main categories and as sub-categories of other areas.  Perhaps it should filter them!).  This service is also a bit wiki-like.  You can add new research areas, new departments and the like for your university (and probably for others...).  You can also add other people, and there is a 'this is me' link (not directly related to the project of the same name!)for people to claim identities which have been set up there.  I am not sure how long it will take for someone to abuse it!

So - academic social networking, collaborative concept mapping and a web page clipping blog system.  All pretty good stuff (admittedly with some rough edges, but I am certainly not complaining about that!)