Sabinet Online Limited, SA's premier facilitator of access to value-added, online information, has launched SA ePublications (
http://journals.sabinet.co.za
), the most comprehensive, searchable collection of full-text electronic South African journals.
Pierre Malan, Sabinet Online director: Academic and Library Business Unit, says the company commenced with the project, which aims to make South African scientific and scholarly journals available online in full-text, in early 2001. The company enlisted the help of the academic and corporate sectors to identify some 350 publications for possible inclusion in the database. Since then, 40 have already become available online and Sabinet Online aims to raise this total to 100 by December.
"Over a period of almost 20 years, Sabinet Online has developed an excellent reputation for providing high-quality electronic information - since 1995, increasingly via the Internet," comments Malan.
"Our initial marketing efforts have therefore yielded a pleasing 77% positive response rate from publishers and editors."
The eagerness of South African publishers to make their journals available online in full-text is also in line with global trends. "There has been a dramatic rise in the numbers of electronic journals that are available online in full-text, in response to growing demand among the international library and research communities," he explains.
"SA ePublications will go a long way towards meeting the needs of South African libraries as well as individual information users for full-text articles in electronic format."
Sabinet Online offers the hosting service to journal publishers free of charge. It includes value-added features such as a fully indexed database complemented by abstracts and a sophisticated search engine.
The company is making bundled subscriptions across all titles in the SA ePublications portal available to local and international institutions. This will soon be complemented by the sale of articles on a per-article basis to ad hoc Internet users via a secure e-commerce site.
Adding further value to the service, SA ePublications is integrated with SA Citations, which includes abstracts of a selection of periodicals published in SA, important scientific and technical journals, as well as some general and popular magazines - all published in SA over the past 15 years.
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Sabinet Online Ltd has established itself over the past nineteen years as an expert in facilitating electronic access to information - understanding and catering for the needs of serious information users across a broad spectrum of markets. The company is also an established web database publisher. It brings a total solution to clients' information needs by making use of strategic elements from its portfolio of products as well as both technical and people skills. Few companies can match Sabinet Online's long track record of experience and effectiveness in addressing the diverse needs of a large and continually growing client base, spanning the corporate, academic and government markets. Visit Sabinet Online's Web site at http://www.sabinet.co.za.
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