A Proposed Currency System for Academic Peer Review Payments Using the BlockChain Technology

par Hans Dillaerts | Laissez un commentaire

Author : Michael Spearpoint

Peer review of scholarly papers is seen to be a critical step in the publication of high quality outputs in reputable journals. However, it appears that there are few incentives for researchers to agree to conduct suitable reviews in a timely fashion and in some cases unscrupulous practices are occurring as part of the production of academic research output.

Innovations in internet-based technologies mean that there are ways in which some of the challenges can be addressed. In particular, this paper proposes a new currency system using the BlockChain as its basis that provides a number of solutions.

Potential benefits and problems of using the technology are discussed in the paper and these will need further investigation should the idea develop further. Ultimately, the currency could be used as an alternative publication metric for authors, institutions and journals.

URL : A Proposed Currency System for Academic Peer Review Payments Using the BlockChain Technology

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/publications5030019

Open Access Research Via Collaborative Educational Blogging: A Case Study from Library & Information Science

par Hans Dillaerts | Laissez un commentaire

Authors : Kristen Radsliff Rebmann, Camden Bernard Clark

This article charts the development of activities for online graduate students in library and information science. Project goals include helping students develop competencies in understanding open access publishing, synthesizing research in the field, and engaging in scholarly communication via collaborative educational blogging.

Using a design experiment approach as a research strategy, focus is placed on the design of the collaborative blogging activity, open access research as a knowledge domain, and analyses of four iterations of the project.

Findings from this iterative learning design suggest several benefits of implementing collaborative educational blogging activities in distance contexts.

URL : Open Access Research Via Collaborative Educational Blogging: A Case Study from Library & Information Science

Alternative location : http://openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/article/view/665

Theory and Practice of Data Citation

par Hans Dillaerts | Laissez un commentaire

Author : Gianmaria Silvello

Citations are the cornerstone of knowledge propagation and the primary means of assessing the quality of research, as well as directing investments in science. Science is increasingly becoming « data-intensive », where large volumes of data are collected and analyzed to discover complex patterns through simulations and experiments, and most scientific reference works have been replaced by online curated datasets.

Yet, given a dataset, there is no quantitative, consistent and established way of knowing how it has been used over time, who contributed to its curation, what results have been yielded or what value it has.

The development of a theory and practice of data citation is fundamental for considering data as first-class research objects with the same relevance and centrality of traditional scientific products. Many works in recent years have discussed data citation from different viewpoints: illustrating why data citation is needed, defining the principles and outlining recommendations for data citation systems, and providing computational methods for addressing specific issues of data citation.

The current panorama is many-faceted and an overall view that brings together diverse aspects of this topic is still missing. Therefore, this paper aims to describe the lay of the land for data citation, both from the theoretical (the why and what) and the practical (the how) angle.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.07976

Software Heritage: Why and How to Preserve Software Source Code

par Hans Dillaerts | Laissez un commentaire

Authors : Roberto Di Cosmo, Stefano Zacchiroli

Software is now a key component present in all aspects of our society. Its preservation has attracted growing attention over the past years within the digital preservation community.

We claim that source code—the only representation of software that contains human readable knowledge—is a precious digital object that needs special handling: it must be a first class citizen in the preservation landscape and we need to take action immediately, given the increasingly more frequent incidents that result in permanent losses of source code collections. In this paper we present Software Heritage, an ambitious initiative to collect, preserve, and share the entire corpus of publicly accessible software source code.

We discuss the archival goals of the project, its use cases and role as a participant in the broader digital preservation ecosystem, and detail its key design decisions. We also report on the project road map and the current status of the Software Heritage archive that, as of early 2017, has collected more than 3 billion unique source code files and 700 million commits coming from more than 50 million software development projects.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01590958

Fast and Furious (at Publishers): The Motivations behind Crowdsourced Research Sharing

par Hans Dillaerts | Laissez un commentaire

Authors : Carolyn Caffrey Gardner, Gabriel J. Gardner

Crowdsourced research sharing takes place across social media platforms including Twitter hashtags such as #icanhazpdf, Reddit Scholar, and Facebook.

This study surveys users of these peer-to-peer exchanges on demographic information, frequency of use, and their motivations in both providing and obtaining scholarly information on these platforms. Respondents also provided their perspectives on the database terms of service and/or copyright violations in these exchanges.

Findings indicate that the motivations of this community are utilitarian or ideological in nature, similar to other peer-to-peer file sharing online. Implications for library services including instruction, outreach, and interlibrary loan are discussed.

URL : Fast and Furious (at Publishers): The Motivations behind Crowdsourced Research Sharing

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.78.2.16578

Measuring Cost per Use of Library-Funded Open Access Article Processing Charges: Examination and Implications of One Method

par Hans Dillaerts | Laissez un commentaire

Authors : Crystal Hampson, Elizabeth Stregger

INTRODUCTION

Libraries frequently support their open access (OA) fund using money from their collections budget. Interest in assessment of OA funds is arising. Cost per use is a common method to assess library collections expenditures.

OA article processing charges (APCs) are a one-time cost for global, perpetual use. Article level metrics provide data on global, cumulative article level usage. This article examines a method and discusses the limitations and implications of using article level metrics to calculate cost per use for OA APCs.

METHODS

Using different APC models from two publishers, PLOS and BioMed Central, this article presents a cost per use formula for each model.

RESULTS

The formula for each model is demonstrated with available data. The examples suggest a very low cost per use for OA APCs after only three years.

DISCUSSION

Several limitations exist to obtaining article level data currently, including the nature of open access and accessibility of the data. OA articles’ usage levels are high and include use from altruistic access. Cost per use comparison with traditional publishing models is possible; however, comparison between different OA expenditures with very low costs per use may not be helpful.

CONCLUSION

Article level metrics can provide a means to measure cost per use of OA APCs. Libraries need increased access to article level usage data. They will also need to develop new benchmarks and expectations to evaluate APC payments, given higher usage levels for OA articles and considering altruistic access.

URL : Measuring Cost per Use of Library-Funded Open Access Article Processing Charges: Examination and Implications of One Method

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2182

Libre accès aux savoirs et accès ouvert aux publications

par Hans Dillaerts | Laissez un commentaire

Auteur/Author : Jérôme Valluy

L’étude sociologique des débats médiatiques et de l’action publique, en France entre 2013 et 2017, sur l’accès ouvert aux publications scientifiques et didactiques de sciences humaines et sociales issues du système universitaire, sous l’angle de la préservation du pluralisme, permet de souligner l’intérêt de distinguer conceptuellement « libre accès » aux savoirs et « accès ouvert » aux publications. Dans la configuration étudiée, l’action publique, gouvernementale et militante, en faveur de l’accès ouvert s’oriente vers des finalités de centralisation et de contrôles qui l’éloignent progressivement de l’idéal philosophique du libre accès aux savoirs.

Ce phénomène donne l’opportunité de repenser à nouveaux frais le sens du mot « libre », dans « libre accès » aux savoirs, en cherchant à mieux identifier les libertés – celles indissociablement liées des auteurs et lecteurs – nécessaires à la recherche et à l’enseignement en SHS.

URL https://rfsic.revues.org/3194