Archives mensuelles : juin 2012

High reprint orders in medical journals and pharmaceutical…

par Hans Dillaerts

High reprint orders in medical journals and pharmaceutical industry funding: case-control study :

« Reprints of published articles are a potential valuable means of disseminating information. Many individuals and organisations may request reprints, including the authors of the articles themselves, other members of the scientific community, study sponsors, and pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical industry is thought to be the largest purchaser of reprints. After gifts and drug samples, reprints are the most common form of promotional material circulated among doctors by pharmaceutical companies.

Because pharmaceutical companies may buy from journals copies of articles they have funded, reprints of published articles have been suggested as a possible source of conflict of interest that could lead to publication bias. Orders can be worth large sums of money and could potentially influence the chance of a paper being accepted, especially with the current organisational framework, under which editors can be responsible for the journal’s content and its finances. Studies sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry are also more likely to be published in higher impact factor journals than are studies without industry funding.

Data on the numbers of reprints ordered are scarce. One study examined the characteristics of articles published in the Lancet in 1998 in the top 21 of reprint orders and compared these with a set of control articles from the same journal. Reprint orders were not reported in detail, but less than 25% were stated to concern over 100 000 copies. Studies sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry were marginally significantly over-represented in the high reprint group compared with the control articles. Using more recent data we report the number of reprints ordered for the top articles by reprint order in medical journals, identify the sponsors and designs of these studies, and quantify the possible financial implications for journals. »

URL : http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e4212

Researchers of Tomorrow the research behaviour of Generation…

par Hans Dillaerts

Researchers of Tomorrow: the research behaviour of Generation Y doctoral students :

« In 2009, the British Library and JISC commissioned the three-year Researchers of Tomorrow study, focusing on the information-seeking and research behaviour of doctoral students in ‘Generation Y’, born between 1982 and 1994 and not ‘digital natives’. Over 17,000 doctoral students from more than 70 higher education institutions participated in the three annual surveys, which were complemented by a longitudinal student cohort study. »

URL : http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/reports/2012/researchers-of-tomorrow.pdf

Digital repositories ten years on: what do scientific researchers think of them and how do they use them?

par Hans Dillaerts

Digital repositories have been with us for more than a decade, and despite the considerable media and conference attention they engender, we know very little about their use by academics.

This paper sets out to address this by reporting on how well they are used, what they are used for, what researchers’ think of them, and where they thought they were going. Nearly 1,700 scientific researchers, mostly physical scientists, responded to an international survey of digital repositories, making it the largest survey of its kind.

High deposit rates were found and mandates appear to be working, especially with younger researchers. Repositories have made significant inroads in terms of impact and use despite, in the case of institutional repositories, the very limited resources deployed. S

ubject repositories, like arXiv and PubMed Central, have certainly come of age but institutional repositories probably have not come of age yet although there are drivers in place which, in theory anyway, are moving them towards early adulthood.

URL : http://ciber-research.eu/download/20120620-Digital_repositories_ten_years_on.pdf

A Preliminary Examination of the Cost Savings and Learning Impacts of Using Open Textbooks in Middle and High School Science Classes

par Hans Dillaerts

Proponents of open educational resources claim that significant cost savings are possible when open textbooks displace traditional textbooks in the classroom. Over a period of two years, we worked with 20 middle and high school science teachers (collectively teaching approximately 3,900 students) who adopted open textbooks to understand the process and determine the overall cost of such an adoption.

The teachers deployed open textbooks in multiple ways. Some of these methods cost more than traditional textbooks; however, we did identify and implement a successful model of open textbook adoption that reduces costs by over 50% compared to the cost of adopting traditional textbooks.

In addition, we examined the standardized test scores of students using the open textbooks and found no apparent differences in the results of students who used open textbooks compared with previous years when the same teachers’ students used traditional textbooks. However, given the limited sample of participating teachers, further investigation is needed. »

URL : http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1153/2256

The impact of open access initiative on knowledge sharing

par Hans Dillaerts | 1 commentaire

The main focus of this paper is to look at the role of the open access initiative (OAI) as a channel for knowledge sharing that could be used for the disseminate knowledge and research funding. For this purpose OAI was selected for analytical as role communication among the research.

To assess if the articles found in the OAI contents knowledge sharing a method called contextual analysis was used. The result showed that OAI can aptly serve as a tool for disseminate knowledge and sharing ideas. By analysis is these material, OAI might be able to drive benefits directly or indirectly and eventually become beneficial took for scholars in their.

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/10760/17219

Open Access, scholarship and digital anthropology

par Hans Dillaerts | 1 commentaire

This paper consists of three arguments. The first advocates the development of Open Access for anthropological books and journals and critiques the way we have ceded control of dissemination to inappropriate commercial concerns that come to stand for what should have been academic criteria.

The second argues that this is best accomplished while being conservative about the process of review, selection, and the canons of scholarship. Third, the paper address the emergence of Digital Anthropology, suggesting this has considerable significance for the very conceptualization of anthropology and its future, and suggesting that it can be given definition.

But, this should not be confused with the issues of Open Access and review. This is followed by ten helpful and critical comments. In the concluding discussion I respond to these and argue how these points can be taken into account in creating the conditions for a shift to Open Access while defending the concept of Digital Anthropology.

URL : http://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/view/93

Fair use vs copyright non compliance among the…

par Hans Dillaerts

Fair use vs copyright non-compliance among the academic community in universities of developing nations :

« The purpose of the paper is to assess whether the copyrighted resources in the universities are being used following fair use principle or not and if there is any copyright management policy in the universities to manage the access to those resources .Quantitative data regarding the use of resources in the library collected through online (using survey monkey web platform) and offline were computed through statistical software (MINITAB version 13).Copyright Resources are not used complying fair use principles in the universities of West Bengal and there is no copyright management policy in any university of West Bengal. Considering similar economic conditions, the findings are equally applicable in other developing nations. Study was conducted among the universities of West Bengal. However result of the study is applicable to universities in all developing nations. This study can inform the entire academic community regarding fair use and can make university or appropriate authority feel the need to design and develop balanced and well-defined copyright management policy for the universities. There is close relation in between fair use and economic condition of that country. The unique context of fair use of copyrighted resources in the universities of West Bengal can add to the body of literature related with intellectual property rights in the universities and form the basis, for further comprehensive study. »

URL : http://www.ijodls.in/9.html