Dark Research: information content in many modern research papers is not easily discoverable online

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Background: Research is published in indexed, online scholarly journals so that published knowledge can be easily found and built upon by others. Most scholars rely on relatively few online indexing service providers to search for relevant scholarly content. It is under-appreciated that the quality of indexing can vary across different journals and that this can have an adverse effect on the quality of research.

Objective: In this short paper I compare the recall of commonly used online indexers; Google Scholar, Web of Knowledge, Scopus, Microsoft Academic Search and Mendeley Search against a selection of over 20,000 papers published in two different high-volume journals: PLOS ONE and Zootaxa.

Results: When using Google Scholar, content in Zootaxa has low recall for search terms that are known to occur in it, significantly lower than the near-perfect recall of the same terms in PLOS ONE. All other indexers tend to have lower recall than Google Scholar except Scopus which outperformed Google Scholar for recall on Zootaxa searches. I also elaborate why Dark Research is undesirable for optimal scientific progress with some recommendations for change.

Conclusion: This research is a basic proof-of-concept which demonstrates that when searching for published scholarly content, relevant studies can remain hidden as ’Dark Research’ in poorly-indexed journals, even despite expertise-informed efforts to find the content. The technological capability to do full text indexing on all modern scholarly journal content certainly exists, it is perhaps just publisher-imposed access-restrictions on content that prevents this from happening.”

URL : Dark Research: information content in many modern research papers is not easily discoverable online

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.773v1

Ebooks in education : Realising the vision

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“Ebooks are coming of age in education, as this exciting collection commissioned by Jisc demonstrates.

Case studies, reflecting ebook success stories across the higher and further education sectors, include:

  • An innovative app to encourage ebook take-up in a Welsh college.
  • A partnership between a library and research centre to create open access monographs and midigraphs.
  • Several examples of creative negotiations with ebook publishers.

Insight chapters address hot topics in the ebook universe, including:

  • The changing world of access to scholarly digital content in the mobile environment.
  • The challenges faced by the library as online distance learning moves from margin to mainstream.
  • How ebooks have the potential to meet a wide range of accessibility needs.
  • Experimentation with ebooks as a shared service.

This collection will provide inspiration and guidance to institutions as they develop projects and services to support students and researchers and will be of interest to library practitioners, publishers, ebook vendors, information professionals, teachers, lecturers and students.”

URL : https://microblogging.infodocs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/12-3-123-1-10-20141114.pdf

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/bal

Le virage Linked Open Data en bibliothèque : étude des pratiques, mise en œuvre, compétences des professionnels

Les Linked Open Data (LOD) mettent peu à peu en évidence des enjeux considérables pour les professionnels de l’information et les bibliothèques. Cet article fait un tour d’horizon de la question en abordant plusieurs aspects. Après avoir introduit les concepts-clés de cette thématique, il s’attache à déterminer l’utilité des LOD en bibliothèque en présentant quelques applications innovantes. Prérequis pour la création de telles applications, la conversion des données en LOD est décrite sous la forme d’un procédé généralisable.

L’article change ensuite de perspective et se penche sur le professionnel de l’information, en identifiant les compétences les plus pertinentes à acquérir pour faire face à ces évolutions. Enfin, il décrit la réalisation concrète d’une formation à distance sur les LOD, accessible à tous sur le web.

URL : http://www.ressi.ch/num15/article_100