Rebooting the CS Publication Process :
Many computer science academics have been grousing about failures in our publication process. This
paper catalogs many of the specific complaints that are raised and proposes some radical new solutions
based on the assumption that, by eliminating physical paper entirely and going with a centralized system
to manage papers, we can rethink the entire process: paper submission, revision and publication. Fur-
thermore, having all of the metadata standardized and easily available, ranking algorithms can be easily
conceived to aid in tenure cases and departmental rankings.
URL : http://bit.ly/aeuLa0
Étiquette : scientific communication
Post Title
Interactive Open Access Publishing and Peer Review: The Effectiveness and Perspectives of Transparency and Self-Regulation in Scientific Communication and Evaluation :
The traditional forms of scientific publishing and peer review do not live up to the demands of efficient communication and quality assurance in today’s highly diverse and rapidly evolving world of science. They need to be advanced by interactive and transparent forms of review, publication and discussion that are open to the scientific community and to the public.
The advantages of open access, public peer review and interactive discussion can be efficiently and flexibly combined with the strengths of traditional publishing and peer review. Since 2001 the viability of this approach is demonstrated by the highly successful interactive open access journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ( ACP) and a growing number of sister journals of the European Geosciences Union ( EGU) and Copernicus Publications.
The achievements and statistics of these journals and their publishers clearly prove both the scientific benefits and the financial sustainability of open access. Future perspectives are outlined with regard to critical rationalism, open societies and the global information commons.
URL : http://liber.library.uu.nl/publish/issues/2009-3_4/index.html?000479
Economic Implications of Alternative Pub…
Economic Implications of Alternative Publishing Models: Self-archiving and Repositories :
A knowledge economy has been defined as one in which the generation and exploitation of knowledge has come to play the predominant part in the creation of wealth. It is not simply about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge; it is also about the more effective use and exploitation of all types of knowledge in all manner of economic activities. One key question is whether there are new opportunities and new models for scholarly publishing that might better serve researchers and more effectively communicate and disseminate research findings.
Building on previous work, this paper looks at the costs and potential benefits of alternative models for scientific and scholarly publishing, describing the approach and methods used and summarising the findings of a study undertaken for JISC in the United Kingdom. It concludes that different publishing models can make a material difference to the costs faced by and benefits realised from research communication, and it seems likely that more open access would have substantial net benefits.
URL : http://liber.library.uu.nl/publish/issues/2009-3_4/index.html?000478
Factors influencing the adoption of open…
Factors influencing the adoption of open access scholarly communication in Tanzanian public universities :
Open access – a means for free availability of scholarly content via the Internet – is an emerging opportunity for wider and unlimited access to scholarly literature. Scholarly communication, through open access journals and self-arching, are the two main approaches of open access publishing. However, this mode of scholarly communication is not widely utilised in developing countries such as Tanzania. This paper discusses the factors that influence the adoption of open access for scholarly communication in Tanzanian public universities based on a study conducted from 2007 to 2010. A survey questionnaire targeted 544 researchers selected through stratified random sampling from a population of 1088
university researchers at six public universities in Tanzania. In addition, 69 policy makers from the six universities were interviewed. It was evident from the findings that the majority of both the policy makers and researchers were aware of open access. However, most of the researchers accessed free online content more (62%) than they disseminated their scholarly content (20%) through open access. Researchers’ Internet usage skills and self-efficacy, social influence, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and the respondents’ general perceptions about open access were identified as the positive factors likely to facilitate open access adoption in Tanzanian public universities. The current poor research conditions and researchers’ low Internet self-efficacy such as inadequate information search skills were cited as the main hindrances for researchers to use open access outlets to access scholarly content. Additionally, inadequate online publishing skills, and the slow Internet connectivity are the
main issues that deterred researchers to disseminate the research findings through open access outlets. The paper recommends that institutional policies on scholarly communication should be revised to incorporate the use of open access publishing. Furthermore, universities should accelerate the establishment of institutional repositories, advocacy campaigns and training directed to researchers, policy makers, readers and information managers of scholarly content, and the improvement of Internet speed at universities through subscription to more bandwidth so as to meet the demand from the scholarly community.
URL : http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/papers/ifla76/138-dulle-en.pdf
Squaring the Circle: Towards an Integrat…
Squaring the Circle: Towards an Integrated Print and Digital Journal Preservation Strategy :
This paper examines preservation strategies for both print and electronic scholarly journals focusing on strategic policy considerations relevant to these tasks. Developments in both areas of preservation are examined in their historical context. Recent promising developments for both print and digital preservation are discussed with an eye to integrating both activities. Four key pillars are outlined to sketch the framework for an integrated journal preservation strategy: legal agreements, archiving infrastructure, holdings registry and consortia leadership. Specific focus is given to the rationale for library consortia leadership in the North American context. The benefits of an integrated print and digital preservation strategy are then analyzed with some conclusions drawn and recommendations for future areas of research.
URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/18622/
Science Dissemination using Open Access
The book is a compendium of selected literature on Open Access, both on the technical and organizational levels, and was written in an effort to guide the scientific community on the requirements of Open Access, and the plethora of low-cost solutions available.
The book also aims to encourage decision makers in academia and research centers to adopt institutional and regional Open Access Journals and Archives to make their own scientific results public and fully searchable on the Internet.
Discussions on open publishing via Academic Webcasting are also included. The book is an effort by ICTP-SDU (Italy) in collaboration with CERN (Switzerland) enabled by the support of INASP (UK).
Research productivity-visibility-accessibility and scholarly communication in Southern African universities
The project for the revitalisation of Southern Africa’s higher education sector is dependent on, among other things, the capacity of the region’s universities to produce research, to communicate that research to a broad public audience and to use the research output in the process of educating future generations of graduates. Given this context, research output in the great majority of Southern African universities is barely visible.
While the introduction of new digital media may offer greater accessibility and expanded opportunities for the visibility of scholarly communication, this may be insufficient to meet the needs of the many scholars and other actors who seek to build on existing bodies of knowledge, whether to advance society or in order to create knowledge for its own sake.
This article reports the findings of two 2008 studies – The state of public science in the SADC region and Opening access to knowledge in Southern African universities. Working within a frame which understands knowledge produced in universities as a public good, this article examines the issues at play in terms of the productivity-visibility-accessibility of scholarly communications in regional higher education.
The conclusion discusses a possible approach to improve such productivity-visibility-accessibility, through the adoption of a strategic vision of open access to knowledge and through consideration of two breakthroughs pertinent to achieving a vision of revitalised higher education in the region.
URL : http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/19768?show=full