Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the…

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Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the Light of the Digital Transition: setting the scene for a major study :

“The paper provides the results of the first phase of the research project Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the Light of the Digital Transition. It provides for an examination of the behaviours and attitudes of academic researchers as producers and consumers of scholarly information resources in the digital era in respect to how they determine authority and trustworthiness in the sources they use, cite, and publish in. The first phase of the study utilized focus groups to formulate research questions for the project as a whole. It provided the direction for the literature review, interviews, and questionnaires studies that would follow. Fourteen focus groups were held in the UK and US in order to obtain this information. A total of 66 science and social science researchers participated. The main findings were: (a) researchers play down difficulties of establishing trustworthiness, not because there are none, but because they have well-developed methods of establishing trust; (b) citation-derived metrics are becoming more important in regard to where researchers publish; (c) social media are ancillary to research, but are used for promotion of research and idea generation; (d) researchers are suspicious and confused about open access, but less so if produced by a traditional publisher; (e) there was a uniformity of perceptions/behaviour of researchers irrespective of differences in subject, country, and age; (f) although some early career researchers behave the same as their more senior colleagues this is because of a fear of the system: they actually think differently.”

URL : http://ciber-research.eu/download/20140406-Learned_Publishing_27_2-Trust.pdf

Scholarly Communication at Canadian Research Libraries Conversations with…

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Scholarly Communication at Canadian Research Libraries: Conversations with Librarians :

INTRODUCTION. The landscape of librarianship in relation to the practice of scholarly communication is evolving. The objectives of this study were to investigate: the scope of scholarly communication activities within Canadian research libraries; the organizational structures in place to support them; and the roles of librarians who participate in them. Key challenges to its advancement and how librarians envision its future were also investigated.
METHODS Twenty-nine academic librarians from Canadian Association of Research Libraries member institutions participated in semi-structured, open-ended interviews. Interviews were analyzed for recurring themes.
RESULTS. Participants outlined initiatives, services, and structures to support scholarly communication at their institutions. Solo scholarly communication librarians, specialized teams, and committees were identified as primary structures. Liaison librarians play an essential supporting role regardless of structure. Individually, librarians are seen to have an impact as leaders and advocates in promoting scholarly communication. The concept of “librarian as researcher” is also important. Participants shared a desire for better communication and collaboration in this area. Many participants saw the need for standardized assessment and evaluation methods. Participants enumerated their greatest challenges and provided suggestions for addressing them in the future.
CONCLUSION. This study demonstrates that organizational structure can enhance scholarly communication activities in libraries. Leadership both at the personal and collective level is necessary to provide an impetus for scholarly communication activities. Librarians should be knowledgeable about the issues and be ready to deliver the “pitch.” Strengthening collaboration and communication among Canadian librarians is essential for moving the scholarly communication agenda forward.”

URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol2/iss2/3/

Starting Scholarly Conversations A Scholarly Communication Outreach Program…

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Starting Scholarly Conversations: A Scholarly Communication Outreach Program :

“As the scholarly communication system continues to evolve, academic librarians should take an active role in both developing their own knowledge and educating their campus communities about emergent topics. At Furman University, librarians developed an outreach program, aimed primarily at faculty, to increase awareness of current scholarly communication issues. Expert speakers were recruited to present throughout the year on open access, altmetrics, author’s rights, and other relevant topics. This program addressed a number of needs simultaneously—outreach to faculty; education for Furman librarians; and education for the greater library community—and affirmed the importance of providing opportunities to discuss these issues beyond the libraries. The program also further established Furman University Libraries’ role in educating and guiding its campus community through changes in scholarly communication models and practices.”

URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol2/iss1/2/

Data Curation in the OpenAIRE Scholarly Communication Infrastructure…

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Data Curation in the OpenAIRE Scholarly Communication Infrastructure :

“OpenAIRE is the European Union initiative for an Open Access Infrastructure for Research in support of open scholarly communication and access to the research output of European funded projects and open access content from a network of institutional and disciplinary repositories. This article outlines the curation activities conducted in the OpenAIRE infrastructure, which employs a multi-level, multi-targeted approach: the publication and implementation of interoperability guidelines to assist in the local data curation processes, the data curation due to the integration of heterogeneous sources supporting different types of data, the inference of links to accomplish the publication research contextualization and data enrichment, and the end-user metadata curation that allows users to edit the attributes and provide links among the entities.”

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.3789/isqv25no3.2013.03

Researchers and scholarly communications: an evolving interdependency

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Scholarly communication is not just about communication. It is not the final stage of the publication process, solely a means of providing the ‘minutes of science’. Rather, it is a vital part of the research process itself, inspiring researchers along new avenues of discovery and enabling the creation of connections between concepts and people.

The ways in which researchers disseminate their research have changed and developed over the four centuries since the launch of the first scientific journals. But it can be argued that scholarly communication has in turn affected the way in which researchers behave.

This chapter explores some of the interaction and interdependencies between researchers and scholarly communication. It also describes how the move to online, electronic publishing might further influence the research process.

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/19914/

The Critical Role of Institutional Services in Open…

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The Critical Role of Institutional Services in Open Access Advocacy :

“This paper examines the development of the Open Access movement in scholarly communication, with particular attention to some of the rhetorical strategies and policy mechanisms used to promote it to scholars and scientists. Despite the majority of journal publishers’ acceptance of author self-archiving practices, and the minimal time commitment required by authors to successfully self-archive their work in disciplinary or institutional repositories, the majority of authors still by and large avoid participation. The paper reviews the strategies and arguments used for increasing author participation in open access, including the role of open access mandates. We recommend a service-oriented approach towards increasing participation in open access, rather than rhetoric that speculates on the benefits that open access will have on text/data mining innovation. In advocating for open access participation, we recommend focusing on its most universal and tangible purpose: increasing public open (gratis) access to the published results of publicly funded research. Researchers require strong institutional support to understand the copyright climate of open access self-archiving, user-friendly interfaces and useful metrics, such as repository usage statistics. We recommend that mandates and well-crafted and responsive author support services at universities will ultimately be required to ensure the growth of open access. We describe the mediated deposit service that was developed to support author self-archiving in Spectrum: Concordia University Research Repository. By comparing the number of deposits of non-thesis materials (e.g. articles and conference presentations) that were accomplished through the staff-mediated deposit service to the number of deposits that were author-initiated, we demonstrate the relative significance of this service to the growth of the repository.”

URL : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/8.1.84

The future of scholarly communication US efforts to…

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The future of scholarly communication: US efforts to bring warring factions to common purpose in support of scholarship :

“Key stakeholders in scholarly communication have been at odds over the purpose, mission and business models of publishing. This piece reviews developments in the United States but with a particular focus on efforts at reestablishing common purpose, such as (1) the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable created in June 2009 by the Chairman of Science and Technology Committee of the US House of Representatives; (2) the Task force of the Association of American Universities and Association of Research Libraries established in 2012 to focus on university presses, scholarly journals and institutional repositories; and (3) the Office of Science and Technology Policy Memorandum of February 22, 2013 on Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research.”

URL : http://iospress.metapress.com/content/u727847272r65681/?id=U727847272R65681