Open Access Scholarly Communication in Malaysia This…

Open Access Scholarly Communication in Malaysia :

“This paper reports on Open Access Scholarly Communication in Malaysia, investigating their use of open access repositories, advocacy undertaken, and reasons for contribution to global scholarship. The outcome wills very much in line with the stipulations willing Scholarly on Open access that will preserve and disseminate digital materials created by, or associated with the university.”

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/10760/16557

Use of Open Access Resources by the Engineering…

Use of Open Access Resources by the Engineering Students of Punjab (India) :

“This study presents the results of a survey that assessed engineering student’s familiarity with use of open access resources in Punjab (India). The survey was made through questionnaires and completed by 460 respondents. Respondents were generally familiar with open access sources including open access journals, institutional repositories and self-archived materials on the web. Respondents’ attitudes toward open access varied, but most agreed that open access resources are of high quality and that open access would benefit them. In helping researchers find open access information, more respondents had used open access journals than institutional repositories or self-archived materials. Some of the challenges faced by the student fraternity in accessing these resources have been enlisted and appropriate recommendations have also been given.”

URL : http://www.academicjournals.org/IJLIS/PDF/pdf2012/Jan/Sandhu%20%20and%20Daviet.pdf

The Effect of Free Access on the Diffusion…

The Effect of Free Access on the Diffusion of Scholarly Ideas :

“This study examines a relationship between free access to research articles and the diffusion of their ideas as measured by citation counts. While free access should, in theory, help the diffusion of ideas, many researchers have debated the existence of the benefit of free access: reported empirical findings range from zero or negative effect to an over 300% increase of citations of non-free articles. By using a dataset from the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), an open repository of research articles, and employing a natural experiment that allows the estimation of the value of free access separate from confounding factors such as early viewership and quality differential, this study identifies the causal effect of free access on the citation counts. The natural experiment in this study is that a select group of published articles is posted on SSRN at a time chosen by their authors’ affiliated organizations or SSRN, not by their authors. Using a difference-in-difference method and comparing the citation profiles of the articles before and after the posting time on SSRN against a group of control articles with similar characteristics, I stimated the effect of the SSRN posting on citation counts. The articles posted on SSRN receive more citations even prior to being posted on SSRN, suggesting that they are of higher quality. Their citation counts further increase after being posted, gaining an additional 10-20% of citations. This gain is likely to be caused by the free access that SSRN provides.”

URL : http://mis.eller.arizona.edu/events/speakers_series/2012/mis_speaker_series_Heekyung_Kim.asp

Online survey on scientific information in the digital…

Online survey on scientific information in the digital age :

“The public consultation ‘Online survey on scientific information in the digital age’ spurred great interest among different categories of stakeholders, with 1 140 responses received. The Commission received responses from 42 countries, including from all Member States except Ireland, Malta, Slovenia and Slovakia, with 37 % of all responses submitted by German respondents.

Respondents were asked if there is no access problem to scientific publications in Europe: 84 % disagreed or disagreed strongly with the statement. The high prices of journals/subscriptions (89 %) and limited library budgets (85 %) were signalled as the most important barriers to accessing scientific publications. More than 1 000 respondents (90 %) supported the idea that publications resulting from publicly funded research should, as a matter of principle, be in open access (OA) mode. An even higher number of respondents (91 %) agreed or agreed strongly that OA increased access to and dissemination of scientific publications. Self-archiving (‘green OA’) or a combination of self-archiving and OA publishing (‘gold OA’) were identified as the preferred ways that public research policy should facilitate in order to increase the number and share of scientific publications available in OA. Respondents were asked, in the case of self-archiving (‘green OA’), what the desirable embargo period is (period of time during which publication is not yet open access): a six-month period was favoured by 56 % of respondents (although 25 % disagree with this option).

As for the question of access to research data, the vast majority of respondents (87 %) disagreed or disagreed strongly with the statement that there is no access problem for research data in Europe. The barriers to access research data considered very important or important by respondents were: lack of funding to develop and maintain the necessary infrastructures (80 %); the insufficient credit given to researchers for making research data available (80 %); and insufficient national/regional strategies/policies (79 %). There was strong support (90 % of responses) for research data that is publicly available and results
from public funding to be, as a matter of principle, available for reuse and free of charge on the Internet. Lower support (72 % of responses) was given for data resulting from partly publicly and partly privately funded research.

Responding to the question asking whether preservation of scientific information is at present sufficiently addressed, 64 % of the respondents disagreed or disagreed strongly. The main barriers signalled in this area were: uncertainty as to who is responsible for preserving scientific information (80 %); the quality and interoperability of repositories (78 %); and the lack of a harmonised approach to legal deposit (69 %).”

URL : http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/survey-on-scientific-information-digital-age_en.pdf

PEER Economics Research Final Report This study…

PEER Economics Research – Final Report :

“This study considers the effect of large-scale deposit on scholarly research publication and dissemination (sharing of research outputs), beginning with the analysis of publishers and
institutions managing repositories and their sustainability. The study associates costs with specific activities, performed by key actors involved in research registration, certification, dissemination and digital management: authors, the scholarly community, editors, publishers, libraries, readers and funding agencies. Contrary to most of the existing literature, the study analyses cost structures of individual organizations. The focus of this study is therefore to provide context for the costs to specific organizations and to their choices in terms of scale and scope.”

URL : http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/media/reports/PEER_Economics_Report.pdf

New Zealand information on the Internet the Power…

New Zealand information on the Internet: the Power to Find the Knowledge :

“In a world of apparently ubiquitous information, does knowledge still equal power? Whatever the answer to this question, we will not have power unless we can retrieve our knowledge. Despite the advances of the last decades, issues remain in finding information on the Web relating to Aotearoa. These include: the efficiency with which the global search engines index the NZ web space, searching for macronised words, the quality of Wikipedia information about NZ, and the availability of open access NZ research.”

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/10063/2004
URL : http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz//handle/10063/2004

Usages, pratiques et besoins des chercheurs concernant les serveurs d’archives ouvertes

Le Centre Commun de Documentation de Lille1 désire mettre en place un serveur d’archives ouvertes destiné aux chercheurs dans le but de leur permettre d’archiver de façon pérenne leurs documents scientifiques et techniques et cela en toute sérénité. Dans ce cadre-là, mon stage a consisté à réaliser une étude comparative et une recherche approfondie sur les sites d’archives ouvertes tels que HAL, OATAO, SPIRE et ORBI, et cela sous forme de rapport d’audit.

J’ai ainsi essayé de distinguer les différents services (exemple : service de dépôt, service de consultation…) mis en place par les sites d’archives ouvertes, la composition de ces services en terme d’éléments structurants (exemple : divers critères de consultation, …) mais je me suis aussi placée du côté des chercheurs pour essayer de comprendre leurs pratiques actuelles en matière de dépôt, de consultation et de recherche de documents. Enfin, par l’intermédiaire d’entretiens semi-directifs, j’ai voulu savoir quels étaient leurs réels besoins en terme de services, d’architecture du site, … mais aussi de connaître leur avis et leur perception du site qu’ils utilisent actuellement.

The Lille1 Library wishes to implement a open archives website for researchers in order to enable them to archive their scientific and technical documents in a lasting way. In that context, my internship was to conduct a comparative study and thorough search on Open Archives sites as HAL, OATAO, SPIRE and ORBI in a form of audit report.

I tried to distinguish the different services set up by theses websites, the composition of theses services in terms of structural elements but I also place on the side of researchers in order to understand their current practices regarding filing, consulting and search documents. Finally, I wanted to know what their real needs in terms of services, website architecture,… but also their views and their perception of the site they use now.

URL : http://memsic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/mem_00655746/fr/