Archives des catégories : EN

A Campus Partnership to Foster Compliance with Funder Mandates

Posté le par

Authors : Jeff R. Broadbent, Andrea Payant, Kevin Peterson, Betty Rozum, Liz Woolcott

Data from federally funded research must now be made publicly accessible and discoverable. Researchers must adhere to guidelines established by federal agencies, and universities must be prepared to demonstrate compliance with the federal mandate.

At Utah State University, the Office of Research and Graduate Studies and the Merrill-Cazier Library partnered to facilitate data sharing and create an audit trail demonstrating compliance with the terms of each researcher’s award.

This systematic approach uses existing resources such as the grant management system, the institutional repository (IR), and the Library online catalog. This paper describes our process and the first eight months of implementation.

URL : http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/lib_pubs/274/

Research Data Management Services in Academic Libraries in the US: A Content Analysis of Libraries’ Websites

Posté le par

Authors : Ayoung Yoon, Teresa Schultz

Examining landscapes of research data management services in academic libraries is timely and significant for both those libraries on the front line and the libraries that are already ahead.

While it provides overall understanding of where the research data management program is at and where it is going, it also provides understanding of current practices and data management recommendations and/or tool adoptions as well as revealing areas of improvement and support.

This study examined the research data (management) services in academic libraries in the United States through a content analysis of 185 library websites, with four main areas of focus: service, information, education, and network.

The results from the content analysis of these webpages reveals that libraries need to advance and engage more actively to provide services, supply information online, and develop educational services.

There is also a wide variation among library data management services and programs according to their web presence.

URL : http://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/16788/18346

Dissertation to Book? A Snapshot of Dissertations Published As Books in 2014 and 2015, Available in Open Access Institutional Repositories

Posté le par

Authors : Anna Marie Johnson, Tyler Goldberg, Robert Detmering

INTRODUCTION

Graduate students sometimes express consternation about whether the presence of their dissertation in an open access institutional repository (IR) will harm their chances of being able to publish the manuscript as a book. Several studies have addressed the question from different perspectives, but the avenue of examining what had actually been published had not been explored.

METHODS

This study examines books published in 2014 and 2015 that were listed as dissertations in one large book vendor database. A list of books was downloaded and searched in both ProQuest’s Dissertations & Theses Global database and Google to identify a matching dissertation.

RESULTS

Only a small percentage of books published as dissertations were found in ProQuest and then subsequently in IRs. The number of libraries holding book titles with corresponding dissertations in IRs dropped between 2014 and 2015. The lists of publishers who published dissertations as books was very similar between 2014 and 2015 data and included large, commercial publishers.

DISCUSSION

Students should be aware that only a small percentage of the total number of dissertations produced in a year are subsequently published as books, that the time between dissertation and book publication is substantial, and that some subject areas are more likely to be published than others.

CONCLUSION

These findings provide nuance to the discussions of dissertations in open access repositories and a starting point to monitor trends in this area. They should also provide librarians who are providing supplementary guidance to graduate students with information about the publishing landscape.

URL : Dissertation to Book? A Snapshot of Dissertations Published As Books in 2014 and 2015, Available in Open Access Institutional Repositories

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2177

Making the Mission Visible: Altmetrics and Nontraditional Publishing

Posté le par

Authors : Jennifer L. Bonnet, Marisa Méndez-Brady

Purpose

Whereas traditional book and journal publishing remain the gold standard for many post-secondary institutions, nontraditional publishing is just as prolific at the flagship university in Maine. The university has strong land and sea grant missions that drive a broad research agenda, with an emphasis on community outreach and engagement.

However, the impact of researchers’ contributions outside of academe is unlikely to be accurately reflected in promotion, tenure or review processes. Thus, the authors designed a series of altmetrics workshops aimed at seeding conversations around novel ways to track the impact of researchers’ diverse scholarly and creative outputs.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper presents a case study of the instructional approach taken at the University of Maine library to facilitate discussions of alternative impact assessments that reach beyond traditional publications.

Findings

Evaluations revealed an increased awareness of, and interest in, impact tracking tools that capture both traditional scholarship, like journal articles, and nontraditional scholarly and creative outputs, such as videos, podcasts and newsletters.

The authors learned that altmetrics provides an entry point into a broader conversation about scholarly impact, and was best received by those whose scholarly output is not always captured by traditional metrics.

Practical implications

Scholars are equipped with novel methods for describing the value of their work and discovering a broader audience for their research. Future initiatives will target the needs identified through initial conversations around altmetrics.

Originality/value

Altmetrics workshops provide spaces to explore the potential for new tools that capture a range of previously unconsidered measures of impact, and to discuss the implications of those measures.

URL : http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/lib_staffpub/27/

 

Imagining the “open” university: Sharing scholarship to improve research and education

Posté le par

Author : Erin C. McKiernan

Open scholarship, such as the sharing of articles, code, data, and educational resources, has the potential to improve university research and education as well as increase the impact universities can have beyond their own walls.

To support this perspective, I present evidence from case studies, published literature, and personal experiences as a practicing open scholar. I describe some of the challenges inherent to practicing open scholarship and some of the tensions created by incompatibilities between institutional policies and personal practice.

To address this, I propose several concrete actions universities could take to support open scholarship and outline ways in which such initiatives could benefit the public as well as institutions. Importantly, I do not think most of these actions would require new funding but rather a redistribution of existing funds and a rewriting of internal policies to better align with university missions of knowledge dissemination and societal impact.

URL : Imagining the “open” university: Sharing scholarship to improve research and education

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002614 

Assessing the Openness of Anthropology Journals

Posté le par

Authors : Melody Dale, Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara, Sheeji Kathuria, Mary Ann Jones

This study analyses the extent of gold open access (OA) publishing options in 377 anthropology journals by applying a six-level coding scheme (0=non-transparent publishing, 5=fully OA, i.e., free to read and publish without embargo).

This analysis is meant to simplify the process of identifying OA journal publishing options in the discipline of anthropology, in addition to sharing findings on some of the prominent issues in OA publishing as they relate to anthropology journals, including non-transparency among publishers and the prevalence and price of article processing charges (APCs).

We conclude that publishers should be more transparent about their OA publishing options and policies by providing conspicuous and straightforward information to potential authors. Further, we find that in the anthropology scholarly communication ecosystem,

APCs for hybrid journals are more expensive than those for fully gold OA journals, thus contradicting the assumption that gold OA is more costly to researchers.

URL : http://scholar.colorado.edu/libr_facpapers/92/