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Who needs access to research? Exploring the societal impact of open access

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Author : ElHassan ElSabry

Studies about open access (OA) have predominantly focused it impact on communication within the scholarly community. For example, many studies have been published on what is called the “Open Access Citation Advantage (OACA)”.

On the other hand, implications of OA in non-academic contexts (e.g. medical practice, policymaking, patient advocacy and citizen science) have been the subject of and the basis for a lot of the advocacy work and many funding agencies’ OA policies, but not so much the subject of original research studies.

To date, this study is the first attempt to collect and synthesize the available evidence on the societal impact of open access. It further builds on this evidence base by introducing a typology of the various science-society interfaces where demand for access to research potentially exists.

The proposed scheme is anticipated to provide guidance for future research on the issue of OA’s societal impact. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of non-academic usage of research on the open access debate, especially on the question of who should bear the cost of scholarly publishing.

URL : https://rfsic.revues.org/3271

A genealogy of open access: negotiations between openness and access to research

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Author : Samuel A. Moore

Open access (OA) is a contested term with a complicated history and a variety of understandings. This rich history is routinely ignored by institutional, funder and governmental policies that instead enclose the concept and promote narrow approaches to OA.

This article presents a genealogy of the term open access, focusing on the separate histories that emphasise openness and reusability on the one hand, as borrowed from the open-source software and free culture movements, and accessibility on the other hand, as represented by proponents of institutional and subject repositories.

This genealogy is further complicated by the publishing cultures that have evolved within individual communities of practice: publishing means different things to different communities and individual approaches to OA are representative of this fact.

From analysing its historical underpinnings and subsequent development, I argue that OA is best conceived as a boundary object, a term coined by Star and Griesemer (1989) to describe concepts with a shared, flexible definition between communities of practice but a more community-specific definition within them.

Boundary objects permit working relationships between communities while allowing local use and development of the concept. This means that OA is less suitable as a policy object, because boundary objects lose their use-value when ‘enclosed’ at a general level, but should instead be treated as a community-led, grassroots endeavour.

URL : https://rfsic.revues.org/3220

 

 

The rise of the middle author: Investigating collaboration and division of labor in biomedical research using partial alphabetical authorship

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Authors : Philippe Mongeon, Elise Smith, Bruno Joyal, Vincent Larivière

Contemporary biomedical research is performed by increasingly large teams. Consequently, an increasingly large number of individuals are being listed as authors in the bylines, which complicates the proper attribution of credit and responsibility to individual authors.

Typically, more importance is given to the first and last authors, while it is assumed that the others (the middle authors) have made smaller contributions. However, this may not properly reflect the actual division of labor because some authors other than the first and last may have made major contributions.

In practice, research teams may differentiate the main contributors from the rest by using partial alphabetical authorship (i.e., by listing middle authors alphabetically, while maintaining a contribution-based order for more substantial contributions). In this paper, we use partial alphabetical authorship to divide the authors of all biomedical articles in the Web of Science published over the 1980–2015 period in three groups: primary authors, middle authors, and supervisory authors.

We operationalize the concept of middle author as those who are listed in alphabetical order in the middle of an authors’ list. Primary and supervisory authors are those listed before and after the alphabetical sequence, respectively.

We show that alphabetical ordering of middle authors is frequent in biomedical research, and that the prevalence of this practice is positively correlated with the number of authors in the bylines. We also find that, for articles with 7 or more authors, the average proportion of primary, middle and supervisory authors is independent of the team size, more than half of the authors being middle authors.

This suggests that growth in authors lists are not due to an increase in secondary contributions (or middle authors) but, rather, in equivalent increases of all types of roles and contributions (including many primary authors and many supervisory authors).

Nevertheless, we show that the relative contribution of alphabetically ordered middle authors to the overall production of knowledge in the biomedical field has greatly increased over the last 35 years.

URL : The rise of the middle author: Investigating collaboration and division of labor in biomedical research using partial alphabetical authorship

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184601

 

 

Imagining the ‘open’ university: Sharing scholarship to improve research and education

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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/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2711v3

Perceptions of Scholarly Communication Among Library and Information Studies Students

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Author: Christopher Hollister

INTRODUCTION

Professional discourse concerning scholarly communication (SC) suggests a broad consensus that this is a burgeoning functional area in academic libraries. The transformed research lifecycle and the corresponding changes in copyright applications, publishing models, and open access policies have generated unprecedented opportunities for innovative library engagement with the academy and its researchers.

Accordingly, the roles for librarians have shifted to accommodate new responsibilities. Previous research on SC librarianship is mainly focused on the provision of services, administrative structures, and the analysis of relevant job descriptions. Little has been written regarding the implications of SC on the preparation of new library professionals, and no research has been produced on the relative perspectives of library students.

METHOD

The author surveyed MLIS students who were completing semester-long courses on SC at three universities to elicit their perceptions of that subject matter in terms of their library education and career pathways.

RESULTS

All respondents qualified SC as interesting and important subject matter, and a majority indicated relevance to their professional pursuits. Student perspectives are given on the viability of SC librarianship and the perceived bearing of this specialty area in different types of libraries.

DISCUSSION

Survey data suggests a possible correlation between SC courses and relative career appeal. The data may warrant attention among MLIS curriculum planners, given the academy’s recognition of the need for SC specialists.

CONCLUSION

The transformed research lifecycle necessitates new professional competencies for library practitioners. Implications for library education are discussed, and areas for future research are proposed

URL : Perceptions of Scholarly Communication Among Library and Information Studies Students

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2180

Lessons Learned in Partnerships and Practice: Adopting Open Source Institutional Repository Software

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Author:  Amy Leigh Allen

INTRODUCTION

After the establishment of the University Archives at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, it became apparent that processes needed to be established for collecting, preserving, and providing access to born-digital materials.

The University Archivist established partnerships across multiple departments within the Libraries and with faculty and staff of colleges, schools, and administrative units across campus to test open source repository software and develop collections to fulfill this need.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

This case study examines three specific projects and workflows providing access to digital undergraduate honors theses, university serials, and music concert recordings. Lessons learned during the project include the success strategies for partnership formation along with the identification of project processes that need improvement, such as promotion and long term preservation.

NEXT STEPS AND CONCLUSIONS 

The campus has transitioned to a proprietary system for the official institutional repository. However, the pilot projects examined in this study filled intermediate needs: providing a group of files and metadata for the official institutional repository and helping the Libraries to evaluate the sustainability of open source platforms.

Staff gained experience and identified areas where improvement was needed. However, the most successful aspect of the project was establishing partnerships that will carry over to the new repository.

URL : Lessons Learned in Partnerships and Practice: Adopting Open Source Institutional Repository Software

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2170

Workflow Development for an Institutional Repository in an Emerging Research Institution

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Authors: Jeanne Hazzard, Stephanie Towery

INTRODUCTION

This paper describes the process librarians in the Albert B. Alkek Library at Texas State University undertook to increase the amount of faculty publications in their institutional repository, known as the Digital Collections.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

Digital Collections at Texas State University is built on a DSpace platform and serves as the location for electronic theses and dissertations, faculty publications, and other digital Texas State University materials. Despite having launched the service in 2005, the amount of faculty work added to the repository has never been at the levels initially hoped for on launch.

DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE WORKFLOW

Taking a proactive and cooperative approach, a team of librarians developed and piloted a workflow, in which library staff would retain the already established protocol of gaining faculty permissions prior to uploading material while respecting publisher copyright policies.

RESULTS

Prior to the vita project, the repository archived 305 faculty publications total. Fifty-seven were added during the pilot, which represents an 18.5% increase. Of a total of 496 articles, seventeen titles were found in the blue category, which allows publisher pdfs to be archived.

The majority of articles (233) were found in the green category, which allows either a pre- or a post-print copy of an article to be archived. One hundred ten of the identified titles were in the yellow and white journal categories, representing 22% of our total, and the team was able to archive only five of these. Finally, 16% (81) were not found in the SHERPA/ RoMEO database (color-coded beige). Only 18 of these articles were archived.

ASSESSMENT

We discovered that our faculty retain nearly none of their pre-print or post-print versions of their published articles, and so we are unable to archive those titles in the repository. Nearly 47% of the articles found were in green journals that allow only pre- or post-print copies.

Most faculty were unable to produce versions of their work other than the publisher’s PDF, which many publishers restrict from upload into a repository.

URL : Workflow Development for an Institutional Repository in an Emerging Research Institution

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2166