Scholarly E-book Across Disciplines: Content Analysis of Usage Reports and Search Terms

Statut

“Data collected through COUNTER usage statistics and the LibQUAL+ service quality assessment survey tell us that faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates value access to the growing e-book collection at Columbia University Libraries (CUL). While the aggregate results indicate that e-book use continues to increase, usage rates are not uniform across disciplines. Anecdotal evidence suggests that while e-book use has grown in the sciences and social sciences, scholars in the arts and humanities rely heavily on print books. Given the highly diverse research needs of the university community, CUL is keen to understand scholarly e-book usage in various disciplines.

In this study, we sought an innovative research method to understand e-book usage. This method utilizes data from two sources: readers’ e -book search terms harvested by Google Analytics; and requested e-book titles provided by the COUNTER e-book usage reports. The data was analyzed using NVivo, a qualitative analysis software, to examine popular scholarly e-book topics and the correlation between search and delivery.”

URL : http://academicworks.cuny.edu/ols_proceedings_lac/4/

Open Access: Ein Lackmustest (Open Access: A Litmus Test)

Statut

German Abstract: “Open Access ist ein interessanter Policy Bereich, nicht nur weil er die Produktionsbedingungen der öffentlichen Forschung selbst betrifft, sondern auch weil er möglicherweise einer verbreiteten Beobachtung in der Urheberrechtsforschung widerspricht. Bestimmend für die allgemeine Erzählung des Urheberrechts ist die Expansionsannahme. Demnach ist die Entwicklung der Ausschlussrechte durch eine kontinuierliche und lineare Expansion gekennzeichnet. Open Access Initiativen mobilisieren dagegen für eine Umkehrung dieses Trends. Sie zielen auf akademische Standards, die einen erlaubnisfreien Zugang zu und eine Nachnutzung von öffentlich finanzierten Forschungsergebnissen verbindlich festlegen.
Dieser Artikel gibt einen breiten Überblick über die verschiedenen Ursprünge, die Operationalisierungs- und Institutionalisierungsformen von Open Access. Er beginnt mit einem kurzen Abriss über die Entstehung und Formierung des Marktes für akademische Zeitschriften, dem bis heute mächtigsten Gegner der Open Access Bewegung; und er schließt mit einer exemplarischen Darstellung der neueren Policies in Großbritannien, im Hinblick auf Open Access derzeit eines der interessantesten Länder. Die Britische Politikentwicklung zeigt zunächst, dass der Teufel tatsächlich in den Implementationsdetails steckt. Dies betrifft nicht nur die Durchsetzung von Open Access Standards, sondern auch die Allokation von Rechten. Darüber hinaus lässt sich von diesem Beispiel lernen, wie wichtig die politische Akteurskonstellation für die Ausgestaltung von Open Access Regeln ist, und damit zugleich für die künftige Bedeutung von Ausschlussrechten in der Zirkulation von öffentlicher Forschung.”

English Abstract: “Open Access is an interesting policy domain, not only because it concerns the modes of production of academic knowledge, but also because it may contradict a common observation of copyright research. While the great copyright narrative assumes that intellectual property rights expand in a continuous and linear fashion, Open Access policies strive to achieve the opposite; to wit, academic standards, which allow a permission-free access and a re-use of publicly funded research results.
This article aims to provide a broad overview of the diverse origins, the operationalization and institutionalization of Open Access policies. It starts with the emergence and formation of the market for academic journals, the most powerful counterpart of the Open Access movement, and it concludes with recent Open Access policies in the UK, one of the most interesting countries in this context because it illustrates that the devil is in the implementation details. The example of the UK not only offers lessons on how Open Access standards can be enforced but, more importantly so, on the political constellations that determine the future fate of Open Access, including that of the role of property rights for the circulation of academic knowledge.”

URL : http://ssrn.com/abstract=2515844

COAR Roadmap Future Directions for Repository Interoperability

Statut

“In the past few years, Open Access repositories and their associated services have become an important component of the global e-research infrastructure. Increasingly, repositories are also being integrated with other systems, such as research administrative systems and with research data repositories, with the aim of providing a more integrated and seamless suite of services to various communities. Repositories can also be connected into networks (e.g. at the national or regional level) to support unified access to an open, aggregated collection of scholarship and related materials that machines can mine enabling researchers to work with content in new ways and allowing funders and institutions to track research outputs.
Scholarly communication is undergoing fundamental changes, in particular with new requirements for open access to research outputs, new forms of peer-review, and alternative methods for measuring impact. In parallel, technical developments, especially in communication and interface technologies facilitate bi-directional data exchange across related applications and systems. The aim of this roadmap is to identify important trends and their associated action points in order for the repository community to determine priorities for further investments in interoperability.”

URL : COAR Roadmap Future Directions for Repository Interoperability

Alternative URL : https://www.coar-repositories.org/files/Roadmap_final_formatted_20150203.pdf

Linking Libraries to the Web: Linked Data and the Future of the Bibliographic Record

Statut

“The ideas behind Linked Data and the Semantic Web have recently gained ground and shown the potential to redefine the world of the web. Linked Data could conceivably create a huge database out of the Internet linked by relationships understandable by both humans and machines. The benefits of Linked Data to libraries and their users are potentially great, but so are the many challenges to its implementation. The BIBFRAME Initiative provides the possible framework that will link library resources with the web, bringing them out of their information silos and making them accessible to all users.”

URL : https://microblogging.infodocs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/gonzales2014.pdf

DOI : 10.6017/ital.v33i4.5631

Library and Information Sciences : Trends and Research

Statut

“This book explores the development, trends and research of library and information sciences (LIS) in the digital age. Inside, readers will find research and case studies written by LIS experts, educators and theorists, most of whom have visited China, delivered presentations there and drafted their articles based on feedback they received. As a result, readers will discover the LIS issues and concerns that China and the international community have in common.

The book first introduces the opportunities and challenges faced by the library and information literacy profession and discusses the key role of librarians in the future of information literacy education. Next, it covers trends in LIS education by examining the vision of the iSchool movement and detailing its practice in Syracuse University.

The book then covers issues in information seeking and retrieval by showing how visual data mining technology can be used to detect the relationship and pattern between terms on the Q&A of a social media site. It also includes a case study regarding tracing information seeking behavior and usage on a multimedia website.

Next, the book stresses the importance of building an academic accreditation framework for scientific datasets, explores the relationship between bibliometrics and university rankings, and details the birth and development of East Asian Libraries in North America.

Overall, the book offers readers insight into the changing nature of LIS, including the electronic dissemination of information, the impact of the Internet on libraries, the changing responsibilities of library professionals, the new paradigm for evaluating information, and characteristics and functions of today’s library personnel.”

URL : https://microblogging.infodocs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/chen2014.pdf

Alternative URL : http://www.springer.com/business+%26+management/book/978-3-642-54811-6

The implementation of the European Commission recommendation on open access to scientific information: comparison of national policies

Statut

“Two years after the publication of the European Commission recommendation on open access to scientific information, the critical threshold of accessibility to fifty percent of papers has been crossed. However, this figure is an average and the implementation of the EC recommendation varies from one country to another. The topical issue now is to observe the different steps of implementation and to wonder about the reaseons of such a disparity. In order to suggest many elements of the response, this research compares the different levels of implementation in the EU28.”

URL : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_01111211

A Review of Theory and Practice in Scientometrics

Statut

“Scientometrics is the study of the quantitative aspects of the process of science as a communication system. It is centrally, but not only, concerned with the analysis of citations in the academic literature. In recent years it has come to play a major role in the measurement and evaluation of research performance. In this review we consider: the historical development of scientometrics, sources of citation data, citation metrics and the “laws” of scientometrics, normalisation, journal impact factors and other journal metrics, visualising and mapping science, evaluation and policy, and future developments.”

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1501.05462