Cooperation between Referees and Authors Increases Peer Review…

Statut

Cooperation between Referees and Authors Increases Peer Review Accuracy :

“Peer review is fundamentally a cooperative process between scientists in a community who agree to review each other’s work in an unbiased fashion. Peer review is the foundation for decisions concerning publication in journals, awarding of grants, and academic promotion. Here we perform a laboratory study of open and closed peer review based on an online game. We show that when reviewer behavior was made public under open review, reviewers were rewarded for refereeing and formed significantly more cooperative interactions (13% increase in cooperation, P = 0.018). We also show that referees and authors who participated in cooperative interactions had an 11% higher reviewing accuracy rate (P = 0.016). Our results suggest that increasing cooperation in the peer review process can lead to a decreased risk of reviewing errors.”

URL : http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0026895

Analyzing the Performance of an Institutional Scientific Repository…

Statut

Analyzing the Performance of an Institutional Scientific Repository – A Case Study :

“Scientific knowledge evolution is mainly based on an effective dissemination of research results. The concept of Open Access gives us the theoretical foundation of a model for accessing scientific knowledge, free from the constraints of traditional publishing and technologically supported by the Internet.

Institutional Repositories are information systems that allow preserving, storing and disseminating scientific knowledge produced in higher education and scientific research institutions.

They increase the visibility and the citation level of the documents. They also contribute to minimizing negative aspects like plagiarism of content because documents are exposed to peers in real time.

As an alternative way to the traditional system of publishing scientific research content, repositories are developed in a cultural climate of great visibility leading to an immediate critical evaluation by peers.

The Scientific Repository of the Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco – Portugal (RCIPCB) was created in 2009 but its official presentation took place in January 2010. Its main purposes are promoting Open Access (OA), and preserving and disseminating the scientific knowledge produced at the Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco (IPCB). Using DSpace as a technological platform, RCIPCB is an institutional project supported by the president of the IPCB.

Therefore, the present study was developed with the aim of analyzing the performance of RCIPCB considering the evolution and growth in terms of users, archiving and self-archiving, the number of published documents (scientific) versus deposited documents in 2010 and the heterogeneity among communities/collections and its causes.

Data were collected in RCIPCB, in the 2010 scientific publication list of the institute and through a questionnaire survey distributed among the members of the community with most documents deposited and those of the community with the fewest documents.

For data collected in RCIPCB and in the publication list, average, standard deviation and counts were calculated. Data collected from questionnaires were analyzed with SPSS.

The results show that RCIPCB indicates an asymmetric growing dynamics. Nevertheless, it reflects the institutional organization, in the sense that the communities related to the older schools possess more documents than the communities related to more recent schools. Communities having higher numbers of deposited documents seem to have also higher levels of searches and downloads. Therefore, it increases significantly the visibility of the institution and its researchers.

Concerning the 2010 scientific production when compared with the deposit level of the corresponding community, the results show that the number of documents deposited is much lower than the number of published documents.

Data obtained from the questionnaire answers from the communities The School of Agriculture (ESACB) and The School of Applied Arts (ESART) suggest that the strategy of communication used by RCIPCB is correct because everybody knows about the Repository. However, that is not related to the number of documents deposited. They also suggest that the strategy is not efficient and it needs some improvements in order to become effective.

Considering the results it is clear that RCIPCB needs to have a mandatory depositing policy that might also be extended to user registration. Those factors would minimize both the heterogeneity and the asymmetric growth of communities and collections. Moreover, it would also decrease the difference between scientific production and the corresponding deposit in RCIPCB.”

URL : http://www.rivista-incontri.nl/index.php/lq/article/view/8047/8436

Assessing the role of librarians in an Open…

Statut

Assessing the role of librarians in an Open Access world :

“This online survey was designed to gauge how the library community is responding to Open Access (OA) publishing in order to better understand librarians’ opinions of OA and what the main benefits and concerns are perceived to be. Also to understand how the role of the librarian may change in the future as a result of OA, in terms of how librarians can best assist their communities in publishing and accessing content under this evolving business model.

The detailed objectives of the research were to explore:
• Current levels of familiarity with Open Access publishing
• Current opinions of and attitudes towards Open Access
• The current role of the librarian with regards to Open Access
• Whether and how Open Access is changing the role of the librarian

The online survey was conducted in April 2012. The survey was sent out to
librarians via a posting on various library listservs, including lis‐e‐resources, LISLINK, lis‐serials, LibLicense and Serialst. 211 participants took part in the online survey; 156 (74.3%) completed it. Please note that all percentage responses shown are representative not of the total number of participants, but of the number that answered each specific question.”

URL : http://www.intechopen.com/js/ckeditor/kcfinder/upload/files/Role%20of%20the%20Librarian_Survey_Findings_Jun12.pdf

L’Open Access en Belgique francophone Au printemps…

Statut

L’Open Access en Belgique francophone :

“Au printemps 2011, les Recteurs des universités de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles et le Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (F.R.S.-FNRS) ont émis le souhait de voir mener une étude sur le développement de l’Open Access en Belgique francophone. Ils ont décidé de confier la réalisation de celle-ci à la Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de la Communauté française de Belgique (BICfB).
La présente étude fait le point sur le développement des dépôts institutionnels (Voie Verte) des universités de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles et apporte un éclairage sur l’implication active des enseignants et chercheurs de leurs institutions (en tant qu’éditeur en chef, membre du comité de rédaction, peer-reviewer, etc.) dans la vie de revues scientifiques en Open Access (Voie d’Or) ou tout au moins accessibles gratuitement sur le web.”

URL : http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/handle/2268/124876

High reprint orders in medical journals and pharmaceutical…

Statut

High reprint orders in medical journals and pharmaceutical industry funding: case-control study :

“Reprints of published articles are a potential valuable means of disseminating information. Many individuals and organisations may request reprints, including the authors of the articles themselves, other members of the scientific community, study sponsors, and pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical industry is thought to be the largest purchaser of reprints. After gifts and drug samples, reprints are the most common form of promotional material circulated among doctors by pharmaceutical companies.

Because pharmaceutical companies may buy from journals copies of articles they have funded, reprints of published articles have been suggested as a possible source of conflict of interest that could lead to publication bias. Orders can be worth large sums of money and could potentially influence the chance of a paper being accepted, especially with the current organisational framework, under which editors can be responsible for the journal’s content and its finances. Studies sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry are also more likely to be published in higher impact factor journals than are studies without industry funding.

Data on the numbers of reprints ordered are scarce. One study examined the characteristics of articles published in the Lancet in 1998 in the top 21 of reprint orders and compared these with a set of control articles from the same journal. Reprint orders were not reported in detail, but less than 25% were stated to concern over 100 000 copies. Studies sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry were marginally significantly over-represented in the high reprint group compared with the control articles. Using more recent data we report the number of reprints ordered for the top articles by reprint order in medical journals, identify the sponsors and designs of these studies, and quantify the possible financial implications for journals.”

URL : http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e4212

Researchers of Tomorrow the research behaviour of Generation…

Statut

Researchers of Tomorrow: the research behaviour of Generation Y doctoral students :

“In 2009, the British Library and JISC commissioned the three-year Researchers of Tomorrow study, focusing on the information-seeking and research behaviour of doctoral students in ‘Generation Y’, born between 1982 and 1994 and not ‘digital natives’. Over 17,000 doctoral students from more than 70 higher education institutions participated in the three annual surveys, which were complemented by a longitudinal student cohort study.”

URL : http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/reports/2012/researchers-of-tomorrow.pdf

Digital repositories ten years on: what do scientific researchers think of them and how do they use them?

Digital repositories have been with us for more than a decade, and despite the considerable media and conference attention they engender, we know very little about their use by academics.

This paper sets out to address this by reporting on how well they are used, what they are used for, what researchers’ think of them, and where they thought they were going. Nearly 1,700 scientific researchers, mostly physical scientists, responded to an international survey of digital repositories, making it the largest survey of its kind.

High deposit rates were found and mandates appear to be working, especially with younger researchers. Repositories have made significant inroads in terms of impact and use despite, in the case of institutional repositories, the very limited resources deployed. S

ubject repositories, like arXiv and PubMed Central, have certainly come of age but institutional repositories probably have not come of age yet although there are drivers in place which, in theory anyway, are moving them towards early adulthood.

URL : http://ciber-research.eu/download/20120620-Digital_repositories_ten_years_on.pdf