Information Diffusion and External Influence in Networks …

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Information Diffusion and External Influence in Networks :

“Social networks play a fundamental role in the diffusion of information. However, there are two different ways of how information reaches a person in a network. Information reaches us through connections in our social networks, as well as through the influence of external out-of-network sources, like the mainstream media. While most present models of information adoption in networks assume information only passes from a node to node via the edges of the underlying network, the recent availability of massive online social media data allows us to study this process in more detail. We present a model in which information can reach a node via the links of the social network or through the influence of external sources. We then develop an efficient model parameter fitting technique and apply the model to the emergence of URL mentions in the Twitter network. Using a complete one month trace of Twitter we study how information reaches the nodes of the network. We quantify the external influences over time and describe how these influences affect the information adoption. We discover that the information tends to “jump” across the network, which can only be explained as an effect of an unobservable external influence on the network. We find that only about 71% of the information volume in Twitter can be attributed to network diffusion, and the remaining 29% is due to external events and factors outside the network.”

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.1331

Research Blogs and the Discussion of Scholarly Information…

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Research Blogs and the Discussion of Scholarly Information :

“The research blog has become a popular mechanism for the quick discussion of scholarly information. However, unlike peer-reviewed journals, the characteristics of this form of scientific discourse are not well understood, for example in terms of the spread of blogger levels of education, gender and institutional affiliations. In this paper we fill this gap by analyzing a sample of blog posts discussing science via an aggregator called ResearchBlogging.org (RB). ResearchBlogging.org aggregates posts based on peer-reviewed research and allows bloggers to cite their sources in a scholarly manner. We studied the bloggers, blog posts and referenced journals of bloggers who posted at least 20 items. We found that RB bloggers show a preference for papers from high-impact journals and blog mostly about research in the life and behavioral sciences. The most frequently referenced journal sources in the sample were: Science, Nature, PNAS and PLoS One. Most of the bloggers in our sample had active Twitter accounts connected with their blogs, and at least 90% of these accounts connect to at least one other RB-related Twitter account. The average RB blogger in our sample is male, either a graduate student or has been awarded a PhD and blogs under his own name.”

URL : http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0035869

Examining Motivations behind Paper Usage in Academia …

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Examining Motivations behind Paper Usage in Academia :

“We carried out a qualitative study to identify the “missing pieces” in current computing devices and technologies that are preventing people from eliminating paper from their lives. Most of the existing literature has looked into the work practices of businesses, while a few have researched how high school and college students and teaching assistants at universities work with paper. We were specifically interested in analyzing paper use for people in the research side of academia, and seeing how our results compare to existing work. We recruited and interviewed participants from academia to understand what kind of tasks they use paper for, what kind of tasks they use computing devices for and what motivates them to use these two media. We found that, despite having access to at least one personal computing device, the participants preferred to work with paper in many situations. This appears to be attributed to certain intrinsic qualities that paper has, such as open format, easy navigation, readability, and the affordances these qualities provide. In order to eventually replace paper with devices, designers of new technology will have to successfully emulate these qualities.”

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.0302

The Hybrid Model for Open Access Publication of…

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The Hybrid Model for Open Access Publication of Scholarly Articles – a Failed Experiment? :

“Mainstream scholarly publishers have since 2004 started to offer authors in subscription journals the possibility to free their individual articles from access barriers against a payment (hybrid OA). This has been marketed as a possible gradual transition path between subscription and open access to the scholarly journal literature, and the publishers have pledged to decrease their subscription prices in proportion to the uptake of the hybrid option. The number of hybrid journals has doubled in the past couple of years and is now over 4,300, and the number of such articles was around 12,000 in 2011. On average only 1-2 % of eligible authors utilize the OA option, due mainly to the generally high price level of typically 3,000 USD. There are, however, a few publishers and individual journals with a much higher uptake. This article takes a closer look at the development of hybrid OA and discusses, from an author-centric viewpoint, the possible reasons for the lack of success of this business model.”

URL : http://www.openaccesspublishing.org/hybrid/hybrid.pdf

Le livre numérique dans l’Edition Professionnelle, Universitaire et de Recherche

L’objectif de cet ebook sur les ebooks est de donner des clés pour comprendre la situation du livre numérique dans l’Edition Professionnelle, Universitaire et de Recherche (EPUR). Sont abordés le contexte, les services associés, la chaîne de la valeur et les acteurs, les modes de commercialisation et d’achat, les usages et l’évolution des pratiques, les accès, les questions règlementaires et juridiques, les tendances et perspectives.

Certains sujets sont juste esquissés dans cette première version. Cet ouvrage se veut une illustration en grandeur réelle des possibilités du livre numérique, avec notamment l’animation d’une communauté d’experts autour de ce projet et l’appel à de nombreuses contributions pour l’enrichir. Une seconde version sera publiée à la fin de l’été 2012 intégrant les remarques et les contributions recueillies. La plate-forme mise en place à cet effet par le GFII est ouverte à l’adresse http://www.gfii.fr/epur .

URL : http://www.gfii.fr/uploads/docs/GFII_ebook_EPUR_VF.pdf

The potential effect of making journals free after…

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The potential effect of making journals free after a six month embargo :

“This report was commissioned by the Association of Learned, Professional and Society Publishers [ALPSP] and The Publishers Association. It follows a straw-poll survey commissioned from Gold Leaf by ALPSP inMarch 2012 in order to obtain sample information on how the acquisition policies of academic libraries might be affected by an across-theboard mandate to make journals articles available free of charge six months after publication. The ALPSP survey obtained responses from thirty-four libraries worldwide. The results from this small sample suggested that such a mandate would have a significant impact on publishers’ revenues, especially in the fields of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences [AHSS] publishing. ALPSP and The Publishers Association therefore commissioned Gold Leaf to conduct a larger, more statistically significant survey, to include corporate and specialist libraries as well as academic ones, in order to obtain more robust results on what the likely impact of a six months’ embargo might be.”

URL : http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/ALPSPPApotentialresultsofsixmonthembargofv.pdf