Trends from the Canadian IR ETD Survey 2012…

Trends from the Canadian IR/ETD Survey 2012 :

“The purpose of the 2012 Canadian IR/ETD Survey was two-fold. The first was to show the growth of Institutional Repositories (IRs) across Canada. The second was to illustrate the state of the electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) submission programs at Canadian institutions granting graduate degrees, where a thesis or dissertation is a requirement for graduation. The survey was a follow-up to one conducted in April/May 2009. We had 38 responses to the survey, with 5 duplicates. The duplicates were caused by two responses from the same institution. Therefore a total of 33 institutions responded. The trends below are based on the responses from the 33 institutions. The IR address was an optional field, but it did indicate that the responses were evenly distributed across Canada.”
URL : http://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8080/handle/1828/3845

Open access, virtual science libraries, geospatial analysis and other complementary information and communications technology and science, technology, engineering and mathematics assets to address development issues, with particular attention to education

This report provides an overview of how open access, virtual science libraries, and geographic information systems (GIS) could be harnessed to address development challenges, especially in the area of education. It contains recommendations for consideration by national governments and the international community, with a view to encouraging and expanding further development and adoption of these ICT assets.

URL : http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=E/CN.16/2012/3&Lang=E

Trends in scientific publications in physical education a…

Trends in scientific publications in physical education: a multifaceted field? :

“The paper investigates diversity in terms of interest and goals in international research in Physical Education (PE). This investigation is based on publications in PE indexed in three major international databases, namely Medline, Scopus and Web of Science (WoS). To identify these publications in Medline, we searched for “physical education and training”. As for the WoS and Scopus, we searched for “physical education” in the title, abstract or key-word. We also searched for “physical education” in the affiliation address only in the Scopus database, which we describe as Scopus-Afill. Using these strategies, we found 2,257 documents in Medline, 6,107 in WoS, 8,807 in Scopus and 5,838 in Scopus – Affil. for the 1991-2005 period. Our findings offer evidence that PE research is mostly associated with biological and medical sciences. However, our results show that the field is multifaceted when it comes to the nature of PE contributions to knowledge.”

URL : http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/11/01/Jcom1101%282012%29A03

Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success: Final Research Report

This report briefly presents the findings and recommendations of the “Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success” project which investigated the extent to which publishing has now become a core activity of North American academic libraries and suggested ways in which further capacity could be built.

The research described (consisting of a survey, some case studies, three workshops, and a set of further reading recommendations) was mainly conducted between October 1, 2010, and September 30, 2011.

It was supported by a grant from the Institute for Museum and Libraries Studies, made to Purdue University Libraries in collaboration with the Libraries of the Georgia Institute of Technology and the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah.

URL : http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/purduepress_ebooks/24/

Value and benefits of text mining Vast…

Value and benefits of text mining :

“Vast amounts of new information and data are generated everyday through economic, academic and social activities. This sea of data, predicted to increase at a rate of 40% p.a., has significant potential economic and societal value. Techniques such as text and data mining and analytics are required to exploit this potential.
Businesses use such techniques to analyse customer and competitor data to improve competitiveness; the pharmaceutical industry mines patents and research articles to improve drug discovery; within academic research, mining and analytics of large datasets are delivering efficiencies and new knowledge in areas as diverse as biological science, particle physics and media and communications.
We have explored the costs, benefits, barriers and risks associated with text mining within UKFHE research using the approach to welfare economics laid out in the UK Treasury best practice guidelines for evaluation.”

URL : http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/reports/2012/value-and-benefits-of-text-mining.aspx

Open access theses in institutional repositories an exploratory…

Open access theses in institutional repositories: an exploratory study of the perceptions of doctoral students :

Introduction. We examine doctoral students’ awareness of and attitudes to open access forms of publication. Levels of awareness of open access and the concept of institutional repositories, publishing behaviour and perceptions of benefits and risks of open access publishing were explored.
Method. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected through interviews with eight doctoral students enrolled in a range of disciplines in a New Zealand university and a self-completion Web survey of 251 students.
Analysis. Interview data were analysed thematically, then evaluated against a theoretical framework. The interview data were then used to inform the design of the survey tool. Survey responses were analysed as a single set, then by disciple using SurveyMonkey’s online toolkit and Excel.
Results. While awareness of open access and repository archiving is still low, the majority of interview and survey respondents were found to be supportive of the concept of open access. The perceived benefits of enhanced exposure and potential for sharing outweigh the perceived risks. The majority of respondents were supportive of an existing mandatory thesis submission policy.
Conclusions. Low levels of awareness of the university repository remains an issue, and could be addressed by further investigating the effectiveness of different communication channels for promotion.”

URL : http://informationr.net/ir/17-1/paper507.html