Is scientific literature subject to a sell by…

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Is scientific literature subject to a sell-by-date? A general methodology to analyze the durability of scientific documents :

“The study of the citation histories and ageing of documents are topics that have been addressed from several perspectives, especially in the analysis of documents with delayed recognition or sleeping beauties. However, there is no general methodology that can be extensively applied for different time periods and/or research fields. In this paper a new methodology for the general analysis of the ageing and durability of scientific papers is presented. This methodology classifies documents into three general types: Delayed documents, which receive the main part of their citations later than normal documents; Flash in the pans, which receive citations immediately after their publication but they are not cited in the long term; and Normal documents, documents with a typical distribution of citations over time. These three types of durability have been analyzed considering the whole population of documents in the Web of Science with at least 5 external citations (i.e. not considering self-citations). Several patterns related to the three types of durability have been found and the potential for further research of the developed methodology is discussed.”

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.1455

Do age and professional rank influence the order of authorship in scientific publications? Some evidence from a micro-level perspective

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Scientific authorship has important implications in science since it reflects the contribution to research of the different individual scientists and it is considered by evaluation committees in research assessment processes.

This study analyses the order of authorship in the scientific output of 1,064 permanent scientists at the Spanish CSIC (WoS, 1994–2004).

The influence of age, professional rank and bibliometric profile of scientists over the position of their names in the byline of publications is explored in three different research areas: Biology and Biomedicine, Materials Science and Natural Resources. There is a strong trend for signatures of younger researchers and those in the lower professional ranks to appear in the first position (junior signing pattern), while more veteran or highly-ranked ones, who tend to play supervisory functions in research, are proportionally more likely to sign in the last position (senior signing pattern).

Professional rank and age have an effect on authorship order in the three fields analysed, but there are inter-field differences. Authorship patterns are especially marked in the most collaboration-intensive field (i.e. Biology and Biomedicine), where professional rank seems to be more significant than age in determining the role of scientists in research as seen through their authorship patterns, while age has a more significant effect in the least collaboration-intensive field (Natural Resources).

URL : http://www.springerlink.com/content/e713j65334v77037/

Open Access Part II: The Structure, Resources, and Implications for Nurses

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Electronic publishing has changed the landscape for broadcasting scholarly information. Now Open Access is globalizing scholarly work. Open Access facilitates lifelong learning habits; enhances dissemination and distribution of information; impacts the informatics curriculum; supports active learning; and provides areas for nursing informatics research.

In the last 10 years the Open Access Movement has formalized into a distinct publishing paradigm. Many free, full-text resources are now available to guide nursing practice. This article describes the Open Access structure, and provides suggestions for using Open Access resources in classroom and practice settings.

The nursing community is only beginning to accept and use Open Access. Yet all nurses should be aware of the unique opportunity to obtain free, current, and scholarly information through a variety of avenues and also to incorporate this information into their daily practice.

The resources presented in this article can be used to increase nursing knowledge and support evidence-based practice.”

URL : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22320873

Open Access Part I The Movement The Issues…

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Open Access Part I: The Movement, The Issues, and The Benefits :

“The advent of Open Access (OA) has changed the landscape of accessing digital information globally. OA offers valuable free, full-text, online resources for all health-related professionals, regardless of the practice setting. Because much scholarly information may now be accessed without charge, nurses worldwide can reach a higher level of information competency—a prime requirement for evidence-based practice. This article provides a brief account of the OA movement, introduces new terminology, discusses various publishing models, and elucidates issues surrounding the choice to publish in OA journals. Many stakeholders derive benefits from Open Access. Nursing must take action to participate in and promote the OA movement in order to derive the maximum gain for our science.”

URL : http://gm6.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/ANAMarketplace/ANAPeriodicals/OJIN/TableofContents/Vol-17-2012/No1-Jan-2012/Articles-Previous-Topics/Open-Access-Part-I.html
DOI: 10.3912/OJIN.Vol17No01PPT02

Driving on the Green Road of Open Access…

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Driving on the Green Road of Open Access: The Green Factor for Successful Institutional Repository :

“In this electronic publishing age, institutions have increasingly recognized that an institutional repository (IR) is an essential infrastructure of scholarly dissemination. An institutional repository is broadly defined as a digital archive of the intellectual product created by the faculty, research staff, and students of an institution and accessible to end users both within and outside of the institution. To achieve the success, IR must require to plan, implement, evaluate maintain and sustain green factor on driving of the green road of institutional repository. This paper examines how to harness successful factors to make an institutional repository the central and authoritative source of the research materials output of institutions. There is much discussion and examination of the factors that help to build and sustain a successful repository for the long- term survival, value and usability that depends on numerous criteria have been discussed in the topic.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/16340

Creative Commons licenses and the non-commercial condition: Implications for the re-use of biodiversity information

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The Creative Commons (CC) licenses are a suite of copyright-based licenses defining terms for the distribution and re-use of creative works. CC provides licenses for different use cases and includes open content licenses such as the Attribution license (CC BY, used by many Open Access scientific publishers) and the Attribution Share Alike license (CC BY-SA, used by Wikipedia, for example). However, the license suite also contains non-free and non-open licenses like those containing a “non-commercial” (NC) condition.

Although many people identify “non-commercial” with “non-profit”, detailed analysis reveals that significant differences exist and that the license may impose some unexpected re-use limitations on works thus licensed. After providing background information on the concepts of Creative Commons licenses in general, this contribution focuses on the NC condition, its advantages, disadvantages and appropriate scope. Specifically, it contributes material towards a risk analysis for potential re-users of NC-licensed works.

URL : http://zookeys.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=3036

doi: 10.3897/zookeys.150.2189