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Examining Motivations behind Paper Usage in Academia …

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

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

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The Hybrid Model for Open Access Publication of…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

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

FR

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

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

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

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The potential effect of making journals free after…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

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

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Evaluation of a Web Portal for Improving Public Access to Evidence-Based Health Information and Health Literacy Skills: A Pragmatic Trial

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

« Background :
Using the conceptual framework of shared decision-making and evidence-based practice, a web portal was developed to serve as a generic (non disease-specific) tailored intervention to improve the lay public’s health literacy skills.

Objective : To evaluate the effects of the web portal compared to no intervention in a real-life setting.

Methods: A pragmatic randomised controlled parallel trial using simple randomisation of 96 parents who had children aged

Results : Use of the web portal was found to improve attitudes towards searching for health information. This variable was identified as the most important predictor of intention to search in both samples. Participants considered the web portal to have good usability, usefulness, and credibility. The intervention group showed slight increases in the use of evidence-based information, critical appraisal skills, and participation compared to the group receiving no intervention, but these differences were not statistically significant.

Conclusion : Despite the fact that the study was underpowered, we found that the web portal may have a positive effect on attitudes towards searching for health information. Furthermore, participants considered the web portal to be a relevant tool. It is important to continue experimenting with web-based resources in order to increase user participation in health care decision-making. »

URL : http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0037715

EN

The weakening relationship between the Impact Factor and papers’ citations in the digital age

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : George A. Lozano, Vincent Lariviere, Yves Gingras

Historically, papers have been physically bound to the journal in which they were published but in the electronic age papers are available individually, no longer tied to their respective journals. Hence, papers now can be read and cited based on their own merits, independently of the journal’s physical availability, reputation, or Impact Factor.

We compare the strength of the relationship between journals’ Impact Factors and the actual citations received by their respective papers from 1902 to 2009. Throughout most of the 20th century, papers’ citation rates were increasingly linked to their respective journals’ Impact Factors.

However, since 1990, the advent of the digital age, the strength of the relation between Impact Factors and paper citations has been decreasing. This decrease began sooner in physics, a field that was quicker to make the transition into the electronic domain.

Furthermore, since 1990, the proportion of highly cited papers coming from highly cited journals has been decreasing, and accordingly, the proportion of highly cited papers not coming from highly cited journals has also been increasing.

Should this pattern continue, it might bring an end to the use of the Impact Factor as a way to evaluate the quality of journals, papers and researchers. »

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.4328