Étiquette : case study

University journals. Consolidating institutional repositories in a digital, free, open access publication platform for all scholarly output

Authors : Saskia Woutersen-Windhouwer, Eva Méndez Rodríguez, Jeroen Sondervan, Frans J. Oort

Funders increasingly mandate researchers to publish their scientific articles in open access and to retain their copyright. Universities all over the world have set up institutional repositories and use repositories for the preservation and dissemination of academic production of their institutions, including scientific articles, reports, datasets, and other research outputs.

However, in general, authors do not find institutional repositories very attractive and accessible as an open access publication platform since repositories and open access are not part of the rewarding system.

We expect that researchers are more likely to publish and deposit their scientific papers in a repository, once they have the appearance, recognition and dissemination of a scientific journal.

That is why we took the initiative to set up a repository based journal ‘University Journals’ in which universities collaborate. The paper will explain the University Journals project and how the involved universities want to facilitate a valuable alternative publication platform that complies with Plan S principles and enables publication and dissemination of all research outcomes.

By establishing University Journals as a publication platform, university libraries are instrumental (and crucial) in achieving the ambitions of Open Science, and universities gain control over the publication process.

URL : University journals. Consolidating institutional repositories in a digital, free, open access publication platform for all scholarly output

DOI : http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10323

The librarian as academic author: a reflection

Author : Helen Fallon

Writing is storytelling. In this article I share my story on how I began (and continue) to write for academic publication.

Hopefully, you, the reader, will get some ideas from my experiences and suggestions and will feel motivated and enthused to write yourself. I have included some writing exercises that those new to writing may find helpful.

URL : The librarian as academic author: a reflection

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.505

Towards inclusive scholarly publishing: developments in the university press community

Authors: Niccole Leilanionapae‘aina Coggins, Gisela Concepción Fosado, Christie Henry, Gita Manaktala

This article provides an overview of the ways in which the members of the Association of University Presses are working towards more inclusive practices in scholarly publishing.

The authors consider the Mellon University Press Diversity Fellowship Program (now in its fourth year), the work of the Association’s Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, the Gender, Equity and Cultures of Respect Task Force and the new Equity, Justice and Inclusion Committee.

They also look at press-based working groups and several ‘Toolkits for Equity’ that are currently in development.

The volunteers engaged in these and other efforts are working to document how bias has shaped universities and university presses, to propose actions to disrupt this powerful force and to share what they have learned with their colleagues as well as with the larger scholarly publishing and academic communities.

URL : Towards inclusive scholarly publishing: developments in the university press community

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.506

Analysis of an Open Textbook Adoption in an American History Course: Impact on Student Academic Outcomes and Behaviors

Authors : Penny Beile, Aimee deNoyelles, John Raible

Textbook costs can have a significant impact on the purchasing behaviors and academic success of higher education students. Open textbooks promise significant cost savings, yet perceptions about quality and efficacy still linger. This study explored the impact of an open textbook adoption in an American history course on student academic outcomes and behaviors.

Using a mixed-methods design, significant savings were realized with no decrease in student academic outcomes. Further, students reported having a positive experience using the open textbook, perceived the textbook as being of high quality, and expressed gratitude about the free cost.

The authors describe the respective roles of the librarian/instructional designer team and note the importance of working collaboratively with instructors to ensure successful implementation of open textbook adoptions.

URL : Analysis of an Open Textbook Adoption in an American History Course: Impact on Student Academic Outcomes and Behaviors

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.81.4.721

Open science-based framework to reveal open data publishing: an experience from using Common Crawl

Authors : Andreiwid Correa, Israel Fernandes

The publishing of open data is considered a key element for civic participation paving the way to the ‘public value’, a term which underpins the social contribution. A result of that can be seen through the popularity of data portals published all around the world by governments, public and private organizations.

However, the diffusion of data portals raises concerns about discoverability and validity of these data sources, especially to what extent they contribute to open data and open science.

The purpose of this work is to develop a framework to reveal open data publishing with the use of a freely available open science project called Common Crawl. The idea is to identify open data-related initiatives and to gather information about their availability, having in the framework’s essence an iterative and differential process.

The main outcome is shown through a proposed model for the historical data repository which involves both use and creation of open science to branch new sort of research possibilities based on publishing of derived data.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02544245

SPI-Hub™: a gateway to scholarly publishing information

Authors : Taneya Y. Koonce, Mallory N. Blasingame, Jerry Zhao, Annette M. Williams, Jing Su, Spencer J. DesAutels, Dario A. Giuse, John D. Clark, Zachary E. Fox, Nunzia Bettinsoli Giuse

Background

Advances in the health sciences rely on sharing research and data through publication. As information professionals are often asked to contribute their knowledge to assist clinicians and researchers in selecting journals for publication, the authors recognized an opportunity to build a decision support tool, SPI-Hub: Scholarly Publishing Information Hub™, to capture the team’s collective publishing industry knowledge, while carefully retaining the quality of service.

Case Presentation

SPI-Hub’s decision support functionality relies on a data framework that describes journal publication policies and practices through a newly designed metadata structure, the Knowledge Management Journal Record™.

Metadata fields are populated through a semi-automated process that uses custom programming to access content from multiple sources. Each record includes 25 metadata fields representing best publishing practices. Currently, the database includes more than 24,000 health sciences journal records.

To correctly capture the resources needed for both completion and future maintenance of the project, the team conducted an internal study to assess time requirements for completing records through different stages of automation.

Conclusions

The journal decision support tool, SPI-Hub, provides an opportunity to assess publication practices by compiling data from a variety of sources in a single location.

Automated and semi-automated approaches have effectively reduced the time needed for data collection.

Through a comprehensive knowledge management framework and the incorporation of multiple quality points specific to each journal, SPI-Hub provides prospective users with both recommendations for publication and holistic assessment of the trustworthiness of journals in which to publish research and acquire trusted knowledge.

URL : SPI-Hub™: a gateway to scholarly publishing information

Original location : http://jmla.pitt.edu/ojs/jmla/article/view/815

Did awarding badges increase data sharing in BMJ Open? A randomized controlled trial

Authors : Anisa Rowhani-Farid, Adrian Aldcroft, Adrian G. Barnett

Sharing data and code are important components of reproducible research. Data sharing in research is widely discussed in the literature; however, there are no well-established evidence-based incentives that reward data sharing, nor randomized studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of data sharing policies at increasing data sharing.

A simple incentive, such as an Open Data Badge, might provide the change needed to increase data sharing in health and medical research. This study was a parallel group randomized controlled trial (protocol registration: doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/PXWZQ) with two groups, control and intervention, with 80 research articles published in BMJ Open per group, with a total of 160 research articles.

The intervention group received an email offer for an Open Data Badge if they shared their data along with their final publication and the control group received an email with no offer of a badge if they shared their data with their final publication.

The primary outcome was the data sharing rate. Badges did not noticeably motivate researchers who published in BMJ Open to share their data; the odds of awarding badges were nearly equal in the intervention and control groups (odds ratio = 0.9, 95% CI [0.1, 9.0]). Data sharing rates were low in both groups, with just two datasets shared in each of the intervention and control groups.

The global movement towards open science has made significant gains with the development of numerous data sharing policies and tools.

What remains to be established is an effective incentive that motivates researchers to take up such tools to share their data.

URL : Did awarding badges increase data sharing in BMJ Open? A randomized controlled trial

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.191818