scientific practices – InfoDoc MicroVeille

Scholars’ temporal participation on, temporary disengagement from, and return to Twitter

Authors : George Veletsianos, Royce Kimmons, Olga Belikov, Nicole Johnson

Even though the extant literature investigates how and why academics use social media, much less is known about academics’ temporal patterns of social media use.

This mixed methods study provides a first-of-its-kind investigation into temporal social media use. In particular, we study how academics’ use of Twitter varies over time and examine the reasons why academics temporarily disengage and return to the social media platform.

We employ data mining methods to identify a sample of academics on Twitter (n = 3,996) and retrieve the tweets they posted (n = 9,025,127). We analyze quantitative data using descriptive and inferential statistics, and qualitative data using the constant comparative approach.

Results show that Twitter use is predominantly connected to traditional work hours and is well-integrated into academics’ professional endeavors, suggesting that professional use of Twitter has become “ordinary.”

Though scholars rarely announce their departure from or return to Twitter, approximately half of this study’s participants took some kind of a break from Twitter.

Although users returned to Twitter for both professional and personal reasons, conferences and workshops were found to be significant events stimulating the return of academic users.

URL : https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/8346

Is together better? Examining scientific collaborations across multiple authors, institutions, and departments

Authors : Lovenoor Aulck, Kishore Vasan, Jevin West

Collaborations are an integral part of scientific research and publishing. In the past, access to large-scale corpora has limited the ways in which questions about collaborations could be investigated. However, with improvements in data/metadata quality and access, it is possible to explore the idea of research collaboration in ways beyond the traditional definition of multiple authorship.

In this paper, we examine scientific works through three different lenses of collaboration: across multiple authors, multiple institutions, and multiple departments. We believe this to be a first look at multiple departmental collaborations as we employ extensive data curation to disambiguate authors’ departmental affiliations for nearly 70,000 scientific papers.

We then compare citation metrics across the different definitions of collaboration and find that papers defined as being collaborative were more frequently cited than their non-collaborative counterparts, regardless of the definition of collaboration used.

We also share preliminary results from examining the relationship between co-citation and co-authorship by analyzing the extent to which similar fields (as determined by co-citation) are collaborating on works (as determined by co-authorship).

These preliminary results reveal trends of compartmentalization with respect to intra-institutional collaboration and show promise in being expanded.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.04093

Vers une culture de la donnée en SHS : Une étude à l’Université de Lille

Auteur/Author : Joachim Schöpfel

La science ouverte figure parmi les priorités de l’Etat français. Dans la continuité des chantiers engagés par le gouvernement français sur la transformation numérique de l’Etat et sa modernisation, le deuxième plan d’action national 2018-2020 “Pour une action publique transparente et collaborative” précise que la France « soutient la mise en œuvre des principes du gouvernement ouvert pour renforcer (…) l’accès aux matériaux et résultats de la recherche ».

Le plan national pour la science ouverte, présenté début juillet 2018, a confirmé cette ambition. L’objectif est que les données produites par la recherche publique soient progressivement structurées en conformité avec les principes FAIR, préservées et, quand cela est possible, ouvertes.

Notre étude “Vers une culture de la donnée en SHS” souhaite contribuer à la mise en œuvre de l’écosystème de la science ouverte sur le terrain d’un campus universitaire.

L’étude a été réalisée dans le cadre du projet structurant D4Humanities, avec un financement de la MESHS et du Conseil Régional Hauts-de-France, et elle fait suite à des travaux de recherche menés depuis 2013 par le laboratoire GERiiCO.

Conduite sous forme d’entretiens avec 51 chercheurs, doctorants, responsables de laboratoires, chefs de projets et ingénieurs en charge de données, l’étude poursuit trois objectifs :

(Re)Mettre les enseignants-chercheurs au cœur de la mise en œuvre de l’écosystème de la science ouverte sur le campus, avec leurs besoins, priorités et interrogations.
Identifier des opportunités et verrous pour une politique de données.
Recommander dix actions à mettre en place pour développer la culture de données sur le campus.

Menée comme un audit sur un terrain particulier et dans le domaine des sciences humaines et sociales, l’étude a une portée pragmatique: dégager les éléments indispensables pour une politique cohérente de la production, gestion et réutilisation des données de la recherche sur un campus en sciences humaines et sociales, et contribuer ainsi à l’appropriation du concept de la science ouverte par une « mise en culture de la donnée, qui effectue une mise en sens d’usages disséminés et spécialisés de données ouvertes ».

Une première partie (« Constats préalables ») s’appuie sur deux études (Rennes 2, Lille 3) pour mieux cerner le concept de la donnée de recherche et son caractère de « longue traîne » ; cette partie synthétise les pratiques, motivations et attentes des enseignants-chercheurs dans ce domaine, en SHS.

Elle aborde également d’une manière générale la question des services et dispositifs de données. Une deuxième partie (« Observations ») décrit un paysage contrasté à partir des entretiens menés en 2017 et 2018 sur le campus SHS de l’Université de Lille.

Les besoins prioritaires des chercheurs sont la sécurité des données et systèmes, et la communication au sein des projets. L’image qui se dégage est un continuum de pratiques plus ou moins efficaces, formalisées et adéquates, avec une gouvernance parfois incertaine, au niveau des projets aussi bien qu’au niveau des structures.

Ces pratiques sont liées aux communautés disciplinaires mais plus encore, aux méthodes, équipements et thématiques scientifiques. La troisième partie (« Vers une culture de la donnée ») liste d’une manière succincte dix recommandations qui, ensemble, définissent un cadre de référence pour la mise en œuvre d’une politique de données sur un campus SHS :

Mettre en place un pilotage scientifique
Investir d’une manière ciblée
Viser les projets, pas les laboratoires
Utiliser les plans de gestion comme levier
Apporter des réponses aux contraintes de sécurité
Apporter des réponses aux besoins de communication
Apporter des réponses aux besoins de curation
Proposer plusieurs solutions pour la conservation des données
Institutionnaliser le lien avec la TGIR Huma-Num
Soutenir les bonnes pratiques

URL : Vers une culture de la donnée en SHS : Une étude à l’Université de Lille

Alternative location : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/GERIICO/hal-01846849v1

Understanding the needs of scholars in a contemporary publishing environment: Survey results

Author : PWW Research Team

Publishing Without Walls (PWW) is a Mellon-funded initiative at the University of Illinois led by the University Library in partnership with the School of Information Sciences, the department of African American Studies, and the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities.

Our project is developing a scalable, sustainable model for library-based digital scholarly publishing. The model aims to lower publishing barriers – both for scholars new to digital publishing and for institutions with limited resources – while opening publications to the widest possible readership.

With a goal of broad adoption in academic libraries, our model locates the humanities scholar at the center of the scholarly communication ecosystem and affords services that are informed by and responsive to scholarly needs.

The research guiding development of this model aims to identify and explore perceived gaps in the current publishing system, including the gap between what and how scholars want to publish and what existing systems accommodate; the gap between the everyday practices of humanities scholars and tools for producing and supporting digital scholarship; and the gap between digital scholarship and publishing opportunities at resource-rich institutions and resource-limited institutions, especially Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

This report gives the results of one piece of an ongoing, multimodal research effort. Through a large-scale survey and a series of interviews with humanities scholars, this effort aims to lay a solid foundation of understanding about scholarly needs in the contemporary publishing environment.

This report explains the survey method, gives a summary of participants’ self-reported demographics, and details survey results, proceeding question by question. The goal of this report is not to provide interpretation of the meaning or significance of survey results, but to document the results themselves as a foundation for future interpretation, and for informing ongoing research and development of the publishing service model.

URL : Understanding the needs of scholars in a contemporary publishing environment: Survey results

URI : http://hdl.handle.net/2142/98576

Awareness of Institutional Repositories and Open Access Publishing Among Researchers in University of Calicut

Authors : Manchu O, asudevan T M

The paper examined institutional repositories and open access publishing awareness among the researchers in university of calicut. Questionnaire method was adopted to collect data for the study. Major findings of the study were that a large majority of researchers in university of Calicut aware of the concept of institutional repositories and open access publishing.

The major motivating factors of researchers for using institutional repositories and open access publishing was improvement of their scholarly communication. The discouraging factors for researchers not deposit their work in it were that majority of them did not aware of how can they deposit their work in it and a good number of them thought that repository would have low prestige.

The study concluded with a suggestion that library should provide appropriate awareness program and training to researchers about the benefits of using institutional repositories and open access publishing and should encourage them to deposit their work in it.

URL : Awareness of Institutional Repositories and Open Access Publishing Among Researchers in University of Calicut

Alternative location : http://irjlis.com/awareness-of-institutional-repositories-and-open-access-publishing-among-researchers-in-university-of-calicut/

Impact of Institutional Repositories’ on Scholarly Practices of Scientists

Authors : Prachi Shukla, Naved Ahmad

Institutional Repositories (IRs) are established mainly to provide access to information resources which are otherwise not easily accessible in digital format. Many institutions across the world and particularly in India have successfully developed their own IRs but have not attempted to assess their importance and impact on the Users.

This study conveys the findings of the survey conducted at research centric CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research) laboratories of India to determine the scientists’ and research scholars’ preference for publishing their research materials; to measure the impact of IRs on their scholarly practices and to recommend future changes for inviting more participation in an IR.

The study deduced that ‘Peer- Review scholarly Journals’ are preferred medium for publishing research content and ‘Increase in the access to grey literature’ is the most significant impact of IR on respondents.

The findings of this research paper provide insight to the IR managers and administrators of low-deposit and low-usage repositories about the contributors’ apprehensions. The study will also help them to define and adopt policies that will eventually enhance their IRs visibility and impact.

URL : https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/1631/