Archives des auteurs : Hans Dillaerts

Usage Bibliometrics as a Tool to Measure Research Activity

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Authors : Edwin A. Henneken, Michael J. Kurtz

Measures for research activity and impact have become an integral ingredient in the assessment of a wide range of entities (individual researchers, organizations, instruments, regions, disciplines).

Traditional bibliometric indicators, like publication and citation based indicators, provide an essential part of this picture, but cannot describe the complete picture.

Since reading scholarly publications is an essential part of the research life cycle, it is only natural to introduce measures for this activity in attempts to quantify the efficiency, productivity and impact of an entity.

Citations and reads are significantly different signals, so taken together, they provide a more complete picture of research activity. Most scholarly publications are now accessed online, making the study of reads and their patterns possible.

Click-stream logs allow us to follow information access by the entire research community, real-time. Publication and citation datasets just reflect activity by authors. In addition, download statistics will help us identify publications with significant impact, but which do not attract many citations.

Click-stream signals are arguably more complex than, say, citation signals. For one, they are a superposition of different classes of readers. Systematic downloads by crawlers also contaminate the signal, as does browsing behavior.

We discuss the complexities associated with clickstream data and how, with proper filtering, statistically significant relations and conclusions can be inferred from download statistics.

We describe how download statistics can be used to describe research activity at different levels of aggregation, ranging from organizations to countries. These statistics show a correlation with socio-economic indicators.

A comparison will be made with traditional bibliometric indicators. We will argue that astronomy is representative of more general trends.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.02153

Une brève histoire d’Okina

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Auteurs/Authors : Stéphanie Bouvier, Daniel Bourrion

Ouverte à sa communauté en février 2015, Okina, l’archive ouverte institutionnelle de l’Université d’Angers, a été développée au sein d’un projet global autour de l’Open Access.

Les lignes qui suivent retracent l’histoire de cette archive et la manière dont Okina est née puis a été portée politiquement. Elles se penchent également sur les choix techniques comme stratégiques ou humains effectués le long du chemin, qui ont permis que de vagues idées se concrétisent dans un objet fonctionnel né de (presque) rien.

URL : http://bbf.enssib.fr/contributions/une-breve-histoire-d-okina

Decentralized creation of academic documents using a Network Attached Storage (NAS) server

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Authors : Johannes Wilm, Afshin Sadeghi, Christoph Lange, Philipp Mayr

Scholarly document creation continues to face various obstacles. Scholarly text production requires more complex word processors than other forms of texts because of the complex structures of citations, formulas and figures.

The need for peer review, often single-blind or double-blind, creates needs for document management that other texts do not require. Additionally, the need for collaborative editing, security and strict document access rules means that many existing word processors are imperfect solutions for academics.

Nevertheless, most papers continue to be written using Microsoft Word (Sadeghi et al. 2017).

We here analyze some of the problems with existing academic solutions and then present an argument why we believe that running an open source academic writing solution for academic purposes, such as Fidus Writer, on a Network Attached Storage (NAS) server could be a viable alternative.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.04185

The Politics of the Commons: Reform or Revolt?

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Author : Vangelis Papadimitropoulos

In this paper I present a critical overview of the contemporary political theories of the Commons, classified in three main categories: 1) the liberal 2) the reformist and 3) the anti-capitalist.

Advocates of the liberal theory of the Commons take a stand in favour of the coexistence of the Commons with the state and the market. The reformists argue for the gradual adjustment of capitalism to the Commons with the aid of a partner state, while the anti-capitalists contrast both the liberals and the reformists by supporting the development of the commons against and beyond capitalism.

I make the case that both the liberal and the anti-capitalist theorists miss the likelihood of technology rendering redundant large-scale production in the future, and forcing thus capitalism to adjust to the Commons in the long run.

The prospect, therefore, of an open cooperativism introduced by the reformist theory holds significant potential with respect to the future development of the Commons. For the Commons however to expand and flourish, a global institutional reform, followed by a set of inter-local and international principles, is sine qua non.

Hence, transparency of information, distribution of value, solidarity and bottom-up self-management are the core variables of individual and collective autonomy inasmuch as they permit a community or group to formulate its values in relation to the needs and skills of its members.

URL : The Politics of the Commons: Reform or Revolt?

Alternative location : http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/852

Open Educational Resources and Rhetorical Paradox in the Neoliberal Univers(ity)

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Author : Nora Almeida

As a phenomenon and a quandary, openness has provoked conversations about inequities within higher education systems, particularly in regards to information access, social inclusion, and pedagogical practice.

But whether or not open education can address these inequities, and to what effect, depends on what we mean by “open” and specifically, whether openness reflexively acknowledges the fraught political, economic, and ethical dimensions of higher education and of knowledge production processes.

This essay explores the ideological and rhetorical underpinnings of the open educational resource (OER) movement in the context of the neoliberal university.

This essay also addresses the conflation of value and values in higher education—particularly how OER production processes and scholarship labor are valued. Lastly, this essay explores whether OER initiatives provide an opportunity to reimagine pedagogical practices, to reconsider authority paradigms, and potentially, to dismantle and redress exclusionary educational practices in and outside of the classroom.

Through a critique of neoliberalism as critically limiting, an exploration of autonomy, and a refutation of the precept that OER can magically solve social inequalities in higher education, the author ultimately advocates for a reconsideration of OER in context and argues that educators should prioritize conversations about what openness means within their local educational communities.

URL : Open Educational Resources and Rhetorical Paradox in the Neoliberal Univers(ity)

Alternative location : http://libraryjuicepress.com/journals/index.php/jclis/article/view/16

Inventory of Research Data Management Services in France

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Author : Violaine Rebouillat

Data has become more and more ubiquitous in the research context. As a result, a growing number of services are created to analyze, store and share research data. This has induced the Research Data Working Group of the Digital Scientific Library (BSN10) to launch an inventory of French research data management services, funded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.

The inventory covers all services that are managed by French institutions and infrastructures and dedicated to public research teams from all fields. Sixty services, provided by forty-five structures, have already been identified and analyzed.

The paper describes the methodology used to carry out the inventory and analyzes these first results by service type, scope and research field. It also emphasizes the heterogeneous and emergent nature of the inventoried services.

URL : Inventory of Research Data Management Services in France

Alternative location : http://ebooks.iospress.nl/publication/46651

Une gestion commune des supports de connaissance

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Auteur/Author : Silvère Mercier

L’expression « partenariat Public-Communs » (Public-Commons Partnership) a été proposée par l’italien Tommaso Fattori, qui souhaitait montrer qu’il existe une autre voie possible que les partenariats Public-privé classiques, trop souvent à l’origine de formes de privatisation ou d’accaparement de ressources communes.

Plus largement, la notion permet d’éviter l’éceuil de percevoir les communs de la connaissance comme une alternative aux services publics. C’est ce que rappellent les auteurs de cet article consacré à l’oeuvre l’Elinor Ostrom : « la self-governance n’exprime pas l’idée d’une autogestion en totale indépendance mais « d’une capacité à s’organiser pour que chacun puisse participer activement à tous – du moins aux principaux – processus de décision concernant la gouvernance de la communauté » (McGinnis, 2011).

Elle n’implique donc pas une absence d’État – du niveau local au niveau fédéral – mais signifie une participation des communautés « auto-organisées » aux processus politiques dans les domaines qui les touchent. »

On ne saurait donc opposer les services publics que sont les bibliothèques aux communs sous peine d’opérer une contresens sur l’idée même des communs. Dès lors, quelles sont les degrés d’articulations possibles? Dans ce chapitre nous nous intéresserons aux communs de la connaissance sous un angle volontairement limité : celui de la participation citoyenne à la constitution d’objets destinés à favoriser la circulation des savoirs.

Ainsi, par opposition à la mise à disposition ciblée de ressources pour des publics dits “empêchés”, nous considérons ici qu’une gestion en communs de supports de connaissance suppose une participation des citoyens à ce qui reste la plupart du temps l’apanage des professionnels : le choix et la sélection de ce qui est rendu accessible. Comment caractériser ces initiatives de bibliothèques qui pourraient être qualifiées de communs, par opposition au traditionnel Hors-les-murs?

URL : http://www.bibliobsession.net/2017/06/08/chapitre-livre-communs-savoirs-bibliotheques/