Archives des auteurs : Hans Dillaerts

From Concerned to Cautiously Optimistic: Assessing Faculty Perceptions and Knowledge of Open Access in a Campus-Wide Study

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“INTRODUCTION : Though open access publishing has many advantages for scholars, very few are interested in learning about and pursuing open access publishing. This article discusses the results of a survey administered to faculty across disciplines at a single university to assess their perceptions, knowledge, and perceived knowledge of open access publishing and related topics.

METHODS : Anonymous electronic survey of 240 faculty members with a response rate of 23%.

RESULTS : Although many respondents considered themselves familiar with open access, very few had practical knowledge of open access publishing. Faculty were uncertain about the value and reliability of open access publishing and were particularly concerned about its applicability in the promotion and tenure process.

CONCLUSION:  Misinformation, lack of motivation, and fear appear to be the main causes of negative perceptions of open access among faculty surveyed. Though science faculty had the highest overall perceived knowledge of open access, they were also most likely to view open access negatively and to believe that the current publishing model works well. Education faculty were more likely to think highly of open access publishing, in part due to a lack of funding for that discipline. Librarians and information professionals should take a tailored approach to discussing open access with faculty by working within the knowledge of the discipline if possible.”

URL : From Concerned to Cautiously Optimistic: Assessing Faculty Perceptions and Knowledge of Open Access in a Campus-Wide Study

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1212

Scholarly Communication as a Core Competency: Prevalence, Activities, and Concepts of Scholarly Communication Librarianship as Shown Through Job Advertisements

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“INTRODUCTION : The dynamic nature of the scholarly communication landscape has produced a need for the creation of positions specifically focused on these issues. Yet, no clear title or job description for scholarly communication librarianship has emerged. The lack of standardization in this area is problematic for educators, professionals, and prospective professionals.

METHODS : Analyzing 13,869 job advertisements published between 2006 and 2014, this study attempts to examine the prevalence of scholarly communication terms and activities and the types of positions in which these terms and activities appear.

RESULTS : This study finds an increase in the use of the term “scholarly communication” in the title or text of job advertisements over the last nine years, with more than 7% of positions in the most recent year containing the term.

CONCLUSIONS : An analysis of the levels of engagement with scholarly communication demonstrates that jobs with substantial levels of engagement are increasing; whereas those requiring passive knowledge or awareness of scholarly communication issues are decreasing. Jobs with scholarly communication as a primary job responsibility are differentiated by a focus on repositories, open access, copyright, authors’ rights, and intellectual property differentiate core scholarly communication positions.”

URL : Scholarly Communication as a Core Competency: Prevalence, Activities, and Concepts of Scholarly Communication Librarianship as Shown Through Job Advertisements

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1236

A Triangulation Method to Dismantling a Disciplinary “Big Deal”

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“In late 2012, it appeared that the University Library, University of Saskatchewan would likely no longer be able to afford to subscribe to the entire American Chemical Society “Big Deal” of 36 journals. Difficult choices would need to be made regarding which titles to retain as individual subscriptions. In an effort to arrive at the most conscientious and evidence-based decisions possible, three discrete sources of data were collected and compared: full-text downloads, citation analysis of faculty publications, and user feedback.

This case study will describe the triangulation method developed — including the unconventional approach of applying a citation analysis technique to usage data and survey responses. Such a thorough, labor-intensive, method is likely not practical for analyzing larger, multidisciplinary journal bundles. When it becomes necessary to break up a smaller collection important to researchers in a particular discipline, this technique may provide strong evidence to support librarian decisions as well as involve faculty in the process.”

URL : http://www.istl.org/15-spring/refereed3.html

In abundance: Networked participatory practices as scholarship

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“In an era of knowledge abundance, scholars have the capacity to distribute and share ideas and artifacts via digital networks, yet networked scholarship often remains unrecognized within institutional spheres of influence. Using ethnographic methods including participant observation, interviews, and document analysis, this study investigates networks as sites of scholarship. Its purpose is to situate networked practices within Boyer’s (1990) four components of scholarship – discovery, integration, application, and teaching – and to explore them as a techno-cultural system of scholarship suited to an era of knowledge abundance.

Not only does the paper find that networked engagement both aligns with and exceeds Boyer’s model for scholarship, it suggests that networked scholarship may enact Boyer’s initial aim of broadening scholarship itself through fostering extensive cross-disciplinary, public ties and rewarding connection, collaboration, and curation between individuals rather than roles or institutions.”

URL : In abundance: Networked participatory practices as scholarship

Related URL : http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2158

The public impact of Latin America’s approach to open access

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“This study explores the extent to which research published in Latin America—where the vast majority of which is made freely available to the public—has an impact and reach beyond the academic community. It addresses the ways in which the study of research impact is moving beyond the counting citations, which has dominated bibliometrics for well over the last 50 years. As more of the world’s research is made freely available to the public, there is an increasing probability that the impact and reach of research extends beyond the confines of academia.

To establish the current extent of public access, this study explores who the users of Latin American research are, as well as their motivations for accessing the work by using a series of simple pop-up surveys, which were displayed to users of the two largest scholarly journal portals in Latin America.

The results, after thousands of responses, indicate that traditional scholarly use makes up only a quarter of the total use in Latin America. The majority of use is from non-scholar communities, namely students (around 50% of the total use) and from individuals interested for professional or personal reasons (collectively around 20% of the total use). By linking the survey responses to the articles being read, it was also possible to identify points of convergence and divergence in student, faculty, and public interest groups.

Finally, this study employed methods from a new field of inquiry, altmetrics, in an attempt to capture engagement with research on the social Web. The success of such methods for the Latin American case were limited due to low coverage levels, but the research nevertheless contributes to the understanding of nascent field of altmetrics more broadly. The study concludes with a discussion of the conceptual, political, curricular, and methodological implications of this new approach to scientific communication.”

URL : https://microblogging.infodocs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/AlperinDissertationFinalPublicImpact-augmented.pdf

Related URL : http://purl.stanford.edu/jr256tk1194

Amplifying the Impact of Open Access: Wikipedia and the Diffusion of Science

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Authors : Misha Teplitskiy, Grace Lu, Eamon Duede

With the rise of Wikipedia as a first-stop source for scientific knowledge, it is important to compare its representation of that knowledge to that of the academic literature. This article approaches such a comparison through academic references made within the worlds 50 largest Wikipedias.

Previous studies have raised concerns that Wikipedia editors may simply use the most easily accessible academic sources rather than sources of the highest academic status. We test this claim by identifying the 250 most heavily used journals in each of 26 research fields (4,721 journals, 19.4M articles in total) indexed by the Scopus database, and modeling whether topic, academic status, and accessibility make articles from these journals more or less likely to be referenced on Wikipedia.

We find that, controlling for field and impact factor, the odds that an open access journal is referenced on the English Wikipedia are 47% higher compared to closed access journals. Moreover, in most of the worlds Wikipedias a journals high status (impact factor) and accessibility (open access policy) both greatly increase the probability of referencing.

Among the implications of this study is that the chief effect of open access policies may be to significantly amplify the diffusion of science, through an intermediary like Wikipedia, to a broad public audience.

URL : Amplifying the Impact of Open Access: Wikipedia and the Diffusion of Science

Alternative location : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.23687/full