Archives des catégories : EN

Open and transparent research practices and public perceptions of the trustworthiness of agricultural biotechnology organizations

Posté le par

Authors : Asheley R. Landrum, Joseph Hilgard, Robert B. Lull, Heather Akin, Kathleen Hall Jamieson

Public trust in agricultural biotechnology organizations that produce so-called ‘genetically-modified organisms’ (GMOs) is affected by misinformed attacks on GM technology and worry that producers’ concern for profits overrides concern for the public good.

In an experiment, we found that reporting that the industry engages in open and transparent research practices increased the perceived trustworthiness of university and corporate organizations involved with GMOs.

Universities were considered more trustworthy than corporations overall, supporting prior findings in other technology domains.

The results suggest that commitment to, and communication of, open and transparent research practices should be part of the process of implementing agricultural biotechnologies.

URL : Open and transparent research practices and public perceptions of the trustworthiness of agricultural biotechnology organizations

DOI : https://doi.org/10.22323/2.17020204

Conceptualizing Data Curation Activities Within Two Academic Libraries

Posté le par

Authors : Sophia Lafferty-Hess, Julie Rudder, Moira Downey, Susan Ivey, Jennifer Darragh

A growing focus on sharing research data that meet certain standards, such as the FAIR guiding principles, has resulted in libraries increasingly developing and scaling up support for research data.

As libraries consider what new data curation services they would like to provide as part of their repository programs, there are various questions that arise surrounding scalability, resource allocation, requisite expertise, and how to communicate these services to the research community.

Data curation can involve a variety of tasks and activities. Some of these activities can be managed by systems, some require human intervention, and some require highly specialized domain or data type expertise.

At the 2017 Triangle Research Libraries Network Institute, staff from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University used the 47 data curation activities identified by the Data Curation Network project to create conceptual groupings of data curation activities.

The results of this “thought-exercise” are discussed in this white paper. The purpose of this exercise was to provide more specificity around data curation within our individual contexts as a method to consistently discuss our current service models, identify gaps we would like to fill, and determine what is currently out of scope.

We hope to foster an open and productive discussion throughout the larger academic library community about how we prioritize data curation activities as we face growing demand and limited resources.

URL : Conceptualizing Data Curation Activities Within Two Academic Libraries

DOI : https://dx.doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ZJ5PQ

A Case Study for a New Peer-Review Journal on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education

Posté le par

Author : Cristobal Salinas Jr.

In this exploratory case study, the interests, attitudes, and opinions of participants of the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity (NCORE) in American Higher Education are presented.

This case study sought to understand how college and university administrators and faculty perceived the need to create a peer-reviewed journal that aimed to support and create opportunities to publish research, policy, practices, and procedures within the context of race and ethnicity in American higher education.

The findings of this study reflect that the vast majority of those surveyed (n = 605) and interviewed (n = 5) support, and are interested in, having a peer-reviewed journal that focuses on race and ethnicity in American higher education.

URL : A Case Study for a New Peer-Review Journal on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications6020026

To What Extent is Inclusion in the Web of Science an Indicator of Journal ‘Quality’?

Posté le par

Authors : Diego Chavarro, Ismael Rafols, Puay Tang

The assessment of research based on the journal in which it is published is a widely adopted practice. Some research assessments use the Web of Science (WoS) to identify “high quality” journals, which are assumed to publish excellent research.

The authority of WoS on journal quality stems from its selection of journals based on editorial standards and scientific impact criteria. These can be considered as universalistic criteria, meaning that they can be applied to any journal regardless of its place of publication, language, or discipline.

In this article we examine the coverage by WoS of journals produced in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. We use a logistic regression to examine the probability of a journal to be covered by WoS given universalistic criteria (editorial standards and scientific impact of the journal) and particularistic criteria (country, language, and discipline of the journal).

We find that it is not possible to predict the inclusion of journals in WoS only through the universalistic criteria because particularistic variables such as country of the journal, its discipline and language are also related to inclusion in WoS.

We conclude that using WoS as a universalistic tool for research assessment can disadvantage science published in journals with adequate editorial standards and scientific merit. We discuss the implications of these findings within the research evaluation literature, specifically for countries and disciplines not extensively covered by WoS.

URL : https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2990653

Developing research data management services and support for researchers

Posté le par

Authors : Laure Perrier, Leslie Barnes

This mixed method study determined the essential tools and services required for research data management to aid academic researchers in fulfilling emerging funding agency and journal requirements. Focus groups were conducted and a rating exercise was designed to rank potential services.

Faculty conducting research at the University of Toronto were recruited; 28 researchers participated in four focus groups from June– August 2016. Two investigators independently coded the transcripts from the focus groups and identified four themes: 1) seamless infrastructure, 2) data security, 3) developing skills and knowledge, and 4) anxiety about releasing data.

Researchers require assistance with the secure storage of data and favour tools that are easy to use. Increasing knowledge of best practices in research data management is necessary and can be supported by the library using multiple strategies.

These findings help our library identify and prioritize tools and services in order to allocate resources in support of research data management on campus.

URL : Developing research data management services and support for researchers

DOI : https://doi.org/10.21083/partnership.v13i1.4115

Trends, Models and Strategies for Medical Libraries in the Era of Open Access to Health Information: A Report of Convention – NCOAHI 2018 held on February 9-10, 2018 at Jaipur

Posté le par

Authors : Rajeev Manhas, Mili Bajpai, Ashok Kumar

Open access to information resources has opened up a new window for the libraries and their users to cope up with the shrinking budget of libraries and increasing cost of the information resources, especially in the case of health sciences, where the cost of information resources is too high, and it is difficult for a single library to afford all the health information resources and meet the emerging demands of health professionals.

The conference provided a sharing platform for the library professionals to discuss various issues related to open access and other relevant hot topics like mobile applications in medical libraries, infrastructure to application of cloud technology, e-learning, open vs. subscribed journals, cost benefit analysis, total quality management, IPRs and role of social media tools in higher educational institutes.

The aim of this report is to create awareness among the stakeholders who are working in this area, so that they may gain the necessary information for further development of the system for the benefits of library users.

At the last of the report some recommendations have been put forth, so that the policy makers may do the needful for framing the policies for the development of library system in the country.

URL : Trends, Models and Strategies for Medical Libraries in the Era of Open Access to Health Information: A Report of Convention – NCOAHI 2018 held on February 9-10, 2018 at Jaipur

Alternative location : http://ijidt.com/index.php/ijidt/article/view/700

Modelling the Research Data Lifecycle

Posté le par

Author: Stacy T Kowalczyk

This paper develops and tests a lifecycle model for the preservation of research data by investigating the research practices of scientists. This research is based on a mixed-method approach.

An initial study was conducted using case study analytical techniques; insights from these case studies were combined with grounded theory in order to develop a novel model of the Digital Research Data Lifecycle.

A broad-based quantitative survey was then constructed to test and extend the components of the model. The major contribution of these research initiatives are the creation of the Digital Research Data Lifecycle, a data lifecycle that provides a generalized model of the research process to better describe and explain both the antecedents and barriers to preservation.

The antecedents and barriers to preservation are data management, contextual metadata, file formats, and preservation technologies. The availability of data management support and preservation technologies, the ability to create and manage contextual metadata, and the choices of file formats all significantly effect the preservability of research data.

URL : Modelling the Research Data Lifecycle

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v12i2.429