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The heteronomy of algorithms: Traditional knowledge and computational knowledge

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Author : David M. Berry

If critical approaches are to remain relevant in a computational age, then philosophy must work to critique and understand how the materiality of the modern world is normatively structured using computation and the attendant imaginaries made possible for the reproduction and transformation of society, economy, culture and consciousness.

This call is something we need to respond to in relation to the contemporary reliance on computational forms of knowledge and practices and the co-constitution of new computational subjectivities. This chapter argues that to comprehend the digital we must, therefore, know it from the inside, we must know its formative processes.

We must materialize the digital and ask about the specific mediations that are made possible in and through computation, and the infrastructural systems which are built from it. This calls for computation and computational thinking to be part of the critical traditions of the arts and humanities, the social sciences and the university as a whole, requiring new pedagogical models that are able to develop new critical faculties in relation to the digital.

URL : https://books.openedition.org/editionsmsh/9091

The legal and policy framework for scientific data sharing, mining and reuse

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Author : Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay

Text and Data Mining, the automatic processing of large amounts of scientific articles and datasets, is an essential practice for contemporary researchers. Some publishers are challenging it as a lawful activity and the topic is being discussed during European copyright law reform process.

In order to better understand the underlying debate and contribute to the policy discussion, this article first examines the legal status of data access and reuse and licensing policies. It then presents available options supporting the exercise of Text and Data Mining: publication under open licenses, open access legislations and a recognition of the legitimacy of the activity.

For that purpose, the paper analyses the scientific rational for sharing and its legal and technical challenges and opportunities. In particular, it surveys existing open access and open data legislations and discusses implementation in European and Latin America jurisdictions.

Framing Text and Data mining as an exception to copyright could be problematic as it de facto denies that this activity is part of a positive right to read and should not require additional permission nor licensing.

It is crucial in licenses and legislations to provide a correct definition of what is Open Access, and to address the question of pre-existing copyright agreements. Also, providing implementation means and technical support is key. Otherwise, legislations could remain declarations of good principles if repositories are acting as empty shells.

URL ; https://books.openedition.org/editionsmsh/9082

Data-informed Open Education Advocacy: A New Approach to Saving Students Money and Backaches

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Authors : Sydney Thompson, Lillian S. Rigling, Will Cross, John Vickery

The North Carolina State University Libraries has long recognized the financial burden textbook costs place on students.

By crosswalking information on use of our textbook collection with textbook cost and course enrollment data, we have begun to map the environment for textbook use at the university and identified opportunities for faculty outreach in promoting alternatives to traditional textbooks, including our Alt-Textbook program.

This article describes our programs, our investigation of textbook use patterns, and how we are using these data to inform our practice.

URL : http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/wlpub/62/

 

The State of OA: A large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles

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Authors : Heather Piwowar, Jason Priem, Vincent Larivière, Juan Pablo Alperin, Lisa Matthias, Bree Norlander, Ashley Farley, Jevin West, Stefanie Haustein

Despite growing interest in Open Access (OA) to scholarly literature, there is an unmet need for large-scale, up-to-date, and reproducible studies assessing the prevalence and characteristics of OA. We address this need using oaDOI, an open online service that determines OA status for 67 million articles.

We use three samples, each of 100,000 articles, to investigate OA in three populations: 1) all journal articles assigned a Crossref DOI, 2) recent journal articles indexed in Web of Science, and 3) articles viewed by users of Unpaywall, an open-source browser extension that lets users find OA articles using oaDOI.

We estimate that at least 28% of the scholarly literature is OA (19M in total) and that this proportion is growing, driven particularly by growth in Gold and Hybrid. The most recent year analyzed (2015) also has the highest percentage of OA (45%). Because of this growth, and the fact that readers disproportionately access newer articles, we find that Unpaywall users encounter OA quite frequently: 47% of articles they view are OA. Notably, the most common mechanism for OA is not Gold, Green, or Hybrid OA, but rather an under-discussed category we dub Bronze: articles made free-to-read on the publisher website, without an explicit Open license.

We also examine the citation impact of OA articles, corroborating the so-called open-access citation advantage: accounting for age and discipline, OA articles receive 18% more citations than average, an effect driven primarily by Green and Hybrid OA. We encourage further research using the free oaDOI service, as a way to inform OA policy and practice.

URL : The State of OA: A large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3119v1

 

Improving the Measurement of Scientific Success by Reporting a Self-Citation Index

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Authors : JustinW. Flatt, Alessandro Blasimme, Effy Vayena

Who among the many researchers is most likely to usher in a new era of scientific breakthroughs? This question is of critical importance to universities, funding agencies, as well as scientists who must compete under great pressure for limited amounts of research money.

Citations are the current primary means of evaluating one’s scientific productivity and impact, and while often helpful, there is growing concern over the use of excessive self-citations to help build sustainable careers in science.

Incorporating superfluous self-citations in one’s writings requires little effort, receives virtually no penalty, and can boost, albeit artificially, scholarly impact and visibility, which are both necessary for moving up the academic ladder.

Such behavior is likely to increase, given the recent explosive rise in popularity of web-based citation analysis tools (Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Altmetric) that rank research performance.

Here, we argue for new metrics centered on transparency to help curb this form of self-promotion that, if left unchecked, can have a negative impact on the scientific workforce, the way that we publish new knowledge, and ultimately the course of scientific advance.

URL : Improving the Measurement of Scientific Success by Reporting a Self-Citation Index

DOI : http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/5/3/20

The Surge in New University Presses and Academic- Led Publishing: An Overview of a Changing Publishing Ecology in the UK

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Authors : Janneke Adema, Graham Stone

This article outlines the rise and development of New University Presses and Academic-Led Presses in the UK or publishing for the UK market. Based on the Jisc research project, Changing publishing ecologies: a landscape study of new university presses and academic-led publishing, commonalities between these two types of presses are identified to better assess their future needs and requirements.

Based on this analysis, the article argues for the development of a publishing toolkit, for further research into the creation of a typology of presses and publishing initiatives, and for support with community building to help these initiatives grow and develop further, whilst promoting a more diverse publishing ecology.

URL : The Surge in New University Presses and Academic- Led Publishing: An Overview of a Changing Publishing Ecology in the UK

DOI : http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10210

Scientific data from and for the citizen

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Authors : Sven Schade, Chrisa Tsinaraki, Elena Roglia

Powered by advances of technology, today’s Citizen Science projects cover a wide range of thematic areas and are carried out from local to global levels. This wealth of activities creates an abundance of data, for example, in the forms of observations submitted by mobile phones; readings of low-cost sensors; or more general information about peoples’ activities.

The management and possible sharing of this data has become a research topic in its own right. We conducted a survey in the summer of 2015 in order to collectively analyze the state of play in Citizen Science.

This paper summarizes our main findings related to data access, standardization and data preservation. We provide examples of good practices in each of these areas and outline actions to address identified challenges.

URL : http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/7842