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Framing a Situated and Inclusive Open Science: Emerging Lessons from the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network

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Authors : Rebecca Hillyer, Alejandro Posada, Denisse Albornoz, Leslie Chan, Angela Okune

What is open science and under what conditions could it contribute towards addressing persistent development challenges? How could we re-imagine and enrich open science so that it is inclusive of local realities and a diversity of knowledge traditions?

These are some of the questions that the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network (OCSDNet) is attempting to answer.

In this paper, we provide the rationale and principles underlying OCSDnet, the conceptual and methodological frameworks guiding the research, and preliminary findings from the network’s twelve globally diverse research projects.

Instead of a “one-size-fits-all” approach to open science, our findings suggest that it is important to take into account the local dynamics and power structures that affect the ways in which individuals tend to collaborate (or not) within particular contexts.

Despite the on-going resistance of powerful actors towards new forms of creating and sharing diverse knowledge, concluding evidence from the twelve research teams suggests that open science does indeed have an important role to play in facilitating inclusive collaboration and transformatory possibilities for development.

URL : Framing a Situated and Inclusive Open Science: Emerging Lessons from the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network

Alternative location : http://ebooks.iospress.nl/publication/46639

Openness in Scholarship: A Return to Core Values?

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Author : Cameron Neylon

The debate over the meaning, and value, of open movements has intensified. The fear of co-option of various efforts from Open Access to Open Data is driving a reassessment and re-definition of what is intended by “open”.

In this article I apply group level models from cultural studies and economics to argue that the tension between exclusionary group formation and identity and aspirations towards inclusion and openness are a natural part of knowledge-making.

Situating the traditional Western Scientific Knowledge System as a culture-made group, I argue that the institutional forms that support the group act as economic underwriters for the process by which groups creating exclusive knowledge invest in the process of making it more accessible, less exclusive, and more public-good-like, in exchange for receiving excludable goods that sustain the group.

A necessary consequence of this is that our institutions will be conservative in their assessment of what knowledge-goods are worth of consideration and who is allowed within those institutional systems. Nonetheless the inclusion of new perspectives and increasing diversity underpins the production of general knowledge.

I suggest that instead of positioning openness as new, and in opposition to traditional closed systems, it may be more productive to adopt a narrative in which efforts to increase inclusion are seen as a very old, core value of the academy, albeit one that is a constant work in progress.

URL : Openness in Scholarship: A Return to Core Values?

Institutional repositories as infrastructures for long-term preservation

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Authors : Helena Francke, Jonas Gamalielsson, Björn Lundell

Introduction

The study describes the conditions for long-term preservation of the content of the institutional repositories of Swedish higher education institutions based on an investigation of how deposited files are managed with regards to file format and how representatives of the repositories describe the functions of the repositories.

Method

The findings are based on answers to a questionnaire completed by thirty-four institutional repository representatives (97% response rate).

Analysis

Questionnaire answers were analysed through descriptive statistics and qualitative coding. The concept of information infrastructures was used to analytically discuss repository work.

Results

Visibility and access to content were considered to be the most important functions of the repositories, but long-term preservation was also considered important for publications and student theses.

Whereas a majority of repositories had some form of guidelines for which file formats were accepted, very few considered whether or not file formats constitute open standards. This can have consequences for the long-term sustainability and access of the content deposited in the repositories.

Conclusion

The study contributes to the discussion about the sustainability of research publications and data in the repositories by pointing to the potential difficulties involved for long-term preservation and access when there is little focus on and awareness of open file formats.

URL : http://www.informationr.net/ir/22-2/paper757.html

Student perceptions of writing with Wikipedia in Australian higher education

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Authors : Robert Cummings, Frances DiLauro

The benefits of teaching with Wikipedia in higher education have been investigated for more than a decade and practitioners have claimed a fairly uniform set of outcomes. Although Wikipedia is a global knowledge platform, many studies of the benefits of teaching with Wikipedia have been conducted in U.S. higher education institutions.

The authors taught with Wikipedia in writing classes at the University of Sydney, Australia, surveying and interviewing students to both verify the traditional benefits of teaching with Wikipedia and investigate a new set of perceived benefits.

This study finds evidence that students who worked with Wikipedia in the writing classroom remained neutral in their opinions as to the legitimacy of information on Wikipedia and skeptical as to its utility in mastering writing course outcomes.

DOI : http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/7488

Assessing the utility of an institutional publications officer: a pilot assessment

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Authors : Kelly D. Cobey, James Galipeau, Larissa Shamseer, David Moher

Background

The scholarly publication landscape is changing rapidly. We investigated whether the introduction of an institutional publications officer might help facilitate better knowledge of publication topics and related resources, and effectively support researchers to publish.

Methods

In September 2015, a purpose-built survey about researchers’ knowledge and perceptions of publication practices was administered at five Ottawa area research institutions. Subsequently, we publicly announced a newly hired publications officer (KDC) who then began conducting outreach at two of the institutions.

Specifically, the publications officer gave presentations, held one-to-one consultations, developed electronic newsletter content, and generated and maintained a webpage of resources. In March 2016, we re-surveyed our participants regarding their knowledge and perceptions of publishing.

Mean scores to the perception questions, and the percent of correct responses to the knowledge questions, pre and post survey, were computed for each item. The difference between these means or calculated percentages was then examined across the survey measures.

Results

82 participants completed both surveys. Of this group, 29 indicated that they had exposure to the publications officer, while the remaining 53 indicated they did not. Interaction with the publications officer led to improvements in half of the knowledge items (7/14 variables).

While improvements in knowledge of publishing were also found among those who reported not to have interacted with the publications officer (9/14), these effects were often smaller in magnitude. Scores for some publication knowledge variables actually decreased between the pre and post survey (3/14).

Effects for researchers’ perceptions of publishing increased for 5/6 variables in the group that interacted with the publications officer.

Discussion

This pilot provides initial indication that, in a short timeframe, introducing an institutional publications officer may improve knowledge and perceptions surrounding publishing.

This study is limited by its modest sample size and temporal relationship between the introduction of the publications officer and changes in knowledge and perceptions. A randomized trial examining the publications officer as an effective intervention is needed.

URL : Assessing the utility of an institutional publications officer: a pilot assessment

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3294

A Trust Framework for Online Research Data Services

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Authors : Malcolm Wolski, Louise Howard, Joanna Richardson

There is worldwide interest in the potential of open science to increase the quality, impact, and benefits of science and research. More recently, attention has been focused on aspects such as transparency, quality, and provenance, particularly in regard to data.

For industry, citizens, and other researchers to participate in the open science agenda, further work needs to be undertaken to establish trust in research environments.

Based on a critical review of the literature, this paper examines the issue of trust in an open science environment, using virtual laboratories as the focus for discussion. A trust framework, which has been developed from an end-user perspective, is proposed as a model for addressing relevant issues within online research data services and tools.

URL : A Trust Framework for Online Research Data Services

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/publications5020014

On the “persistency” of scientific publications: introducing an h-index for journals

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Author : Roberto Piazza

What do we really mean by a “good” scientific journal? Do we care more about the short-time impact of our papers, or about the chance that they will still bhe read and cited on the long run?

Here I show that, by regarding a journal as a “virtual scientist” that can be attributed a time-dependent Hirsch h-index, we can introduce a parameter that, arguably, better captures the “persistency” of a scientific publication. Curiously, however, this parameter seems to depend above all on the “thickness” of a journal.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.09390