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Open Science, Public Engagement and the University

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Authors : Pratim Sengupta, Marie-Claire Shanahan

Contemporary debates on “open science” mostly focus on the pub- lic accessibility of the products of scientific and academic work. In contrast, this paper presents arguments for “opening” the ongoing work of science.

That is, this paper is an invitation to rethink the university with an eye toward engaging the public in the dynamic, conceptual and representational work involved in creating scientific knowledge.

To this end, we posit that public computing spaces, a genre of open- ended, public learning environment where visitors interact with open source computing platforms to directly access, modify and create complex and authentic scientific work, can serve as a possible model of “open science” in the university.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.04855

Research Data Services in European Academic Research Libraries

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Authors : Carol Tenopir, Sanna Talja, Wolfram Horstmann, Elina Late, Dane Hughes, Danielle Pollock, Birgit Schmidt, Lynn Baird, Robert J. Sandusky, Suzie Allard

Research data is an essential part of the scholarly record, and management of research data is increasingly seen as an important role for academic libraries.

This article presents the results of a survey of directors of the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER) academic member libraries to discover what types of research data services (RDS) are being offered by European academic research libraries and what services are planned for the future.

Overall, the survey found that library directors strongly agree on the importance of RDS. As was found in earlier studies of academic libraries in North America, more European libraries are currently offering or are planning to offer consultative or reference RDS than technical or hands-on RDS.

The majority of libraries provide support for training in skills related to RDS for their staff members. Almost all libraries collaborate with other organizations inside their institutions or with outside institutions in order to offer or develop policy related to RDS.

We discuss the implications of the current state of RDS in European academic research libraries, and offer directions for future research.

URL : Research Data Services in European Academic Research Libraries

DOI : http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10180

Managing research data at an academic library in a developing country

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Authors : Shamin Renwick, Marsha Winter, Michelle Gill

Managing research data has become an issue for many universities. In the Caribbean, the St Augustine Campus Libraries at the University of the West Indies are keenly aware of the need to support researchers in this regard.

The objectives of this study were to identify current practices in managing research data on the campus and to determine a possible role for the Campus Libraries. A pilot study of 100 researchers on the campus was conducted. A

nalysis of the 65 valid responses revealed that while researchers owned data sets they had little knowledge or experience in managing such. This low level of awareness is instructive and validates a role for the Campus Libraries to play in supporting researchers on campus.

The Campus Libraries need to sensitize researchers about what data planning and managing research data entail as well as provide technical assistance with actual data storage.

URL : http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0340035216688703

The openness buzz in the knowledge economy: Towards taxonomy

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Authors : Anna Lundgren, Hans Westlund

In the networked information and knowledge-based economy and society, the notions of ‘open’ and ‘openness’ are used in a variety of contexts; open source, open access, open economy, open government, open innovation – just to name a few.

This paper aims at discussing openness and developing a taxonomy that may be used to analyse the concept of openness. Are there different qualities of openness? How are these qualities interrelated?

What analytical tools may be used to understand openness? In this paper four qualities of openness recurrent in literature and debate are explored: accessibility, transparency, participation and sharing. To further analyse openness new institutional theory as interpreted by Williamson (2000) is used, encompassing four different institutional levels; cultural embeddedness, institutional environment, governance structure and resource allocations.

At what institutional levels is openness supported and/or constrained? Accessibility as a quality of openness seems to have a particularly strong relation to the other qualities of openness, whereas the notions of sharing and collaborative economics seem to be the most complex and contested quality of openness in the knowledge-based economy.

This research contributes to academia, policy and governance, as handling of challenges with regard to openness vs. closure in different contexts, territorial, institutional and/or organizational, demand not only a better understanding of the concept, but also tools for analysis.

URL : http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0263774X16671312

No scholar is an island: The impact of sharing in the work life of scholars

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Authors : Carol Tenopir, Suzie Allard, Lisa Christian, Robert Anderson, Suzan Ali-Saleh, Dave Nicholas, Anthony Watkinson, Hazel Woodward

The sharing of scholarly articles is an intrinsic and often ignored facet of the value and mission of scholarship. It is so entwined in the daily work life of scholars that it has almost become second nature, an integral part of the research process itself.

This article addresses this often overlooked area of research in usage studies. In an international survey of 1,000 published scholars, the Beyond Downloads project examined their sharing behaviours in order to gain a more contextualized and accurate picture of their usage beyond download patterns and citation counts.

Scholars share published articles with others as a mode of content discovery and dissemination, particularly if they work in groups, and most expect to increase their sharing in the future.

While their methods of sharing articles may change, and their reasons for sharing may vary from self-promotion to the more altruistic motives of scientific progress, they desire to share the final published versions of articles with their colleagues.

URL : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/leap.1090/full

What are the personal and professional characteristics that distinguish the researchers who publish in high- and low-impact journals? A multi-national web-based survey

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Authors : Carlos Eduardo Paiva, Raphael L C Araujo, Bianca Sakamoto Ribeiro Paiva, Cristiano de Pádua Souza, Flavio Mavignier Cárcano, Marina Moreira Costa, Sérgio Vicente Serrano, João Paulo Nogueira Lima

Purpose

This study identifies the personal and professional profiles of researchers with a greater potential to publish high-impact academic articles.

Method

The study involved conducting an international survey of journal authors using a  web-based questionnaire. The survey examined personal characteristics, funding, and the perceived barriers of research quality, work-life balance, and satisfaction and motivation in relation to career.

The processes of manuscript writing and journal publication were measured using an online questionnaire that was developed for this study. The responses were compared between the two groups of researchers using logistic regression models.

Results

A total of 269 questionnaires were analysed. The researchers shared some common perceptions; both groups reported that they were seeking recognition (or to be leaders in their areas) rather than financial remuneration.

Furthermore, both groups identified time and funding constraints as the main obstacles to their scientific activities.

The amount of time that was spent on research activities, having >5 graduate students under supervision, never using text editing services prior to the publication of articles, and living in a developed and English-speaking country were the independent variables that were associated with their article getting a greater chance of publishing in a high-impact journal.

In contrast, using one’s own resources to perform studies decreased the chance of publishing in high-impact journals.

Conclusions

The researchers who publish in high-impact journals have distinct profiles compared with the researchers who publish in low-impact journals.

English language abilities and the actual amount of time that is dedicated to research and scientific writing, as well as aspects that relate to the availability of financial resources are the factors that are associated with a successful researcher’s profile.

URL : What are the personal and professional characteristics that distinguish the researchers who publish in high- and low-impact journals? A multi-national web-based survey

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.3332/ecancer.2017.718

Open Access and the Graduate Author: A Dissertation Anxiety Manual

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Authors : Jill Cirasella, Polly Thistlethwaite

The process of completing a dissertation is stressful—deadlines are scary, editing is hard, formatting is tricky, and defending is terrifying. (And, of course, postgraduate employment is often uncertain.)

Now that dissertations are deposited and distributed electronically, students must perform yet another anxiety-inducing task: deciding whether they want to make their dissertations immediately open access (OA) or, at universities that require OA, coming to terms with openness.

For some students, mostly in the humanities and some of the social sciences, who hope to transform their dissertations into books, OA has become a bogeyman, a supposed saboteur of book contracts and destroyer of careers.

This chapter examines the various access-related anxieties that plague graduate students. It is a kind of diagnostic and statistical manual of dissertation anxieties—a “Dissertation Anxiety Manual,” if you will—describing anxieties surrounding book contracts, book sales, plagiarism, juvenilia, the ambiguity of the term online, and changes in scholarly research and production.

URL : http://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_pubs/286/