Catégorie : EN

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EN

Information in the ecosystem: Against the “information ecosystem”

Authors : Timothy B. Norris, Todd Suomela

The “information ecosystem” metaphor is widely used in academic libraries and has become nearly ubiquitous when speaking of the information systems that support scholarly communication and varied forms of data sharing and publication.

The trending use of this language arises from non-academic applications — for example in big data (the Hadoop ecosystem) or software development (the node.js ecosystem) — and there remains little critical examination of the use of this metaphor.

Indeed, the definition of ecosystem as the set of relations between living organisms and their surrounding non-living environment is apparently not directly a part of the metaphor.

This paper first describes the emergence of ecological thinking and how it was influenced by early information science and then explores how different “ecologies” are used within the academy, including in the emergent field of information ecology.

A short critique of the metaphor is then posed and the paper concludes that the information ecosystem metaphor is useful, yet at the same time there are dangerous elements that render aspects of human societies and natural ecosystems invisible.

URL : http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/6847

Catégories
EN

The interactive library as a virtual working space

Author : Andreas Degkwitz

The internet and the new digital media are challenging the traditional business model of academic libraries and enable new capabilities of information provisioning and new shapes of collaborations between the librarians and the users.

To pick up the demands and the expectations of the many users, whose information behavior is heavily influenced by the internet, a new business model for academic libraries has to be designed urgently.

The aim of the project is to analyze and to identify the organizational and technical requirements of a business model for the future library, which is based on the potential of the internet and the new media.

The result is a pilot study about the interactive, multi-user driven library as the future business model for libraries.

URL : The interactive library as a virtual working space

DOI : http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10214

Catégories
EN

Academics’ behaviors and attitudes towards open access publishing in scholarly journals

Authors : Jennifer Rowley, Frances Johnson, Laura Sbaffi, Will Frass, Elaine Devine

While there is significant progress with policy and a lively debate regarding the potential impact of open access publishing, few studies have examined academics’ behavior and attitudes to open access publishing (OAP) in scholarly journals.

This article seeks to address this gap through an international and interdisciplinary survey of academics. Issues covered include: use of and intentions regarding OAP, and perceptions regarding advantages and disadvantages of OAP, journal article publication services, peer review, and reuse.

Despite reporting engagement in OAP, academics were unsure about their future intentions regarding OAP. Broadly, academics identified the potential for wider circulation as the key advantage of OAP, and were more positive about its benefits than they were negative about its disadvantages. As regards services, rigorous peer review, followed by rapid publication were most valued.

Academics reported strong views on reuse of their work; they were relatively happy with noncommercial reuse, but not in favor of commercial reuse, adaptations, and inclusion in anthologies. Comparing science, technology, and medicine with arts, humanities, and social sciences showed a significant difference in attitude on a number of questions, but, in general, the effect size was small, suggesting that attitudes are relatively consistent across the academic community.

URL : http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/114578/

Catégories
EN

How quickly do publications get read? The evolution of Mendeley reader counts for new articles

Authors : Nabeil Maflahi, Mike Thelwall

Within science, citation counts are widely used to estimate research impact but publication delays mean that they are not useful for recent research. This gap can be filled by Mendeley reader counts, which are valuable early impact indicators for academic articles because they appear before citations and correlate strongly with them.

Nevertheless, it is not known how Mendeley readership counts accumulate within the year of publication, and so it is unclear how soon they can be used. In response, this paper reports a longitudinal weekly study of the Mendeley readers of articles in six library and information science journals from 2016.

The results suggest that Mendeley readers accrue from when articles are first available online and continue to steadily build. For journals with large publication delays, articles can already have substantial numbers of readers by their publication date.

Thus, Mendeley reader counts may even be useful as early impact indicators for articles before they have been officially published in a journal issue. If field normalised indicators are needed, then these can be generated when journal issues are published using the online first date.

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/2436/620522

 

Catégories
EN

Evolution of Wikipedia’s medical content: past, present and future

Authors : Thomas Shafee, Gwinyai Masukume, Lisa Kipersztok, Diptanshu Da, Mikael Häggström, James Heilman

As one of the most commonly read online sources of medical information, Wikipedia is an influential public health platform. Its medical content, community, collaborations and challenges have been evolving since its creation in 2001, and engagement by the medical community is vital for ensuring its accuracy and completeness.

Both the encyclopaedia’s internal metrics as well as external assessments of its quality indicate that its articles are highly variable, but improving. Although content can be edited by anyone, medical articles are primarily written by a core group of medical professionals.

Diverse collaborative ventures have enhanced medical article quality and reach, and opportunities for partnerships are more available than ever. Nevertheless, Wikipedia’s medical content and community still face significant challenges, and a socioecological model is used to structure specific recommendations.

We propose that the medical community should prioritise the accuracy of biomedical information in the world’s most consulted encyclopaedia.

URL : Evolution of Wikipedia’s medical content: past, present and future

Alternative location : http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2017/08/24/jech-2016-208601

Catégories
EN

Toward a homogenization of academic social sites: a longitudinal study of profiles in Academia.edu, Google Scholar Citations and ResearchGate

Author : José Luis Ortega

Purpose

The main objective is to analyse the distribution of profiles from academic social networking sites according to disciplines, academic statuses and gender, and detect possible biases with regard to the real staff distribution. In this way, it intends to know whether these academic places tend to become specialized sites or, on the contrary, there is a homogenization process.

Design/methodology/approach

To this purpose, the evolution of profiles of one organization (CSIC) in three major academic social sites (Academia.edu, Google Scholar Citations and ResearchGate) through six quarterly samples since April 2014 to September 2015 are tracked.

Findings

Longitudinal results show important disciplinary biases but with strong increase of new profiles form different areas. They also suggests that these virtual spaces are gaining more stability and they tend toward a equilibrate environment.

Originality/value

This is the first longitudinal study of profiles from three major academic social networking sites and it allows to shed light on the future of these platforms’ populations.

URL : http://jlortega.scienceontheweb.net/articles/OIR_Ortega_2017.pdf

Catégories
EN

Institutional Repositories and Academic Social Networks: Competition or Complement? A Study of Open Access Policy Compliance vs. ResearchGate Participation

Authors : Julia A. Lovett, Andrée J. Rathemacher, Divana Boukari, Corey Lang

INTRODUCTION

The popularity of academic social networks like ResearchGate and Academia.edu indicates that scholars want to share their work, yet for universities with Open Access (OA) policies, these sites may be competing with institutional repositories (IRs) for content.

This article seeks to reveal researcher practices, attitudes, and motivations around uploading their work to ResearchGate and complying with an institutional OA Policy through a study of faculty at the University of Rhode Island (URI).

METHODS

We conducted a population study to examine the participation by 558 full-time URI faculty members in the OA Policy and ResearchGate followed by a survey of 728 full-time URI faculty members about their participation in the two services.

DISCUSSION The majority of URI faculty does not participate in the OA Policy or use ResearchGate. Authors’ primary motivations for participation are sharing their work more broadly and increasing its visibility and impact.

Faculty who participate in ResearchGate are more likely to participate in the OA Policy, and vice versa. The fact that the OA Policy targets the author manuscript and not the final published article constitutes a significant barrier to participation.

CONCLUSION

Librarians should not view academic social networks as a threat to Open Access. Authors’ strong preference for sharing the final, published version of their articles provides support for calls to hasten the transition to a Gold OA publishing system.

Misunderstandings about the OA Policy and copyright indicate a need for librarians to conduct greater education and outreach to authors about options for legally sharing articles.

URL : Institutional Repositories and Academic Social Networks: Competition or Complement? A Study of Open Access Policy Compliance vs. ResearchGate Participation

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2183