Catégorie : EN

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EN

Usage Bibliometrics as a Tool to Measure Research Activity

Authors : Edwin A. Henneken, Michael J. Kurtz

Measures for research activity and impact have become an integral ingredient in the assessment of a wide range of entities (individual researchers, organizations, instruments, regions, disciplines).

Traditional bibliometric indicators, like publication and citation based indicators, provide an essential part of this picture, but cannot describe the complete picture.

Since reading scholarly publications is an essential part of the research life cycle, it is only natural to introduce measures for this activity in attempts to quantify the efficiency, productivity and impact of an entity.

Citations and reads are significantly different signals, so taken together, they provide a more complete picture of research activity. Most scholarly publications are now accessed online, making the study of reads and their patterns possible.

Click-stream logs allow us to follow information access by the entire research community, real-time. Publication and citation datasets just reflect activity by authors. In addition, download statistics will help us identify publications with significant impact, but which do not attract many citations.

Click-stream signals are arguably more complex than, say, citation signals. For one, they are a superposition of different classes of readers. Systematic downloads by crawlers also contaminate the signal, as does browsing behavior.

We discuss the complexities associated with clickstream data and how, with proper filtering, statistically significant relations and conclusions can be inferred from download statistics.

We describe how download statistics can be used to describe research activity at different levels of aggregation, ranging from organizations to countries. These statistics show a correlation with socio-economic indicators.

A comparison will be made with traditional bibliometric indicators. We will argue that astronomy is representative of more general trends.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.02153

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EN

Decentralized creation of academic documents using a Network Attached Storage (NAS) server

Authors : Johannes Wilm, Afshin Sadeghi, Christoph Lange, Philipp Mayr

Scholarly document creation continues to face various obstacles. Scholarly text production requires more complex word processors than other forms of texts because of the complex structures of citations, formulas and figures.

The need for peer review, often single-blind or double-blind, creates needs for document management that other texts do not require. Additionally, the need for collaborative editing, security and strict document access rules means that many existing word processors are imperfect solutions for academics.

Nevertheless, most papers continue to be written using Microsoft Word (Sadeghi et al. 2017).

We here analyze some of the problems with existing academic solutions and then present an argument why we believe that running an open source academic writing solution for academic purposes, such as Fidus Writer, on a Network Attached Storage (NAS) server could be a viable alternative.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.04185

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EN

The Politics of the Commons: Reform or Revolt?

Author : Vangelis Papadimitropoulos

In this paper I present a critical overview of the contemporary political theories of the Commons, classified in three main categories: 1) the liberal 2) the reformist and 3) the anti-capitalist.

Advocates of the liberal theory of the Commons take a stand in favour of the coexistence of the Commons with the state and the market. The reformists argue for the gradual adjustment of capitalism to the Commons with the aid of a partner state, while the anti-capitalists contrast both the liberals and the reformists by supporting the development of the commons against and beyond capitalism.

I make the case that both the liberal and the anti-capitalist theorists miss the likelihood of technology rendering redundant large-scale production in the future, and forcing thus capitalism to adjust to the Commons in the long run.

The prospect, therefore, of an open cooperativism introduced by the reformist theory holds significant potential with respect to the future development of the Commons. For the Commons however to expand and flourish, a global institutional reform, followed by a set of inter-local and international principles, is sine qua non.

Hence, transparency of information, distribution of value, solidarity and bottom-up self-management are the core variables of individual and collective autonomy inasmuch as they permit a community or group to formulate its values in relation to the needs and skills of its members.

URL : The Politics of the Commons: Reform or Revolt?

Alternative location : http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/852

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EN

Open Educational Resources and Rhetorical Paradox in the Neoliberal Univers(ity)

Author : Nora Almeida

As a phenomenon and a quandary, openness has provoked conversations about inequities within higher education systems, particularly in regards to information access, social inclusion, and pedagogical practice.

But whether or not open education can address these inequities, and to what effect, depends on what we mean by “open” and specifically, whether openness reflexively acknowledges the fraught political, economic, and ethical dimensions of higher education and of knowledge production processes.

This essay explores the ideological and rhetorical underpinnings of the open educational resource (OER) movement in the context of the neoliberal university.

This essay also addresses the conflation of value and values in higher education—particularly how OER production processes and scholarship labor are valued. Lastly, this essay explores whether OER initiatives provide an opportunity to reimagine pedagogical practices, to reconsider authority paradigms, and potentially, to dismantle and redress exclusionary educational practices in and outside of the classroom.

Through a critique of neoliberalism as critically limiting, an exploration of autonomy, and a refutation of the precept that OER can magically solve social inequalities in higher education, the author ultimately advocates for a reconsideration of OER in context and argues that educators should prioritize conversations about what openness means within their local educational communities.

URL : Open Educational Resources and Rhetorical Paradox in the Neoliberal Univers(ity)

Alternative location : http://libraryjuicepress.com/journals/index.php/jclis/article/view/16

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EN

Inventory of Research Data Management Services in France

Author : Violaine Rebouillat

Data has become more and more ubiquitous in the research context. As a result, a growing number of services are created to analyze, store and share research data. This has induced the Research Data Working Group of the Digital Scientific Library (BSN10) to launch an inventory of French research data management services, funded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.

The inventory covers all services that are managed by French institutions and infrastructures and dedicated to public research teams from all fields. Sixty services, provided by forty-five structures, have already been identified and analyzed.

The paper describes the methodology used to carry out the inventory and analyzes these first results by service type, scope and research field. It also emphasizes the heterogeneous and emergent nature of the inventoried services.

URL : Inventory of Research Data Management Services in France

Alternative location : http://ebooks.iospress.nl/publication/46651

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EN

Claims About Benefits of Open Access to Society (Beyond Academia)

Author : ElHassan ElSabry

This study tries to systematically identify claims about societal benefits of Open Access by analyzing different documents written by Open Access supporters. Three types of documents are used: key declarations and statements in support of Open Access, Open Access policies issued by public funding agencies and journal editorials announcing the adoption of Open Access.

Analysis shows these three types emphasize different benefits for Open Access as they address different audience. There is strong support of the idea that Open Access has benefits to different groups of people outside side the university/credentialed research institutes.

It is not clear how much evidence is available to support these claims, but identifying them would suggest new stakeholders to involve in the conversation and perhaps also inform the ongoing debate about who should bear the cost of Open Access.

URL : Claims About Benefits of Open Access to Society (Beyond Academia)

Alternative location : http://ebooks.iospress.nl/publication/46640

Catégories
EN

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

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