The European Landscape Study of Research Data Management offers an overview of how to effectively support researchers in their data management. It looks at interventions by funding agencies, research institutions, national bodies and publishers across the European Union member states. The report also makes recommendations that organisations can adopt to help their researchers.
Catégorie : EN
Many authors appear to think that most open access (OA) journals charge authors for their publications. This brief communication examines the basis for such beliefs and finds it wanting. Indeed, in this study of over 9,000 OA journals included in the Directory of Open Access Journals, only 28% charged authors for publishing in their journals. This figure, however, was highest in various disciplines in medicine (47%) and the sciences (43%) and lowest in the humanities (4%) and the arts (0%).
URL : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.22972/full
Over the past 15 years the Web has transformed the ways in which we search for information and use it. In more recent years, we have seen the emergence of a new array of innovative tools that collectively go under the name of ‘Web 2.0’, in which the information user is also increasingly an information producer (i.e., prosumer), by sharing or creating content.
The success of Web 2.0 tools for personal use is only partially replicated in the professional sphere and, particularly, in the academic environment in relation with research and teaching.
To date, very few studies have explored the level of adoption of Web 2.0 among academic researchers in their research and teaching activity. It is not known in what way how and how much Web 2.0 is currently used within research communities, and we are not aware of the drivers and the drawbacks of the use of Web 2.0 tools in academia, where the majority of people is focused either on research or on teaching activities.
To analyse these issues, i.e. the combined adoption of Web 2.0 tools in teaching and research, the authors carried out a survey among teaching and researching staff of the University of Breda in The Netherlands. This country was chosen mainly because it is on the cutting edge as far as innovation is concerned. An important driver in choosing the Breda University’s academic community was the fact that one of the two authors of this survey works as senior researcher at this university.
The purpose of our survey was to explore the level of adoption of Web 2.0 tools among the academic communities. We were interested in investigating how they were using these tools in the creation of scientific knowledge both in their research and teaching activity. We were also interested in analysing differences in the level of adoption of Web 2.0 tools with regard to researchers’ position, age, gender, and research field.
Finally, in our study we explored the issue of peer reviewing in the Web 2.0 setting. In particular, we investigated whether social peer review is regarded by researchers as a viable alternative to the current closed peer review system (single-blind or double blind).
We approached about 60 staff members, but only 12 faculty members completed the survey fully. This means that our results can only be regarded as exploratory, but we still believe that they represent a complementary perspective with respect to previous studies. »
URL : http://liber.library.uu.nl/index.php/lq/article/view/8108
This Article argues that copyright jurisprudence has lost sight of the knowledge principle at the heart of the Constitutional justification for copyright. The Framers envisioned the objective of copyright as promoting the advancement of knowledge for a democratic society by increasing access to published works.
Under what is best termed the “knowledge principle,” access to existing knowledge is a necessary condition for the creation of new knowledge. Copyright jurisprudence has largely protected the interests of producers – from early booksellers to modern Hollywood film companies – failing to notice the central role of access to works as a necessary pre-condition to the creation of new works.
The realities of the digital era further hinder the functioning of this mechanism. Ownership of copies of texts has morphed into a limited right of possession of digital files. Public libraries can no longer fulfill their mission of maximizing the circulation of materials in order to spread available knowledge among citizens.
This Article proposes an alternative model to the conventional copyright theories, focusing on the critical role that access to knowledge resources plays in the dynamic processes at work in the production of knowledge and the creation of new works.
This Article proposes a non-waivable “fair access” right exercisable by public libraries in order to realign copyright with its Constitutional justification, and more importantly to support the knowledge creation process for the future of our democratic society.
This report examines policies and strategies towards open access (OA) of scientific data in the European Research Area (ERA), Brazil, Canada, Japan and the US from 2000 onwards. The analysis examines strategies that aim to foster OA scientific data—such as the types of incentives given at the researcher and institutional levels and the level of compliance by researchers and funded organisations —and also examines how, and whether, these policies are monitored and enforced. The infrastructures developed to store and share OA scientific data are also examined.
The analysis is supported by findings from the literature on the global progression of OA scientific data since 2000—including its growth as a segment of scholarly publishing—as well as some of the broader trends, themes and debates that have emerged from the movement.
This document is a policy paper from the e-InfraNet project concerning open approaches for the research and higher education communities across the European Research Area (ERA). The document has been produced to provide advice and guidance on this topic to the Commission.
In order to realize the full potential of ‘Open’ e-InfraNet recommends that a broad policy framework covering open access to content and infrastructure as well as open approaches to the further development of ‘Open’ itself, and to the way research and higher education is established and developed.
The basis for the policy framework as outlined in this paper is an overview of the current ‘Open’ landscape outlining contexts, drivers, achievements and effects of the various ‘opens’, as well as a number of common issues. »
Research on practices to share and reuse data will inform the design of infrastructure to support data collection, management, and discovery in the long tail of science and technology. These are research domains in which data tend to be local in character, minimally structured, and minimally documented. We report on a ten-year study of the Center for Embedded Network Sensing (CENS), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center.
We found that CENS researchers are willing to share their data, but few are asked to do so, and in only a few domain areas do their funders or journals require them to deposit data. Few repositories exist to accept data in CENS research areas.. Data sharing tends to occur only through interpersonal exchanges. CENS researchers obtain data from repositories, and occasionally from registries and individuals, to provide context, calibration, or other forms of background for their studies. Neither CENS researchers nor those who request access to CENS data appear to use external data for primary research questions or for replication of studies.
CENS researchers are willing to share data if they receive credit and retain first rights to publish their results. Practices of releasing, sharing, and reusing of data in CENS reaffirm the gift culture of scholarship, in which goods are bartered between trusted colleagues rather than treated as commodities.
URL : If We Share Data, Will Anyone Use Them?
DOI : 10.1371/journal.pone.0067332