Catégorie : EN

Catégories
EN

Open Access—Are the Barriers to Change Receding?

The move from subscription only publishing of scholarly articles to open access has been much slower than previously anticipated by many Open Access (OA) advocates. Despite the many advantages that OA offers, this particular branch of E-commerce imposes several formidable barriers to change.

A framework conceptualizing these barriers that was developed over a decade ago was revisited to see if the significance of these barriers has changed. Nowadays, building the IT infrastructure, support from indexing services and finding a sustainable business model are no longer important barriers. For gold OA publishing the academic reward system is still a major obstacle, whereas more marketing and critical mass is needed for both gold OA and green OA.

Green OA self-archiving is still also strongly affected by what subscription publishers allow. In the overall balance the situation has nevertheless improved significantly.

URL : http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/1/1/5

Catégories
EN

Toward Reproducible Computational Research: An Empirical Analysis of Data and Code Policy Adoption by Journals

Journal policy on research data and code availability is an important part of the ongoing shift toward publishing reproducible computational science. This article extends the literature by studying journal data sharing policies by year (for both 2011 and 2012) for a referent set of 170 journals.

We make a further contribution by evaluating code sharing policies, supplemental materials policies, and open access status for these 170 journals for each of 2011 and 2012.

We build a predictive model of open data and code policy adoption as a function of impact factor and publisher and find higher impact journals more likely to have open data and code policies and scientific societies more likely to have open data and code policies than commercial publishers.

We also find open data policies tend to lead open code policies, and we find no relationship between open data and code policies and either supplemental material policies or open access journal status.

Of the journals in this study, 38% had a data policy, 22% had a code policy, and 66% had a supplemental materials policy as of June 2012. This reflects a striking one year increase of 16% in the number of data policies, a 30% increase in code policies, and a 7% increase in the number of supplemental materials policies.

We introduce a new dataset to the community that categorizes data and code sharing, supplemental materials, and open access policies in 2011 and 2012 for these 170 journals.

URL : http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0067111

Catégories
EN

Using bibliometrics to support the facilitation of cross-disciplinary communication

Given the importance of cross-disciplinary research (CDR), facilitating CDR effectiveness is a priority for many institutions and funding agencies. There are a number of CDR types, however, and the effectiveness of facilitation efforts will require sensitivity to that diversity. This article presents a method characterizing a spectrum of CDR designed to inform facilitation efforts that relies on bibliometric techniques and citation data.

We illustrate its use by the Toolbox Project, an ongoing effort to enhance cross-disciplinary communication in CDR teams through structured, philosophical dialogue about research assumptions in a workshop setting. Toolbox Project workshops have been conducted with more than 85 research teams, but the project’s extensibility to an objectively characterized range of CDR collaborations has not been examined.

To guide wider application of the Toolbox Project, we have developed a method that uses multivariate statistical analyses of transformed citation proportions from published manuscripts to identify candidate areas of CDR, and then overlays information from previous Toolbox participant groups on these areas to determine candidate areas for future application.

The approach supplies 3 results of general interest:
1) A way to employ small data sets and familiar statistical techniques to characterize CDR spectra as a guide to scholarship on CDR patterns and trends.
2) A model for using bibliometric techniques to guide broadly applicable interventions similar to the Toolbox.
3) A method for identifying the location of collaborative CDR teams on a map of scientific activity, of use to research administrators, research teams, and other efforts to enhance CDR projects.

URL : http://www.cals.uidaho.edu/toolbox/pres/WilliamsEtAl-UsingBiblioToFacilitateCDC-JASIST-2013.pdf

Catégories
EN

Trust in Digital Repositories

ISO 16363:2012, Space Data and Information Transfer Systems – Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories (ISO TRAC), outlines actions a repository can take to be considered trustworthy, but research examining whether the repository’s designated community of users associates such actions with trustworthiness has been limited. Drawing from this ISO document and the management and information systems literatures, this paper discusses findings from interviews with 66 archaeologists and quantitative social scientists.

We found similarities and differences across the disciplines and among the social scientists. Both disciplinary communities associated trust with a repository’s transparency. However, archaeologists mentioned guarantees of preservation and sustainability more frequently than the social scientists, who talked about institutional reputation. Repository processes were also linked to trust, with archaeologists more frequently citing metadata issues and social scientists discussing data selection and cleaning processes.

Among the social scientists, novices mentioned the influence of colleagues on their trust in repositories almost twice as much as the experts. We discuss the implications our findings have for identifying trustworthy repositories and how they extend the models presented in the management and information systems literatures.

URL : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/8.1.143

Catégories
EN

Data Management and Preservation Planning for Big Science

‘Big Science’ – that is, science which involves large collaborations with dedicated facilities, and involving large data volumes and multinational investments – is often seen as different when it comes to data management and preservation planning.

Big Science handles its data differently from other disciplines and has data management problems that are qualitatively different from other disciplines. In part, these differences arise from the quantities of data involved, but possibly more importantly from the cultural, organisational and technical distinctiveness of these academic cultures.

Consequently, the data management systems are typically and rationally bespoke, but this means that the planning for data management and preservation (DMP) must also be bespoke.

These differences are such that ‘just read and implement the OAIS specification’ is reasonable Data Management and Preservation (DMP) advice, but this bald prescription can and should be usefully supported by a methodological ‘toolkit’, including overviews, case-studies and costing models to provide guidance on developing best practice in DMP policy and infrastructure for these projects, as well as considering OAIS validation, audit and cost modelling.

In this paper, we build on previous work with the LIGO collaboration to consider the role of DMP planning within these big science scenarios, and discuss how to apply current best practice.

We discuss the result of the MaRDI-Gross project (Managing Research Data Infrastructures – Big Science), which has been developing a toolkit to provide guidelines on the application of best practice in DMP planning within big science projects.

This is targeted primarily at projects’ engineering managers, but intending also to help funders collaborate on DMP plans which satisfy the requirements imposed on them.

URL : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/8.1.29

Catégories
EN

arXiv e-prints and the journal of record: An analysis of roles and relationships

Authors : Vincent Larivière, Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Benoit Macaluso, Staša Milojević, Blaise Cronin, Mike Thelwal

Since its creation in 1991, arXiv has become central to the diffusion of research in a number of fields. Combining data from the entirety of arXiv and the Web of Science (WoS), this paper investigates (a) the proportion of papers across all disciplines that are on arXiv and the proportion of arXiv papers that are in the WoS, (b) elapsed time between arXiv submission and journal publication, and (c) the aging characteristics and scientific impact of arXiv e-prints and their published version.

It shows that the proportion of WoS papers found on arXiv varies across the specialties of physics and mathematics, and that only a few specialties make extensive use of the repository.

Elapsed time between arXiv submission and journal publication has shortened but remains longer in mathematics than in physics. In physics, mathematics, as well as in astronomy and astrophysics, arXiv versions are cited more promptly and decay faster than WoS papers.

The arXiv versions of papers – both published and unpublished – have lower citation rates than published papers, although there is almost no difference in the impact of the arXiv versions of both published and unpublished papers. »

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.3261

Catégories
EN

‘Héloïse’: towards a co-ordinated ecosystem approach for the archiving of scientific publications?

Authors : Hans Dillaerts, Ghislaine Chartron

With the continued development of open access policies, it is important to promote consensus-building projects with the various stakeholders. This article gives an account of how such collaboration has facilitated the construction of the project Héloïse.

This project is a French information service dedicated to describing the policies of French publishers on the self-archiving of scientific publications. Héloïse represents a real tool of mediation whose development involved much debate between publishers and research stakeholders.

This article seeks to demonstrate that the development of trust between the actors involved in the project was a major component of its success.

URL : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00834411