Catégorie : EN

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Access, accommodation, and science: Knowledge in an “open” world

« The rising popularity of open access (OA) publishing in scholarly communities is purportedly leading to increased public knowledge. At least, that’s a key piece of the OA moral argument. This is especially true for discussions of scientific research.

We argue, however, that while there have been significant moves to provide better material/technological access to research, OA advocates must still tackle the issue of making original scientific research conceptually accessible. Despite being freely available on the Internet, articles are not also by default linguistically, conceptually, or ideologically accessible to the global public(s) they are intended to reach.

In this article, we examine how OA coupled with innovative scientific communication practices can help align the ideals of OA with the realities of complex, specialized genres of writing to provide better, more “open,” access to research.

We look to PLOS ONE and the PLOS Blog Network to discuss how the innovative material access of PLOS ONE coupled with the communication strategies of PLOS Bloggers can work together toward more openly accessible original scientific research articles. »

URL : http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4341

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EN

The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer: The Effect of Open Access on Cites to Science Journals Across the Quality Spectrum

An open-access journal allows free online access to its articles, obtaining revenue from fees charged to submitting authors. Using panel data on science journals, we are able to circumvent some problems plaguing previous studies of the impact of open access on citations.

We find that moving from paid to open access increases cites by 8% on average in our sample, but the effect varies across the quality of content. Open access increases cites to the best content (top-ranked journals or articles in upper quintiles of citations within a volume) but reduces cites to lower-quality content.

We construct a model to explain these findings in which being placed on a broad open-access platform can increase the competition among articles for readers’ attention. We can find structural parameters allowing the model to fit the quintile results quite closely.

URL : http://ssrn.com/abstract=2269040

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EN

Open Access Subject Repositories – an Overview

Subject repositories are open web collections of working papers or manuscript copies of published scholarly articles, specific to particular scientific disciplines. The first repositories emerged already in the early 1990’s and in some fields of science they have become an important channel for the dissemination of research results.

Using quite strict inclusion criteria 56 subject repositories were identified from a much larger number indexed in two repository indexes. A closer study of these demonstrated a huge variety in sizes, organizational models, functions and topics.

When they first started to emerge subject repositories catered to a strong market demand, but the later development of Internet search engines, the rapid growth of institutional repositories and the tightening up of journal publisher OA policies seems to be slowing down their growth.

URL : http://www.openaccesspublishing.org/repositories/Subject_Repositories.pdf

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EN

Ethics of using language editing services in an era of digital communication and heavily multiauthored papers

Scientists of many countries in which English is not the primary language routinely use a variety of manuscript preparation, correction or editing services, a practice that is openly endorsed by many journals and scientific institutions.

These services vary tremendously in their scope; at one end there is simple proof-reading, and at the other extreme there is in-depth and extensive peer-reviewing, proposal preparation, statistical analyses, re-writing and co-writing.

In this paper, the various types of service are reviewed, along with authorship guidelines, and the question is raised of whether the high-end services surpass most guidelines’ criteria for authorship. Three other factors are considered.

First, the ease of collaboration possible in the internet era allows multiple iterations between authors and the editing service, so essentially, papers can be co-written.

Second, ‘editing services’ often offer subject-specific experts who comment not only on the language, but interpret and improve scientific content.

Third, the trend towards heavily multi-authored papers implies that the threshold necessary to earn authorship is declining.

The inevitable conclusion is that at some point the contributions by ‘editing services’ should be deemed sufficient to warrant authorship. Trying to enforce any guidelines would likely be futile, but nevertheless, it might be time to revisit the ethics of using some of the high-end ‘editing services’.

In an increasingly international job market, recognizing this problem might prove progressively more important in authorship disputes, the allocation of research grants, and hiring decisions. »

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.2401

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EN

The Role of the Library in the Research Enterprise

Libraries have provided services to researchers for many years. Changes in technology and new publishing models provide opportunities for libraries to be more involved in the research enterprise.

Within this article, the author reviews traditional library services, briefly describes the eScience and publishing landscape as it relates to libraries, and explores possible library programs in support of research. Many of the new opportunities require new partnerships, both within the institution and externally.

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.2013.1043

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EN

Data Sharing by Scientists: Practices and Perceptions

Background

Scientific research in the 21st century is more data intensive and collaborative than in the past. It is important to study the data practices of researchers – data accessibility, discovery, re-use, preservation and, particularly, data sharing. Data sharing is a valuable part of the scientific method allowing for verification of results and extending research from prior results.

Methodology/Principal Findings

A total of 1329 scientists participated in this survey exploring current data sharing practices and perceptions of the barriers and enablers of data sharing. Scientists do not make their data electronically available to others for various reasons, including insufficient time and lack of funding. Most respondents are satisfied with their current processes for the initial and short-term parts of the data or research lifecycle (collecting their research data; searching for, describing or cataloging, analyzing, and short-term storage of their data) but are not satisfied with long-term data preservation.

Many organizations do not provide support to their researchers for data management both in the short- and long-term. If certain conditions are met (such as formal citation and sharing reprints) respondents agree they are willing to share their data. There are also significant differences and approaches in data management practices based on primary funding agency, subject discipline, age, work focus, and world region.

Conclusions/Significance

Barriers to effective data sharing and preservation are deeply rooted in the practices and culture of the research process as well as the researchers themselves. New mandates for data management plans from NSF and other federal agencies and world-wide attention to the need to share and preserve data could lead to changes. Large scale programs, such as the NSF-sponsored DataNET (including projects like DataONE) will both bring attention and resources to the issue and make it easier for scientists to apply sound data management principles.

URL : http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0021101

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EN

Collaborative Marketing for Electronic Resources: A Project Report and Discussion of Implications

This article reports on the design and findings of a project concerning the feasibility of a collaborative model to benchmark the marketing of electronic resources in institutions of higher education.

This inter-national project gathered 100 libraries to move in lockstep through the process of a typical marketing cycle that included running a brief marketing campaign and reporting findings to each other. The findings show good reasons and strong support for this kind of model.

URL : http://collaborativelibrarianship.org/index.php/jocl/article/view/204