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The Myth of European Term Harmonisation 27 Public…

The Myth of European Term Harmonisation: 27 Public Domains for the 27 Member States :

“The term of protection of copyright and related rights is generally considered to be one of the best harmonised areas of European copyright law. However, close examination of the EU Term Directive’s intricate provisions reveals a piecemeal and permissive approach to harmonisation which preserves many differences between the national rules. In this report, four main sources of legislative variability are identified and analysed: a) contagion from unharmonised areas of substantive copyright law; b) explicit exceptions to the harmonisation of the term of protection; c) national related rights of unharmonised term; and d) incorrect implementation of the provisions of the Term Directive into national law.

As a result, the desired harmonising effect has not been fully achieved: although a single rule may be applicable across the EU in theory, drastically divergent terms of protection may attach to the same information product depending on the jurisdiction within which protection is sought. In this way, the territorial nature of copyright undercuts harmonisation efforts, forcing the public domain to contract and expand according to divergent national rules. The result is a legislative framework that makes cross-border rights clearance calculation difficult, hampering end-users and cultural heritage organisations from taking full avail of the new opportunities now technically available for the digitisation and exploitation of the public domain. If the EU wishes to establish a truly harmonised term of protection for copyright and related rights, a more committed and comprehensive approach will be a necessary.”

URL : http://ssrn.com/abstract=2145862

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Open Access and A2K Collaborative Experiences in Latin…

Open Access and A2K: Collaborative Experiences in Latin America :

“Today, information is at the heart of all economies. Modern societies must keep pace with the growth of knowledge. This has become crucial for sustainable development. But, it is also important to note that restrictions exist with regard to accessing knowledge, with large numbers of people in the world who are being left behind in terms of having access to knowledge. It is critical to overcome these barriers in any possible way. While the Internet and digital technologies facilitate access to knowledge, at the same time there are certain barriers that prevent access. An alternative way to restore the lost equilibrium is the development of resources that favor open access to knowledge. In this chapter the access to knowledge (A2K) movement is based on definitions coined by theorists Benkler (2006), Balkin (2010) and Shaver (2007), who advance the concept of human development and equal access to knowledge as distributive justice. This chapter focuses on the role of Latin American countries in the WIPO development agenda and the role of library associations against excessive intellectual property regulations which impose barriers to access and ultimately the creation of new knowledge. The concepts of A2K to Open Access (OA), showing how OA can restore knowledge as a public good on a global scale, are also discussed in this chapter.The chapter also provides an account of the growth of global OA, portrays the Latin American situation and takes into account OA indicators from Argentina, Chile and Brazil. It also reports on international and regional projects, describing several collaborative projects developed in the region. The results of a survey to members of the LLAAR1 discussion list are presented. Finally, the chapter arrives at conclusions that integrate the concepts of A2K, OA, collaborative work, and development and growth of Open Access in the region.”

URL : http://rephip.unr.edu.ar/handle/2133/2103

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Beyond open access: an examination of Australian academic publication behaviour

This study explored the publication behaviour of academics from Australian universities and how this impacted on the adoption of open access models of scholarly publishing. Using grounded theory as its methodology, the study developed theoretical models that identified publication practice. The study also indicated how this practice had been influenced by ongoing changes in government policy associated with research recognition. While the government policies aimed to improve Australian research quality, studies such as this thesis assist in determining the impact that changes made to research evaluation policies may have on the research community and research dissemination.

The study examined data collected through three methods: focus groups held with Australian academics and publishers, an online survey of academics from Australian universities and interviews with Australian academics and university based e-press managers. In total, two hundred and eighty-one participants contributed to this study, including twenty-three in-depth interviewees and thirteen focus group participants. The survey participants represented a cross section of the Australian university community, whilst the focus groups and interviews represented academics from two universities, one from the Group of Eight and the other from the Australian Technology Network.

The outcome of this study was a number of theoretical models that suggested that the changing policies associated with research recognition have narrowed the publication behaviour of the Australian academic community and that this could be to the detriment of the adoption of alternative models of scholarly publishing. The publication behaviour, which had a focus on tiered journal listings, resulted in a dissemination pattern that was primarily directed to the academy. This was of concern for disciplines that had a practitioner-based research focus. Such disciplines would benefit from open access dissemination.

The study also examined engagement with institutional repositories and highlighted the importance of mediation in populating the content of repositories. The process of permission-based mandates was supported as a means to develop repository content. Permission-based mandates allow academics to enter a non-exclusive agreement with their university or institution so that the university can manage copyright and repository submission processes on behalf of the academic. Academics can then focus on the process of publication, while mediators can manage copyright and the repository submission processes.

URL : http://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/view/rmit:160184

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Open access to scientific literature and research data…

Open access to scientific literature and research data: a window of opportunity for latin america :

“The advance that the international open access movement has had in the last decade may seem to suggest that we are witnessing an important change in the model of scientific communication. This paper introduces the fundamental concepts of this movement, and in turn tries to measure the impact it has had in Latin America based on the development of different strategies.”

URL : http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/23865

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Open evaluation a vision for entirely transparent post…

Open evaluation: a vision for entirely transparent post-publication peer review and rating for science :

“The two major functions of a scientific publishing system are to provide access to and evaluation of scientific papers. While open access (OA) is becoming a reality, open evaluation (OE), the other side of the coin, has received less attention. Evaluation steers the attention of the scientific community and thus the very course of science. It also influences the use of scientific findings in public policy. The current system of scientific publishing provides only journal prestige as an indication of the quality of new papers and relies on a non-transparent and noisy pre-publication peer-review process, which delays publication by many months on average. Here I propose an OE system, in which papers are evaluated post-publication in an ongoing fashion by means of open peer review and rating. Through signed ratings and reviews, scientists steer the attention of their field and build their reputation. Reviewers are motivated to be objective, because low-quality or self-serving signed evaluations will negatively impact their reputation. A core feature of this proposal is a division of powers between the accumulation of evaluative evidence and the analysis of this evidence by paper evaluation functions (PEFs). PEFs can be freely defined by individuals or groups (e.g., scientific societies) and provide a plurality of perspectives on the scientific literature. Simple PEFs will use averages of ratings, weighting reviewers (e.g., by H-index), and rating scales (e.g., by relevance to a decision process) in different ways. Complex PEFs will use advanced statistical techniques to infer the quality of a paper. Papers with initially promising ratings will be more deeply evaluated. The continual refinement of PEFs in response to attempts by individuals to influence evaluations in their own favor will make the system ungameable. OA and OE together have the power to revolutionize scientific publishing and usher in a new culture of transparency, constructive criticism, and collaboration.”

URL : http://www.frontiersin.org/Computational_Neuroscience/10.3389/fncom.2012.00079/full

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The Citation Merit of Scientific Publications We…

The Citation Merit of Scientific Publications :

“We propose a new method to assess the merit of any set of scientific papers in a given field based on the citations they receive. Given a field and a citation impact indicator, such as the mean citation or the h-index, the merit of a given set of n articles is identified with the probability that a randomly drawn set of n articles from a given pool of articles in that field has a lower citation impact according to the indicator in question. The method allows for comparisons between sets of articles of different sizes and fields. Using a dataset acquired from Thomson Scientific that contains the articles published in the periodical literature in the period 1998–2007, we show that the novel approach yields rankings of research units different from those obtained by a direct application of the mean citation or the h-index.”

URL : http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0049156

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An activity based costing model for long term…

An activity-based costing model for long-term preservation and dissemination of digital research data: the case of DANS :

“Financial sustainability is an important attribute of a trusted, reliable digital repository. The authors of this paper use the case study approach to develop an activity-based costing (ABC) model. This is used for estimating the costs of preserving digital research data and identifying options for improving and sustaining relevant activities. The model is designed in the environment of the Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) institute, a well-known trusted repository. The DANS–ABC model has been tested on empirical cost data from activities performed by 51 employees in frames of over 40 different national and international projects. Costs of resources are being assigned to cost objects through activities and cost drivers. The ‘euros per dataset’ unit of costs measurement is introduced to analyse the outputs of the model. Funders, managers and other decision-making stakeholders are being provided with understandable information connected to the strategic goals of the organisation. The latter is being achieved by linking the DANS–ABC model to another widely used managerial tool—the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). The DANS–ABC model supports costing of services provided by a data archive, while the combination of the DANS–ABC with a BSC identifies areas in the digital preservation process where efficiency improvements are possible.”

URL : http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00799-012-0092-1