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Access to Scientific Publications The Scientist’s Perspective …

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Access to Scientific Publications: The Scientist’s Perspective :

“Background : Scientific publishing is undergoing significant changes due to the growth of online publications, increases in the number of open access journals, and policies of funders and universities requiring authors to ensure that their publications become publicly accessible. Most studies of the impact of these changes have focused on the growth of articles available through open access or the number of open-access journals. Here, we investigated access to publications at a number of institutes and universities around the world, focusing on publications in HIV vaccine research – an area of biomedical research with special importance to the developing world.

Methods and Findings : We selected research papers in HIV vaccine research field, creating: 1) a first set of 50 most recently published papers with keywords “HIV vaccine” and 2) a second set of 200 articles randomly selected from those cited in the first set. Access to the majority (80%) of the recently published articles required subscription, while cited literature was much more accessible (67% freely available online). Subscriptions at a number of institutions around the world were assessed for providing access to subscription-only articles from the two sets. The access levels varied widely, ranging among institutions from 20% to 90%. Through the WHO-supported HINARI program, institutes in low-income countries had access comparable to that of institutes in the North. Finally, we examined the response rates for reprint requests sent to corresponding authors, a method commonly used before internet access became widespread. Contacting corresponding authors with requests for electronic copies of articles by email resulted in a 55-60% success rate, although in some cases it took up to 1.5 months to get a response.

Conclusions : While research articles are increasingly available on the internet in open access format, institutional subscriptions continue to play an important role. However, subscriptions do not provide access to the full range of HIV vaccine research literature. Access to papers through subscriptions is complemented by a variety of other means, including emailing corresponding authors, joint affiliations, use of someone else’s login information and posting requests on message boards. This complex picture makes it difficult to assess the real ability of scientists to access literature, but the observed differences in access levels between institutions suggest an unlevel playing field, in which some researchers have to spend more efforts than others to obtain the same information.”

URL : http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0027868
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0027868

Linking to Data Effect on Citation Rates in…

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Linking to Data – Effect on Citation Rates in Astronomy :

“Is there a difference in citation rates between articles that were published with links to data and articles that were not? Besides being interesting from a purely academic point of view, this question is also highly relevant for the process of furthering science. Data sharing not only helps the process of verification of claims, but also the discovery of new findings in archival data. However, linking to data still is a far cry away from being a “practice”, especially where it comes to authors providing these links during the writing and submission process. You need to have both a willingness and a publication mechanism in order to create such a practice. Showing that articles with links to data get higher citation rates might increase the willingness of scientists to take the extra steps of linking data sources to their publications. In this presentation we will show this is indeed the case: articles with links to data result in higher citation rates than articles without such links. The ADS is funded by NASA Grant NNX09AB39G.”

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3618

Not with a Bang but a Whimper The…

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Not with a Bang but a Whimper: The Politics of Accountability and Open Data in the UK :

“Can the pro-active release of raw datasets by the government lead to more participatory democracy and government accountability? This paper explores the limits of what is possible through open government data by examining the UK government’s recent release of historic data in its COINS database of public expenditure. The paper begins by examining the origins of the UK’s open government data policy. It shows that far, from constituting a radical departure from pre-existing practice, the use of open data as a tool of democratic consolidation is in fact the outcome of several long-term trends in British politics and administration. It then shows that these origins encouraged a limited view of the likely impact of open government data on the actual exercise of democratic accountability, one which emphasises the removal of institutional barriers to access and tends to be overly-optimistic about how widely these data are likely to be used by individual citizens. Although pro-active disclosure may make it easier for “the public” to obtain information, there are still numerous barriers to actually using it, including the technical challenge of processing the raw data itself, the expertise to understand it and the existence of opportunities to act effectively on it. Overall, the paper argues that far from encouraging direct participation, the resource requirements for using government datasets actually reinforce the importance of intermediary organisations capable of processing and interpreting them, and that a rights-based framework may not be a particularly informative way of understanding the effects of open government data on democratic practice. It also suggests that the experience of the COINS disclosure has thus far confirmed a number of key claims made by technological sceptics, including that information technology is likely to reinforce existing power relations rather than disrupting them.”

URL : http://ssrn.com/abstract=1899790

A Surfboard for Riding the Wave Towards a…

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A Surfboard for Riding the Wave. Towards a four country action programme on research data :

“The Riding the Wave report by the high level expert group on research data called for a collaborative data infrastructure that will enable researchers and other stakeholders from education, society and business to use, re-use and exploit research data to the maximum benefit of science and society. The Knowledge Exchange partners have embraced this vision and commissioned a report that translates Riding the Wave into actions for the four partner countries and beyond.

This paper builds on this report and presents an overview of the present situation with regard to research data in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom and offers broad outlines for a possible action programme for the four countries in realising the envisaged collaborative data infrastructure. An action programme at the level of four countries will require the involvement of all stakeholders from the scientific community.”

URL : http://knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=469

Legal Issues in Mass Digitization A Preliminary Analysis…

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Legal Issues in Mass Digitization: A Preliminary Analysis and Discussion Document :

“This Preliminary Analysis and Discussion Document (the “Analysis”) addresses the issues raised by the intersection between copyright law and the mass digitization of books. The Copyright Office (the “Office”) has prepared this Analysis for the purpose of facilitating further discussion among the affected parties and the public – discussions that may encompass a number of possible approaches, including voluntary initiatives, legislative options, or both.

On March 22, 2011, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected a proposed settlement of the class action lawsuit brought by the Authors Guild and a related suit by book publishers against Google for the mass digitization of books in several large U.S. libraries. The court ruled that the class action settlement would have redefined the relationship between copyright law and new technology, and encroached upon Congress’s ability to set copyright policy with respect to orphan works. Subsequently, on September 12, 2011, the Authors Guild and several prominent authors sued five university libraries that participated in Google’s mass digitization project as well as a library consortium known as the HathiTrust after the universities announced their intention to offer access to some of the book scans Google had provided to them.

These developments have sparked public debate on the risks and opportunities that mass book digitization may create for authors, publishers, libraries, technology companies, the general public, and the corresponding legal framework. The questions are many: What mass digitization projects are currently underway in the United States? What are the objectives and who are the intended beneficiaries? How are the exclusive rights of copyright owners implicated? What exceptions or limitations may apply, to whom, and in what circumstances? To the extent there are public policy goals at issue, what could Congress do to facilitate or control the boundaries of mass digitization projects? Would orphan works legislation help? Are efficient and costeffective licensing options available? Could Congress encourage or even require new licensing schemes for mass digitization? Could it provide direction and oversight to authors, publishers,
libraries, and technology companies as they explore solutions? Indeed, these stakeholders may be in the best position to find points of consensus and create strategies for the U.S. book and library sectors.

The issues discussed in this Analysis are complex and require public discussion. The Office recognizes that the Google Books proceeding, initiated more than six years ago, and the recently filed lawsuit involving the HathiTrust Digital Library will continue to influence the public debate over mass digitization. International developments may also contribute to the debate in the United States. Although the marketplace and the issues will continue to evolve, the Office believes there is sufficient information to undertake an intense public discussion about the broader policy implications of mass book digitization. By necessity, this discussion must address the relationship between the emerging digital marketplace and the existing copyright framework.”

URL : http://pub.bna.com/ptcj/USCOMassDigitization_October2011.pdf

Digital Curiosities Resource Creation Via Amateur Digitisation …

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Digital Curiosities: Resource Creation Via Amateur Digitisation :

“Most memory institutions are now engaging with digitising holdings to provide online access. Although recent developments in technology have allowed users to create high quality digital resources out with institutional boundaries, little consideration has been given to the potential contribution that the general public can make to digitising our cultural heritage. This paper seeks to scope the growing trend of the creation of amateur online museums, archives, and collections, and demonstrates that the best examples of this endeavour can teach best practice to traditional memory institutions in how to make their collections useful, interesting, and used by online communities.”

URL : http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/171071/

Open Access at the University of Southampton Pushing…

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Open Access at the University of Southampton. Pushing the boundaries and the art of the possible.
Case study :

“At the University of Southampton researchers, academics, service providers and senior management have been working together for ten years in a partnership to underpin an “open” approach to research and learning resources based on the repository model.

Innovative research at the School of Electronics and Computer Science set out the technical building blocks for making research available on open access. As a next step, the JISC- funded TARDis project (Targeting Academic Research for Dissemination and Disclosure) successfully brought together internal departments – the Library, the University Computing Service and the Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Research Group within Electronics and Computer Science. Together, they committed to support an institutional strategy for making scholarly communication both more visible and more accessible. This partnership approach remains key and has allowed Southampton to extend open access into other areas including the learning repository.

At institutional level the value of the research repository has been strongly identified with the University’s strategies for the RAE/REF, and with the institutional response to meeting funder mandates. The University of Southampton became the first university in the UK to adopt a formal requirement that all academic staff make access to their published research available online through the institutional repository. Senior management support has been crucial as has been the promotion of the benefits to the author. Institutional strategy often means less to individual academics and researchers than how the services provide benefits to them. It is therefore important to link open access to the research and learning process, and to the benefits of increasing visibility. A pragmatic approach combined with a strongly visible support service has underpinned the way in which open access has been developed institutionally at Southampton.

The University’s main priorities going forward are to increase the amount of open content by encouraging the direct deposit of postprints in the research repository and increasing the range of material across disciplines in the learning repository. In parallel Southampton will experiment with scoping options to link access to research data initially at metadata level.”

URL : http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/topics/opentechnologies/openaccess/institutionsandoa/southampton.aspx