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Cross‐cultural analysis of the Wikipedia community This…

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Cross‐cultural analysis of the Wikipedia community :

“This paper reports a cross‐cultural analysis of four Wikipedias in different languages and demonstrates their roles as communities of practice (CoPs). Prior research on CoPs and on the Wikipedia community often lacks cross‐cultural analysis. Despite the fact that over 75% of Wikipedia is written in languages other than English, research on Wikipedia primarily focuses on the English Wikipedia and tends to overlook the Wikipedias in other languages. This paper first argues that Wikipedia communities can be analyzed and understood as CoPs. Second, norms of behaviors are examined in four Wikipedia languages (English, Hebrew, Japanese, and Malay), and the similarities and differences across these four languages are reported. Specifically, typical behaviors on three types of discussion spaces (Talk, User Talk, and Wikipedia Talk) are identified and examined across languages. Hofstede’s dimensions of cultural diversity as well as the size of the community, and the function of each discussion area provide lenses for understanding the similarities and differences. As such, this paper expands the research on online CoPs through an examination of cultural variations across multiple CoPs, and increases our understanding of Wikipedia communities in various languages.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/15529

Beyond vandalism Wikipedia trolls Research on trolls…

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Beyond vandalism: Wikipedia trolls :

“Research on trolls is scarce, but their activities challenge online communities; one of the main challenges of the Wikipedia community is to fight against vandalism and trolls. This study identifies Wikipedia trolls’ behaviours and motivations, and compares and contrasts hackers with trolls; it extends our knowledge about this type of vandalism and concludes that Wikipedia trolls are one type of hacker. This study reports that boredom, attention seeking, and revenge motivate trolls; they regard Wikipedia as an entertainment venue, and find pleasure from causing damage to the community and other people. Findings also suggest that trolls’ behaviours are characterized as repetitive, intentional, and harmful actions that are undertaken in isolation and under hidden virtual identities, involving violations of Wikipedia policies, and consisting of destructive participation in the community.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/15530

Institutional Repositories Features Architecture Design and Implementation Technologies…

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Institutional Repositories: Features, Architecture, Design and Implementation Technologies :

“Europe is the leading continent in terms of active adoption and use of Digital Libraries – particularly Institutional Repositories (IRs). Africa has not done poorly in this area with a steady increase from 19 repositories in 2008 to 46 in January, 2011 but there is need to raise awareness and channel efforts towards making IRs easily accessible to Africans through ubiquitous channels such as hand-helds and mobile devices. This paper reviews the features, architecture, design and implementation technologies of IRs. In addition, it highlights viable research areas that can be pursued by African researchers in the field of Digital Libraries. It also encourages research efforts to focus on areas that will be beneficial to Africa.”

URL : http://eprints.covenantuniversity.edu.ng/108/

Heading for the open road costs and benefits…

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Heading for the open road: costs and benefits of transitions in scholarly communications :

“This new report investigates the drivers, costs and benefits of potential ways to increase access to scholarly journals. It identifies five different routes for achieving that end over the next five years, and compares and evaluates the benefits as well as the costs and risks for the UK.

The report suggests that policymakers who are seeking to promote increases in access should encourage the use of existing subject and institutional repositories, but avoid pushing for reductions in embargo periods, which might put at risk the sustainability of the underlying scholarly publishing system. They should also promote and facilitate a transition to open access publishing (Gold open access) while seeking to ensure that the average level of charges for publication does not exceed c.£2000; that the rate in the UK of open access publication is broadly in step with the rate in the rest of the world; and that total payments to journal publishers from UK universities and their funders do not rise as a consequence.

At a time of financial stringency for universities, research funders and publishers, it is important that all the stakeholders in the scholarly communications system work together to find the most cost-effective ways of fulfilling their joint goal of increasing access to the outputs of research. This report provides the first detailed and authoritative analysis of how this might be achieved over the next five years. We hope that it will stimulate new dialogue and new approaches to policy and practice across all stakeholders.”

URL : http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/heading-open-road-costs-and-benefits-transitions-s

Awarness and Use of Open Access and Free Resources on the Internet: A Case Study at BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus, Goa

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“The Internet is a huge source of free and openly available information. However, the awareness about the availability of such free and open source information amongst members of the academic community is not clearly known. This aspect was studied using a structured questionnaire and the data recorded through the survey was analyzed. The results reinforce the commonly held belief that the academic community is largely unaware of these vast and freely available resources. The study also points out the role a librarian can play in imparting awareness through information literacy sessions from the library .”

URL : http://ir.inflibnet.ac.in/dxml/handle/1944/1626

Reinventing Research Information Practices in the Humanities This…

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Reinventing Research? Information Practices in the Humanities :

This report is the second in a series of three commissioned by the Research Information Network (RIN), each looking at information practices in a specific discipline (life sciences, humanities and physical sciences). The aim is to understand how researchers within a range of disciplines find and use information, and in particular how that has changed with the introduction of new technologies.

Humanities scholars are often perceived in very traditional terms: spending a lot of time working on their own and collaborating only informally through highly-dispersed networks. Unlike most scientists, they have no long tradition of working in formal, close-knit and collaborative research groups. Humanities scholars have also sometimes been presented as ‘depth’ rather than ‘breadth’ researchers, preferring to spend significant amounts of time with a few items, rather than working across a broader frame. In terms of information sources, text and images held in archives and libraries tend to dominate, with less of an association with new web-based technologies (although this is changing with the increasing visibility of digital humanities).

This report suggests that such perceptions may be out of date. In each of our case studies we found researchers working with new tools and technologies, in increasingly collaborative environments, and both producing and using information resources in diverse ways. There is a richness and variety within humanities information practices which must be recognised and understood if we are to provide the right kind of support for researchers.

URL : http://www.rin.ac.uk/system/files/attachments/Humanities_Case_Studies_for_screen.pdf