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How Linking Changes the Role of Library…

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“How Linking Changes the Role of Library Data: Examples from the Wider World” :

“Discussion in the W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group (2010-2011) tended to focus on the benefits of linked-data technology to libraries. This talk explores how library data – datasets, element sets, and value vocabularies – when linked, provide new forms of support to scholarly and cultural communities in the wider world. Well-maintained value vocabularies, their concepts identified by URI and backed by institutional persistence policies, can function as magnets, forming hubs of incoming links from thousands of providers. The global agricultural research community maintains a key thesaurus, AGROVOC, through an effort distributed across multiple language areas. Its linked data strategy aims at solutions that will work in low-resource and low-bandwidth conditions and at tools that can use natural-language processing to assign appropriate URIs and automate the “triplification” of existing data (“wrapping the legacy”).

In the library world, the standards underpinning bibliographic description, such as ISBD, FRBR, FRAD, FRSAD, and RDA, are being translated into the language of linked data. Triplified standards provide building blocks for descriptive practice based not on fixed records, but on statements that can be differently recombined and bundled for diverse, even unanticipated, uses – aggregated “just in time” instead of being maintained “just in case”. As for other artifacts of long-term cultural importance, libraries could play a key role in preserving the underlying vocabularies, ensuring their long-term usefulness as the “footnotes” of library data.”

Open Access Digital Repository Sharing Student Research with…

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Open Access Digital Repository: Sharing Student Research with the World :

“University libraries use open access digital repositories to preserve and distribute the intellectual scholarly communications of their institution. How can global accessibility of quality student work be harnessed to benefit researchers, practitioners, and educators? To address this question, we study the impact of content factors and search engine optimization factors on download rates of capstone papers. We examined all 290 MPA capstone papers at Texas State University which have been made available through an online digital repository for public consumption. Results show strong support for the impact of search engine factors on download rates. The implications of high download rates of MPA capstone papers on public administration research, practice, and education are discussed in this paper.”

URL : http://www.naspaa.org/jpaemessenger/Article/VOL18-1/jpae18_01_final.pdf

Users narcissism and control – tracking the impact…

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Users, narcissism and control – tracking the impact of scholarly publications in the 21st century :

“What is the scientific and social impact of my research publications? This question has been of interest to scientists and scholars since the inception of modern science 400 years ago. But it was hard to answer. This may now be changing. Scholarship is transforming into a variety of digital networked forms. These developments have created new possibilities and challenges in the evaluation of the quality of research. This is of interest to research funders assessing the quality of research. It is also relevant to the individual researchers interested in assessing their career development.

This report explores the explosion of tracking tools that have accompanied the surge of web based information instruments. Is it possible to monitor ‘real-time’ how new research findings are being read, cited, used and transformed in practical results and applications? And what are the potential risks and disadvantages of the new tracking tools? This report aims to contribute to a better understanding of these developments by providing a detailed assessment of the currently available novel tools and methodologies. A total of 16 quite different tools are assessed.

The report concludes that web based academic publishing is producing a variety of novel information filters. These allow the researcher to make some sort of limited self-assessment with respect to the response to his/her work. However, this does not mean that these technologies and databases can also legitimately be used in research assessments. For this application, they need to adhere to a far stricter protocol of data quality and indicator reliability and validity. Most new tools do not (yet) comply with these more strict quality criteria.

The report therefore advises to start a concerted research programme in the dynamics, properties, and potential use of new web based metrics which relates these new measures to the already established indicators of publication impact. Its goal would be to contribute to the development of more useful tools for the scientific and scholarly community. This programme should monitor at least the following tools: F1000, Microsoft Academic Research, Total-Impact, PlosONE altmetrics, and Google Scholar. The programme should moreover develop the following key research themes: concepts of new web metrics and altmetrics; standardisation of tools and data; and the use and normalisation of the new metrics.”

URL : http://www.surffoundation.nl/nl/publicaties/Documents/Users%20narcissism%20and%20control.pdf

Use of ICT Based Electronic Resources in selected…

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Use of ICT Based Electronic Resources in selected Central Universities of India :

“The paper divulge in the increasing use of electronic resources and the widening acceptance of the same among academic library patrons. Reaffirms the necessity of making the end users aware of the e-resources based services offered by the libraries. Conducts a cursory examination of the web design of the university libraries. Finally, attempts to identify ways to maximise the use of e-resources by taking into consideration 18 central university libraries.”

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/10760/16561

Studies on Subject Specific Requirements for Open Access…

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Studies on Subject-Specific Requirements for Open Access Infrastructure :

“This study addresses subject-specific requirements for research infrastructure
with a focus on the influences of Open Access (OA). OA is treated in a broad sense covering open access to literature, open data and open science. Considering the wide variety of aspects to be analysed and the early stages of developing a general account of OA infrastructure, the study took a case based approach and deliberately did not attempt to provide a representative account of research. In the pragmatic approach taken, six partners (institutions and organisations) were chosen to provide their subjective view on OA infrastructure. These partners are considered as exemplars of research and infrastructure institutions in a given subject area.”

URL : http://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/download/2445229/2460478

The Influence of the National Institutes of Health…

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The Influence of the National Institutes of Health : Public-Access Policy on the Publishing Habits of Principal Investigators :

“The mandatory NIH public-access policy, which became effective on April 7, 2008, requires the NIH-funded principal investigators (PIs) to self-archive to the National Library of Medicine subject repository PubMed Central a manuscript’s electronic version immediately upon publication, which will then be available to the public free of cost the latest after a twelve-month embargo period. The Public Library of Science (PLoS), a non-profit open-access publisher in health sciences, publishes seven journals in the health sciences field (PLoS ONE, PLoS Biology, PLoS Medicine, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics, PLoS Pathogenes and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases) and submits to PubMed Central all the published articles, irrespective of the funder of the research results. The PIs who had published in one of the PLoS journals were chosen based on the journals’ established high impact factor immediately after their creation. The PIs’ motivation to publish in one of the seven PLoS journals was unknown. Whether the NIH public-access policy has affected the PIs’ publishing decisions was also unknown.

A random sample of NIH-funded PIs, who had published in one of the PLoS journals between the years 2005- 2009, was selected from the RePORTER database. During the period
March-May 2011, forty-two PIs were interviewed using SkypeTM software, and a semi-structured open-ended interview protocol was followed. The participants were divided into two groups; the pre-mandate PIs, who had published in one of the seven PLoS journals during the period 2005-2007 and the post-mandate, who had published in the PLoS journals the during period 2008-2009. The publishing habits of these two groups were compared, in order to reach an understanding about their publishing decisions.

Based on the findings, the NIH-funded PIs choose the PLoS journals due to their high impact factor, fast publication speed, fair peer-review system and the articles’ open-access availability. Although the PIs agree with the premise that publicly funded research must be distributed for-free to everyone who has funded it, the steps required to comply with the policy were perceived to be time consuming. Since conformity with the policy is essential, the participants’ goal is to ensure that the manuscripts will appear to PubMed Central, which either can be self-archived by the PIs, by an administrative assistant or by the journal.

The NIH public-access policy did not cause either an increase in the PIs’ open-access awareness or a change in their publishing habits. The open-access advocates were supporters of the immediate free access to scientific information before the policy and provided their manuscripts free-of-cost before the policy’s mandate. The non-open-access advocates choose their publications based on quality criteria such as the journal’s prestige, impact factor, speed of publication and the attracted audience, while the article’s open-access availability is considered to be a plus. Furthermore, since a large number of journals comply with the NIH-policy, the participants did not have to change their publishing habits.”

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/10760/17208