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Open access to health and education research outside academia: perspectives of research users, research intermediaries and researchers

Author : Emily Nunn

The thesis investigates how publics outside academia engage with ideas of open access (OA) to research publications. To do this, it analyses data from interviews with users of health and education research in two non-academic contexts, as well as with researchers interested in communicating their work to wider audiences. It draws on constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) and situational analysis (Clarke, 2005).

The literature review highlighted a need to empirically explore OA outside academia. The study focused on the ways in which publications were accessed and used outside academia and the factors enabling and preventing access.

It also explored perceptions of OA within a wider context of communicating research to non- academic audiences, and identified areas of contestation. The study found that there was a demand for OA, although the demand was perceived to be limited. There were significant sources of friction in accessing research publications, including paywalls, which could be circumvented through file/password sharing and drawing on contacts.

Conceptual access (e.g. understandability) was also found to prevent engagement with research publications in some cases, although this varied according to levels of expertise. The study identified research intermediaries as playing an important dual role, as they accessed research in order to make it accessible to a wider audience.

The study found a disconnect between some OA advocacy and research-user perceptions. and a disconnect between researchers’ commitment to communicating their work outside the academy and their support of OA.

Attitudes towards OA were influenced by bureaucratic mandates, high APCs and belief that there would be little demand for their research. Findings indicated however, that OA could complement other forms of research communication in specific contexts.

Finally, the study suggested that a narrow focus on ‘tangible outcomes’ for non- academic publics (Moore, 2019) risked obscuring attempts to develop a more equitable scholarly communications system.

URL : Open access to health and education research outside academia: perspectives of research users, research intermediaries and researchers

Original location : https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/23582/

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Can scholarly pirate libraries bridge the knowledge access gap? An empirical study on the structural conditions of book piracy in global and European academia

Authors : Balázs Bodó, Dániel Antal, Zoltán Puha

Library Genesis is one of the oldest and largest illegal scholarly book collections online. Without the authorization of copyright holders, this shadow library hosts and makes more than 2 million scholarly publications, monographs, and textbooks available.

This paper analyzes a set of weblogs of one of the Library Genesis mirrors, provided to us by one of the service’s administrators. We reconstruct the social and economic factors that drive the global and European demand for illicit scholarly literature.

In particular, we test if lower income regions can compensate for the shortcomings in legal access infrastructures by more intensive use of illicit open resources. We found that while richer regions are the most intensive users of shadow libraries, poorer regions face structural limitations that prevent them from fully capitalizing on freely accessible knowledge.

We discuss these findings in the wider context of open access publishing, and point out that open access knowledge, if not met with proper knowledge absorption infrastructures, has limited usefulness in addressing knowledge access and production inequalities.

URL : Can scholarly pirate libraries bridge the knowledge access gap? An empirical study on the structural conditions of book piracy in global and European academia

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242509

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Biomedical Data Sharing Among Researchers: A Study from Jordan

Authors : Lina Al-Ebbini, Omar F Khabour, Karem H Alzoubi, Almuthanna K Alkaraki

Background

Data sharing is an encouraged practice to support research in all fields. For that purpose, it is important to examine perceptions and concerns of researchers about biomedical data sharing, which was investigated in the current study.

Methods

This is a cross-sectional survey study that was distributed among biomedical researchers in Jordan, as an example of developing countries. The study survey consisted of questions about demographics and about respondent’s attitudes toward sharing of biomedical data.

Results

Among study participants, 46.9% (n=82) were positive regarding making their research data available to the public, whereas 53.1% refused the idea. The reasons for refusing to publicly share their data included “lack of regulations” (33.5%), “access to research data should be limited to the research team” (29.5%), “no place to deposit the data” (6.5%), and “lack of funding for data deposition” (6.0%).

Agreement with the idea of making data available was associated with academic rank (P=0.003). Moreover, gender (P-value=0.043) and number of publications (P-value=0.005) were associated with a time frame for data sharing (ie, agreeing to share data before vs after publication).

Conclusion

About half of the respondents reported a positive attitude toward biomedical data sharing. Proper regulations and facilitation data deposition can enhance data sharing in Jordan.

URL : Biomedical Data Sharing Among Researchers: A Study from Jordan

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2147/JMDH.S284294

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Role of a Croatian National Repository Infrastructure in Promotion and Support of Research Data Management

Authors : Kristina Posavec, Draženko Celjak, Ljiljana Jertec Musap

The paper will give an overview of national infrastructure for digital repositories, Digital Academic Archives and Repositories (DABAR), and its role as technology steward in raising awareness about research data management (RDM) and promoting good practices in the Croatian A&R community.

The University of Zagreb, University Computing Centre (SRCE) is providing national infrastructure DABAR suitable for storing and dissemination of different types of digital objects. Through DABAR, all Croatian higher education and research institutions can establish their digital repository.

A strong collaboration between SRCEs DABAR team and institutions repository managers has proven to be important in the process of disseminating knowledge about research data management among researchers and the scientific community at large.

The paper will provide information about this collaboration during the project RDA Europe 4.0 – The European plug-in to the global Research Data Alliance (RDA). The main goal of this collaboration is to raise awareness about the importance of managing and sharing research data.

URL : Role of a Croatian National Repository Infrastructure in Promotion and Support of Research Data Management

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-048

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Implementing the RDA Research Data Policy Framework in Slovenian Scientific Journals

Authors: Janez Štebe, Maja Dolinar, Sonja Bezjak, Ana Inkret

The paper aims to present the implementation of the RDA research data policy framework in Slovenian scientific journals within the project RDA Node Slovenia. The activity aimed to implement the practice of data sharing and data citation in Slovenian scientific journals and was based on internationally renowned practices and policies, particularly the Research Data Policy Framework of the RDA Data Policy Standardization and Implementation Interest Group.

Following this, the RDA Node Slovenia coordination prepared a guidance document that allowed the four pilot participating journals (from fields of archaeology, history, linguistics and social sciences) to adjust their journal policies regarding data sharing, data citation, adapted the definitions of research data and suggested appropriate data repositories that suit their disciplinary specifics.

The comparison of results underlines how discipline-specific the aspects of data-sharing are. The pilot proved that a grass-root approach in advancing open science can be successful and well-received in the research community, however, it also pointed out several issues in scientific publishing that would benefit from a planned action on a national level.

The context of an underdeveloped data sharing culture, slow implementation of open data strategy by the national research funder and sparse national data service infrastructure creates a unique environment for this study, the result of which can be used in similar contexts worldwide.

URL : Implementing the RDA Research Data Policy Framework in Slovenian Scientific Journals

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-049

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Open Data Challenges in Climate Science

Authors : Francesca Eggleton, Kate Winfiel

The purpose of this paper is to explore challenges in open climate data experienced by data scientists at the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA). This paper explores two of the five V’s of Big Data, Volume and Variety.

These challenges are explored using the Sentinel satellite data and Climate Modelling Intercomparison Project phase six (CMIP6) data held in the CEDA Archive. To address the Big Data Volume challenge, this paper describes the approach developed by CEDA to manage large volumes of data through the allocation of storage as filesets.

These filesets allow CEDA to plan and track dataset storage volumes, a flexible approach which could be adopted by any data centre. CEDA utilise the implementation of the Climate and Forecast (CF) conventions and standard names within archived data wherever possible to overcome the challenge of Variety.

Collaboration from the international science community through contributions to the moderation of CF standard names ensures these data then adhere to the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data principles.

Utilising data standards such as the CF standard names is recommended because it promotes data exchange and allows data from different sources to be compared. Addressing these Open Data challenges is crucial to ensure valuable climate data are made available to the scientific community to facilitate research that addresses one of society’s most pressing issues – climate change.

URL : Open Data Challenges in Climate Science

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-052

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Investigation and Development of the Workflow to Clarify Conditions of Use for Research Data Publishing in Japan

Authors : Yasuyuki Minamiyama, Ui Ikeuchi, Kunihiko Ueshima, Nobuya Okayama, Hideaki Takeda

With the recent Open Science movement and the rise of data-intensive science, many efforts are in progress to publish research data on the web. To reuse published research data in different fields, they must be made more generalized, interoperable, and machine-readable.

Among the various issues related to data publishing, the conditions of use are directly related to their reuse potential. We show herein the types of external constraints and conditions of use in research data publishing in a Japanese context through the analysis of the interview and questionnaire for practitioners.

Although the conditions of research data use have been discussed only in terms of their legal constraints, we organize the inclusion of the non-legal constraints and data holders’ actual requirements.

Furthermore, we develop practical guideline for examining effective data publishing flow with licensing scenarios. This effort can be positioned to develop an infrastructure for data-intensive science, which will contribute to the realization of Open Science.

URL : Investigation and Development of the Workflow to Clarify Conditions of Use for Research Data Publishing in Japan

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-053