EN

‘Is the library open?’: Correlating unaffiliated access to academic libraries with open access support

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors: Katie Wilson, Cameron Neylon, Chloe Brookes-Kenworthy, Richard Hosking, Chun-Kai (Karl) Huang, Lucy Montgomery, Alkim Ozaygen

In the context of a growing international focus on open access publishing options and mandates, this paper explores the extent to which the ideals of ‘openness’ are also being applied to physical knowledge resources and research spaces.

This study, which forms part of the larger Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative project, investigates the relationship between academic library access policies and institutional positions on open access or open science publishing.

Analysis of library access policies and related documents from twenty academic institutions in Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, Africa and the United Kingdom shows that physical access to libraries for members of the public who are not affiliated with a university is often the most restricted category of access. Many libraries impose financial and sometimes security barriers on entry to buildings, limiting access to collections in print and other non-digital formats.

The limits placed on physical access to libraries contrast strongly with the central role that these institutions play in facilitating open access in digital form for research outputs through institutional repositories and open access publishing policies.

We compared library access policies and practices with open access publishing and research sharing policies for the same institutions and found limited correlation between both sets of policies.

Comparing the two assessments using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient confirmed open access policies have a direct association with the narrow aspects of public access provided through online availability of formal publications, but are not necessarily associated (in the universities in this study) with delivering on a broader commitment to public access to knowledge.

The results suggest that while institutional mission statements and academic library policies may refer to sharing of knowledge and research and community collaboration, multiple layers of library user categories, levels of privilege and fees charged can inhibit the realisation of these goals.

As open access publishing options and mandates expand, physical entry to academic libraries and access to print and electronic resources has contracted. This varies within and across countries, but it conflicts with global library and information commitments to open access to knowledge.

URL : ‘Is the library open?’: Correlating unaffiliated access to academic libraries with open access support

DOI : http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10298

EN

Can Accessibility Liberate The « Lost Ark » of Scholarly Work?: University Library Institutional Repositories Are « Places of Public Accommodation”

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Raizel Liebler, Gregory Cunningham

For any body of knowledge – an ark of power or a corpus of scholarship – to be studied and used by people, it needs to be accessible to those seeking information. Universities, through their libraries, now aim to make more of the scholarship produced available for free to all through institutional repositories.

However, the goal of being truly open for an institutional repository is more than the traditional definition of open access. It also means openness in a more general sense. Creating a scholarship-based online space also needs to take into consideration potential barriers for people with disabilities.

This article addresses the interaction between the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and university academic library based institutional repositories. This article concludes that institutional repositories have an obligation to comply with the ADA to make scholarly works available to potential users with disabilities.

For managers of institutional repositories, following the law is an opportunity to make scholarship even more widely available. University open access institutional repositories need to be accessible to existing and potential disabled users. However, there are no specific rules that university institutional repositories must follow to be compliant with the ADA’s “public accommodation” standard.

Accessibility is a changeable, moveable wall, consistently and constantly needing to be additionally inclusive of more – more technology and more users, regardless of disability or limitations.

Institutional repositories should not become the crated Ark of the Covenant with their secrets locked inside; instead, they should be as open as possible to all, sharing the scholarship inside.

URL : https://repository.jmls.edu/lawreview/vol52/iss2/2/

EN

Open Access — Towards a non-normative and systematic understanding

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Niels Taubert, Anne Hobert, Nicolas Fraser, Najko Jahn, Elham Iravani

The term Open Access not only describes a certain model of scholarly publishing — namely in digital format freely accessible to readers — but often also implies that free availability of research results is desirable, and hence has a normative character.

Together with the large variety of presently used definitions of different Open Access types, this normativity hinders a systematic investigation of the development of open availability of scholarly literature.

In this paper, we propose a non-normative definition of Open Access and its usage as a neutral, descriptive term in bibliometric studies and research on science.

To this end, we first specify what normative figures are commonly associated with the term Open Access and then develop a neutral definition. We further identify distinguishing characteristics of openly accessible literature, called dimensions, and derive a classification scheme into Open Access categories based on these dimensions.

Additionally, we present an operationalisation method to assign scientific publications to the respective categories in practice. Here, we describe useful data sources, which can be employed to gather the information needed for the classification of scholarly works according to the presented classification scheme.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.11568

EN

Research Data Management Among Life Sciences Faculty: Implications for Library Service

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Kelly A. Johnson, Vicky Steeves

Objective

This paper aims to inform on opportunities for librarians to assist faculty with research data management by examining practices and attitudes among life sciences faculty at a tier one research university.

Methods

The authors issued a survey to estimate actual and perceived research data management needs of New York University (NYU) life sciences faculty in order to understand how the library could best contribute to the research life cycle.

Results

Survey responses indicate that over half of the respondents were aware of publisher and funder mandates, and most are willing to share their data, but many indicated they do not utilize data repositories. Respondents were largely unaware of data services available through the library, but the majority were open to considering such services. Survey results largely mimic those of similar studies, in that storing data (and the subsequent ability to share it) is the most easily recognized barrier to sound data management practices.

Conclusions

At NYU, as with other institutions, the library is not immediately recognized as a valuable partner in managing research output. This study suggests that faculty are largely unaware of, but are open to, existent library services, indicating that immediate outreach efforts should be aimed at promoting them.

URL : Research Data Management Among Life Sciences Faculty: Implications for Library Service

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.2019.1159

EN

Different Preservation Levels: The Case of Scholarly Digital Editions

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Elias Oltmanns, Tim Hasler, Wolfgang Peters-Kottig, Heinz-Günter Kuper

Ensuring the long-term availability of research data forms an integral part of data management services. Where OAIS compliant digital preservation has been established in recent years, in almost all cases the services aim at the preservation of file-based objects.

In the Digital Humanities, research data is often represented in highly structured aggregations, such as Scholarly Digital Editions. Naturally, scholars would like their editions to remain functionally complete as long as possible.

Besides standard components like webservers, the presentation typically relies on project specific code interacting with client software like webbrowsers. Especially the latter being subject to rapid change over time invariably makes such environments awkward to maintain once funding has ended.

Pragmatic approaches have to be found in order to balance the curation effort and the maintainability of access to research data over time. A sketch of four potential service levels aiming at the long-term availability of research data in the humanities is outlined: (1) Continuous Maintenance, (2) Application Conservation, (3) Application Data Preservation, and (4) Bitstream Preservation.

The first being too costly and the last hardly satisfactory in general, we suggest that the implementation of services by an infrastructure provider should concentrate on service levels 2 and 3. We explain their strengths and limitations considering the example of two Scholarly Digital Editions.

URL : Different Preservation Levels: The Case of Scholarly Digital Editions

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2019-051

FR

Les environnements personnels d’apprentissage au prisme des productions documentaires : Des intentions aux pratiques

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Auteurs/Authors : Fabrice Pirolli, Raphaëlle Crétin-Pirolli

La multiplicité des dispositifs numériques déployés dans le cadre institué de l’université s’ajoute à une offre sans cesse croissante, en particulier sur le Web, de services et d’outils qui modifient profondément les rapports individuels et collectifs à l’information et aux savoirs.

Afin d’étudier les logiques et les stratégies à l’œuvre dans l’agencement de l’Environnement Personnel d’Apprentissage des étudiants, nous proposons une approche centrée sur leurs pratiques documentaires ainsi que sur leurs usages courants des technologies de l’information et de la communication.

Sur la base d’une étude quantitative menée auprès d’étudiants d’une université française, croisée à une approche qualitative menée auprès d’enseignants, nous caractérisons les mouvements de recomposition des EPA, à la fois sur la base de leur hybridité et des processus de négociation et d’ajustement qui les guident, entre prescriptions d’usages et pratiques personnelles.

Cette démarche vise à questionner à la fois les éléments factuels ainsi que les intentions et les représentations qui y sont associées.

URL : https://journals.openedition.org/dms/3984

EN

Research integrity: environment, experience, or ethos?

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Bjørn Hofmann, Søren Holm

Background

Research integrity has gained attention in the general public as well as in the
research community. We wanted to investigate knowledge, attitudes, and practices amongst researchers that have recently finished their PhD and compare this to their responses during their PhD fellowship. In particular, we wanted to investigate whether their attitudes are related to their experiences of their immediate research environment.

Material and method

Researchers (n = 86) awarded the PhD degree at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Oslo in 2016 were invited to answer a questionnaire about knowledge, attitudes, and actions related to scientific dishonesty. Seventy-two responded (83.7%). The results were compared with results among first-year doctoral students who responded to the same questionnaire during 2010–2017.

Results

Overall, 13% of PhDs reported that they knew of people in their immediate research environment who had committed serious forms of scientific dishonesty. A small percentage of PhDs (1.4%) indicated that they themselves had committed such acts. About 3% of the candidates had experienced pressure to commit serious forms of dishonesty and nearly a third of respondents had experienced unethical pressure with respect to authorship during the course of their fellowship.

Thirteen percent reported that they had experienced unethical pressure in relation to other forms of dishonesty and 11% had experienced the consequences of some form of scientific dishonesty. Eighteen percent of the respondents believed that one or more actions, which in the literature were perceived as scientific misconduct, were not wrong. We find a connection between attitudes and the perceived research integrity of their research environment.

The results also show a difference between PhD students and graduated PhDs in terms of scientific dishonesty. In some areas, the PhDs’ norms are stricter, such as for the use of statistical analysis methods, while there is little change in others, such as in misconduct in order to expedite publications.

Conclusion

Many PhDs knew about serious forms of scientific misconduct from the research environment in which they are trained, and some also report misconduct themselves.

Some experienced pressure to serious forms of misconduct and a large proportion of the respondents had experienced unethical pressure with respect to authorship during their fellowship. Attitudes change during the PhD studies, but ambiguously. Scientific misconduct seems to be an environmental issue as much as a matter of personal integrity.

URL : Research integrity: environment, experience, or ethos?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1747016119880844