EN

Science of science — Citation models and research evaluation

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Vincent Traag

Citations in science are being studied from several perspectives, among which approaches such as scientometrics and science of science. In this chapter I briefly review some of the literature on citations, citation distributions and models of citations. These citations feature prominently in another part of the literature which is dealing with research evaluation and the role of metrics and indicators in that process.

Here I briefly review part of the discussion in research evaluation. This also touches on the subject of how citations relate to peer review. Finally, I conclude by trying to integrate the two literatures. The fundamental problem in research evaluation is that research quality is unobservable. This has consequences for conclusions that we can draw from quantitative studies of citations and citation models.

The term « indicators » is a relevant concept in this context, which I try to clarify. Causality is important for properly understanding indicators, especially when indicators are used in practice: when we act on indicators, we enter causal territory. Even when an indicator might have been valid, through its very use, the consequences of its use may invalidate it. By combining citation models with proper causal reasoning and acknowledging the fundamental problem about unobservable research quality, we may hope to make progress.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2207.11116

EN

Evolving library practice toward the sustainability of supporting open access

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Maureen P Walsh, Miranda Bennett, Matthew W Goddard, Joshua Shelly

This paper is based on the Evolving Library Practice toward the Sustainability of Supporting Open Access panel presented at the 2024 NISO Plus Global/Online conference on September 17, 2024, and brings together four perspectives on how academic research library practices are evolving in response to developments in the global open access landscape.

The authors discuss current pain points in library support of open access publishing and explore how we might collectively work toward scalable and sustainable open access workflows.

URL : Evolving library practice toward the sustainability of supporting open access

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/18758789251339911

 

EN

The African Platform for Open Scholarship Advancing Diamond Open Access and Inclusivity

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Reggie Raju, Saiansha Maharaj

Geographic, language, peer review, and editorial biases have to be navigated by Global South authors to get published. Initially, the open access movement was praised for bridging the information access divide.

However, commercial publishers have hijacked the philanthropic ethos, turning it into a business model. Publishing charges add to the aforementioned biases, consolidating the exclusion of Global South scholarship. The African Platform for Open Scholarship developed by the University of Cape Town (UCT) counters these biases by offering free publishing infrastructure to advance the publishing of African scholarship without compromising academic rigor.

The platform adopts the diamond open access model to demarginalize Global South scholarship. Further, there is a discussion on the challenges and opportunities associated with creating an inclusive and equitable scholarly communication ecosystem. This paper focuses on UCT’s use of the platform to transition its commercial publishing arm (UCT Press) and to grow UCT Libraries Press. The paper will use exemplars to demonstrate the positive impact of these initiatives on the growth of diamond open access.

URL : The African Platform for Open Scholarship Advancing Diamond Open Access and Inclusivity

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18278

FR

La visibilité des mémoires déposés sur DUMAS : une question de discipline

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Auteurs : Matthieu Cisel, Nicolas Laudier

S’ils ne sont généralement pas considérés comme des écrits scientifiques de premier plan, les mémoires de Master de bonne qualité peuvent néanmoins se révéler utiles à la recherche, notamment car ils traitent souvent de sujets d’actualité et peuvent ce faisant accélérer le travail de chercheurs plus confirmés.

Encore faut-il qu’il existe des leviers de motivations susceptibles d’inciter les étudiants à mettre à disposition leur travail. Nous nous proposons ici d’explorer au prisme de la théorie de l’échange social l’un des mécanismes qui poussent les étudiant.es à mettre en ligne leur mémoire dans des archives dédiées : la visibilité du travail partagé, mesurée sur la base du nombre de téléchargements du document.

DUMAS, site français qui avait pris son essor à la fin des années 2000, centralisait en 2023 les manuscrits de plus de 50 000 étudiant.es. Via une technique de web scraping, nous avons collecté les métadonnées de l’ensemble ces manuscrits, pour mieux identifier les éléments qui déterminent la visibilité en ligne de ces travaux, tout en portant la focale sur les disciplines.

Nous montrons que les travaux relevant des sciences de gestion, bien que minoritaires dans la base, sont ceux qui attirent le plus l’attention des internautes au fil des ans, qui, au sein du répertoire, semblent rechercher avant tout des écrits à visée praxéologique.

Nous analysons au prisme de la théorie de l’activité d’Engeström les contradictions qui peuvent émerger de la possibilité pour les étudiants d’acquérir via DUMAS de la visibilité au sein du milieu académique comme en dehors de celui-ci.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/13lft

EN

Implementation of Transformative Agreements at the University of Chicago Library: A Case Study

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Jessica Harris, Greg Fleming, Jennifer Hart, Adrian K. Ho, Barbara Kern,
Catherine Mardikes, Debra A. Werner

The University of Chicago Library created a working group, composed of librarians across the library, to engage in dedicated and focused work around transformative agreements, including understanding how they work and how the library should be engaging with them in a complex open access (OA) landscape.

The working group was charged with specific tasks, including determining challenges and opportunities around transformative agreements, developing criteria for determining when to use the library’s OA fund to pursue an agreement, conducting ongoing assessments of the agreements, and developing a set of recommendations to communicate this out to our wider campus community.

The group’s work included piloting several transformative agreements and establishing a rubric to evaluate these agreements. The creation of the group allowed the library to gain valuable knowledge and expertise, engage actively in new models for supporting OA, and start critical conversations on campus.

The group continues the work, with the ultimate goal of affordable OA publishing and communicating the value of OA with researchers and campus partners, as well as positioning the library as a campus leader in OA.

URL : Implementation of Transformative Agreements at the University of Chicago Library: A Case Study

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18265

EN

Understanding ORCID adoption among academic researchers

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Stephen R. Porter

Just over a decade ago, the ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier) was created to provide a unique digital identifier for researchers around the world. The ORCID has proven essential in identifying individual researchers and their publications, both for bibliometric research analyses and for universities and other organizations tracking the research productivity and impact of their personnel.

Yet widespread adoption of the ORCID by individual researchers has proved elusive, with previous studies finding adoption rates ranging from 3% to 42%. Using a national survey of U.S. academic researchers at 31 research universities, we investigate why some researchers adopt an ORCID and some do not. We found an overall adoption rate of 72%, with adoptions rates ranging between academic disciplines from a low of 17% in the visual and performing arts to a high of 93% in biological and biomedical sciences.

Many academic journals require an ORCID to submit a manuscript, and this is the main reason why researchers adopt an ORCID. The top three reasons for not having an ORCID are not seeing the benefits, being far enough in the academic career to not need it, and working in an academic discipline where it is not needed.

URL : Understanding ORCID adoption among academic researchers

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-025-05300-7

EN

Which kind of research papers influence policymaking

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Pablo Dorta-González

This study examines the use of evidence in policymaking by analysing a range of journal and article attributes, as well as online engagement metrics. It employs a large-scale citation analysis of nearly 150,000 articles covering diverse policy topics. The findings highlight that scholarly citations exert the strongest positive influence on policy citations.

Articles from journals with a higher citation impact and larger Mendeley readership are cited more frequently in policy documents. Other online engagements, such as news and blog mentions, also boost policy citations, while mentions on social media X have a negative effect.

The finding that highly cited and widely read papers are also frequently referenced in policy documents likely reflects the perception among policymakers that such research is more trustworthy. In contrast, papers that derive their influence primarily from social media tend to be cited less often in policy contexts.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2504.18889