EN

Podcasting as Open Access: A Review and Discussion of Potential Impact on Scholarly Communication and Promotion

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Allison Symulevich, Matt Torrence, Jason Boczar, Jessica Szempruch

Introduction

Academic Podcasts are an informal way for faculty members to share their research expertise with an expanded and international audience. In this article, we argue that podcasts are a form of informal scholarly communication and that libraries can contribute to the successful dissemination of this informal scholarly communication.

Description of Service

At the University of South Florida, episodes of faculty-created academic podcasts are posted to the institutional repository, allowing the dissemination of these podcasts permanently via open access. The open-access nature of these materials makes them freely available to faculty, students, and other scholars; additionally, it helps to improve metrics capturing while demonstrating international impact.

In comparing the measures afforded to record statistics, as well as other geographic and various platforms used, the authors leaned on internal resources and concepts from the literature to examine existing measures and reporting related to podcasting efforts.

Next Steps

Through the study of both existing services at the University of South Florida and other universities, as well as the literature, what remains is to increasingly document and standardize methods of measuring the impact of academic podcasts and related types of open-access content.

URL : Podcasting as Open Access: A Review and Discussion of Potential Impact on Scholarly Communication and Promotion

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18241

EN

Open science in qualitative evaluations : Considerations and Opportunities

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Crystal N. Steltenpohl, Laurel Standiford Reyes, Mary A. Pei, Lindsay Ellis Lee

This article discusses how open science principles—often rooted in quantitative epistemologies—and qualitative evaluation practices can complement each other and explores strategies for evaluators and researchers to consider adopting in their practices.

Although the qualitative and quantitative approaches to knowledge creation may be perceived as being in conflict, many practices and values can be viewed as different expressions of the shared goals of rigor and transparency. We describe practices like data, process, and outcome sharing as activities that already align with open science values and encourage evaluators to consider practices like preregistration, registered reports, and replication as possible areas for evaluators to expand into.

We also encourage evaluators to contribute to conversations about transparency, community engagement, evaluating effectiveness, and avoiding harm. A flexible, additive approach to evaluation and research projects can allow all parties to draw on each other’s strengths for more rigorous, comprehensive, transparent, and community-centered work.

Finally, we suggest a few starting places for evaluators who are interested in incorporating open science practices and researchers who are interested in conducting qualitative evaluations.

URL : Open science in qualitative evaluations : Considerations and Opportunities

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/td5cx_v1

EN

Making museum research more visible: Open Access in the GLAM sector

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Emily Rees Koerner, Lydia Ackrell

Open Access paradigms have changed how academic scholarship is published and disseminated, creating a new model for how research is shared. But how do these paradigms map onto museum research?

This question is particularly pertinent when larger numbers of funded research projects include, or are led by, museums. This article considers some of the affordances and challenges of using Open Access principles and technologies to make visible the multifaceted modes of research that take place in a museum setting. Using the Science Museum Group as a case study, it focuses on how repositories offer one means to make research conducted in museums more accessible, while also broadening definitions of what a research output is.

With the focus hitherto more on images and collection items, here we expand into the realm of exhibition and gallery outputs – the content which museums produce to narrate their collections’ stories and engage audiences.

Many of these outputs may have been designed to have an ephemeral, physical lifespan, but through platforms such as repositories they can gain a digital afterlife, serving a new purpose as learning resources, research data, or indeed a record of curatorial and museological practice.

The article ultimately argues that Open Access principles can aid museums (and the wider GLAM sector) in their mission to be transparent organisations for wide-ranging audiences.

DOI : https://dx.doi.org/10.15180/252304

EN

Assessing the societal influence of academic research with ChatGPT: Impact case study evaluations

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Kayvan Kousha, Mike Thelwall

Academics and departments are sometimes judged by how their research has benefited society. For example, the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) assesses Impact Case Studies (ICSs), which are five-page evidence-based claims of societal impacts.

This article investigates whether ChatGPT can evaluate societal impact claims and therefore potentially support expert human assessors. For this, various parts of 6220 public ICSs from REF2021 were fed to ChatGPT 4o-mini along with the REF2021 evaluation guidelines, comparing ChatGPT’s predictions with published departmental average ICS scores.

The results suggest that the optimal strategy for high correlations with expert scores is to input the title and summary of an ICS but not the remaining text and to modify the original REF guidelines to encourage a stricter evaluation.

The scores generated by this approach correlated positively with departmental average scores in all 34 Units of Assessment (UoAs), with values between 0.18 (Economics and Econometrics) and 0.56 (Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience).

At the departmental level, the corresponding correlations were higher, reaching 0.71 for Sport and Exercise Sciences, Leisure and Tourism. Thus, ChatGPT-based ICS evaluations are simple and viable to support or cross-check expert judgments, although their value varies substantially between fields.

URL : Assessing the societal influence of academic research with ChatGPT: Impact case study evaluations

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.25021

FR

Refaire de la recherche : La valorisation de la recherche publique au CNRS

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Autrice : Victoria Brun

Cette thèse de sociologie des sciences analyse ce que la valorisation académique fait aux pratiques de recherche au CNRS. Mission de la recherche publique depuis 1982, la valorisation consiste à transférer les résultats de recherche à l’extérieur du monde académique par l’intermédiaire du marché.

Une part importante des travaux antérieurs l’a inscrite dans un mouvement de mise en économie des connaissances qualifié de « capitalisme académique » ou de « néo-libéralisation de la recherche ». Pourtant, loin de subordonner la recherche publique à des préoccupations économiques, mon enquête montre que les activités académiques et la qualité scientifique restent au cœur des pratiques de valorisation.

Afin de rendre compte de cette situation, la thèse défend l’argument selon lequel la valorisation est encouragée et pratiquée comme une modalité particulière de l’activité de recherche. À cet égard, les politiques institutionnelles n’ont pas pour ambition d’ajouter un nouveau type d’activités aux tâches des personnels de recherche, mais d’insuffler le souci d’identifier des applications technologiques au cours de leur recherche.

De leur côté, les personnels de recherche organisent et financent une partie de leurs recherches par des dispositifs de valorisation, tout en menant de front valorisation économique et communication académique de leurs résultats.

Bien loin de la figure du chercheur startupper, rares sont les personnels de recherche qui renoncent à leur carrière académique pour la valorisation. Ainsi les pratiques de valorisation ne se substituent pas aux activités de recherche, elles transforment les pratiques de recherche elles-mêmes.

HAL : https://hal.science/tel-05065109

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