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Understanding Data Retrieval Practices: A Social Informatics Perspective

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Kathleen Gregory, Helena Cousijn, Paul Groth, Andrea Scharnhorst, Sally Wyatt

Open research data are heralded as having the potential to increase effectiveness, productivity, and reproducibility in science, but little is known about the actual practices involved in data search and retrieval.

The socio-technical problem of locating data for (re)use is often reduced to the technological dimension of designing data search systems. In this article, we explore how a social informatics perspective can help to better analyze the current academic discourse about data retrieval as well as to study user practices and behaviors.

We employ two methods in our analysis – bibliometrics and interviews with data seekers – and conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for designing data discovery systems.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.04971

EN

Understanding Big Data for Industrial Innovation and Design: The Missing Information Systems Perspective

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Miguel Baptista Nunes

This paper identifies a need to complement the current rich technical and mathematical research agenda on big data with a more information systems and information science strand, which focuses on the business value of big data.

An agenda of research for information systems would explore motives for using big data in real organizational contexts, and consider proposed benefits, such as increased effectiveness and efficiency, production of high-quality products/services, creation of added business value, and stimulation of innovation and design.

Impacts of such research on the academic community, the industrial and business world, and policy-makers are discussed.

URL : Understanding Big Data for Industrial Innovation and Design: The Missing Information Systems Perspective

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1515/jdis-2017-0017

 

EN

A Framework for the Assessment of Research and Its Impacts

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Cinzia Daraio

This paper proposes a holistic framework for the development of models for the assessment of research activities and their impacts. It distinguishes three dimensions, including in an original way, data as a main dimension, together with theory and methodology.

Each dimension of the framework is further characterized by three main building blocks: education, research, and innovation (theory); efficiency, effectiveness, and impact (methodology); and availability, interoperability, and “unit-free” property (data).

The different dimensions and their nine constituent building blocks are attributes of an overarching concept, denoted as “quality.” Three additional quality attributes are identified as implementation factors (tailorability, transparency, and openness) and three “enabling” conditions (convergence, mixed methods, and knowledge infrastructures) complete the framework.

A framework is required to develop models of metrics. Models of metrics are necessary to assess the meaning, validity, and robustness of metrics. The proposed framework can be a useful reference for the development of the ethics of research evaluation.

It can act as a common denominator for different analytical levels and relevant aspects and is able to embrace many different and heterogeneous streams of literature. Directions for future research are provided.

URL : A Framework for the Assessment of Research and Its Impacts

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1515/jdis-2017-0018

 

EN

Co-creation and open innovation: Systematic literature review

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : María Soledad Ramírez-Montoya,  Francisco-José García-Peñalvo

Open science, as a common good, opens possibilities for the development of nations, through innovations and collaborative constructions, which help to democratize knowledge. Advances in this area are still emerging, and the open science, cocreation of knowledge and open innovation triangle, is presented as an opportunity to generate an original contribution from research to open educational theory and practices.

The study analyzed the articles that addressed this triangle, in order to identify the contexts and challenges that arise in open innovation and the cocreation of knowledge to promote open science.

The method was a systematic literature review (SLR) of 168 articles published in open access format, from January 2014 to May 2017 in the Web of Science and Scopus databases.

In the validation process, the York University criteria were used: inclusion and exclusion, relevance of the pertinent studies, evaluation of the quality / validity of included studies and description of data / basic studies.

The findings showed that the mostwidely publicized contexts were in the United States and Brazil, in the business and academic sectors (closely followed by the social sector), and the challenges were open to innovation, opening and research.

The research concludes that the context and practices of collaboration are substantial elements for innovation and open science.

URL :  Co-creation and open innovation: Systematic literature review

Alternative location : http://eprints.rclis.org/32168/

EN

Wikipedia in higher education: Changes in perceived value through content contribution

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Joan Soler-Adillon, Dragana Pavlovic

Wikipedia is a widely used resource by university students, but it is not necessarily regarded as being reliable and trustworthy by them, nor is it seen as a context in which to make content contributions.

This paper presents a teaching and research project that consisted in having students edit or create Wikipedia articles and testing whether or not this experience changed their perceived value of the platform. We conducted our experience at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain) and University of Niš (Niš, Serbia) with a total number of 240 students.

These students edited articles and answered two questionnaires, one before and one after the exercise. We compared the pre and post experience answers to the questionnaires with a series of paired samples ttests, through which our data showed that students did significantly change their perception of reliability and usefulness, and of likeliness of finding false information on Wikipedia.

Their appreciation of the task of writing Wikipedia articles, in terms of it being interesting and challenge also increased. They did not significantly change, however, their judgement on the social value of the platform, neither in the university nor in the general context.

In addition, the open questions and informal feedback allowed us to gather valuable insights towards the evaluation of the overall experience.

URL : Wikipedia in higher education: Changes in perceived value through content contribution

Alternative location : http://eprints.rclis.org/32171/

 

 

EN

How Many More Cites is a $3,000 Open Access Fee Buying You? Empirical Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors :  Frank Mueller-Langer, Richard Watt

This paper analyzes the effect of open access (OA) status of published journal articles on peer recognition, as measured by the number of citations. Using cross-sectional and panel data from interdisciplinary mathematics and economics journals, we perform negative binomial, Poisson and linear regressions together with generalized method of moments/instrumental variable methods regressions.

We benefit from a natural experiment via hybrid OA pilot agreements. Under these agreements, OA status is exogenously assigned to all articles of authors affiliated with hybrid OA pilot institutions.

Our cross-sectional analysis of the full sample suggests that there is no citation benefit associated with hybrid OA. In contrast, for the subpopulation of journal articles for which neither OA pre-prints nor OA post-prints are available, we find positive hybrid OA effects for the full sample and each discipline separately.

We address the issue of selection bias by exploiting a panel of journal articles for which OA pre-prints are available. Citations to pre-prints allow us to identify the intrinsic quality of articles prior to publication in a journal.

The results from the panel analysis provide additional empirical evidence for a negligible hybrid OA citation effect.

URL : https://ssrn.com/abstract=3096572