Software Heritage: Why and How to Preserve Software Source Code

Authors : Roberto Di Cosmo, Stefano Zacchiroli

Software is now a key component present in all aspects of our society. Its preservation has attracted growing attention over the past years within the digital preservation community.

We claim that source code—the only representation of software that contains human readable knowledge—is a precious digital object that needs special handling: it must be a first class citizen in the preservation landscape and we need to take action immediately, given the increasingly more frequent incidents that result in permanent losses of source code collections. In this paper we present Software Heritage, an ambitious initiative to collect, preserve, and share the entire corpus of publicly accessible software source code.

We discuss the archival goals of the project, its use cases and role as a participant in the broader digital preservation ecosystem, and detail its key design decisions. We also report on the project road map and the current status of the Software Heritage archive that, as of early 2017, has collected more than 3 billion unique source code files and 700 million commits coming from more than 50 million software development projects.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01590958

Fast and Furious (at Publishers): The Motivations behind Crowdsourced Research Sharing

Authors : Carolyn Caffrey Gardner, Gabriel J. Gardner

Crowdsourced research sharing takes place across social media platforms including Twitter hashtags such as #icanhazpdf, Reddit Scholar, and Facebook.

This study surveys users of these peer-to-peer exchanges on demographic information, frequency of use, and their motivations in both providing and obtaining scholarly information on these platforms. Respondents also provided their perspectives on the database terms of service and/or copyright violations in these exchanges.

Findings indicate that the motivations of this community are utilitarian or ideological in nature, similar to other peer-to-peer file sharing online. Implications for library services including instruction, outreach, and interlibrary loan are discussed.

URL : Fast and Furious (at Publishers): The Motivations behind Crowdsourced Research Sharing

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.78.2.16578

Measuring Cost per Use of Library-Funded Open Access Article Processing Charges: Examination and Implications of One Method

Authors : Crystal Hampson, Elizabeth Stregger

INTRODUCTION

Libraries frequently support their open access (OA) fund using money from their collections budget. Interest in assessment of OA funds is arising. Cost per use is a common method to assess library collections expenditures.

OA article processing charges (APCs) are a one-time cost for global, perpetual use. Article level metrics provide data on global, cumulative article level usage. This article examines a method and discusses the limitations and implications of using article level metrics to calculate cost per use for OA APCs.

METHODS

Using different APC models from two publishers, PLOS and BioMed Central, this article presents a cost per use formula for each model.

RESULTS

The formula for each model is demonstrated with available data. The examples suggest a very low cost per use for OA APCs after only three years.

DISCUSSION

Several limitations exist to obtaining article level data currently, including the nature of open access and accessibility of the data. OA articles’ usage levels are high and include use from altruistic access. Cost per use comparison with traditional publishing models is possible; however, comparison between different OA expenditures with very low costs per use may not be helpful.

CONCLUSION

Article level metrics can provide a means to measure cost per use of OA APCs. Libraries need increased access to article level usage data. They will also need to develop new benchmarks and expectations to evaluate APC payments, given higher usage levels for OA articles and considering altruistic access.

URL : Measuring Cost per Use of Library-Funded Open Access Article Processing Charges: Examination and Implications of One Method

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2182

Libre accès aux savoirs et accès ouvert aux publications

Auteur/Author : Jérôme Valluy

L’étude sociologique des débats médiatiques et de l’action publique, en France entre 2013 et 2017, sur l’accès ouvert aux publications scientifiques et didactiques de sciences humaines et sociales issues du système universitaire, sous l’angle de la préservation du pluralisme, permet de souligner l’intérêt de distinguer conceptuellement « libre accès » aux savoirs et « accès ouvert » aux publications. Dans la configuration étudiée, l’action publique, gouvernementale et militante, en faveur de l’accès ouvert s’oriente vers des finalités de centralisation et de contrôles qui l’éloignent progressivement de l’idéal philosophique du libre accès aux savoirs.

Ce phénomène donne l’opportunité de repenser à nouveaux frais le sens du mot « libre », dans « libre accès » aux savoirs, en cherchant à mieux identifier les libertés – celles indissociablement liées des auteurs et lecteurs – nécessaires à la recherche et à l’enseignement en SHS.

URL https://rfsic.revues.org/3194

La notion de Science Ouverte dans l’Espace européen de la recherche. Entre tendances à l’« exotérisation » et à la « gestionnarisation » de la recherche scientifique

Auteur/Author : Marc Vanholsbeeck

Cet article analyse les prescriptions européennes en matière d’Open Science et évalue la mesure dans laquelle celles-ci contribuent à résoudre la contradiction qui leur préexiste entre les prescrits qui, au sein de l’Espace européen de la recherche, encouragent les chercheurs à ouvrir la démarche scientifique et les produits de la recherche à des parties prenantes extérieures, et ceux qui incitent à fonder les indicateurs de performance en matière de recherche sur les articles de revue savante internationale.

A cet égard, la combinaison de la publication en OA avec l’archivage d’une diversité de produits de la recherche sur des répertoires OA s’avère préférable au basculement unilatéral dans la voie dorée de l’OA, par le biais de « big deals » avec les Majors.

URL : https://rfsic.revues.org/3241

Open notebook science as an emerging epistemic culture within the Open Science movement

Authors : Anne Clinio, Sarita Albagli

The paper addresses the concepts and practices of “open notebook science” (Bradley, 2006) as an innovation within the contemporary Open Science movement. Our research points out that open notebook science is not an incremental improvement, but it is a new “literary technology” (Shapin, Shaffer, 1985) and main element of a complex open collaboration ecosystem that fosters a new epistemic culture (Knorr-Cetina, 1999).

This innovation aimed to move from a “science based on trust” to a science based on transparency and data provenance – a shift that recognizes the ability of scientists in performing experiments, but mostly, values their capacity of documenting properly what they say they have done. The theoretical framework was built with the notion of epistemic culture (Knorr-Cetina, 1999) and the “three technologies” perspective used by Shapin and Shaffer (1985) to describe the construction by natural philosophers of “matter of fact” as “variety of knowledge” so powerful that became synonymous of science itself.

Empirically, we entered the “open lab” through a netnography that led us to understand that the epistemic culture being engendered by its practitioners is based on a “matter of proof”.

URL : https://rfsic.revues.org/3186

De l’open data à l’open science : retour réflexif sur les méthodes et pratiques d’une recherche sur les données géographiques

Auteurs/Authors : Nathalie Pinède, Matthieu Noucher, Françoise Gourmelon, Karel Soumagnac-Colin

Nous mobilisons ici l’expérience d’un projet de recherche en cours pour analyser la façon dont les nouveaux terrains d’expérimentations sur le web, modifient les conditions de la pratique scientifique, des objets aux méthodes, de l’open data à l’open science.

La massification des données géographiques disponibles sur le web reconfigure les dynamiques de recherche selon trois axes de transformation : les objets, les méthodes et les pratiques de recherche. Tout d’abord, nous soulignerons comment les enjeux de pouvoir autour de la cartographie se sont déplacés avec l’avènement du web et de l’open data.

Nous développerons ensuite les impacts en matière de méthodologie de recherche dans un contexte d’approche interdisciplinaire. Enfin, nous montrerons comment ce projet de recherche s’inscrit dans une démarche de type open science.

URL : https://rfsic.revues.org/3200