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Imagining tomorrow’s university: open science and its impact

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Adina Howe, Michael D. Howe, Amy L. Kaleita, D. Raj Raman

As part of a recent workshop entitled « Imagining Tomorrow’s University”, we were asked to visualize the future of universities as research becomes increasingly data- and computation-driven, and identify a set of principles characterizing pertinent opportunities and obstacles presented by this shift.

In order to establish a holistic view, we take a multilevel approach and examine the impact of open science on individual scholars as well as on the university as a whole.

At the university level, open science presents a double-edged sword: when well executed, open science can accelerate the rate of scientific inquiry across the institution and beyond; however, haphazard or half-hearted efforts are likely to squander valuable resources, diminish university productivity and prestige, and potentially do more harm than good. We present our perspective on the role of open science at the university.

URL : Imagining tomorrow’s university: open science and its impact

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.11232.1

EN

Rethinking the Subscription Paradigm for Journals: Using Interlibrary Loan in Collection Development for Serials

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Gail Perkins Barton, George E. Relyea, Steven A. Knowlton

Many librarians evaluate local Interlibrary Loan (ILL) statistics in order to affect collection development decisions concerning new subscriptions.

In this study, the authors examine whether the number of ILL article requests received in one academic year can predict the use of those same journal titles once added to library resources.

There is little correlation between ILL requests for individual titles and their later use as subscribed titles. However, there is strong correlation between ILL requests within a subject category and later use of subscribed titles in that subject category.

An additional study examining the sources from which patrons made ILL requests shows that database search results, not journal titles, dominate. These results call into question the need for libraries to subscribe to individual journal titles rather than providing access to a broad array of articles.

URL : http://crl.acrl.org/content/early/2017/04/06/crl17-1061.short

EN

What Constitutes Peer Review of Data: A survey of published peer review guidelines

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Todd A Carpenter

Since a number of journals specifically focus on the review and publication of data sets, reviewing their policies seems an appropriate place to start in assessing what existing practice looks like in the ‘real world’ of reviewing and publishing data.

This article outlines a study of the publicly available peer review policies of 39 scientific publications that publish data papers to discern which criteria are most and least frequently referenced. It also compares current practice with proposed criteria published in 2012.

URL : What Constitutes Peer Review of Data: A survey of published peer review guidelines

Alternative location : https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.02236

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The scientific impact of nations on scientific and technological development

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Aurelio Patelli, Giulio Cimini, Emanuele Pugliese, Andrea Gabrielli

Determining how scientific achievements influence the subsequent process of knowledge creation is a fundamental step in order to build a unified ecosystem for studying the dynamics of innovation and competitiveness.

Yet, relying separately on data about scientific production on one side, through bibliometric indicators, and about technological advancements on the other side, through patents statistics, gives only a limited insight on the key interplay between science and technology which, as a matter of fact, move forward together within the innovation space.

In this paper, using citation data of both scientific papers and patents, we quantify the direct impact of the scientific outputs of nations on further advancements in science and on the introduction of new technologies.

Our analysis highlights the presence of geo-cultural clusters of nations with similar innovation system features, and unveils the heterogeneous coupled dynamics of scientific and technological success.

This study represents a first step in the buildup of a comprehensive framework for knowledge creation and innovation.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.03768

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Networked Scholarship and Motivations for Social Media use in Scholarly Communication

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Stefania Manca, Maria Ranieri

Research on scholars’ use of social media suggests that these sites are increasingly being used to enhance scholarly communication by strengthening relationships, facilitating collaboration among peers, publishing and sharing research products, and discussing research topics in open and public formats.

However, very few studies have investigated perceptions and attitudes towards social media use for scholarly communication of large cohorts of scholars at national level.

This study investigates the reasons for using social media sites for scholarly communication among a large sample of Italian university scholars (N=6139) with the aim of analysing what factors mainly affect these attitudes.

The motivations for using social media were analysed in connection with frequency of use and factors like gender, age, years of teaching, academic title, and disciplinary field. The results point out that for the most used tools the influence of the variables examined was higher in shaping scholars’ motivations.

In fact, frequency of use, age, years of teaching, and disciplinary field were found to be relevant factors especially for LinkedIn and ResearchGate-Academia.edu, while gender and academic title seemed to have a limited impact on scholars’ motivations for all social media sites considered in the study.

Considerations for future research are provided along with limitations of the study.

URL : Networked Scholarship and Motivations for Social Media use in Scholarly Communication

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i2.2859

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Open Access and Global Inclusion: A Look at Cuba

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Authors : Elizabeth Jardine, Maureen Garvey, J. Silvia Cho

Is the Open Access movement meeting its goal of equalizing access to research worldwide? What we learned in libraries and archives during a delegation to Cuba inspired us to pursue this question.

Latin America has long used OA to share its research, but it still has not achieved parity in access and contribution with the developed world. We consider what the OA movement can do to relieve some of these global inequities.

URL : http://academicworks.cuny.edu/si_pubs/78/

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Ready for the future? A survey on open access with scientists from the French National Research Center (CNRS)

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Joachim Schöpfel, Coline Ferrant, Francis André, Renaud Fabre

Purpose

The paper presents empirical evidence on the opinion and behaviour of French scientists (senior management level) regarding open access to scientific and technical information.

Approach

The results are part of a nationwide survey on scientific information and documentation with 432 directors of French public research laboratories conducted by the French Research Center CNRS in 2014.

Findings

1. The CNRS senior research managers (laboratory directors) globally share the positive opinion towards open access revealed by other studies with researchers from the UK, Germany, the United States and other countries. However, they are more supportive of open repositories (green road) than of OA journal publishing (gold).

2. The response patterns reveal a gap between generally positive opinions about open access and less supportive behaviours, principally publishing articles with APCs.

3. A small group of senior research managers does not seem to be interested in green or gold open access and reluctant to self-archiving and OA publishing.

4. Similar to other studies, the French survey confirms disciplinary differences, i.e. a stronger support for self-archiving of records and documents in HAL by scientists from
Mathematics, Physics and Informatics than from Biology, Earth Sciences and Chemistry; and more experience and positive feelings with open access publishing and payment of APCs in Biology than in Mathematics or in Social Sciences and Humanities. Disciplinary differences and specific French factors are discussed, in particular in the context of the new European policy in favour of Open Science.

Originality

For the first time, a nationwide survey was conducted with the senior research management level from all scientific disciplines.

The response rate was high (>30%), and the results provide good insight into the real awareness, support and uptake of open access by senior research managers who provide both models (examples for good practice) and opinion leadership.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01399422