EN

Use of the Paid Open Access Option in Hybrid Open Access Journals in Agriculture: A Mixed-Methods Study

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Megan Kocher, Julie Kelly

We explore the use and usefulness of the hybrid open access publishing model in agricultural sciences using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods.

To ascertain the level of usage of the paid open access option in hybrid open access journals in agriculture, we studied the agriculture-related journals published by six commercial publishers.

These publishers offer authors the option of paying a fee, often close to $3,000 per article, to make their article immediately freely available, usually with a Creative Commons license. We defined agriculture broadly but also assigned each journal to a subspecialty (e.g., animal science) in order to see if there were differences based on these subdivisions.

For each journal we gathered data for 2014-2015 and noted the total number of research articles and the number of those that were made freely available by authors paying the open access fee.

To give context to our results we also surveyed local faculty in agricultural sciences, asking their reasons for considering the paid open access options and the sources of the funds to pay for it. Survey respondents were asked about their academic position and rank to see if there were differences to be noted.

We also investigated the findability of the open access articles, noting if each individual publisher offered a way to easily locate all the freely available articles in a particular journal and if there are other avenues to easily locate these articles.

URL : http://istl.org/16-fall/refereed2.html

EN

Grand challenges in altmetrics: heterogeneity, data quality and dependencies

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Stefanie Haustein

As uptake among researchers is constantly increasing, social media are finding their way into scholarly communication and, under the umbrella term altmetrics, were introduced to research evaluation.

Fueled by technological possibilities and an increasing demand to demonstrate impact beyond the scientific community, altmetrics received great attention as potential democratizers of the scientific reward system and indicators of societal impact. This paper focuses on current challenges of altmetrics.

Heterogeneity, data quality and particular dependencies are identified as the three major issues and discussed in detail with a particular emphasis on past developments in bibliometrics.

The heterogeneity of altmetrics mirrors the diversity of the types of underlying acts, most of which take place on social media platforms. This heterogeneity has made it difficult to establish a common definition or conceptual framework.

Data quality issues become apparent in the lack of accuracy, consistency and replicability of various altmetrics, which is largely affected by the dynamic nature of social media events.

It is further highlighted that altmetrics are shaped by technical possibilities and depend particularly on the availability of APIs and DOIs, are strongly dependent on data providers and aggregators, and potentially influenced by technical affordances of underlying platforms.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.04939

FR

A l’épreuve de l’hétérogénéité : données de recherche et interdisciplinarité : L’exemple du projet européen IPERION-CH

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Auteur/Author : Marie Puren

Avec la mise en place de grandes infrastructures de recherche en sciences du patrimoine comme E-RIHS, on rassemble des acteurs divers, issus à la fois des sciences humaines et sociales et des sciences expérimentales. Le paléontologue croise l’historien de l’art, et le physicien collabore avec le restaurateur.

Dans ce cadre, la gestion des données de la recherche est un véritable défi, car elle doit rassembler, valoriser et rendre accessibles des données produites par des protagonistes très différents, utilisant des méthodes elles aussi très différentes. Comment en effet gérer et échanger à la fois des données d’expériences, des images numérisées et des rapports de restauration ?

Le cycle de vie des données de la recherche, de leur création à leur diffusion en passant par leur analyse, au sein de cette communauté interdisciplinaire interroge la définition même de ce type de données, et nous amène à questionner les pratiques autour de celles-ci.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01408951/

EN

Bibliometrics and academic staff assessment in Polish university libraries – current trends

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Danuta Ryś, Anna Chadaj

Academic staff assessment in Poland is, to a large extent, based on bibliographic indicators, such as the number of scientific publications produced, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education score pertaining to the journal rank and the publication type, as well as the number of citations and derivatives.

Relevant data is retrieved from bibliographic databases developed by libraries, international citation indexes available for Polish scientific institutions under a national licence, and from open-access international and Polish sources, which are briefly presented in the article.

The workload entailed, and in consequence, the results of this citation search vary depending on the search method applied. For this reason university staff members and university authorities often seek assistance for this from the university library staff. This in return provides an opportunity for libraries to increase their role within the academic community.

In order to investigate the matter further, the authors conducted a survey among the largest academic libraries in Poland.

The findings confirm that bibliometric processes (namely, the registration and the formal acceptance of university staff scientific publications, and compilation of citation reports) have become a vital part of modern library work. Bibliographies of university staff publications developed by libraries include various bibliometric indicators (those most frequently used being identified in the article), and have become an important source of statistical and bibliometric information.

The survey results highlight the most frequently used bibliometric sources and methods. Examples of bibliographic databases created by the libraries and bibliometric indicators used within these databases are also presented.

DOI : https://www.liberquarterly.eu/article/10.18352/lq.10175/

FR

Les archives ouvertes dans le monde arabe : entre stagnation et évolution

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Mohamed Ben Romdhane

L’offre des archives ouvertes dans le monde arabe ne cesse d’accroitre ces dernières années, c’est ce que cette étude essaye de montrer à travers l’identification et l’évaluation de ces dépôts en se basant sur une grille spécifique et en comparant les résultats obtenus à ceux obtenus par d’autres études antérieures.

Sur d’autres plans, l’étude a montré une légère évolution dans quelques aspects voire une stagnation dans d’autres. C’est ainsi que les politiques des institutions arabes envers le libre accès et les archives ouvertes restent inconnus et non déclarées. Pour ce qui est le volume de ces dépôts, la plupart restent très peu alimentés.

URL : https://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_01412079

 

EN

The persistence of open access electronic journals

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Elizabeth A. Lightfoot

Purpose

Open access (OA) electronic journals have been identified as potentially at risk of loss without more coordinated preservation efforts. The purpose of this paper is to test the current availability of OA electronic journals indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

Design/methodology/approach

Using publicly available journal metadata downloaded from DOAJ, individual journal URLs were tested for validity and accessibility using a Microsoft Excel Visual Basic for Applications macro.

Findings

Initial results showed 69.51% of the URLs tested returned a successful HTTP status code. The remainder of the URLs returned codes that indicated redirection or errors.

Originality/Value

Unlike past studies of link decay, this is not limited to cited references or a specific discipline. This study utilizes the full DOAJ metadata to analyze the persistence of OA electronic journals.

URL : http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/glworks/55/

EN

Open supply? On the future of document supply in the world of open science

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Joachim Schöpfel

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to propose a personal viewpoint on the development of document supply in the context of the recent European Union (EU) decisions on open science.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper provides some elements to the usual questions of service development, about business, customers, added value, environment and objectives.

Findings

The EU goal for open science is 100 per cent available research results in 2020. To meet the challenge, document supply must change, include more and other content, serve different targets groups, apply innovative technology and provide knowledge. If not, document supply will become a marginalized library service.

Originality/value

Basically, open science is not library-friendly, and it does not offer a solution for the actual problems of document supply. But it may provide an opportunity for document supply to become a modern service able to deal with new forms of unequal access and digital divide.

URL : http://hal.univ-lille3.fr/hal-01408443