InfoDoc MicroVeille – Page 359 – Veille dédiée aux Sciences de l'Information et des Bibliothèques // Collecting and Sharing research papers in Library and Information science ISSN 2429-3938

Demographics of scholarly publishing and communication professionals

Posted on 4 juin 2016 by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Albert N. Greco, Robert M. Wharton, Amy Brand

Scholarly publishing plays a pivotal role in the dissemination of research. While a great deal is known about the companies active in this sector, we need to know more about the employees of the firms that edit, produce, market, and distribute today’s scholarly books and journals.

To achieve this goal, the researchers conducted an international survey in late 2014 and early 2015 of approximately 6,121 scholarly publishing employees in 33 nations. The researchers received 828 usable questionnaires.

Some of the substantive findings about the respondents include: 90.79% identified themselves as white; 85.07% worked in scholarly publishing for more than 5 years; 60% held graduate or professional degrees; and 49% worked in editorial departments.

Key suggestions include the need for annual surveys of this type and that the majority of scholarly publishing firms need to address the issue of diversity.

URL : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/leap.1017/full

Small scholar-led scholarly journals: Can they survive and thrive in an open access future?

Posted on 4 juin 2016 by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Heather Morrison

This article presents early results of a research project designed to further our understanding of how to ensure that small scholar-led journals can survive and thrive in a global open access knowledge commons.

This phase of the research focuses on generation of ideas through interviews and focus groups with 15 participants involved in producing small scholar-led journals that either are or would like to become open access.

Although a couple of journals reported that they could survive in an open access future based on existing resources, most were concerned about survival and none expressed confidence that they could thrive in an open-access future.

These journals are far more diverse than one might imagine. Comparing the costs of article production from one journal with another might not make sense. A number of avenues for further research are discussed.

URL : Small scholar-led scholarly journals: Can they survive and thrive in an open access future?

Alternative location : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/leap.1015/full

Can we use altmetrics at the institutional level? A case study analysing the coverage by research areas of four Spanish universities

Posted on 2 juin 2016 by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Daniel Torres-Salinas, Nicolas Robinson-Garcia, Evaristo Jiménez-Contreras

Social media based indicators or altmetrics have been under scrutiny for the last seven years. Their promise as alternative metrics for measuring scholarly impact is still far from becoming a reality.

Up to now, most studies have focused on the understanding of the nature and relation of altmetric indicators with citation data. Few papers have analysed research profiles based on altmetric data.

Most of these have related to researcher profiles and the expansion of these tools among researchers. This paper aims at exploring the coverage of the Altmetric.com database and its potential use in order to show universities’ research profiles in relationship with other databases.

We analyse a sample of four different Spanish universities.First, we observe a low coverage of altmetric indicators with only 36 percent of all documents retrieved from the Web of Science having an ‘altmetric’ score.Second, we observe that for the four universities analysed, the area of Science shows higher ‘altmetric’ scores that the rest of the research areas.

Finally, considering the low coverage of altmetric data at the institutional level, it could be interesting for research policy makers to consider the development of guidelines and best practices guides to ensure that researchers disseminate adequately their research findings through social media.

URL : Can we use altmetrics at the institutional level? A case study analysing the coverage by research areas of four Spanish universities

Alternative location : https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.00232

Revisiting the Data Lifecycle with Big Data Curation

Posted on 27 mai 2016 by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Line Pouchard

As science becomes more data-intensive and collaborative, researchers increasingly use larger and more complex data to answer research questions.

The capacity of storage infrastructure, the increased sophistication and deployment of sensors, the ubiquitous availability of computer clusters, the development of new analysis techniques, and larger collaborations allow researchers to address grand societal challenges in a way that is unprecedented.

In parallel, research data repositories have been built to host research data in response to the requirements of sponsors that research data be publicly available. Libraries are re-inventing themselves to respond to a growing demand to manage, store, curate and preserve the data produced in the course of publicly funded research.

As librarians and data managers are developing the tools and knowledge they need to meet these new expectations, they inevitably encounter conversations around Big Data. This paper explores definitions of Big Data that have coalesced in the last decade around four commonly mentioned characteristics: volume, variety, velocity, and veracity.

We highlight the issues associated with each characteristic, particularly their impact on data management and curation. We use the methodological framework of the data life cycle model, assessing two models developed in the context of Big Data projects and find them lacking.

We propose a Big Data life cycle model that includes activities focused on Big Data and more closely integrates curation with the research life cycle. These activities include planning, acquiring, preparing, analyzing, preserving, and discovering, with describing the data and assuring quality being an integral part of each activity.

We discuss the relationship between institutional data curation repositories and new long-term data resources associated with high performance computing centers, and reproducibility in computational science.

We apply this model by mapping the four characteristics of Big Data outlined above to each of the activities in the model. This mapping produces a set of questions that practitioners should be asking in a Big Data project

URL : Revisiting the Data Lifecycle with Big Data Curation

Alternative location : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/10.2.176

The effects of an editor serving as one of the reviewers during the peer-review process

Posted on 24 mai 2016 by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Marco Giordan, Attila Csikasz-Nagy, Andrew M. Collings

Background

Publishing in scientific journals is one of the most important ways in which scientists disseminate research to their peers and to the wider public.

Pre-publication peer review underpins this process, but peer review is subject to various criticisms and is under pressure from growth in the number of scientific publications.

Methods

Here we examine an element of the editorial process at eLife, in which the Reviewing Editor usually serves as one of the referees, to see what effect this has on decision times, decision type, and the number of citations.

We analysed a dataset of 8,905 research submissions to eLife since June 2012, of which 2,750 were sent for peer review, using R and Python to perform the statistical analysis.

Results

The Reviewing Editor serving as one of the peer reviewers results in faster decision times on average, with the time to final decision ten days faster for accepted submissions (n=1,405) and 5 days faster for papers that were rejected after peer review (n=1,099).

There was no effect on whether submissions were accepted or rejected, and a very small (but significant) effect on citation rates for published articles where the Reviewing Editor served as one of the peer reviewers.

Conclusions

An important aspect of eLife’s peer-review process is shown to be effective, given that decision times are faster when the Reviewing Editor serves as a reviewer. Other journals hoping to improve decision times could consider adopting a similar approach.

URL : The effects of an editor serving as one of the reviewers during the peer-review process

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.8452.1

Produire un rapport d’activité : Pourquoi ? Comment ?

Posted on 23 mai 2016 by Hans Dillaerts

Auteur/author : Thomas Violet

L’environnement culturel, institutionnel, économique et technologique en mutation incite les bibliothèques à produire un rapport annuel d’activité afin de disposer d’un document de référence et de promouvoir leurs activités.

Si elles possèdent depuis longtemps une tradition de collecte des données d’activité, basée sur les différentes enquêtes ministérielles, elle ne produisent pas toutes un document synthétique autonome.

À la croisée des problématiques d’évaluation et de communication, les différentes pratiques des bibliothèques françaises éclairent les possibilités et enjeux d’un tel document, ses objectifs, les difficultés de sa fabrication ainsi que son circuit de diffusion.

URL : Produire un rapport d’activité : Pourquoi ? Comment ?

Alternative location : http://www.enssib.fr/bibliotheque-numerique/notices/66455-produire-un-rapport-d-activite-pourquoi-comment