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On the Marginal Cost of Scholarly Communication

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

We assessed the marginal cost of scholarly communication from the perspective of an agent looking to start an independent, peer-reviewed scholarly journal. We found that various vendors can accommodate all of the services required for scholarly communication for a price ranging between $69 and $318 per article.

In contrast, if an agent had access to software solutions replacing the services provided by vendors, the marginal cost of scholarly communication would be reduced to the cloud infrastructure cost alone and drop to between $1.36 and $1.61 per article.

Incidentally, DOI registration alone accounts for between 82% and 98% of this cost. While vendor cost typically decreases with higher volume, new offerings in cloud computing exhibit the opposite trend, challenging the notion that large volume publishers benefit from economies of scales as compared to smaller publishers.

Given the current lack of software solutions fulfilling the functions of scholarly communication, we conclude that the development of high quality “plug-and-play” open source software solutions would have a significant impact in reducing the marginal cost of scholarly communication, making it more open to experimentation and innovation.

URL : https://research.science.ai/article/on-the-marginal-cost-of-scholarly-communication

EN

The academic, economic and societal impacts of Open Access: an evidence-based review

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Ongoing debates surrounding Open Access to the scholarly literature are multifaceted and complicated by disparate and often polarised viewpoints from engaged stakeholders. At the current stage, Open Access has become such a global issue that it is critical for all involved in scholarly publishing, including policymakers, publishers, research funders, governments, learned societies, librarians, and academic communities, to be well-informed on the history, benefits, and pitfalls of Open Access.

In spite of this, there is a general lack of consensus regarding the advantages or disadvantages of Open Access at multiple levels. This review aims to to be a resource for current knowledge on the impacts of Open Access by synthesizing important research in three major areas of impact: academic, economic and societal.

While there is clearly much scope for additional research, several key trends are identified, including a broad citation advantage for researchers who publish openly, as well as additional benefits to the non-academic dissemination of their work.

The economic case for Open Access is less well-understood, although it is clear that access to the research literature is key for innovative enterprises, and a range of governmental and non-governmental services.

Furthermore, Open Access has the potential to save publishers and research funders considerable amounts of financial resources. The social case for Open Access is strong, in particular for advancing citizen science initiatives, and leveling the playing field for researchers in developing countries.

Open Access supersedes all potential alternative modes of access to the scholarly literature through enabling unrestricted re-use, and long-term stability independent of financial constraints of traditional publishers that impede knowledge sharing.

Open Access remains only one of the multiple challenges that the scholarly publishing system is currently facing. Yet, it provides one foundation for increasing engagement with researchers regarding ethical standards of publishing.

We recommend that Open Access supporters focus their efforts on working to establish viable new models and systems of scholarly communication, rather than trying to undermine the existing ones as part of the natural evolution of the scholarly ecosystem. Based on this, future research should investigate the wider impacts of an ecosystem-wide transformation to a system of Open Research.

URL : The academic, economic and societal impacts of Open Access: an evidence-based review

Alternative location : http://f1000research.com/articles/5-632/v1

FR

Archives Ouvertes de la Connaissance. Valoriser et diffuser les données de recherche

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Projet commun de l’Université de Strasbourg, l’Université de Haute-Alsace, l’Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA) et la Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire (BNU) de Strasbourg, les Archives Ouvertes de la Connaissance offriront aux (enseignants)-chercheurs et doctorants un service pour la valorisation de leurs données de recherche.

Ce mémoire propose, dans un premier temps, de replacer le projet dans le contexte des archives institutionnelles françaises et européennes, afin d’en dégager les spécificités ; dans un second temps, sont présentés les enjeux et les modalités de mise en forme et de diffusion des données de recherche, que produisent les établissements alsaciens partenaires et qui seront liées à l’archive ouverte.

URL : https://microblogging.infodocs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/66039-archives-ouvertes-de-la-connaissance-valoriser-et-diffuser-les-donnees-de-recherche.pdf

Alternative location : http://www.enssib.fr/bibliotheque-numerique/notices/66039-archives-ouvertes-de-la-connaissance-valoriser-et-diffuser-les-donnees-de-recherche

EN

OpenTrials: towards a collaborative open database of all available information on all clinical trials

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

OpenTrials is a collaborative and open database for all available structured data and documents on all clinical trials, threaded together by individual trial.

With a versatile and expandable data schema, it is initially designed to host and match the following documents and data for each trial: registry entries; links, abstracts, or texts of academic journal papers; portions of regulatory documents describing individual trials; structured data on methods and results extracted by systematic reviewers or other researchers; clinical study reports; and additional documents such as blank consent forms, blank case report forms, and protocols.

The intention is to create an open, freely re-usable index of all such information and to increase discoverability, facilitate research, identify inconsistent data, enable audits on the availability and completeness of this information, support advocacy for better data and drive up standards around open data in evidence-based medicine.

The project has phase I funding. This will allow us to create a practical data schema and populate the database initially through web-scraping, basic record linkage techniques, crowd-sourced curation around selected drug areas, and import of existing sources of structured and documents.

It will also allow us to create user-friendly web interfaces onto the data and conduct user engagement workshops to optimise the database and interface designs.

Where other projects have set out to manually and perfectly curate a narrow range of information on a smaller number of trials, we aim to use a broader range of techniques and attempt to match a very large quantity of information on all trials. We are currently seeking feedback and additional sources of structured data.

URL : OpenTrials: towards a collaborative open database of all available information on all clinical trials

Alternative location : http://trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13063-016-1290-8

FR

Big data et bibliothèques : traitement et analyse informatiques des collections numériques

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Cette étude s’attache à présenter sous quels aspects les collections numériques des bibliothèques relèvent des problématiques propres aux données massives, et en quoi les techniques de fouille de données (text and data mining) représentent désormais une nécessité pour l’appropriation par les chercheurs des résultats de la littérature scientifique.

Ce travail, qui met au centre de son propos les techniques de fouille de données comme moyens de maîtriser la masse documentaire, identifie trois problématiques distinctes concernant les bibliothèques numériques et ces dispositifs de lecture algorithmiques : sont ainsi abordées successivement les démarches à mettre en oeuvre pour aider les chercheurs à faire usage de ces nouvelles méthodes de lecture, puis l’emploi de techniques de fouille de données sur les collections pour constituer de nouvelles formes d’instruments de recherche, et enfin l’usage de la fouille pour assister le traitement documentaire.

L’étude se conclut sur le détail des questions juridiques soulevées actuellement par la fouille de données, en rapport avec le droit de la propriété intellectuelle.

URL : Big data et bibliothèques : traitement et analyse informatiques des collections numériques

Alternative location : http://www.enssib.fr/bibliotheque-numerique/notices/66017-big-data-et-bibliotheques-traitement-et-analyse-informatiques-des-collections-numeriques

EN

Open Access Temptations: Buyer Beware

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Backlash against « megapublishers” which began in mathematics a decade ago has led to an exponential growth in open access journals. Their increasing numbers and popularity notwithstanding, there is evidence that not all open access journals are legitimate.

The nature of the « gold open access » business model and increasing prevalence of « publish or perish » culture in academia has given rise to a dark underbelly in the world of scientific publishing which feeds off academics’ professional needs.

Many such « predatory publishers » and journals not only seem to originate out of India but also seem to have been patronized by academics in the country. This article is a cautionary note to early-career academics and administrators in India to be wary of this « wild west » of the internet and exercise due discretion when considering/ evaluating open-access journals for scholarly contributions.

URL : http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/assets/snippets/workingpaperpdf/10046630992016-03-49.pdf

EN

The Paradox of Privacy: Revisiting a Core Library Value in an Age of Big Data and Linked Data

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Protecting user privacy and confidentiality is fundamental to the ethics and practice of librarianship, and such protection constitutes one of eleven values in the American Library Association’s “Core Values of Librarianship” (2004).

This paper addresses the concerns of protecting privacy in the library as they relate to library users who are defining, exploring, and negotiating their sexual identities with the help of the library’s information, programming, and physical facilities.

In so doing, we enlist the aid of Garret Keizer, who, in Privacy (2012), articulates a fresh theory of the concept in light of American social life in the twenty-first century. Using Keizer’s theory, we examine these concerns within the context of the rise of big data systems and social media on the one hand, and linked data and new cataloging standards on the other.

In so doing, we suggest that linked data technologies, with their ability to lead searchers through self-directed, open inquiry, are superior to big data technologies in the navigation of the paradox between openness and secrecy.

In this way they offer a greater potential to support the needs of queer library users: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, or questioning (LGBTQ).

URL : http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/library_trends/v064/64.3.campbell.html