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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

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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

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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

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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

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Advocating for Librarianship: The Discourses of Advocacy and Service in the Professional Identities of Librarians

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

A dedication to service is often cited as a hallmark of a profession. Service is included as one of eleven Core Values in the American Library Association’s “Core Values of Librarianship” (2004). For librarians, service includes helping people find information resources to meet their educational, recreational, and work needs.

Reporting findings from a larger study into the professional identity of librarians, this paper explores the centrality of service, with specific attention to how librarians advocate for their services and, ultimately, for librarianship.

Using a discourse analysis approach, this study examines the roles that Service as a Core Value and advocacy play in the construction of professional identity. Three different data sources were used: professional journals, e-mail discussion lists, and research interviews.

The data were analyzed for the discourses librarians use when describing librarians, librarianship, and professionalism and their connection to advocacy. When librarians advocate for the services they offer, they are in fact advocating for the value of the profession.

Discursively, speaking or writing about advocacy positioned librarians as active participants in their own identity formation. By making advocacy a central activity of the profession, librarians not only challenged others’ perception of librarianship, they challenged their own understanding as well.

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

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Democratic Potential of New Models of Scholarship and the Crisis of Control

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

This paper frames the serials crisis as a loss of control over libraries’ collections and development budgets. While libraries have always had to contend with budget constraints, for many the rising cost of serials has become prohibitive, impeding on scholarship itself as librarians are forced to cut journal subscriptions.

Open Access (OA) journals hold the potential to partially alleviate the crisis, but a lasting solution might lie in altering expectations of scholars. Our critique of the dissemination of scholarly research looks to both Marxian economic theory and later critical theory, but finds both inadequate for a pragmatic solution to the crisis; instead, we adopt Deweyan democratic theory to argue in favour of public scholarship aided by librarians and vetted by scholarly societies.

URL : Democratic Potential of New Models of Scholarship and the Crisis of Control

Alternative location : http://www.mediatropes.com/index.php/Mediatropes/article/view/26418