InfoDoc MicroVeille – Page 389 – Veille dédiée aux Sciences de l'Information et des Bibliothèques // Collecting and Sharing research papers in Library and Information science ISSN 2429-3938

A multi-institutional study of the impact of open textbook adoption on the learning outcomes of post-secondary students

Posted on 7 octobre 2015 by Hans Dillaerts

In some educational settings, the cost of textbooks approaches or even exceeds the cost of tuition. Given limited resources, it is important to better understand the impacts of free open educational resources (OER) on student outcomes. Utilizing digital resources such as OER can substantially reduce costs for students. The purpose of this study was to analyze whether the adoption of no-cost open digital textbooks significantly predicted students’ completion of courses, class achievement, and enrollment intensity during and after semesters in which OER were used. T

his study utilized a quantitative quasi-experimental design with propensity-score matched groups to examine differences in outcomes between students that used OER and those who did not. The demographics of the initial sample of 16,727 included 4909 students in the treatment condition with a pool of 11,818 in the control condition. There were statistically significant differences between groups, with most favoring students utilizing OER.

URL : http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12528-015-9101-x

Publier : à quel prix ? Étude sur la structuration des coûts de publication pour les revues françaises en SHS

Posted on 5 octobre 2015 by Hans Dillaerts

La publication d’articles dans des revues scientifiques est un enjeu fort pour les institutions de recherche françaises car il s’agit bien d’un vecteur essentiel de la visibilité des travaux des chercheurs et qu’il est fondamental de maximiser l’impact de ces travaux. Cette publication a un coût pour les institutions publiques, que ce soit pour le financement du processus éditorial et de production, ou pour l’achat en bibliothèques et la mise à disposition auprès des chercheurs.

Cet article présente les résultats de l’enquête sur les coûts éditoriaux des revues scientifiques menée par le groupe édition de BSN de mars 2014 à janvier 2015 avec pour objectif de collecter une information récente et représentative de la diversité des situations, au sujet des coûts éditoriaux des revues de recherche, afin de faire un état des lieux complet et à jour.

URL : http://rfsic.revues.org/1716

Strategies for Success: Open Access Policies at North American Educational Institutions

Posted on 4 octobre 2015 by Hans Dillaerts

Recognizing the paucity of quantitative and qualitative data from North American educational institutions that have pursued open access policies, the authors devised a survey to collect information on the characteristics of these institutions, as well as the elements of the open access policies, the methods of promoting these policies, faculty concerns about the policies, and how those concerns have been addressed.

The data collected through survey results from fifty-one institutions can inform the strategic decisions being made by other institutions considering an open access policy and illustrates the essential roles that academic libraries can play in the development and passage of open access policies.

URL : http://crl.acrl.org/content/early/2015/09/24/crl15-809.full.pdf

‘Predatory’ open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics

Posted on 3 octobre 2015 by Hans Dillaerts

Background

A negative consequence of the rapid growth of scholarly open access publishing funded by article processing charges is the emergence of publishers and journals with highly questionable marketing and peer review practices. These so-called predatory publishers are causing unfounded negative publicity for open access publishing in general. Reports about this branch of e-business have so far mainly concentrated on exposing lacking peer review and scandals involving publishers and journals. There is a lack of comprehensive studies about several aspects of this phenomenon, including extent and regional distribution.

Methods

After an initial scan of all predatory publishers and journals included in the so-called Beall’s list, a sample of 613 journals was constructed using a stratified sampling method from the total of over 11,000 journals identified. Information about the subject field, country of publisher, article processing charge and article volumes published between 2010 and 2014 were manually collected from the journal websites. For a subset of journals, individual articles were sampled in order to study the country affiliation of authors and the publication delays.

Results

Over the studied period, predatory journals have rapidly increased their publication volumes from 53,000 in 2010 to an estimated 420,000 articles in 2014, published by around 8,000 active journals. Early on, publishers with more than 100 journals dominated the market, but since 2012 publishers in the 10–99 journal size category have captured the largest market share. The regional distribution of both the publisher’s country and authorship is highly skewed, in particular Asia and Africa contributed three quarters of authors. Authors paid an average article processing charge of 178 USD per article for articles typically published within 2 to 3 months of submission.

Conclusions

Despite a total number of journals and publishing volumes comparable to respectable (indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals) open access journals, the problem of predatory open access seems highly contained to just a few countries, where the academic evaluation practices strongly favor international publication, but without further quality checks.

URL : ‘Predatory’ open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics

Alternative location : http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/13/230

Calliopê.ch : Recommandations pour la mise en place d’une offre de ebooks en bibliothèque

Posted on 29 septembre 2015 by Hans Dillaerts

Initié par la Haute École de gestion de Genève, le projet de recherche Calliopê.ch s’est déroulé entre janvier 2014 et juin 2015. Cette étude visait à appréhender la réception et l’usage de dispositifs mobiles de lecture (notamment liseuses et tablettes) en bibliothèque, de manière à formuler des préconisations sur la mise en place d’une offre numérique globale (contenus, organisation des contenus, interfaces, dispositifs de lecture, modalités de prêt).

Mené en partenariat avec l’enssib (école nationale supérieure des sciences de l’information et des bibliothèques), la Bibliothèque de l’UNIGE (Université de Genève) et la CLP (Communauté de travail des bibliothèques suisses de lecture publique), le projet a abouti à l’élaboration de recommandations basées sur les résultats d’une enquête en ligne et les retours d’expériences d’usagers.

Présentées sous formes de fiches, ces préconisations fournissent des pistes de réflexion et d’actions concrètes aux bibliothèques suisses romandes désireuses d’offrir une collection de livres numériques à leurs usagers. Elles traitent d’une part d’aspects généraux et, d’autre part, de points spécifiques au contexte académique et à la lecture publique.

De nature pratique, elles couvrent à la fois les aspects techniques, fonctionnels, organisationnels et juridiques mais aussi ceux relatifs aux publics et à la communication. L’objectif est de soutenir les bibliothèques dans leur démarche de mise en place d’une offre complète alliant ebooks, dispositifs mobiles et services d’accompagnement nécessaires à leur valorisation et, in fine, à leur appropriation par les publics.

URL : Calliopê.ch : Recommandations pour la mise en place d’une offre de ebooks en bibliothèque

Accessible également sur ArchiveSic : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_01186706

Open access chemical probes for epigenetic targets

Posted on 29 septembre 2015 by Hans Dillaerts

Background

High attrition rates in drug discovery call for new approaches to improve target validation. Academia is filling gaps, but often lacks the experience and resources of the pharmaceutical industry resulting in poorly characterized tool compounds.

Discussion

The SGC has established an open access chemical probe consortium, currently encompassing ten pharmaceutical companies. One of its mandates is to create well-characterized inhibitors (chemical probes) for epigenetic targets to enable new biology and target validation for drug development.

Conclusion

Epigenetic probe compounds have proven to be very valuable and have not only spurred a plethora of novel biological findings, but also provided starting points for clinical trials. These probes have proven to be critical complementation to traditional genetic targeting strategies and provided sometimes surprising results.

URL : http://www.future-science.com/doi/pdfplus/10.4155/fmc.15.127