InfoDoc MicroVeille – Page 4 – Veille dédiée aux Sciences de l'Information et des Bibliothèques // Collecting and Sharing research papers in Library and Information science ISSN 2429-3938

Performance of the Nigerian Open Access Repositories

Posted on 16 juin 2025 by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Binta Ladan Farouk, Karimatu Isa Maisango, Alkasim Hamisu Abdu

Research is undertaken to make human life better. This underscores the need to communicate the research results globally. The possibilities inherent in digital technologies coupled with the understanding that knowledge should be treated as a public good engender the emergence of the open access movement.

The movement aims at making research literature more freely available. Open access is implemented in two major ways: the gold route and the green route. The gold route entails making research literature freely available on publishers’ servers, whereas the green route entails using Open Access Repositories (OARs) to achieve the open access aims.

To date, a few OARs have been hosted in Nigeria to communicate the research produced in the country with the rest of the world. Therefore, this study used content analysis to assess the functionality and effectiveness of OARs hosted in Nigeria. Data were extracted from the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR), and, additionally, the contents of Nigerian repositories were analyzed.

The finding of the study revealed that there is a steady increase in OARs in Nigeria; however, the country lags when compared with its counterparts. It was also discovered that most Nigerian OARs were inaccessible owing to technical problems. At the same time, the contents of the accessible repositories are not consistent with OpenDOAR repository information sheets.

DSpace repository software continues to be the most popular in Nigeria; however, libraries were found to be lagging in housing OARs for their universities. Therefore, it is recommended that stakeholders in Nigeria double their efforts to develop OARs in the country.

URL : Performance of the Nigerian Open Access Repositories

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18293

An APC Trap? Privilege and the Perception of Reasonableness in Open Access Publishing

Posted on 13 juin 2025 by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Melissa H. Cantrell, Jennifer A. Mezick, Matthew Estill, Rachel Caldwell &
Lauren B. Collister

Introduction: This article investigates funding sources reported by authors of open access (OA) articles at four R1 (doctoral-granting institutions in the United States with very high research activity) universities, along with these authors’ perceptions of Article Processing Charges (APCs). The study suggests a cognitive dissonance among many respondents, in which there appears to be a desire and willingness to participate in OA publishing, which is at odds with a sense of unreasonableness and an uneven distribution of the ability of researchers to participate.

Literature review: Much of the literature on APCs centers on rising prices, how commercial publishers profit from this model, and the resulting inequities in OA publishing. Some information exists about resources for funding APCs, including grant funding, library programs, and fee waivers.

Methods: We surveyed authors who published an OA article in the calendar year 2022. The survey asked whether there was an APC, the funding source for the fee, and the author’s perception of the reasonableness of APC prices and their relative ability to pay compared with their peers.

Results: From 321 total respondents, grant funding was the largest source of APC funding, and authors reported fees of over $1,500 in U.S. dollars as unreasonable.

Discussion: This study confirms the hypothesis that external grants are the primary support for authors paying APCs, and beyond that, authors use a variety of sources to support their publishing fees. Respondents characterized APCs in general as unreasonable for less well-resourced colleagues.

Conclusion: Though authors were generally able to find funding or have fees waived, they perceive a threshold of reasonableness for APCs.

URL : An APC Trap? Privilege and the Perception of Reasonableness in Open Access Publishing

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18184

Assessing the Societal Impact of Academic Research With Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Scoping Review of Business School Scholarship as a ‘Force for Good’

Posted on 13 juin 2025 by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : David Steingard, Kathleen Rodenburg

This study addresses critical questions about how current evaluative frameworks for academic research can effectively translate scholarly findings into practical applications and policies to tackle societal ‘grand challenges’.

This scoping review analysis was conducted using bibliometric methods and AI tools. Articles were drawn from a wide range of disciplines, with particular emphasis on the business and management fields, focusing on the burgeoning scholarship area of ‘business as a force for good’.

The novel integration of generative AI research approaches underscores the transformative potential of AI-human collaboration in academic research. Metadata from 4051 articles were examined in the scoping review, with only 370 articles (9.1%) explicitly identified as relevant to societal impact.

This finding reveals a substantial and concerning gap in research addressing the urgent social and environmental issues of our time. To address this gap, the study identifies six meta-themes related to enhancing the societal impact of research: business applications; faculty publication pressure; societal impact focus; sustainable development; university and scholarly rankings; and reference to responsible research frameworks.

Key findings highlight critical misalignments between research outputs and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a lack of practical business applications of research insights.

The results emphasise the urgent need for academic institutions to expand evaluation criteria beyond traditional metrics to prioritise real-world impacts. Recommendations include developing holistic evaluation frameworks and incentivising research that addresses pressing societal challenges—shifting academia from a ‘scholar-to-scholar’ to a ‘scholar-to-society’ paradigm.

The implications of this shift are applied to business-related scholarship and its potential to inspire meaningful societal impact through business practice.

URL : Assessing the Societal Impact of Academic Research With Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Scoping Review of Business School Scholarship as a ‘Force for Good’

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.2010

Identifying Open Access Practices in Librarianship Journals

Posted on 13 juin 2025 by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Jennifer Jordan, Blair Solon, Stephanie Beene

Introduction: In this article, we discuss the results of our research over the spring and summer of 2023. During this study, we conducted an environmental scan of 377 journals in the field of librarianship to gather information on open access publishing practices.

Methods: We used a mixed methods framework as a starting point for our research, collecting data on selected journals’ publishing practices. We selected journals based on the following criteria: 1) peer reviewed, 2) written in English or abstracted in English, 3) actively published at the time of analysis, and 4) scoped to librarianship. Data we collected included the journals’ open access policies, peer review processes, and data sharing policies.

Results: With a dataset of 133 of the initial 377 journals meeting our criteria, we observed variations in the journals’ open access practices, peer review processes, and data sharing policies. We noted more journals allowed diamond open access than any other publishing option, and a low number of journals are toll access.

Discussion: Within our study sample, open access policies are varied and in flux. Ascertaining the openness of individual peer-reviewed journals was challenging. Within the 133 journals examined, the state of open publishing practice is clearly evolving quickly, but with varying levels of transparency and consistency.

Conclusion: Even though there are myriad challenges associated with open access publishing, the field of librarianship must continue moving toward an open access model. Academic librarians can advocate for scholars to critically analyze and challenge the scholarly communication system. In addition, journals should provide publishing transparency and guidance for those looking to publish.

URL : Identifying Open Access Practices in Librarianship Journals

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.17778

Platforms, programmability, and precarity: The platformization of research repositories in academic libraries

Posted on 4 juin 2025 by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Jean-Christophe Plantin, Andrea Thomer

We investigate in this article how repository platforms change the sharing and preservation of digital objects in academic libraries. We use evidence drawn from semi-structured interviews with 31 data repository managers working at 21 universities using the product Figshare for institutions.

We first show that repository managers use this platform to bring together actors, technologies, and processes usually scattered across the library to assign to them the tasks that they value less—such as data preparation or IT maintenance—and spend more time engaging in activities they appreciate—such as raising awareness of data sharing.

While this platformization of data management improves their job satisfaction, we reveal how it simultaneously accentuates the outsourcing of libraries’ core mission to private actors. We eventually discuss how this platformization can deskill librarians and perpetuate precarity politics in university libraries.

URL : Platforms, programmability, and precarity: The platformization of research repositories in academic libraries

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231176758

Publication en accès ouvert et coûts d’Article Processing Charges (APC) en Argentine

Posted on 3 juin 2025 by Hans Dillaerts

Auteur.ices : Fernanda Beigel, Osvaldo Gallardo, Soledad Gomez, Flavia Prado

La prolifération des revues en libre accès présente un dilemme difficile pour les chercheurs basés en Argentine, en raison des coûts élevés des APC (Article Processing Charges) qui créent un écart entre ceux qui peuvent payer pour publier et ceux qui ne le peuvent pas. Dans la première partie de ce travail, nous analysons le problème des frais APC dans différents pays d’Amérique latine et les leçons des études réalisées sur le cas de l’Argentine.

Nous décrivons ensuite la population de chercheurs faisant l’objet de l’enquête — les directeurs de projets financés au niveau national — ainsi que la méthode utilisée et ses résultats. Nous proposons une classification des pratiques de publication en libre accès avec APC en quatre groupes comprenant des chercheurs de plusieurs disciplines.

Dans chaque groupe, on observe des tendances différentes vers la publication en accès ouvert ou fermé, l’origine des fonds utilisés pour payer les APC et les disciplines dans lesquelles ce phénomène a plus ou moins d’impact. Enfin, nous analysons la section qualitative de l’enquête qui comprend les questions ouvertes auxquelles ont répondu une bonne partie des chercheurs, offrant un aperçu de leurs stratégies face au problème et les voies envisagées pour en atténuer les effets néfastes.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/140p9