« The exponential growth in the number of scientific papers makes it increasingly difficult for researchers to keep track of all the publications relevant to their work. Consequently, the attention that can be devoted to individual papers, measured by their citation counts, is bound to decay rapidly. In this work we make a thorough study of the life-cycle of papers in different disciplines. Typically, the citation rate of a paper increases up to a few years after its publication, reaches a peak and then decreases rapidly. This decay can be described by an exponential or a power law behavior, as in ultradiffusive processes, with exponential fitting better than power law for the majority of cases. The decay is also becoming faster over the years, signaling that nowadays papers are forgotten more quickly. However, when time is counted in terms of the number of published papers, the rate of decay of citations is fairly independent of the period considered. This indicates that the attention of scholars depends on the number of published items, and not on real time. »
A Two-Step Model for Assessing Relative Interest in E-books Compared to Print
« Librarians often wish to know whether readers in a particular discipline favor e-books or print books. Because print circulation and e-book usage statistics are not directly comparable, it can be hard to determine the relative interest of readers in the two types of books. This study demonstrates a two-step method by which librarians can assess the appeal of books in various formats. First, a nominal assessment of use or non-use is performed; this eliminates the difficulty of comparing print circulation to e-book usage statistics. Then, the comparison of actual use to Percentage of Expected Use (PEU) is made. By examining the distance between PEU of e-books to PEU of print books in a discipline, librarians can determine whether patrons have a strong preference for one format over another. »
URL : http://crl.acrl.org/content/early/2015/04/10/crl15-747
Managing Research Data in Academic Institutions: Role of Libraries
« One of the global emerging trends in academic libraries is to facilitate the management of research data for the benefit of researchers and institutions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of a library in offering such research data management services. The paper discusses the importance of research data, its preservation, organization, dissemination and critical role in the scholarly research life cycle. The authors attempt to provide a vivid description of Research Data Management (RDM) as a service and in the process review the existing literature on the topic in addition to the indicating the tools and technologies that could be adopted in successful RDM service implementation. The paper also is an attempt to share the experience of creating the Vikram Sarabhai Library’s research data repository that was developed by adopting the open source software – CKAN. »
Open Access Policy: Numbers, Analysis, Effectiveness
« The PASTEUR4OA project is focused on Open Access policy developments and is undertaking a number of activities relating to policy, including mapping policies and policy-related activities, and engaging with policymakers and providing them with information about the general policy picture and what makes a policy effective.
Work Package 3 involved a set of tasks as follows:
- Describe and enumerate the policy picture in Europe and around the world
- Rebuild ROARMAP, the registry of OA policies, including the development of a new, detailed classification scheme that describes policy elements
- Collect data on the levels of Open Access material in institutional repositories around the world
- Measure policy outcomes and analyse what elements of a policy contribute to its effectiveness
The project sought out policies that exist but had not been registered in ROARMAP, and added more than 250 new entries to the database. The total number of policies globally is now 663 (March 2015), 60% of them from Europe. Of these, approximately two-thirds are institutional policies and about 10% are funder policies. Over half are mandatory, requiring some action rather than simply requesting it and over 60% of these mandatory policies are European.
ROARMAP, the policy registry, has been rebuilt with a new classification scheme for policies that records far more detail about them than before and permits much more extensive search functionality than previously. The scheme includes criteria for deposit and licensing conditions, rights holding, embargo lengths and ‘Gold’ Open Access publishing options.Links to policy documents are provided. Repository managers at policy institutions were contacted to check that we had the correct details for their policy and where necessary corrections were made. As it stands, at the end of this period of concentrated and meticulous work, ROARMAP reflects an accurate and detailed picture of the Open Access policy situation around the world.
The project also examined policy effectiveness. Three main exercises were undertaken. First, deposit rates were measured for articles in the repositories of both mandated and non-mandated institutions, and compared to the total number of articles published from these institutions. The material was identified as Metadata-Only, Full-Text, Open Access and Restricted Access. Open Access and Restricted Access are subsets of Full-Text and together comprise the whole of that category. Restricted Access means full-text articles that are showing only their metadata, with the text itselfclosed off, and are usually in this state for a period of embargo.
Across all institutions, more than three-quarters of published articles are not deposited at all, 8% are Metadata-Only, 3% Restricted Access and 12% Open Access. The rates vary by discipline. Deposit of Open Access material was over four times as high (14%) for institutions with a mandatory policy than for those without (3%). The top 20 institutions (all mandated) in terms of amount of repository content are listed. The top five are the University of Liège (Belgium), Instituto Politecnico de Bragança (Portugal), the National Institute of Oceanography (India), University of Pretoria (South Africa) and the University of Minho (Portugal).
Second, the time lag between publication and deposit of articles (deposit latency, which may be negative if the article is deposited before publication) was measured. Open Access items tend to be deposited later than Restricted Access ones, and latency periods tend to be longer in mandated institutions than in non-mandated ones (though deposits themselves are four times higher), probably because authors who deposit voluntarily are self-motivated and will do it early.
Third, we examined the deposit rate in relation to different policy criteria:
- Positive correlations were found between Open Access and Restricted Access deposit rates and the following policy criteria: Must deposit, Cannot waive deposit, Link to research evaluation, Cannot waive rights retention, Must make item Open Access
- Negative correlation was found with Cannot waive Open Access
- Significant correlation was found between Open Access deposit rate and Must deposit and Cannot waive deposit
Fourth, we examined the correlation between deposit latency (specifically, the latency of deposit within the first year after publication) and different policy criteria. There is positive correlation between early deposit and Mandate age, Cannot waive rights retention and deposit immediately. We found significant correlation between early Open Access deposits and the age of the mandate: that is, the longer a mandatory policy has been in place, the more effective it can become.
As the numbers stand at the moment (March 2015), there are not yet enough OA policies to test whether other policy conditions would further contribute to mandate effectiveness. The current findings, however, already suggest that it would be useful for future mandates to adopt these conditions so as to maximise the growth of OA.
This analysis provides a list of criteria around which we recommend policies should align:
- Must deposit (i.e. deposit is mandatory)
- Deposit cannot be waived
- Link deposit with research evaluation »
URL : https://microblogging.infodocs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/PASTEUR4OA3.pdf
Research data sharing: Developing a stakeholder-driven model for journal policies
« Conclusions of research articles depend on bodies of data that cannot be included in articles themselves. To share this data is important for reasons of both transparency and reuse. Science, Technology, and Medicine journals have a role in facilitating sharing, but by what mechanism is not yet clear. The Journal Research Data (JoRD) Project was a JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee)-funded feasibility study on the potential for a central service on journal research data policies. The objectives of the study included identifying the current state of journal data sharing policies and investigating stakeholders’ views and practices. The project confirmed that a large percentage of journals have no data sharing policy and that there are inconsistencies between those that are traceable. This state leaves authors unsure of whether they should share article related data and where and how to deposit those data. In the absence of a consolidated infrastructure to share data easily, a model journal data sharing policy was developed by comparing quantitative information from analyzing existing journal data policies with qualitative data collected from stakeholders. This article summarizes and outlines the process by which the model was developed and presents the model journal data sharing policy. »
Bibliogifts in LibGen? A study of a text-sharing platform driven by biblioleaks and crowdsourcing
Author : Guillaume Cabanac
Research articles disseminate the knowledge produced by the scientific community. Access to this literature is crucial for researchers and the general public. Apparently, “bibliogifts” are available online for free from text-sharing platforms.
However, little is known about such platforms. What is the size of the underlying digital libraries? What are the topics covered? Where do these documents originally come from? This article reports on a study of the Library Genesis platform (LibGen).
The 25 million documents (42 terabytes) it hosts and distributes for free are mostly research articles, textbooks, and books in English. The article collection stems from isolated, but massive, article uploads (71%) in line with a “biblioleaks” scenario, as well as from daily crowdsourcing (29%) by worldwide users of platforms such as Reddit Scholar and Sci-Hub.
By relating the DOIs registered at CrossRef and those cached at LibGen, this study reveals that 36% of all DOI articles are available for free at LibGen. This figure is even higher (68%) for three major publishers: Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley. More research is needed to understand to what extent researchers and the general public have recourse to such text-sharing platforms and why.
Le projet TED, une tablette scolaire, la conception comme appropriation
« L’expérimentation de tablettes dédiées à l’enseignement en collège dans le département de la Saône- et-Loire (TED) porte sur 17 collèges et près de 3000 tablettes mises à disposition des enseignants et des élèves. La particularité de ce dispositif élaboré et retenu dans le cadre d’un appel à projets d’investissement pour l’avenir e-éducation appelé TED est de proposer outre une tablette spécifiquement dédiée à l’enseignement, un logiciel appelé « manager » qui permet aux enseignants de préparer des cours, de les déployer et de récupérer ensuite les résultats du travail des élèves. Le développement de cette tablette est original car il a pour projet d’associer les enseignants à la conception même du produit, des logiciels et ressources qui y sont proposées (design d’expérience utilisateur, J.J.Garret 2002).
L’objet de cette communication est de présenter les premiers résultats de notre recherche sur la manière dont les enseignants s’approprient l’objet et son environnement logiciel et d’identifier comment ils conçoivent leurs enseignements et quelles ressources ils élaborent ou utilisent. De mars 2013 à juillet 2014 nous avons accompagné le processus qui va de l’expérimentation initiale sur 2 collèges au déploiement dans 17 collèges à partir de janvier 2014.
Au-delà de ce seul focus sur la conception et l’utilisation des ressources par les enseignants, nous montrerons comment se construisent les usages des élèves dans de tels contextes. À partir de l’analyse de quelques situations explicites d’enseignement, et à partir du suivi longitudinal de quelques élèves, nous mettrons en évidence les caractéristiques qui définissent les relations aux supports et aux ressources dans un contexte de médiation instrumentale (D. Péraya 2005) spécifique. »
URL : http://culture.numerique.free.fr/publications/ludo14/Devauchelle_Chaintrier_Ludovia_2014.pdf