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Bibliogifts in LibGen? A study of a text-sharing platform driven by biblioleaks and crowdsourcing

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

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.

URL : http://www.irit.fr/publis/SIG/2015_JASIST_C.pdf

Non classé

Le projet TED, une tablette scolaire, la conception comme appropriation

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

« 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

Non classé

Deaccession of Print Books in a Transitional Age II: Business, Science, and Interdisciplinary Studies

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

« The paper, by means of citation studies, studies on information seeking behavior, and book format preferences and use, draws conclusions about the deaccession of print books in business, science and interdisciplinary studies in academic libraries. It is argued that deaccession of print books in business and science can proceed more quickly than in the humanities and social sciences. This is especially true for the sciences, with some evidence that print books continue to play a role in business scholarship and teaching. It is difficult to produce generalizations about deaccession in interdisciplinary studies. »

URL : http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/1226/

Non classé

Sustaining Professionalism in the Fields of Library and Information Studies

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

« This essay analyzes the development and status of professionalism in general and in the fields associated with library and information studies (LIS) in particular. The notable American resistance to educated professionalism is explored and placed in its historic, multinational framework. Throughout, the limitations of various theoretical approaches to analyzing professionalism are addressed and more realistic methods of defining professionalism in context are offered. The field of school librarianship is examined as a domain where professionalism and appropriate LIS education are sustained to some degree in law and regulation but face challenges at the system and building level. Expressed preferences of funders and customers for LIS educational programs, as reflected in recent government reports and other studies, are explored, as well as the approaches to service that appeal to significant stakeholders within and without selected LIS fields. Recommendations are offered for equipping practitioners with the knowledge necessary to determine and strengthen the contemporary relevance of their missions, as well as for managing the perceptions of significant stakeholders while sustaining multiple LIS professionalisms. »

URL : http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/1231/

Non classé

Coauthorship networks: A directed network approach considering the order and number of coauthors

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

« In many scientific fields, the order of coauthors on a paper conveys information about each individual’s contribution to a piece of joint work. We argue that in prior network analyses of coauthorship networks, the information on ordering has been insufficiently considered because ties between authors are typically symmetrized. This is basically the same as assuming that each co-author has contributed equally to a paper. We introduce a solution to this problem by adopting a coauthorship credit allocation model proposed by Kim and Diesner (2014), which in its core conceptualizes co-authoring as a directed, weighted, and self-looped network. We test and validate our application of the adopted framework based on a sample data of 861 authors who have published in the journal Psychometrika. Results suggest that this novel sociometric approach can complement traditional measures based on undirected networks and expand insights into coauthoring patterns such as the hierarchy of collaboration among scholars. As another form of validation, we also show how our approach accurately detects prominent scholars in the Psychometric Society affiliated with the journal. »

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.00361

Non classé

Internet Research Ethics

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

« This anthology addresses ethical challenges that arise within the field of Internet research. Among the issues discussed in the book are the following:

  • When is voluntary informed consent from research subjects required in using the Internet as a data source?
  • How may researchers secure the privacy of research subjects in a landscape where the traditional public/private distinction is blurred and re-identification is a recurring threat?
  • What are the central ethical and legal aspects of Internet research for individuals, groups, and society?

The book is written in cooperation with The Norwegian National Research Ethics Committees. The Commitees are independent public agencies providing guidelines and addressing questions regarding research ethics in all subject fields. »

URL : https://microblogging.infodocs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/3-3-9-1-10-20150317.pdf

Alternative URL : http://press.nordicopenaccess.no/index.php/noasp/catalog/book/3

 

Non classé

The Open Access Advantage Considering Citation, Article Usage and Social Media Attention

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

« In this study, we compare the difference in the impact between open access (OA) and non-open access (non-OA) articles. 1761 Nature Communications articles published from 1 Jan. 2012 to 31 Aug. 2013 are selected as our research objects, including 587 OA articles and 1174 non-OA articles. Citation data and daily updated article-level metrics data are harvested directly from the platform of nature.com. Data is analyzed from the static versus temporal-dynamic perspectives. The OA citation advantage is confirmed, and the OA advantage is also applicable when extending the comparing from citation to article views and social media attention. More important, we find that OA papers not only have the great advantage of total downloads, but also have the feature of keeping sustained and steady downloads for a long time. For article downloads, non-OA papers only have a short period of attention, when the advantage of OA papers exists for a much longer time. »

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.05702