Le libre accès en France en 2012: Entre immobilisme et innovation

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“Pour faire l’état des lieux du libre accès (LA) en France en 2012, dix ans après la Budapest Open Access Initiative, nous avons examiné les deux voies : la voie verte (l’auto-archivage) et la voie dorée (publications dans les revues en LA). L’archive centrale multidisciplinaire HAL, créée en 2002 pour recevoir les publications scientifiques au niveau national, est reconnue pour sa qualité technique, mais elle ne propose que 10% à 15 % de la production scientifique annuelle française. Ce chiffre est à l’image de ce qu’offrent toutes les autres archives dans le monde où il n’y a pas d’obligation de déposer (pas de mandat). Les archives qui ont un mandat comme celle de l’université de Liège, ont atteint un taux de 80% en deux ans. Quelques archives institutionnelles se sont développées en France parallèlement à HAL, et deux d’entre elles (Archimer and OATAO) ont un bon taux de remplissage, grâce à l’implication d’un personnel dédié. Pour soutenir les offres éditoriales en libre accès le Centre pour l’Édition électronique Ouverte (CLEO) a récemment mis en place OpenEdition Freemium. Cette initiative pourrait favoriser le développement des revues en LA. Cependant, l’étude faite à partir des revues qualifiantes en Sciences Humaines et Sociales montre que les chercheurs sont peu encouragés à publier dans ces revues par les instances d’évaluation : peu de revues en libre accès françaises sont présentes dans les listes des revues qualifiantes de l’agence d’évaluation de la recherche et de l’enseignement supérieur (AERES). On note aussi une forte disparité entre les disciplines. Différents exemples de politique en faveur du libre accès sont donnés : un politique forte peut être menée par des universités, comme à l’université de Liège, ou par des bailleurs de fonds, comme le FRS-FNRS en Belgique ou par l’Europe. Elle peut être entreprise au niveau législatif comme aux USA, au Brésil ou en Argentine. En France les deux voies du libre accès sont tracées par des initiatives intéressantes. Le gouvernement français devrait accompagner ces initiatives et devrait s’investir dans une politique forte pour recevoir rapidement les bénéfices du libre accès.”

“Ten years after the Budapest Open Access Initiative, we have examined the current situation of Open Access in France via the two open access (OA) roads: the Green (self-archiving) and the Gold (OA publishing). HAL, a central multidisciplinary French archive launched in 2002, is recognized for its technical quality, but 10 years after its creation it only includes 10 to 15% of the annual French scientific output. This figure is similar to other repositories worldwide for which there is no mandatory policy (no mandate). On the other hand, archives such as that of Liège University which has a mandate, achieved an 80% deposit rate within two years. Other than HAL, a number of institutional archives are being developed in France, with Archimer and OATAO being two successful examples, thanks to dedicated library staff. In order to support the editorial offer in open access the Centre pour l’Édition électronique Ouverte (CLEO) recently launched the Open Edition Freemium. This initiative should favor the development of OA periodicals. However, the study based on the list of qualifying periodicals in Human and Social Sciences, shows that researchers are not encouraged to publish in these periodicals by national assessment bodies; very few French open access periodicals are on the different qualifying lists of the agence d’évaluation de la recherche et de l’enseignement supérieur (AERES – French research and higher education assessment agency). In addition, a wide disparity can be observed between disciplines. Different examples of strong policies in favor of OA are given: at the university level, as at Liège university, at the level of foundations, as at FRS-FNRS in Belgium, at the level of the Europe or at the legislative level, as attempted in the USA or Brazil or Argentina. In France the two roads are supported by interesting initiatives and these should be accompanied by strong French government policy to enable the benefits of open access to be rapidly reaped.”

URL : http://revista.ibict.br/liinc/index.php/liinc/article/view/502

Open Textbooks and Increased Student Access and Outcomes…

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Open Textbooks and Increased Student Access and Outcomes :

“This study reports findings from a year-long pilot study during which 991 students in 9 core courses in the Virginia State University School of Business replaced traditional textbooks with openly licensed books and other digital content. The university made a deliberate decision to use open textbooks that were copyrighted under the Creative Commons license. This decision was based on the accessibility and flexibility in the delivery of course content provided by open textbooks. More students accessed digital open textbooks than had previously purchased hard copies of textbooks. Higher grades were correlated with courses that used open textbooks.”

URL : http://www.eurodl.org/?article=533

Peer-Reviewed Open Research Data: Results of a Pilot

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Peer review of publications is at the core of science and primarily seen as instrument for ensuring research quality. However, it is less common to independently value the quality of the underlying data as well.

In the light of the ‘data deluge’ it makes sense to extend peer review to the data itself and this way evaluate the degree to which the data are fit for re-use. This paper describes a pilot study at EASY – the electronic archive for (open) research data at our institution.

In EASY, researchers can archive their data and add metadata themselves. Devoted to open access and data sharing, at the archive we are interested in further enriching these metadata with peer reviews.

As a pilot, we established a workflow where researchers who have downloaded data sets from the archive were asked to review the downloaded data set. This paper describes the details of the pilot including the findings, both quantitative and qualitative.

Finally, we discuss issues that need to be solved when such a pilot is turned into a structural peer review functionality for the archiving system.

URL : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/231

Trends in Use of Scientific Workflows Insights from…

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Trends in Use of Scientific Workflows: Insights from a Public Repository and Recommendations for Best Practice :

“Scientific workflows are typically used to automate the processing, analysis and management of scientific data. Most scientific workflow programs provide a user-friendly graphical user interface that enables scientists to more easily create and visualize complex workflows that may be comprised of dozens of processing and analytical steps. Furthermore, many workflows provide mechanisms for tracing provenance and methodologies that foster reproducible science. Despite their potential for enabling science, few studies have examined how the process of creating, executing, and sharing workflows can be improved. In order to promote open discourse and access to scientific methods as well as data, we analyzed a wide variety of workflow systems and publicly available workflows on the public repository myExperiment. It is hoped that understanding the usage of workflows and developing a set of recommended best practices will lead to increased contribution of workflows to the public domain.”

URL : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/232

SW MIS A Semantic Web Based Model for…

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SW-MIS: A Semantic Web Based Model for Integration of Institutional Repositories Metadata Records :

“Despite providing a low level of interoperability, the method of Metadata Harvesting is very common within service providers for unifying access to the institutional repositories. On the other hand, the semantic web-based method of Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE) has not been widely adopted by service providers due to its complexity as well as the small number of ORE compatible archives. The purpose of this study is to provide a new metadata integration model, through which resources harvested from repositories are aggregated and converted to Resource Description Format (RDF) so that can take advantage of integrating into the semantic web resources. For the purpose of this study a metadata integration model, namely SW-MIS (Semantic Web-based Metadata Integration System) has been developed, which involves four steps, including: metadata harvesting, exposing harvested metadata, creating Semantic Web compliance data sets, and providing the search and brows interface. For each step, a specific software tool was developed, so that together formed an information workflow system.”

URL : http://www.researchgate.net/publication/233855032_SW-MIS_A_Semantic_Web_Based_Model_for_Integration_ofInstitutional_Repositories_Metadata_Records

Research Blogging: Indexing and Registering the Change in Science 2.0

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Increasing public interest in science information in a digital and 2.0 science era promotes a dramatically, rapid and deep change in science itself. The emergence and expansion of new technologies and internet-based tools is leading to new means to improve scientific methodology and communication, assessment, promotion and certification. It allows methods of acquisition, manipulation and storage, generating vast quantities of data that can further facilitate the research process.

It also improves access to scientific results through information sharing and discussion. Content previously restricted only to specialists is now available to a wider audience. This context requires new management systems to make scientific knowledge more accessible and useable, including new measures to evaluate the reach of scientific information. The new science and research quality measures are strongly related to the new online technologies and services based in social media. Tools such as blogs, social bookmarks and online reference managers, Twitter and others offer alternative, transparent and more comprehensive information about the active interest, usage and reach of scientific publications.

Another of these new filters is the Research Blogging platform, which was created in 2007 and now has over 1,230 active blogs, with over 26,960 entries posted about peer-reviewed research on subjects ranging from Anthropology to Zoology. This study takes a closer look at RB, in order to get insights into its contribution to the rapidly changing landscape of scientific communication.

URL : http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0050109