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Do universities or research institutions with a specific…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Do universities or research institutions with a specific subject profile have an advantage or a disadvantage in institutional rankings? :

« Using data compiled for the SCImago Institutions Ranking, we look at whether the subject area type an institution (university or research-focused institution) belongs to (in terms of the fields researched) has an influence on its ranking position. We used latent class analysis to categorize institutions based on their publications in certain subject areas. Even though this categorization does not relate directly to scientific performance, our results show that it exercises an important influence on the outcome of a performance measurement: Certain subject area types of institutions have an advantage in the ranking positions when compared with others. This advantage manifests itself not only when performance is measured with an indicator that is not field-normalized but also for indicators that are field-normalized. »

URL : http://www.lutz-bornmann.de/icons/UniTyp.pdf

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Medical research charities and open access This…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Medical research charities and open access :

« This paper provides an analysis of the attitudes and activities of UK medical research charities in relation to open access (OA). Both quantitative and qualitative data are presented derived from a recent survey of charities covering areas such as policy development, funding arrangements, and business process design for OA. Positions on key issues including green and gold OA, funding article-processing charges (APCs), and publication licences are assessed. Modelling of potential APCs as a percentage of overall annual research spend is undertaken to show possible costs of a charged for gold system. Medical research charities clearly regard OA as important and some see it as an opportunity to further their mission. However, many expressed significant concerns particularly about the costs and expertise required to support OA. Further co-ordination of policy development and action across the sector and with other stakeholders is recommended in order to help ensure optimal implementation of OA. »

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/20130409

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The Open Access Divide This paper is…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

The Open Access Divide :

« This paper is an attempt to review various aspects of the open access divide regarding the difference between those academics who support free sharing of data and scholarly output and those academics who do not. It provides a structured description by adopting the Ws doctrines emphasizing such questions as who, what, when, where and why for information-gathering. Using measurable variables to define a common expression of the open access divide, this study collects aggregated data from existing open access as well as non-open access publications including journal articles and extensive reports. The definition of the open access divide is integrated into the discussion of scholarship on a larger scale. »

URL : http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/1/3/113

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A project exploring Open Access monograph publishing in…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

A project exploring Open Access monograph publishing in the Netherlands :

« Monographs still play an important role in scholarly communication, particularly in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The availability of publication outlets for research monographs is crucial to the careers of researchers and to research assessment opportunities for universities with departments in those disciplines. Humanities and Social Sciences have suffered from the serials crises, as library funds for the purchase of monographs came under pressure.
The Open Access model addresses the monograph crisis in two ways. By making a digital edition freely available through the Internet the access to and discoverability of the monograph are greatly improved. The Open Access model also provides the opportunity to find a new sustainable business model for monographs, based on the reduced production costs of the digital edition and building on emerging business models for Open Access journals. Open Access models for monographs differ from the models for Open Access journals, because the Open Access version of a monograph does not substitute printed books in the same way that e-journals are substituting printed journals. But although the business models may differ, there are no obstacles to achieve Open Access for books. There are clear benefits to the academic community and society at large and both publishers and funders are experimenting with a variety of models to enable Open Access to monographs. »

URL : http://www.surf.nl/nl/publicaties/Documents/OAPEN%20Rapport_%20A%20project%20exploring%20Open%20Access%20monograph%20publishing%20in%20the%20Netherlands_22102013.pdf

EN

Knowledge sharing behaviour influences : A study of Information Science and Library Management faculties in Bangladesh

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

The prime focus of this study is to measure knowledge sharing behaviour of Information Science and Library Management (ISLM) faculties in Bangladesh. Determining factors that may influence knowledge sharing behaviour constitutes an important area of research.

A survey questionnaire was developed and used to collect data on faculties’ demographic and academic information, perception, attitude, intention and intrinsic motivation to share knowledge. In order to analyze the influence of faculties’ demographic and individual characteristics on their attitude, intention and intrinsic motivation, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were carried out.

Results showed that no significant difference was found between knowledge sharing behaviour of LIS educators with different Major Research Questions (MRQs). The researchers found a significant relationship 0.000 (p-value<0.05) between attitude of educators toward knowledge sharing and their intention to share knowledge.

It is believed that the findings will assist knowledge managers charged with the design of flexible knowledge sharing system.

This is the first time an effort has been made to assess faculties’ perception, attitude, intention and intrinsic motivation to share knowledge of ISLM faculties in Bangladesh.

The authors feel that this study may encourage more such research on knowledge sharing behaviour in Bangladesh and further. »

URL : http://ifl.sagepub.com/content/39/3/221.abstract

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Data Curation in the OpenAIRE Scholarly Communication Infrastructure…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Data Curation in the OpenAIRE Scholarly Communication Infrastructure :

« OpenAIRE is the European Union initiative for an Open Access Infrastructure for Research in support of open scholarly communication and access to the research output of European funded projects and open access content from a network of institutional and disciplinary repositories. This article outlines the curation activities conducted in the OpenAIRE infrastructure, which employs a multi-level, multi-targeted approach: the publication and implementation of interoperability guidelines to assist in the local data curation processes, the data curation due to the integration of heterogeneous sources supporting different types of data, the inference of links to accomplish the publication research contextualization and data enrichment, and the end-user metadata curation that allows users to edit the attributes and provide links among the entities. »

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.3789/isqv25no3.2013.03

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Open access repositories worldwide 2005-2012 Past growth current…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Open-access repositories worldwide, 2005-2012: Past growth, current characteristics and future possibilities :

« This paper reviews the worldwide growth of open-access (OA) repositories, December 2005 to December 2012, using data collected by the OpenDOAR project. It shows that initial repository development was focused on North America, Western Europe and Australasia, particularly the USA, UK, Germany and Australia. Soon after, Japan increased its repository numbers. Since 2010, other geographical areas and countries have seen repository growth, including East Asia (especially Taiwan), South America (especially Brazil) and Eastern Europe (especially Poland). During the whole period, countries such as France, Italy and Spain have maintained steady growth, whereas countries such as China and Russia have experienced relatively low levels of growth. Globally, repositories are predominantly institutional, multidisciplinary and English-language-based. They typically use open-source OAI-compliant repository software but remain immature in terms of explicit licensing arrangements. Whilst the size of repositories is difficult to assess accurately, the available data indicate that a small number of large repositories and a large number of small repositories make up the repository landscape. These trends and characteristics are analyzed using Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT) building on previous studies. IDT is shown to provide a useful explanatory framework for understanding repository adoption at various levels: global, national, organizational and individual. Major factors affecting both the initial development of repositories and their take up by users are identified, including IT infrastructure, language, cultural factors, policy initiatives, awareness-raising activity and usage mandates. It is argued that mandates in particular are likely to play a crucial role in determining future repository development. »

URL : http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/76632/