The potential effect of making journals free after…
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The potential effect of making journals free after a six month embargo :
“This report was commissioned by the Association of Learned, Professional and Society Publishers [ALPSP] and The Publishers Association. It follows a straw-poll survey commissioned from Gold Leaf by ALPSP inMarch 2012 in order to obtain sample information on how the acquisition policies of academic libraries might be affected by an across-theboard mandate to make journals articles available free of charge six months after publication. The ALPSP survey obtained responses from thirty-four libraries worldwide. The results from this small sample suggested that such a mandate would have a significant impact on publishers’ revenues, especially in the fields of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences [AHSS] publishing. ALPSP and The Publishers Association therefore commissioned Gold Leaf to conduct a larger, more statistically significant survey, to include corporate and specialist libraries as well as academic ones, in order to obtain more robust results on what the likely impact of a six months’ embargo might be.”
URL : http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/ALPSPPApotentialresultsofsixmonthembargofv.pdf
Evaluation of a Web Portal for Improving Public Access to Evidence-Based Health Information and Health Literacy Skills: A Pragmatic Trial
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“Background :
Using the conceptual framework of shared decision-making and evidence-based practice, a web portal was developed to serve as a generic (non disease-specific) tailored intervention to improve the lay public’s health literacy skills.
Objective : To evaluate the effects of the web portal compared to no intervention in a real-life setting.
Methods: A pragmatic randomised controlled parallel trial using simple randomisation of 96 parents who had children aged
Results : Use of the web portal was found to improve attitudes towards searching for health information. This variable was identified as the most important predictor of intention to search in both samples. Participants considered the web portal to have good usability, usefulness, and credibility. The intervention group showed slight increases in the use of evidence-based information, critical appraisal skills, and participation compared to the group receiving no intervention, but these differences were not statistically significant.
Conclusion : Despite the fact that the study was underpowered, we found that the web portal may have a positive effect on attitudes towards searching for health information. Furthermore, participants considered the web portal to be a relevant tool. It is important to continue experimenting with web-based resources in order to increase user participation in health care decision-making.”
URL : http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0037715
The weakening relationship between the Impact Factor and papers’ citations in the digital age
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Authors : George A. Lozano, Vincent Lariviere, Yves Gingras
Historically, papers have been physically bound to the journal in which they were published but in the electronic age papers are available individually, no longer tied to their respective journals. Hence, papers now can be read and cited based on their own merits, independently of the journal’s physical availability, reputation, or Impact Factor.
We compare the strength of the relationship between journals’ Impact Factors and the actual citations received by their respective papers from 1902 to 2009. Throughout most of the 20th century, papers’ citation rates were increasingly linked to their respective journals’ Impact Factors.
However, since 1990, the advent of the digital age, the strength of the relation between Impact Factors and paper citations has been decreasing. This decrease began sooner in physics, a field that was quicker to make the transition into the electronic domain.
Furthermore, since 1990, the proportion of highly cited papers coming from highly cited journals has been decreasing, and accordingly, the proportion of highly cited papers not coming from highly cited journals has also been increasing.
Should this pattern continue, it might bring an end to the use of the Impact Factor as a way to evaluate the quality of journals, papers and researchers.”
Leaving Elsevier’s big deal an evaluation of…
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Leaving Elsevier’s “big deal”: an evaluation of the Italian National Institute of Health experience inside the Bibliosan Consortium :
“In 2011 the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS), the Italian National Institute of Health, has been forced, due to economic reason, to leave the Bibliosan Consortium contract with the publisher Elsevier. The contract, following the “big deal” model, provided for the maintenance of paper subscriptions and the payment of an additional fee for the whole electronic collection (more than 2,000 journal titles). The continuous increase of annual costs has led to unsustainable growth in costs and to the subsequent cancellation of the contract. This meant that more than 500 researchers of the Institute have suddenly had access to just 180 Elsevier current titles instead of the previous 2,000. The study traces the various stages which led to taking this unavoidable decision to cut about half of the Elsevier’s journals and analyzes its impact.”
URL : http://hdl.handle.net/10760/17042
Beyond citations Scholars’ visibility on the social Web…
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Beyond citations: Scholars’ visibility on the social Web :
“Traditionally, scholarly impact and visibility have been measured by counting publications and citations in the scholarly literature. However, increasingly scholars are also visible on the Web, establishing presences in a growing variety of social ecosystems. But how wide and established is this presence, and how do measures of social Web impact relate to their more traditional counterparts? To answer this, we sampled 57 presenters from the 2010 Leiden STI Conference, gathering publication and citations counts as well as data from the presenters’ Web “footprints.” We found Web presence widespread and diverse: 84% of scholars had homepages, 70% were on LinkedIn, 23% had public Google Scholar profiles, and 16% were on Twitter. For sampled scholars’ publications, social reference manager bookmarks were compared to Scopus and Web of Science citations; we found that Mendeley covers more than 80% of sampled articles, and that Mendeley bookmarks are significantly correlated (r=.45) to Scopus citation counts.”
URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.5611
Le classement de Leiden environnement scientifique et configuration…
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Le classement de Leiden: environnement scientifique et configuration :
“Le classement de Leiden s’impose aujourd’hui comme une alternative pertinente et valable vis-à-vis de celui de Shanghai. De nombreux indicateurs font intervenir les caractéristiques propres aux champs disciplinaires et des calculs fondés sur le principe de distribution. Il est conçu par le centre CWTS de l’université néerlandaise de Leiden.”
“The Leiden Ranking is considered today as quite a pertinent and valuable alternative vs. the Shanghai Ranking. A significant number of indicators involve for instance Fields Citation Scores and data distribution. It is conceived by the CWTS of the University of Leiden – The Netherlands.”
URL : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00696098