A conversation with philosophers Richard Holton and Peter Suber on open access :
Making Data a First Class Scientific Output Data…
Making Data a First Class Scientific Output: Data Citation and Publication by NERC’s Environmental Data Centres :
« The NERC Science Information Strategy Data Citation and Publication project aims to develop and formalise a method for formally citing and publishing the datasets stored in its environmental data centres. It is believed that this will act as an incentive for scientists, who often invest a great deal of effort in creating datasets, to submit their data to a suitable data repository where it can properly be archived and curated. Data citation and publication will also provide a mechanism for data producers to receive credit for their work, thereby encouraging them to share their data more freely. »
URL : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/218
Developments in Research Funder Data Policy This…
Developments in Research Funder Data Policy :
« This paper reviews developments in funders’ data management and sharing policies, and explores the extent to which they have affected practice. The Digital Curation Centre has been monitoring UK research funders’ data policies since 2008. There have been significant developments in subsequent years, most notably the joint Research Councils UK’s Common Principles on Data Policy and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s Policy Framework on Research Data. This paper charts these changes and highlights shifting emphasises in the policies. Institutional data policies and infrastructure are increasingly being developed as a result of these changes. While action is clearly being taken, questions remain about whether the changes are affecting practice on the ground. »
URL : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/219
Building an Open Data Repository for a Specialized Research Community: Process, Challenges and Lessons
In 2009, the Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS) at Yale University began building an open access digital collection of social science experimental data, metadata, and associated files produced by ISPS researchers.
The digital repository was created to support the replication of research findings and to enable further data analysis and instruction. Content is submitted to a rigorous process of quality assessment and normalization, including transformation of statistical code into R, an open source statistical software.
Other requirements included: (a) that the repository be integrated with the current database of publications and projects publicly available on the ISPS website; (b) that it offered open access to datasets, documentation, and statistical software program files; (c) that it utilized persistent linking services and redundant storage provided within the Yale Digital Commons infrastructure; and (d) that it operated in accordance with the prevailing standards of the digital preservation community.
In partnership with Yale’s Office of Digital Assets and Infrastructure (ODAI), the ISPS Data Archive was launched in the fall of 2010.
We describe the process of creating the repository, discuss prospects for similar projects in the future, and explain how this specialized repository fits into the larger digital landscape at Yale.
Implementing Open Access Mandates in Europe This…
Implementing Open Access Mandates in Europe :
« This work highlights existing open access policies in Europe and provides an overview of publishers’ self-archiving policies. It also highlights the strategies needed to implement these policies. It provides a unique overview of national awareness of open access in 32 European countries involving all eu member states and in addition, Norway, Iceland, Croatia, Switzerland and Turkey. Moreover, it describes funder and institutional open access mandates in Europe and national strategies to introduce and implement them. An overview is provided of the repository infrastructure currently in place in European countries, including institutional and disciplinary repositories, national repository networks and national open access information portals and support networks. »
URL : http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/univerlag/2012/oa_mandates.pdf
Awareness and Use of Open Access Scholarly Publications…
Awareness and Use of Open Access Scholarly Publications by LIS Lecturers in Southern Nigeria :
« The study examined the awareness and use of open access scholarly publications by Library and Information Science (LIS) lecturers in southern Nigeria. Based on this, three (3) objectives were set out for the study. The descriptive survey design was employed and the questionnaire entitled “Awareness and Use of Open Access to Scholarly Publications Questionnaire” (AUOASPQ) was administered on the entire population of 141 LIS lecturers from which 114 responses were successfully collected. The data collected were analyzed using frequency counts, percentages, mean and regression analysis. The study revealed a high level of usage of open access publications by both senior and junior LIS lecturers and that the awareness of open access concepts accounts for the tendency of LIS lecturers in southern Nigeria to use open access publications. The study recommends that efforts should be geared towards inculcating the awareness and use of open access especially through enabling infrastructure and enacting policies such as mandatory deposit of scholarly works in open access archives. »
URL : http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.j.library.20120104.02.html
EU FP7 Research in Open Access Repositories …
EU FP7 Research in Open Access Repositories :
« Open access repositories are a reliable source of academic items that can be used for testing the capabilities of the webometric analysis. This paper deals with actions needed for extracting web indicators from bibliographic records in open access repositories, provides guidelines to support a further webometric study and presents the results of a preliminary web impact evaluation carried out over a sample of 1,386 EU FP7 output papers available from the OpenAIRE database. The European Commission project OpenAIRE aims, among other objectives, to provide impact measures to assess the research performance from repositories contents and, especially, of Special Clause 39 project participants within EU FP7. Using URL citations, title mentions and copies of titles as main web impact indicators, this study suggests that a priori the implementation of the mandatory clause SC39 to encourage open access to European research may be resulted indeed in a greater and more immediate web visibility of these papers. »
URL : http://2012.sticonference.org/Proceedings/vol1/Alvarez_EU_58.pdf