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Beyond Citations: Scholars’ Visibility on the Social Web

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

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://2012.sticonference.org/Proceedings/vol1/Bar-Ilan_Beyond_98.pdf

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The Relationship between Ph D Students’ Excellence Scholarships…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

The Relationship between Ph.D. Students’ Excellence Scholarships and their Research Productivity, Scientific Impact and Degree Completion :

« Drawing on three distinct sources of data (students, excellence scholarships and scientific publications) on the entire population of doctoral students in the province of Québec, this report presents evidence of a relationship between excellence scholarships and research productivity, scientific impact and degree completion. It shows that funded students publish more papers than their unfunded colleagues and that there is only a slight difference between funded and unfunded Ph.D. students in terms of scientific impact. Funded students are also more likely to graduate, and this effect is greater for students funded by the federal government. Finally, although funding is clearly linked to higher degree completion for students who did not publish, this relationship does not hold for those who manage to publish at least one paper during the course of their Ph.D. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implication of the findings for Canadian science policy. »

URL : http://2012.sticonference.org/Proceedings/vol2/Lariviere_Relationship_498.pdf

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Scientific Publishing in West Africa A Comparison of…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Scientific Publishing in West Africa: A Comparison of Benin with Senegal and Ghana :

« We compared scientific indicators related to Benin, Senegal and Ghana. We collected data from Web of Science and used indicators like the yearly productivity, the language of publication, the type of publication, the citable documents, the publication fields, and the main international partners as well as the percentage of papers in collaboration. Results showed that Benin productivity is the lowest one; Ghana and Senegal competed over the period; depending on the type of documents under consideration, the positions of the three countries vary. Citable documents had an increasing trend for all the countries. There is less cooperation between African countries and Benin, Senegal and Ghana; colonial ties count much in their international partnership. Cooperation among the three countries is negligible. »

URL : http://2012.sticonference.org/Proceedings/vol2/Megnigbeto_Scientific_589.pdf

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F1000, Mendeley and Traditional Bibliometric Indicators

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

This article compares the Faculty of 1000 (F1000) quality filtering results and Mendeley usage data with traditional bibliometric indicators, using a sample of 1397 Genomics and Genetics articles published in 2008 selected by F1000 Faculty Members (FMs). Both Mendeley user counts and F1000 article factors (FFas) correlate significantly with citation counts and associated Journal Impact Factors. However, the correlations for Mendeley user counts are much larger than those for FFas.

It may be that F1000 is good at disclosing the merit of an article from an expert practitioner point of view while Mendeley user counts may be more closely related to traditional citation impact. Articles that attract exceptionally many citations are generally disorder or disease related, while those with extremely high social bookmark user counts are mainly historical or introductory.

URL : http://2012.sticonference.org/Proceedings/vol2/Li_F1000_541.pdf

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Planting the green seeds for a golden harvest…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Planting the green seeds for a golden harvest: Comments and clarifications on “Going for Gold” :

« The economic modelling work we have carried out over the past few years has been referred to and cited a number of times in the discussions of the Finch report and subsequent policy developments in the UK. We are concerned that there may be some misinterpretation of this work. This short paper sets out the main conclusions of our work, which was designed to explore the overall costs and benefits of Open Access (OA), as well as identify the most cost-effective policy basis for transitioning to OA at national and institutional levels.

The main findings are that disseminating research results via OA would be more cost-effective than subscription publishing. If OA were adopted worldwide, the net benefits of Gold OA would exceed those of Green OA. However, we are not in an OA world, nor are we likely to be in such a world in the foreseeable future.

At the institutional level, during a transitional period when subscriptions are maintained, the cost of unilaterally adopting Green OA is much lower than the cost of Gold OA – with Green OA self-archiving costing average institutions sampled around one-fifth the amount that Gold OA might cost, and as little as one-tenth as much for the most research intensive university.

Hence, we conclude that the most affordable and cost-effective means of moving towards OA is through Green OA, which can be adopted unilaterally at the funder, institutional, sectoral and national levels at relatively little cost. »

URL : http://www.cfses.com/projects/Going%20for%20Gold%20-%20Comment%20and%20Clarification%20%28Houghton%20and%20Swan%29.pdf

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The Myth of European Term Harmonisation 27 Public…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

The Myth of European Term Harmonisation: 27 Public Domains for the 27 Member States :

« The term of protection of copyright and related rights is generally considered to be one of the best harmonised areas of European copyright law. However, close examination of the EU Term Directive’s intricate provisions reveals a piecemeal and permissive approach to harmonisation which preserves many differences between the national rules. In this report, four main sources of legislative variability are identified and analysed: a) contagion from unharmonised areas of substantive copyright law; b) explicit exceptions to the harmonisation of the term of protection; c) national related rights of unharmonised term; and d) incorrect implementation of the provisions of the Term Directive into national law.

As a result, the desired harmonising effect has not been fully achieved: although a single rule may be applicable across the EU in theory, drastically divergent terms of protection may attach to the same information product depending on the jurisdiction within which protection is sought. In this way, the territorial nature of copyright undercuts harmonisation efforts, forcing the public domain to contract and expand according to divergent national rules. The result is a legislative framework that makes cross-border rights clearance calculation difficult, hampering end-users and cultural heritage organisations from taking full avail of the new opportunities now technically available for the digitisation and exploitation of the public domain. If the EU wishes to establish a truly harmonised term of protection for copyright and related rights, a more committed and comprehensive approach will be a necessary. »

URL : http://ssrn.com/abstract=2145862

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Open Access and A2K Collaborative Experiences in Latin…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Open Access and A2K: Collaborative Experiences in Latin America :

« Today, information is at the heart of all economies. Modern societies must keep pace with the growth of knowledge. This has become crucial for sustainable development. But, it is also important to note that restrictions exist with regard to accessing knowledge, with large numbers of people in the world who are being left behind in terms of having access to knowledge. It is critical to overcome these barriers in any possible way. While the Internet and digital technologies facilitate access to knowledge, at the same time there are certain barriers that prevent access. An alternative way to restore the lost equilibrium is the development of resources that favor open access to knowledge. In this chapter the access to knowledge (A2K) movement is based on definitions coined by theorists Benkler (2006), Balkin (2010) and Shaver (2007), who advance the concept of human development and equal access to knowledge as distributive justice. This chapter focuses on the role of Latin American countries in the WIPO development agenda and the role of library associations against excessive intellectual property regulations which impose barriers to access and ultimately the creation of new knowledge. The concepts of A2K to Open Access (OA), showing how OA can restore knowledge as a public good on a global scale, are also discussed in this chapter.The chapter also provides an account of the growth of global OA, portrays the Latin American situation and takes into account OA indicators from Argentina, Chile and Brazil. It also reports on international and regional projects, describing several collaborative projects developed in the region. The results of a survey to members of the LLAAR1 discussion list are presented. Finally, the chapter arrives at conclusions that integrate the concepts of A2K, OA, collaborative work, and development and growth of Open Access in the region. »

URL : http://rephip.unr.edu.ar/handle/2133/2103