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New Roles New Responsibilities Examining Training Needs of…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

New Roles, New Responsibilities: Examining Training Needs of Repository Staff:

« INTRODUCTION : Institutional repositories play a critical role in the research lifecycle. Funding agencies are increasingly seeking an improved return on their investment in research. Repositories facilitate this process by providing storage of, and access to, institutional research outputs and, more recently, research data. While repositories are generally managed within the academic library, repository staff require different skills and knowledge compared with traditional library roles. This study reports on a survey of Australasian institutional repository staff to identify skills and knowledge sets.

METHODS :Institutional repository staff working at universities in Australia and New Zealand were invited to participate in an online survey which incorporated both open and closed-ended question types.

RESULTS :The survey found significant gaps in the current provision of formal training and coursework related to institutional repositories, which echoed findings in the United Kingdom, Italy, and the United States.

DISCUSSION :There is clearly a need for more and varied training opportunities for repository professionals. Repository work requires a specific set of skills that can be difficult to find and institutions will benefit from investing in training and ongoing development opportunities for repository staff.

CONCLUSION :The data from this study could be used to facilitate staff recruitment, development, training, and retention strategies. »

URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol1/iss2/7/

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Understanding and Making Use of Academic Authors’ Open…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Understanding and Making Use of Academic Authors’ Open Access Rights :

« INTRODUCTION : Authors of academic works do not take full advantage of the self-archiving rights that they retain in their publications, though research shows that many academic authors are well-aligned (at least in principle) with open access (OA) principles. This article explains how institutionally-assisted self-archiving in open access repositories can effectively take advantage of retained rights and highlights at least one method of facilitating this process through automated means.

METHODS : To understand the scope of author-retained rights (including the right to purchase hybrid or other open access options) at some sample universities, author-rights data through the SHERPA/RoMEO API was combined with individual article citations (from Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science) for works published over a one-year period (2011) and authored by individuals affiliated with five major U.S. research universities.

RESULTS : Authors retain significant rights in the articles that they create. Of the 29,322 unique articles authored over the one year period at the five universities, 28.83 percent could be archived in final PDF form and 87.95 percent could be archived as the post-print version. Nearly 43.47 percent also provided authors the choice of purchasing a hybrid paid open access option.

DISCUSSION : A significant percentage of current published output could be archived with little or no author intervention. With prior approval through an open access policy or otherwise, article manuscripts or final PDFs can be obtained and archived by library staff, and hybrid paid-OA options could be negotiated and exploited by library administrators.

CONCLUSION : Although mandates, legislation, and other policy tools may be useful to promote open access, many institutions already have the ability to increase the percentage of accessible works by taking advantage of retained author rights and hybrid OA options. »

URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol1/iss2/6/

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Scientometric Mapping of Remote Sensing Research Output A…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Scientometric Mapping of Remote Sensing Research Output: A Global Perspective :

« This paper presents a quantitative analysis of remote sensing, in terms of research out put throughout the world during 1975 – FEB 2010. During that period, 1188 papers have been published and the cited references have been 30654. The average number of publications published per year has been 38.07. The highest number of paper (119) was published in the year of 2009. The USA topped the list with 473 (39.8%) publications, followed by UK with 128 (10.8%) publications, India with 93 (7.8%) publications respectively. The highly productive authors are Kaufman YJ with 13 (1.1%) publications, followed by Wagner W with 10 (0.8%) publications. There were 1082 institutions involved in the research with NASA which topped the list with 112 (9.4%), followed by NOAA with 48 (4%) publications. The most preferred journal is IEEE Transaction on Geoscience and Remote Sensing with 103 papers, followed by International journal of Remote Sensing with 95 papers, Acta Astronautica with 64 papers. The most preferred language by scientist is English with 1170 (98.5%) publications. »

URL : http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/801/

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Analysis and visualization of the dynamics of research…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Analysis and visualization of the dynamics of research groups in terms of projects and co-authored publications. A case study of library and information science in Argentina :

« Objective: The present study offers a novel methodological contribution to the study of the configuration and dynamics of research groups, through a comparative perspective of the projects funded (inputs) and publication co-authorships (output).

Method: A combination of bibliometric techniques and social network analysis was applied to a case study: the Departmento de Bibliotecología (DHUBI), Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, for the period 2000-2009. The results were interpreted statistically and staff members of the department, were interviewed.

Results: The method makes it possible to distinguish groups, identify their members and reflect group make-up through an analytical strategy that involves the categorization of actors and the interdisciplinary and national or international projection of the networks that they configure. The integration of these two aspects (input and output) at different points in time over the analyzed period leads to inferences about group profiles and the roles of actors.

Conclusions: The methodology presented is conducive to micro-level interpretations in a given area of study, regarding individual researchers or research groups. Because the comparative input-output analysis broadens the base of information and makes it possible to follow up, over time, individual and group trends, it may prove very useful for the management, promotion and evaluation of science. »

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/10760/17694

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In science « there is no bad publicity »: Papers criticized in technical comments have high scientific impact

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Technical comments are special types of scientific publications whose aim is to correct or criticize previously published papers. Often, comments are negatively perceived by the authors of the criticized articles because believed to make the commented papers less worthy or trusty to the eyes of the scientific community.

Thus, there is a tendency to think that criticized papers are predestined to have low scientific impact. We show here that such belief is not supported by empirical evidence. We consider thirteen major publication outlets in science and perform a large-scale analysis of the citation patterns of criticized publications.

We find that commented papers have not only average citation rates much higher than those of non commented articles, but also unexpectedly over-populate the set of the most cited publications within a journal. Since comments are published soon after criticized papers, comments can be viewed as early indicators of the future impact of criticized papers.

Our results represent one the most clear observations of the popular wisdom of « any publicity is good publicity », according to which success might follow from negative criticisms, but for which there have been very few empirical validations so far.

Our results go also beyond, touching core topics of research in philosophy of science, because they emphasize the fundamental importance of scientific disputes for the production and dissemination of knowledge.

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.4997

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Build it and they will come Support for…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Build it and they will come? Support for open access in Australia :

« This paper takes a critical look at the Australian open access landscape and analyses the issues with existing mandates and infrastructure through the lens of achieving open access via placing work in institutional repositories. Beginning with an explanation of the funding arrangements for universities in Australia, this paper describes the existing policy structure, the funding for physical infrastructure, how Australian theses are shared and the approach to the management of data as a research output. The second half of this paper takes an analytical view of the policies and repository infrastructure in Australia. This will demonstrate that beyond the basic provision of the tools for open access many issues affect the success or otherwise of an open access program. It will conclude by exploring areas which could be improved to allow Australia to take full advantage of the infrastructure in place to increase open access uptake in the country. »

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/1885/9390

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Open Access in Österreich Anmerkungen zur aktuellen Entwicklung…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Open Access in Österreich – Anmerkungen zur aktuellen Entwicklung und zu den Perspektiven für einen Paradigmenwechsel im wissenschaftlichen Publikationswesen :

« Die Berliner Erklärung über offenen Zugang zu wissenschaftlichem Wissen hat auch in Österreich WissenschaftlerInnen, BibliothekarInnen und Forschungsförderungseinrichtungen für das Thema Open Access sensibilisiert. Mangels einer Initiative auf nationaler Ebene wird das Open-Access-Geschehen in Österreich derzeit im Wesentlichen von der Universität Wien, der Akademie der Wissenschaften und vom FWF – Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung – getragen. Seit Sommer 2012 sind Statements von über 40 österreichischen WissenschaftlerInnen, die als Testimonials ihre Argumente für Open Access formuliert haben, auf der Website des FWF online zugänglich. »

« Open Access in Austria – notes on current developments and perspectives for a paradigm shift in the field of academic publishing. The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities has created awareness for Open Access also among Austrian scientists, librarians and funding organizations. Due to the lack of initiatives on the national level, Open Access activities in Austria are currently taken on mainly by the Vienna University of Vienna, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Austrian Science Fund. More than 40 Austrian scientists have expressed their arguments in favor of Open Access in testimonials which have been available online since summer 2012 on the website of the Austrian Science Fund. »

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/10760/17645