Peer2ref a peer reviewer finding web tool that…

Peer2ref: a peer-reviewer finding web tool that uses author disambiguation :

« Background :
Reviewer and editor selection for peer review is getting harder for authors and publishers due to the specialization onto narrower areas of research carried by the progressive growth of the body of knowledge. Examination of the literature facilitates finding appropriate reviewers but is time consuming and complicated by author name ambiguities.

Results : We have developed a method called peer2ref to support authors and editors in selecting suitable reviewers for scientific manuscripts. Peer2ref works from a text input, usually the abstract of the manuscript, from which important concepts are extracted as keywords using a fuzzy binary relations approach. The keywords are searched on indexed profiles of words constructed from the bibliography attributed to authors in MEDLINE. The names of these scientists have been previously disambiguated by coauthors identified across the whole MEDLINE. The methods have been implemented in a web server that automatically suggests experts for peer-review among scientists that have authored manuscripts published during the last decade in more than 3,800 journals indexed in MEDLINE.

Conclusion : peer2ref web server is publicly available at http://www.ogic.ca/projects/peer2ref/ . »

URL : http://www.biodatamining.org/content/5/1/14/abstract

Open by default: a proposed copyright license and waiver agreement for open access research and data in peer-reviewed journals

Copyright and licensing of scientific data, internationally, are complex and present legal barriers to data sharing, integration and reuse, and therefore restrict the most efficient transfer and discovery of scientific knowledge. Much data are included within scientific journal articles, their published tables, additional files (supplementary material) and reference lists. However, these data are usually published under licenses which are not appropriate for data.

Creative Commons CC0 is an appropriate and increasingly accepted method for dedicating data to the public domain, to enable data reuse with the minimum of restrictions. BioMed Central is committed to working towards implementation of open data-compliant licensing in its publications. Here we detail a protocol for implementing a combined Creative Commons Attribution license (for copyrightable material) and Creative Commons CC0 waiver (for data) agreement for content published in peer-reviewed open access journals.

We explain the differences between legal requirements for attribution in copyright, and cultural requirements in scholarship for giving individuals credit for their work through citation. We argue that publishing data in scientific journals under CC0 will have numerous benefits for individuals and society, and yet will have minimal implications for authors and minimal impact on current publishing and research workflows.

We provide practical examples and definitions of data types, such as XML and tabular data, and specific secondary use cases for published data, including text mining, reproducible research, and open bibliography. We believe this proposed change to the current copyright and licensing structure in science publishing will help clarify what users — people and machines — of the published literature can do, legally, with journal articles and make research using the published literature more efficient.

We further believe this model could be adopted across multiple publishers, and invite comment on this article from all stakeholders in scientific research.

URL : http://www.biomedcentral.com/1756-0500/5/494/abstract

Copyright and the Harvard Open Access Mandate …

Copyright and the Harvard Open Access Mandate :

« Open access proponents argue that scholars are far more likely to make their articles freely available online if they are required to do so by their university or funding institution. Therefore, if the open access movement is to achieve anything close to its goal of seeing all scholarly articles freely available online, mandates will likely play a significant role. In 2008, the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences adopted a policy that purports not only to require scholars to deposit their works in open access repositories, but also to grant the university nonexclusive copyright licenses to archive and publicly distribute all faculty-produced scholarly articles. A number of other American universities have since adopted similar policies. The principal aim of this Article is to analyze the legal effect of these Harvard-style open access “permission” mandates.

By invoking copyright law terminology in permission mandates, schools might intend that they have the legal effect of transferring nonexclusive rights to the school, thereby clarifying and fortifying the school’s rights to reproduce and publicly disseminate faculty works. However, the legal effect of these mandates is uncertain for several reasons. First, it is unsettled whether scholars or their university employers are the authors and initial owners of scholarly articles under U.S. copyright law’s work-made-for-hire rules, which vest authorship and copyright ownership in the employer for works created by employees within the scope of employment. Second, the mandates are broad university policies that purport to grant the university nonexclusive copyright licenses in every scholarly article unless a faculty member affirmatively opts out on a per-article basis. Are the policies specific enough to provide the essential terms of the grant? Furthermore, can the mere adoption of a school policy, without some additional affirmative act by the author, effectuate such a grant without unduly encroaching upon the author’s autonomy interests? Lastly, even if the policies effectuate nonexclusive license grants, will the licenses survive after the author transfers copyright ownership to a journal publisher as per common practice? Section 205(e) of the Copyright Act provides that a prior nonexclusive license evidenced in a writing signed by the right holder prevails over a subsequent conflicting transfer of copyright ownership, so the answer appears to turn on whether permission mandates satisfy the requirements of § 205(e).

This Article argues that permission mandates can create legally enforceable, durable nonexclusive licenses. First, it argues that although there are important justifications, including academic freedom concerns, for recognizing the controversial “teacher exception” to the work for hire rules for scholarly articles, such an exception may be unnecessary because a strong argument also exists that much scholarship is produced outside the scope of employment for work for hire purposes. Second, it argues that permission mandates provide sufficient evidence of the grantor’s intent and the rights granted to create effective nonexclusive licenses. Third, permission mandates satisfy the requirements of § 205(e) and establish the license’s priority over the subsequent transfer of copyright ownership largely because they fulfill the underlying purposes of § 205(e) by providing sufficient evidence and notice of the license to potential copyright transferees (typically academic publishers). In reaching these conclusions, this Article emphasizes that Courts should consider the uniformity costs (social costs resulting from applying uniform rules and granting uniform entitlements across diverse conditions) that arise from applying to scholarly articles copyright rules developed to address proprietary models of information production. Applying the relevant copyright rules in a manner sensitive to the nonmarket nature of scholarly production is the most effective way to reduce these social costs, and reinforces the conclusion that mandate licenses are enforceable.

Lastly, the Article considers whether the opt-out nature of permission mandates offends notions of authorial autonomy in copyright. It compares permission mandates with another high profile opt-out licensing regime: the proposed Google Books settlement agreement, which the court rejected partly because of authorial autonomy concerns. Authorial autonomy is far less of a concern for scholarly articles than for the books at issue in the Google Books case, however, due to the nonmarket nature of scholarly article production coupled with academic community norms. Accordingly, it does not substantially interfere with authors’ autonomy interests to find that the opt-out structure of permission mandates creates valid nonexclusive licenses in universities. »

URL : http://ssrn.com/abstract=1890467

The Embedded Repository: Introducing an Institutional Repository to a New Audience Via Location-Aware Social Networking

Authors : Robin A. Bedenbaugh, Holly Mercer

The authors report the outcome of a partnership between a university marketing and communications department and a university library. The research aimed to determine whether providing links to institutional digital repository content on location-based social media is a viable marketing approach.

Foursquare Tips were added to locations on the Texas A&M University campus with links to repository content. The authors subsequently monitored repository traffic using Google analytics to determine how many users were being referred by the Foursquare service.

Research indicates that users will click through links on Foursquare to visit the institutional repository, and that they will explore further once they are there. This was an initial exploration. More data will be needed to determine precisely the best way to market services through location-based or location-aware services. »

URL : https://journals.tdl.org/pal/index.php/pal/article/view/6062

Readability of Wikipedia Wikipedia is becoming widely…

Readability of Wikipedia :

« Wikipedia is becoming widely acknowledged as a reliable source of encyclopedic information. However, concerns have been expressed about its readability. Wikipedia articles might be written in a language too difficult to be understood by most of its visitors. In this study, we apply the Flesch reading ease test to all available articles from the English Wikipedia to investigate these concerns. The results show that overall readability is poor, with 75 percent of all articles scoring below the desired readability score. The ‘Simple English’ Wikipedia scores better, but its readability is still insufficient for its target audience. A demo of our methodology is available at www.readabilityofwikipedia.com . »

URL : http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3916/3297

Scientific knowledge dissemination in Danish seed communities of…

Scientific knowledge dissemination in Danish seed communities of practice :

« Danish agriculture and seed science have a history of successful collaboration spanning more than a hundred years. In this study, we interviewed 26 growers, consultants, and scientists from the Danish seed community focusing on their current knowledge status and on their views on improving scientific knowledge communication. Theoretically, we consider these actors participants in different communities of practice relating to the production of seeds (Seed-CoP), and we conclude that strong network collaboration is present among Danish seed-CoP effectuated by the valuable work undertaken by the consultants. We discovered a divergence in knowledge dissemination among the growers – an innovative group of growers with a high demand for new scientific knowledge versus a majority of growers content with the level of knowledge provided by the consultants. ‘Time’ was recognized as an important parameter, as only the innovative growers prioritized time allocation for additional knowledge search. To improve scientific knowledge dissemination and interdisciplinary collaboration among Danish seed-CoP we recommend a combination of face-to-face and online communication processes. »

URL : http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/11/03/Jcom1103%282012%29A02

Can’t surf, won’t surf: The digital divide in mental health

Background: New health information technology (HIT) increasingly plays a role in health care as technology becomes cheaper and more widespread. However, there is a danger that those who do not use or have access to technology will not benefit from HIT innovations, thus creating a “digital divide”.

Aims: To assess the extent to which mental health service users have access to, skills in using and appetite for various technologies.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was used to assess technology use and access patterns of 121 people from community mental health services. Data were analysed using logistic regression.

Results: Technology use and access were very similar to that of the general population with older individuals reporting less familiarity, access and confidence across a range of technologies. Black, minority and ethnic (BME) groups were more likely to access computers outside of their own homes than white individuals. Older participants experiencing psychosis indicated a desire to increase their computer use.

Conclusions: The findings reported here contrast with recent evidence suggesting that those who do not engage with technology are “self-excluders”. Furthermore, BME groups may need extra support regarding provision of technology in order to engage with HIT.

URL : http://informahealthcare.com/doi/full/10.3109/09638237.2012.689437