Assessing the role of librarians in an Open…

Assessing the role of librarians in an Open Access world :

« This online survey was designed to gauge how the library community is responding to Open Access (OA) publishing in order to better understand librarians’ opinions of OA and what the main benefits and concerns are perceived to be. Also to understand how the role of the librarian may change in the future as a result of OA, in terms of how librarians can best assist their communities in publishing and accessing content under this evolving business model.

The detailed objectives of the research were to explore:
• Current levels of familiarity with Open Access publishing
• Current opinions of and attitudes towards Open Access
• The current role of the librarian with regards to Open Access
• Whether and how Open Access is changing the role of the librarian

The online survey was conducted in April 2012. The survey was sent out to
librarians via a posting on various library listservs, including lis‐e‐resources, LISLINK, lis‐serials, LibLicense and Serialst. 211 participants took part in the online survey; 156 (74.3%) completed it. Please note that all percentage responses shown are representative not of the total number of participants, but of the number that answered each specific question. »

URL : http://www.intechopen.com/js/ckeditor/kcfinder/upload/files/Role%20of%20the%20Librarian_Survey_Findings_Jun12.pdf

L’Open Access en Belgique francophone Au printemps…

L’Open Access en Belgique francophone :

« Au printemps 2011, les Recteurs des universités de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles et le Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (F.R.S.-FNRS) ont émis le souhait de voir mener une étude sur le développement de l’Open Access en Belgique francophone. Ils ont décidé de confier la réalisation de celle-ci à la Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de la Communauté française de Belgique (BICfB).
La présente étude fait le point sur le développement des dépôts institutionnels (Voie Verte) des universités de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles et apporte un éclairage sur l’implication active des enseignants et chercheurs de leurs institutions (en tant qu’éditeur en chef, membre du comité de rédaction, peer-reviewer, etc.) dans la vie de revues scientifiques en Open Access (Voie d’Or) ou tout au moins accessibles gratuitement sur le web. »

URL : http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/handle/2268/124876

High reprint orders in medical journals and pharmaceutical…

High reprint orders in medical journals and pharmaceutical industry funding: case-control study :

« Reprints of published articles are a potential valuable means of disseminating information. Many individuals and organisations may request reprints, including the authors of the articles themselves, other members of the scientific community, study sponsors, and pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical industry is thought to be the largest purchaser of reprints. After gifts and drug samples, reprints are the most common form of promotional material circulated among doctors by pharmaceutical companies.

Because pharmaceutical companies may buy from journals copies of articles they have funded, reprints of published articles have been suggested as a possible source of conflict of interest that could lead to publication bias. Orders can be worth large sums of money and could potentially influence the chance of a paper being accepted, especially with the current organisational framework, under which editors can be responsible for the journal’s content and its finances. Studies sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry are also more likely to be published in higher impact factor journals than are studies without industry funding.

Data on the numbers of reprints ordered are scarce. One study examined the characteristics of articles published in the Lancet in 1998 in the top 21 of reprint orders and compared these with a set of control articles from the same journal. Reprint orders were not reported in detail, but less than 25% were stated to concern over 100 000 copies. Studies sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry were marginally significantly over-represented in the high reprint group compared with the control articles. Using more recent data we report the number of reprints ordered for the top articles by reprint order in medical journals, identify the sponsors and designs of these studies, and quantify the possible financial implications for journals. »

URL : http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e4212

Researchers of Tomorrow the research behaviour of Generation…

Researchers of Tomorrow: the research behaviour of Generation Y doctoral students :

« In 2009, the British Library and JISC commissioned the three-year Researchers of Tomorrow study, focusing on the information-seeking and research behaviour of doctoral students in ‘Generation Y’, born between 1982 and 1994 and not ‘digital natives’. Over 17,000 doctoral students from more than 70 higher education institutions participated in the three annual surveys, which were complemented by a longitudinal student cohort study. »

URL : http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/reports/2012/researchers-of-tomorrow.pdf

Digital repositories ten years on: what do scientific researchers think of them and how do they use them?

Digital repositories have been with us for more than a decade, and despite the considerable media and conference attention they engender, we know very little about their use by academics.

This paper sets out to address this by reporting on how well they are used, what they are used for, what researchers’ think of them, and where they thought they were going. Nearly 1,700 scientific researchers, mostly physical scientists, responded to an international survey of digital repositories, making it the largest survey of its kind.

High deposit rates were found and mandates appear to be working, especially with younger researchers. Repositories have made significant inroads in terms of impact and use despite, in the case of institutional repositories, the very limited resources deployed. S

ubject repositories, like arXiv and PubMed Central, have certainly come of age but institutional repositories probably have not come of age yet although there are drivers in place which, in theory anyway, are moving them towards early adulthood.

URL : http://ciber-research.eu/download/20120620-Digital_repositories_ten_years_on.pdf

A Preliminary Examination of the Cost Savings and Learning Impacts of Using Open Textbooks in Middle and High School Science Classes

Proponents of open educational resources claim that significant cost savings are possible when open textbooks displace traditional textbooks in the classroom. Over a period of two years, we worked with 20 middle and high school science teachers (collectively teaching approximately 3,900 students) who adopted open textbooks to understand the process and determine the overall cost of such an adoption.

The teachers deployed open textbooks in multiple ways. Some of these methods cost more than traditional textbooks; however, we did identify and implement a successful model of open textbook adoption that reduces costs by over 50% compared to the cost of adopting traditional textbooks.

In addition, we examined the standardized test scores of students using the open textbooks and found no apparent differences in the results of students who used open textbooks compared with previous years when the same teachers’ students used traditional textbooks. However, given the limited sample of participating teachers, further investigation is needed. »

URL : http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1153/2256

The impact of open access initiative on knowledge sharing

The main focus of this paper is to look at the role of the open access initiative (OAI) as a channel for knowledge sharing that could be used for the disseminate knowledge and research funding. For this purpose OAI was selected for analytical as role communication among the research.

To assess if the articles found in the OAI contents knowledge sharing a method called contextual analysis was used. The result showed that OAI can aptly serve as a tool for disseminate knowledge and sharing ideas. By analysis is these material, OAI might be able to drive benefits directly or indirectly and eventually become beneficial took for scholars in their.

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/10760/17219