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Digital Librarians and the Challenges of Open Access…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Digital Librarians and the Challenges of Open Access to Knowledge: The Michael Okpara University of Agriculture (MOUAU) Library Experience :

« The development of Internet technology has provided academic and research institutions with a very high level of visibility on the web. As a result, teaching, learning and research is widely improved in the global society today. The intellectual call for knowledge and information dissemination by countless organizations and educational meetings has given birth to a terminology called open access. This initiative is aimed at bringing the knowledge society to a state of free access to all kinds of information and learning material using the Internet and ICT tools. The library plays an important role in sustaining the open access initiative (Das, 2008). Librarians who ensure the organization and dissemination of full-text content of knowledge materials to online communities are the digital librarians. »

URL : http://unllib.unl.edu/LPP/uzuebgu-mcalbert.htm

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The Anatomy of a Data Citation: Discovery, Reuse, and Credit

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

INTRODUCTION

Data citation should be a necessary corollary of data publication and reuse. Many researchers are reluctant to share their data, yet they are increasingly encouraged to do just that.

Reward structures must be in place to encourage data publication, and citation is the appropriate tool for scholarly acknowledgment. Data citation also allows for the identification, retrieval, replication, and verification of data underlying published studies.

METHODS

This study examines author behavior and sources of instruction in disciplinary and cultural norms for writing style and citation via a content analysis of journal articles, author instructions, style manuals, and data publishers. Instances of data citation are benchmarked against a Data Citation Adequacy Index.

RESULTS

Roughly half of journals point toward a style manual that addresses data citation, but the majority of journal articles failed to include an adequate citation to data used in secondary analysis studies.

DISCUSSION

Full citation of data is not currently a normative behavior in scholarly writing. Multiplicity of data types and lack of awareness regarding existing standards contribute to the problem.

CONCLUSION

Citations for data must be promoted as an essential component of data publication, sharing, and reuse. Despite confounding factors, librarians and information professionals are well-positioned and should persist in advancing data citation as a normative practice across domains.

Doing so promotes a value proposition for data sharing and secondary research broadly, thereby accelerating the pace of scientific research. »

URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol1/iss1/6/

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The Accessibility Quotient A New Measure of Open…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

The Accessibility Quotient: A New Measure of Open Access :

« INTRODUCTION: The Accessibility Quotient (AQ), a new measure for assisting authors and librarians in assessing and characterizing the degree of accessibility for a group of papers, is proposed and described. The AQ offers a concise measure that assesses the accessibility of peer-reviewed research produced by an individual or group, by incorporating data on open availability to readers worldwide, the degree of financial barrier to access, and journal quality. The paper reports on the context for developing this measure, how the AQ is calculated, how it can be used in faculty outreach, and why it is a useful lens to use in assessing progress towards more open access to research.

METHODS: Journal articles published in 2009 and 2010 by faculty members from one department in each of MIT’s five schools were examined. The AQ was calculated using economist Ted Bergstrom’s Relative Price Index to assess affordability and quality, and data from SHERPA/RoMEO to assess the right to share the peer-reviewed version of an article.

RESULTS: The results show that 2009 and 2010 publications by the Media Lab and Physics have the potential to be more open than those of Sloan (Management), Mechanical Engineering, and Linguistics & Philosophy.

DISCUSSION: Appropriate interpretation and applications of the AQ are discussed and some limitations of the measure are examined, with suggestions for future studies which may improve the accuracy and relevance of the AQ.

CONCLUSION: The AQ offers a concise assessment of accessibility for authors, departments, disciplines, or universities who wish to characterize or understand the degree of access to their research output, capturing additional dimensions of accessibility that matter to faculty. »

URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol1/iss1/7/

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Does Tenure Matter Factors Influencing Faculty Contributions to…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Does Tenure Matter? Factors Influencing Faculty Contributions to Institutional Repositories :

« INTRODUCTION : Institutional repositories (IRs) provide colleges and universities a way to ensure stability of access to and dissemination of digital scholarly communications. Yet, many institutions report that faculty willingness to contribute to IRs is often limited. This study investigates faculty attitudes about IR contributions by tenure status and category of material.

IMETHODS: Two focus group interviews were conducted in the spring of 2009 among English department faculty at a large Midwestern university. One group consisted of tenured faculty and the other of tenure-track and adjunct faculty.

IRESULTS: Both groups recognize the benefit of open access to research materials but expressed concern about their intellectual property rights. Untenured faculty spoke more about nonprint research. Both groups also shared concerns about contributing instructional materials, primarily in regard to plagiarism and outdated materials. In regard to faculty service, the tenured group discussed many items they would contribute, while the untenured faculty mentioned very little.

IDISCUSSION: Some minor differences emerged related to experience and tenure status in regard to contributing research and instructional artifacts, but the major variation was the strong support tenured participants gave for contributing service items, compared to the untenured faculty, who did not view this category positively. Tenured faculty viewed the IR as a way to document their own service activities, investigate those of colleagues, and had fewer concerns about plagiarism or other negative effects in the service category.

CONCLUSION: Promoting faculty contribution of service-related items to an IR may be a way to encourage larger numbers to participate. »

URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol1/iss1/8/

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Open Access Publishing Practices in a Complex Environment: Conditions, Barriers, and Bases of Power

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

The system of scholarly communication is a complex environment made up of various stakeholders including not only researchers, librarians, and publishers, but also academic administrators. This paper examines conditions each group faces while also noting barriers preventing movement toward open access.

To further analyze interrelationships and interdependencies among groups, a discussion is presented using French & Raven’s bases of power to describe how members of each stakeholder group exert some degree of power upon all other groups while at the same time being influenced, either directly or indirectly, by external forces.

A better understanding of the many existing interactions and dependencies can help those who work within this system navigate ongoing changes while more successfully positioning their organizations for the future.

URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol1/iss1/10/

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Lasting Impact: Sustainability of Disciplinary Repositories

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Librarians need to be familiar with the evolving aspects of scholarly communication and the changing scholarly record. One component of that is the role of repositories. It’s crucial for anyone working in a research library to understand the repository landscape, both to advise researchers on where to look for information and how to disseminate their own research articles.

Librarians should appreciate the nature of the leading disciplinary repositories and have a sense of their motivations, their scope, and how they operate. Before getting involved with a disciplinary repository, they should be familiar with the risks and opportunities in depending on the repository and, most importantly, they need to know if the repository has a sustainable model.

For a library considering starting a disciplinary repository or taking on the operation of an existing one, these considerations are essential.

URL : http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2012/2012-03.pdf

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Bibliometric methods for detecting and analysing emerging research topics

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

This study gives an overview of the process of clustering scientific disciplines using hybrid methods, detecting and labelling emerging topics and analysing the results using bibliometrics methods.

The hybrid clustering techniques are based on biblographic coupling and text-mining and ‘core documents’, and cross-citation links are used to identify emerging fields.

The collaboration network of those countries that proved to be most active in the underlying disciplines, in combination with a set of standard indicators, form the groundwork for the bibliometric analysis of the detected emerging research topics.

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/10760/16947