De l’open access au freemium :
How the Scientific Community Reacts to Newly Submitted…
How the Scientific Community Reacts to Newly Submitted Preprints: Article Downloads, Twitter Mentions, and Citations :
« We analyze the online response of the scientific community to the preprint publication of scholarly articles. We employ a cohort of 4,606 scientific articles submitted to the preprint database arXiv.org between October 2010 and April 2011. We study three forms of reactions to these preprints: how they are downloaded on the arXiv.org site, how they are mentioned on the social media site Twitter, and how they are cited in the scholarly record. We perform two analyses. First, we analyze the delay and time span of article downloads and Twitter mentions following submission, to understand the temporal configuration of these reactions and whether significant differences exist between them. Second, we run correlation tests to investigate the relationship between Twitter mentions and both article downloads and article citations. We find that Twitter mentions follow rapidly after article submission and that they are correlated with later article downloads and later article citations, indicating that social media may be an important factor in determining the scientific impact of an article. »
URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.2461
How Linking Changes the Role of Library…
« How Linking Changes the Role of Library Data: Examples from the Wider World » :
« Discussion in the W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group (2010-2011) tended to focus on the benefits of linked-data technology to libraries. This talk explores how library data – datasets, element sets, and value vocabularies – when linked, provide new forms of support to scholarly and cultural communities in the wider world. Well-maintained value vocabularies, their concepts identified by URI and backed by institutional persistence policies, can function as magnets, forming hubs of incoming links from thousands of providers. The global agricultural research community maintains a key thesaurus, AGROVOC, through an effort distributed across multiple language areas. Its linked data strategy aims at solutions that will work in low-resource and low-bandwidth conditions and at tools that can use natural-language processing to assign appropriate URIs and automate the « triplification » of existing data (« wrapping the legacy »).
In the library world, the standards underpinning bibliographic description, such as ISBD, FRBR, FRAD, FRSAD, and RDA, are being translated into the language of linked data. Triplified standards provide building blocks for descriptive practice based not on fixed records, but on statements that can be differently recombined and bundled for diverse, even unanticipated, uses – aggregated « just in time » instead of being maintained « just in case ». As for other artifacts of long-term cultural importance, libraries could play a key role in preserving the underlying vocabularies, ensuring their long-term usefulness as the « footnotes » of library data. »
Open Access Digital Repository Sharing Student Research with…
Open Access Digital Repository: Sharing Student Research with the World :
« University libraries use open access digital repositories to preserve and distribute the intellectual scholarly communications of their institution. How can global accessibility of quality student work be harnessed to benefit researchers, practitioners, and educators? To address this question, we study the impact of content factors and search engine optimization factors on download rates of capstone papers. We examined all 290 MPA capstone papers at Texas State University which have been made available through an online digital repository for public consumption. Results show strong support for the impact of search engine factors on download rates. The implications of high download rates of MPA capstone papers on public administration research, practice, and education are discussed in this paper. »
URL : http://www.naspaa.org/jpaemessenger/Article/VOL18-1/jpae18_01_final.pdf
Users narcissism and control – tracking the impact…
Users, narcissism and control – tracking the impact of scholarly publications in the 21st century :
« What is the scientific and social impact of my research publications? This question has been of interest to scientists and scholars since the inception of modern science 400 years ago. But it was hard to answer. This may now be changing. Scholarship is transforming into a variety of digital networked forms. These developments have created new possibilities and challenges in the evaluation of the quality of research. This is of interest to research funders assessing the quality of research. It is also relevant to the individual researchers interested in assessing their career development.
This report explores the explosion of tracking tools that have accompanied the surge of web based information instruments. Is it possible to monitor ‘real-time’ how new research findings are being read, cited, used and transformed in practical results and applications? And what are the potential risks and disadvantages of the new tracking tools? This report aims to contribute to a better understanding of these developments by providing a detailed assessment of the currently available novel tools and methodologies. A total of 16 quite different tools are assessed.
The report concludes that web based academic publishing is producing a variety of novel information filters. These allow the researcher to make some sort of limited self-assessment with respect to the response to his/her work. However, this does not mean that these technologies and databases can also legitimately be used in research assessments. For this application, they need to adhere to a far stricter protocol of data quality and indicator reliability and validity. Most new tools do not (yet) comply with these more strict quality criteria.
The report therefore advises to start a concerted research programme in the dynamics, properties, and potential use of new web based metrics which relates these new measures to the already established indicators of publication impact. Its goal would be to contribute to the development of more useful tools for the scientific and scholarly community. This programme should monitor at least the following tools: F1000, Microsoft Academic Research, Total-Impact, PlosONE altmetrics, and Google Scholar. The programme should moreover develop the following key research themes: concepts of new web metrics and altmetrics; standardisation of tools and data; and the use and normalisation of the new metrics. »
URL : http://www.surffoundation.nl/nl/publicaties/Documents/Users%20narcissism%20and%20control.pdf
The Future of Taxpayer-Funded Research: Who Will Control Access to the Results?
This report examines the costs and benefits of increased public access, and proposals to either extend or overturn the NIH policy. It looks at increased public access to research results through the lens of “openness,” with a particular interest in how greater openness affects the progress of science, the productivity of the research enterprise, the process of innovation, the commercialization of research, and economic growth.
URL : http://www.ced.org/images/content/issues/innovation-technology/DCCReport_Final_2_9-12.pdf