Access to Scientific Publications The Scientist’s Perspective …

Access to Scientific Publications: The Scientist’s Perspective :

« Background : Scientific publishing is undergoing significant changes due to the growth of online publications, increases in the number of open access journals, and policies of funders and universities requiring authors to ensure that their publications become publicly accessible. Most studies of the impact of these changes have focused on the growth of articles available through open access or the number of open-access journals. Here, we investigated access to publications at a number of institutes and universities around the world, focusing on publications in HIV vaccine research – an area of biomedical research with special importance to the developing world.

Methods and Findings : We selected research papers in HIV vaccine research field, creating: 1) a first set of 50 most recently published papers with keywords “HIV vaccine” and 2) a second set of 200 articles randomly selected from those cited in the first set. Access to the majority (80%) of the recently published articles required subscription, while cited literature was much more accessible (67% freely available online). Subscriptions at a number of institutions around the world were assessed for providing access to subscription-only articles from the two sets. The access levels varied widely, ranging among institutions from 20% to 90%. Through the WHO-supported HINARI program, institutes in low-income countries had access comparable to that of institutes in the North. Finally, we examined the response rates for reprint requests sent to corresponding authors, a method commonly used before internet access became widespread. Contacting corresponding authors with requests for electronic copies of articles by email resulted in a 55-60% success rate, although in some cases it took up to 1.5 months to get a response.

Conclusions : While research articles are increasingly available on the internet in open access format, institutional subscriptions continue to play an important role. However, subscriptions do not provide access to the full range of HIV vaccine research literature. Access to papers through subscriptions is complemented by a variety of other means, including emailing corresponding authors, joint affiliations, use of someone else’s login information and posting requests on message boards. This complex picture makes it difficult to assess the real ability of scientists to access literature, but the observed differences in access levels between institutions suggest an unlevel playing field, in which some researchers have to spend more efforts than others to obtain the same information. »

URL : http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0027868
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0027868

Linking to Data Effect on Citation Rates in…

Linking to Data – Effect on Citation Rates in Astronomy :

« Is there a difference in citation rates between articles that were published with links to data and articles that were not? Besides being interesting from a purely academic point of view, this question is also highly relevant for the process of furthering science. Data sharing not only helps the process of verification of claims, but also the discovery of new findings in archival data. However, linking to data still is a far cry away from being a « practice », especially where it comes to authors providing these links during the writing and submission process. You need to have both a willingness and a publication mechanism in order to create such a practice. Showing that articles with links to data get higher citation rates might increase the willingness of scientists to take the extra steps of linking data sources to their publications. In this presentation we will show this is indeed the case: articles with links to data result in higher citation rates than articles without such links. The ADS is funded by NASA Grant NNX09AB39G. »

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3618

Research Infrastructures in the Digital Humanities

This peer reviewed document reflects on the centrality of Research Infrastructures (RIs) to the Humanities. It argues that without RIs such as archives, libraries, academies, museums and galleries (and the sources that they identify, order, preserve and make accessible) significant strands of Humanities research would not be possible. After proposing a wide-ranging definition of digital RIs – with the aim of reflecting on the meaning of infrastructure in the Humanities rather than on those parts common to other domains of science – it attempts to relate physical RIs to digital ones. By drawing on a number of case studies – chosen to showcase the variety of research around existing or emerging infrastructures – it demonstrates that digital RIs offer Humanities scholars new and productive ways to explore old questions and develop new ones.

URL : http://www.esf.org/media-centre/ext-single-news/article/humanities-researchers-and-digital-technologies-building-infrastructures-for-a-new-age-776.html

Not with a Bang but a Whimper The…

Not with a Bang but a Whimper: The Politics of Accountability and Open Data in the UK :

« Can the pro-active release of raw datasets by the government lead to more participatory democracy and government accountability? This paper explores the limits of what is possible through open government data by examining the UK government’s recent release of historic data in its COINS database of public expenditure. The paper begins by examining the origins of the UK’s open government data policy. It shows that far, from constituting a radical departure from pre-existing practice, the use of open data as a tool of democratic consolidation is in fact the outcome of several long-term trends in British politics and administration. It then shows that these origins encouraged a limited view of the likely impact of open government data on the actual exercise of democratic accountability, one which emphasises the removal of institutional barriers to access and tends to be overly-optimistic about how widely these data are likely to be used by individual citizens. Although pro-active disclosure may make it easier for “the public” to obtain information, there are still numerous barriers to actually using it, including the technical challenge of processing the raw data itself, the expertise to understand it and the existence of opportunities to act effectively on it. Overall, the paper argues that far from encouraging direct participation, the resource requirements for using government datasets actually reinforce the importance of intermediary organisations capable of processing and interpreting them, and that a rights-based framework may not be a particularly informative way of understanding the effects of open government data on democratic practice. It also suggests that the experience of the COINS disclosure has thus far confirmed a number of key claims made by technological sceptics, including that information technology is likely to reinforce existing power relations rather than disrupting them. »

URL : http://ssrn.com/abstract=1899790

A Surfboard for Riding the Wave Towards a…

A Surfboard for Riding the Wave. Towards a four country action programme on research data :

« The Riding the Wave report by the high level expert group on research data called for a collaborative data infrastructure that will enable researchers and other stakeholders from education, society and business to use, re-use and exploit research data to the maximum benefit of science and society. The Knowledge Exchange partners have embraced this vision and commissioned a report that translates Riding the Wave into actions for the four partner countries and beyond.

This paper builds on this report and presents an overview of the present situation with regard to research data in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom and offers broad outlines for a possible action programme for the four countries in realising the envisaged collaborative data infrastructure. An action programme at the level of four countries will require the involvement of all stakeholders from the scientific community. »

URL : http://knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=469

History and structures of telecommunication in pathology, focusing on open access platforms

Background

Telecommunication has matured to a broadly applied tool in diagnostic pathology.

Technology and Systems

Contemporary with the development of fast electronic communication lines (Integrated digital network services (ISDN), broad band connections, and fibre optics, as well as the digital imaging technology (digital camera), telecommunication in tissue – based diagnosis (telepathology) has matured. Open access (internet) and server – based communication have induced the development of specific medical information platforms, such as iPATH, UICC-TPCC (telepathology consultation centre of the Union International against Cancer), or the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) teleconsultation system.

They have been closed, and are subject to be replaced by specific open access forums (Medical Electronic Expert Communication System (MECES) with embedded virtual slide (VS) technology). MECES uses php language, data base driven mySqL architecture, X/L-AMPP infrastructure, and browser friendly W3C conform standards. »

Experiences

The server – based medical communication systems (AFIP, iPATH, UICC-TPCC) have been reported to be a useful and easy to handle tool for expert consultation. Clients’ sampling, and evaluation of transmitted still images by experts revealed no or only minor differences to the original images and good practice of the involved experts.

Beta tests with the new generation medical expert consultation systems (MECES) revealed superior results in terms of performance, still image viewing, and system handling, especially as this is closely related to the use of so – called social forums (facebook, youtube, etc.).

Benefits and Expectations

In addition to the acknowledged advantages of the former established systems (assistance of pathologists working in developing countries, diagnosis confirmation, international information exchange, etc.), the new generation offers additional benefits such as acoustic information transfer, assistance in image screening, VS technology, and teaching in diagnostic sampling, judgement, and verification.

URL : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22059444

Openness as infrastructure

The advent of open access to peer reviewed scholarly literature in the biomedical sciences creates the opening to examine scholarship in general, and chemistry in particular, to see where and how novel forms of network technology can accelerate the scientific method. This paper examines broad trends in information access and openness with an eye towards their applications in chemistry.

URL : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3197551/