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A further exploration of the views of chemists…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

A further exploration of the views of chemists and economists on Open Access issues in the UK :

« Most UK researchers are attached to academic institutions. Although there are variations in the breadth of the subscription base of institutional libraries, most scholars have smooth and seamless access to most of the scholarly research outputs that they require, for most of the time. Their world is largely an open one. For this reason, the policy discourse about openness in general, and Open Access in particular has had little influence on most academics. Their world is dominated less by issues of efficiency, cost-effectiveness and public good, than by the motivations in relation to scholarly publishing that exist within their own field. The focus of this study is on the latter, that is, on culture and the reasons behind researchers’ attitude to Open Access.

It is worth noting that ‘ Open Access’ is not a term whose nuances and implications are widely understood. For most people the key distinction is – ‘is it free or do I have to pay for it?’ The organisation and arrangements that go on behind the scenes to make that ‘free’ stuff possible is and will probably always be only a concern for a tiny minority of people. But having the free access is a concern for everyone. In a similar way: everyone wants to use Google to find things but how many people get involved in discussing search algorithms, ranking and indexing? »

URL : http://crc.nottingham.ac.uk/projects/rcs/Chemists&EconomistsViews_on_OA.pdf

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The Impact of Open Access Contributions Developed and…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

The Impact of Open Access Contributions: Developed and Developing World Perspectives :

« The study explores the research impact of ‘Open Access research articles’ across the globe with a view to test the hypothesis that “OA research contributions emanating from developing countries receive equal citations (subsequently resultant research impact) as those from the developed world”. The study covers 5639 research articles from 50 Open Access DOAJ based Medical Sciences journals covering the period from 2005 to 2006. The research impact of OA research publications measured by the citation counts varies from journal to journal and from country to country. Statistically significant difference is noted between the research impact of the developed and the developing world for OA research articles. The research articles from the developed countries receive higher number of citations (subsequently resultant research impact) compared to those of the developing world. The study may help and pave way for framing policies and strategies to increase the impact of research in the developing world. »

URL : http://elpub.scix.net/cgi-bin/works/Show?107_elpub2011

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Characteristics of Education Doctoral Dissertation References An Inter…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Characteristics of Education Doctoral Dissertation References: An Inter-Institutional Analysis of Review of Literature Citations :

« This study had two purposes: to examine the expertise of doctoral students in their use of the scholarly literature and to investigate the use of citation analysis as a tool for collection development. Analysis of 1,842 coded citations gleaned from 30 education dissertations awarded in 2000 from 3 institutions in the United States revealed that journal articles, at 45%, were cited most frequently, followed by monographs (33.9%) and « other » (18.3%), with magazines and Web sites contributing less than 2% each of the total material types cited. The study examined 858 journal and magazine citations, which were found in 239 unique titles. A relatively small number of journals contained a high percentage of the references found in the dissertations analyzed. Based on a design by D. Kohl and L. Wilson (1986), dissertation citations were also scored for scholarliness, currency, and appropriateness of format, and scores on the three criteria were averaged to arrive at a quality rating. Results of interinstitutional comparisons revealed a significant amount of variation and were considered in conjunction with institutional characteristics and published criteria for quality bibliographies. The data suggest that the assumption of doctoral student expertise in their use of the scholarly literature may be overstated and should be examined in relation to their preparation for professional status. For purposes of developing a library’s research collection, a core list of titles, generated on the basis of multiple, rather than single, institutional analysis is indicated. (Contains 8 figures, 11 tables, and 28 references.) »

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/15870

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Knowledge Representation and Digital Scholarly Editions in Theory…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Knowledge Representation and Digital Scholarly Editions in Theory and Practice :

« In Transition: Selected Poems by the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven is a publicly available scholarly edition of twelve unpublished poems written by Freytag-Loringhoven between 1923 and 1927. This edition provides access to a textual performance of her creative work in a digital environment. It is encoded using the Text Encoding Initiative’s (TEI) P5 Guidelines for critical apparatuses including parallel segmentation and location-referenced encoding. The encoded text is rendered into an interactive web interface using XSLT, CSS, and JavaScript available through the Versioning Machine (http://www.v-machine.org/). One aspect of textual performance theory I am exploring within In Transition concerns the social text network. The social text network these twelve texts always and already represent presupposes the notion of a constant circulation of networked social text systems. The network represented by In Transition is based primarily on issues of reception, materiality, and themes which engage and reflect the social nature of the text in the 1920s and now. This is to say two things: (1) that the concept of the network is not new with digital scholarly editions; and (2) that these networks in a digital edition foreground the situated 1920s history of these texts as well as the real-time, situated electronic reading environment. The argument of a digital edition like In Transition is formed as much by the underlying theory of text as it is by its content and the particular application or form it takes. This discussion employs the language of knowledge representation in computation (through terms like domain, ontology, and logic) in order to situate this scholarly edition within two existing frameworks: theories of knowledge representation in computation and theories of scholarly textual editing. »

URL : http://jtei.revues.org/203

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Publication Fees in Open Access Publishing Sources of…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Publication Fees in Open Access Publishing: Sources of Funding and Factors Influencing Choice of Journal :

« Open access (OA) journals make their full text content available for free on the Web and use other means than subscriptions or access charges for funding the publication process. Publication fees or article processing charges (APC)s have become the predominant means for funding professional OA publishing. We surveyed 1,038 authors from seven discipline categories who recently published articles in 74 OA journals that charge APCs. Authors were asked about the source of funding for the APC, factors influencing their choice of a journal and past history publishing in OA and subscription journals. Additional information about the journal and the authors’ country were obtained from the journal websites. A total of 429 (41%) authors completed the survey. There were large differences in the source of funding among disciplines. Journals with impact factors charged higher APCs as did journals from disciplines where grant funding is plentiful. Topical fit, quality, and speed of publication where the most important factors in the authors’ choice of a journal. Open accessibility was less important but a significant factor for many authors in their choice of a journal to publish. These findings are consistent with other research on OA publishing and suggest, that if OA journals meet normal quality standards, authors and their employers and funders are willing to pay reasonable APCs, the acceptable levels of which are dependent on the field of science and the quality of the journal in question. »

URL : http://www.openaccesspublishing.org/apc/

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Recruiting Content for the Institutional Repository The Barriers…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Recruiting Content for the Institutional Repository: The Barriers Exceed the Benefits :

« Focus groups conducted at Carnegie Mellon reveal that what motivates many faculty to self-archive on a website or disciplinary repository will not motivate them to deposit their work in the institutional repository. Recruiting a critical mass of content for the institutional repository is contingent on increasing awareness, aligning deposit with existing workflows, and providing value-added services that meet needs not currently being met by other tools. Faculty share concerns about quality and the payoff for time invested in publishing and disseminating their work, but disagree about metrics for assessing quality, the merit of disseminating work prior to peer review, and the importance of complying with publisher policies on open access. Bridging the differences among disciplinary cultures and belief systems presents a significant challenge to marketing the institutional repository and developing coherent guidelines for deposit. »

URL : http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/view/2068

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La transformation numérique au service de la croissance…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

La transformation numérique au service de la croissance :

« Alors que débute la deuxième décennie du xxie siècle, l’influence du numérique sur la société mondiale est incontestable. La numérisation est aujourd’hui un élément fondamental dans le fonctionnement de certains domaines de la société tels que la finance, et est amenée à devenir incontournable pour l’ensemble des couches sociales, comme on peut le voir avec la généralisation de la téléphonie mobile et du Web. Pour réussir cette révolution, il faut être capable de l’encourager mais également de contrôler les inévitables déviances et confusions qu’implique le développement des technologies de l’information.

Face à cette transformation irréversible et globale, la France et tout particulièrement l’État français doivent aujourd’hui réussir à se forger une place significative dans la définition des paramètres de la société numérique. Ce changement doit tout d’abord s’effectuer pour que la France rattrape son retard dans la conception et la production de technologies numériques, domaines jusqu’ici dominés par la Chine et les États-Unis. Les entrepreneurs français doivent apprendre à saisir les innombrables opportunités offertes par le numérique.

Dans un deuxième temps, il est nécessaire que l’État français réussisse à suivre le rythme exponentiel des mutations engendrées par les usages et les initiatives personnelles pour être capable de participer à la régulation mondiale d’Internet (dans la mesure où cette régulation est possible), mais aussi afin d’éviter une fracture numérique qui pourrait éprouver certaines catégories de la population.

Pour finir, la puissance publique se doit d’accompagner les citoyens face à une révolution numérique qui transforme tous les aspects de la société. Cette action passe à la fois par une garantie de la neutralité du Net – pour permettre aux français un libre choix des acteurs et des services numériques, mais aussi par une sécurisation des usages, tout particulièrement une sécurisation des transactions. »

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URL : http://www.fondapol.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Note-CORNIOU-211-06-14-WEB-2.pdf