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A research study into Practices Policies Plans and…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

A research study into Practices, Policies, Plans…..and Promises :

« This is a research study commissioned by the Publishing Research Consortium on the topic of Content Mining of Journal Articles. Content mining is defined as the automated processing of large amounts of digital content for purposes of information retrieval, information extraction and meta‐analysis. This study, carried out between February and May 2011, aims to provide an overview of
current practices, players, policies, plans and expectations for text mining and data mining of content
in academic journals. The research consisted of a series of 29 interviews with experts and people working on content mining and was concluded by a survey among scholarly publishers.

Overall, experts expect a further acceleration of text and data mining into scholarly content, sparked by a greater availability of digital content corpuses, the ever increasing computer capabilities, improved user‐friendliness of software tools and easier access to content. Semantic annotation of content is expected by some to develop into a new standard for STM content, facilitating better and
deeper search and browse facilities into related articles ‐‐ even if use cases and business propositions
are at present in infancy stage only and not yet fully developed.

This optimism on Journal Article Mining is generally shared by publishers across the board who expect an increase in publishers mining their own content. Half of the publishers surveyed also already see an increase in mining requests from third parties. The mining requests that publishers receive are not very frequent (mostly less than 10 per year, a good share even less than 5 per year) and come mostly from Abstracting and Indexing services and from corporate customers. Respondents also note a fair amount of illegal crawling and downloading that suggest unreported mining activities.

Publishers tend to treat mining requests from third parties in a liberal way, certainly so for mining requests with a research purpose. Publishers are less permissive if the mining results can replace or compete with the original content. Few publishers have a publicly available mining policy, the large majority handles mining requests on a case‐by‐case basis. Approximately 30 % of publisher respondents allow any kind of mining of their content without restrictions, in most cases as part of their Open Access policies. For the other publishers, nearly all require information about the intent and purpose of the mining request.

Regarding measures to make content mining easier across multi‐publishers content, the interviews generated a broad spectrum of possible improvements: from the creation of one shared content mining platform across publishers, and commonly agreed permission rules for research based mining requests, to collaboration with (national) libraries and standardization of mining‐friendly content formats including basic, common ontologies. Of these options, the suggestion for more cross publisher standardization of content formats received most support in the survey, especially from the (self declared) mining experts. Collaboration with libraries was least popular, while one content mining platform received a good response overall, but faced less positive responses from those respondents who have expertise or experience in content mining.

The survey results were cross analyzed for differences in responses from small and large publishers, for different types of publishers and for experts versus non‐experts. Size and type of publishers showed no statistically significant deviations, except that larger publishers (with more than 50
journals) receive more mining requests, do more mining of their own content and more often have publicly available explicit permission guidelines for content mining. Differences between expert and non‐experts responses were most prominent regarding solutions to make content mining easier: experts were more articulate in their opinions with a higher rating for standardization of content formats and a lower rating for the creation of one shared content mining platform. Experts were more negative than non‐experts about collaboration with libraries. »

URL : http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/PRCSmitJAMreport20June2011VersionofRecord.pdf

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Has the Revolution in Scholarly Communication Lived Up…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Has the Revolution in Scholarly Communication Lived Up to Its Promise? :

« In the late 1990s the need for an overhaul in the approach to scholarly publishing was recognized. A drastic change would revise the economic model on which publishing was based, give authors rights to their own works in open access repositories and enable consumers across the world to access scholarly materials, building a flow of valuable information for the common good. The revolution has yet to materialize, though small but welcome achievements have been made. The open access business model has gained a foothold with the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and scientists receiving grants through the National Institutes of Health must submit manuscripts to the PubMed Central digital archive. Several universities mandate that faculty members deposit their scholarly articles in institutional repositories, and the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity promotes open publishing by supporting authors. Librarians are both part of the problem and part of the solution. Instead of worrying about paying rising subscription fees, they could use their position to influence authors to take advantage of open access channels despite publish-or-perish pressures. Recent legislative and presidential initiatives, geared to disseminating publicly funded research, may be effective in moving open access closer to transforming the traditional system of scholarly communication. »

URL : http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Jun-11/JunJul11_Hahn_Burright_Nickisch.html

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Le copyleft appliqué à la création hors logiciel…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Le copyleft appliqué à la création hors logiciel. Une reformulation des données culturelles ? :

« Le copyleft est une notion juridique issue des logiciels libres qui autorise, dans le respect des droits de l’auteur, la copie, la diffusion et la transformation des œuvres avec l’interdiction d’en avoir une jouissance exclusive. C’est le projet GNU de la Free Software Foundation initié par Richard Stallman avec la première licence libre copyleft pour logiciels : la General Public License.
Notre recherche concerne le copyleft appliqué à la création hors logiciel telle que nous l’avons initiée en 2000 avec la Licence Art Libre. À travers la pratique que nous en avons et par l’observation de ses effets, nous nous interrogeons sur la place de l’auteur à l’ère du numérique et de l’internet. Nous découvrons une histoire, une histoire de l’art, qui n’est plus déterminée par une fin mais qui débouche sur des créations infinies réalisées par une infinité d’artistes mineurs et conséquents. Nous observons que le copyleft n’est pas un processus de création ordinaire, mais de décréation. Il s’agit d’affirmer, par la négative et la faille, non la négation ou la faillite, mais la beauté d’un geste qui s’offre gracieusement. Ce geste conjugue éthique et esthétique, il est « es-éthique ». Nous comprenons qu’avec le copyleft, la technique est au service d’une politique d’ouverture « hyper-démocratique », à l’image de l’hypertexte du web qui troue les pages et ouvre sur l’altérité. Il s’agit d’articuler le singulier au pluriel en un écosystème qui préserve le bien commun de la passion du pouvoir. Une économie élargie excède, sans le nier, le seul marché. Des œuvres copyleft affirment cette réalité politique et culturelle où l’art forme la liberté commune à tous et à chacun. »

URL : http://antoinemoreau.org/index.php?cat=these

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Establishing an Institutional Repository A UNISA Case Study…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Establishing an Institutional Repository: A UNISA Case Study :

« The purpose of the paper is to share and learn about the roles of Academic Libraries with reference to the establishment of the Institutional Repository as a mechanism which can benefit scholars to expose their work, putting the institution at the level where-in its research output can
be evaluated and accessed by their peers. The institutional repository provides opportunity for citations, providing an opportunity for the required expose to other web based access tools. It can provide an alternative to the conventional publishing channel. The paper will focus on the practical experience of the UNISA library as a result of the implementation of the Institutional Repository through a pilot project.

UNISA, as an international university with its vision “Towards the African University in the service of humanity” has comprehensive and valuable research output by its academics. The institutional repository is a tool which can benefit scholars to expose their work and putting the
institution at the level where in its research out can be evaluated and accessed by their peers. The
institutional repository provides opportunity for citations, publication which is free, providing an opportunity for the required expose to other web based access tools.

One of UNISA’s strategic objectives is to implement an institutional repository, starting with the pilot project in 2008. This decision has created a positive platform for the library to utilize the
skills available to create a repository for the research output for UNISA. UNISA library has embarked on a pilot project to establish an institutional repository as a vehicle to expose its academic research output in a coherent manner. There are challenges in the process which require further debates on the benefits this platform would bring to both the university and individual academics. There is still a lot of mistrust, resistance and lack of skills from academics. Unless the information is shared, debates and workshops are held on the benefits from putting ones work on the institutional repository, African researchers will continue to aspire to exposure outside Africa. Institutional repositories can provide the platform to electronic journals, with a bigger potential if co-ordinated through the academic institutions to have the African market of
researchers more exposed, thus building our own African research output. The benefit of this is to
disseminate the research of African academics.

An overview of the role the Library plays in creation and establishing the Institutional repository will be provided. Information will be shared with the colleagues who wish to establish an Institutional Repository, while also providing an opportunity to learn how to utilize the tool to benefit researchers who are challenged, in terms of publishing their work. The academic libraries in higher education are willing to assist in establish a platform through the institutional repository, which is available through any internet.

The paper will conclude by highlighting some solutions to ensure that the research work of academics is exposed to the world. It will also provide an alternative to start providing access for potential articles which can get into the “international journals”. It will tell the UNISA library
story. »

URL : http://uir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/4297

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Funding for Sustainability How Funders’ Practices Influence the…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Funding for Sustainability: How Funders’ Practices Influence the Future of Digital Resources :

« Over the past decade, philanthropic organizations and government agencies have invested millions of dollars, pounds, and euros in the creation of digital content in the not-for-profit sector. Their grants have facilitated major digitization efforts and encouraged innovative scholarly work possible only in an online environment. Still, the path from initial grant funding to long-term sustainability of these resources can be challenging.

Ithaka S+R, with generous support from the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance, interviewed more than 80 individuals, including representatives from more than 25 funding bodies in Europe and North America with a focus on digital resources in the higher education and cultural heritage sectors. Through a year-long research process, Ithaka S+R observed a rich range of sustainability planning activities, but also identified areas for improvement in the funding process that are valuable to both funders and grant seekers. The report also offers funders and project leaders a high-level process for working together at the proposal stage to set plans for post-grant sustainability. »

URL : http://www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/research/funding-for-sustainability

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The Development of Open Access Journal Publishing from…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

The Development of Open Access Journal Publishing from 1993 to 2009 :

« Open Access (OA) is a model for publishing scholarly peer reviewed journals, made possible by the Internet. The full text of OA journals and articles can be freely read, as the publishing is funded through means other than subscriptions. Empirical research concerning the quantitative development of OA publishing has so far consisted of scattered individual studies providing brief snapshots, using varying methods and data sources. This study adopts a systematic method for studying the development of OA journals from their beginnings in the early 1990s until 2009. Because no comprehensive index of OA articles exists, systematic manual data collection from journal web sites was conducted based on journal-level data extracted from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Due to the high number of journals registered in the DOAJ, almost 5000 at the time of the study, stratified random sampling was used. A separate sample of verified early pioneer OA journals was also studied. The results show a very rapid growth of OA publishing during the period 1993–2009. During the last year an estimated 191 000 articles were published in 4769 journals. Since the year 2000, the average annual growth rate has been 18% for the number of journals and 30% for the number of articles. This can be contrasted to the reported 3,5% yearly volume increase in journal publishing in general. In 2009 the share of articles in OA journals, of all peer reviewed journal articles, reached 7,7%. Overall, the results document a rapid growth in OA journal publishing over the last fifteen years. Based on the sampling results and qualitative data a division into three distinct periods is suggested: The Pioneering years (1993–1999), the Innovation years (2000–2004), and the Consolidation years (2005–2009). »

URL : http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0020961;jsessionid=4113A80C11E4025D98E160C2D7BCFB7D.ambra01

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Open Access Publishing: What Authors Want

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Campus-based open access author funds are being considered by many academic libraries as a way to support authors publishing in open access journals. Article processing fees for open access have been introduced recently by publishers and have not yet been widely accepted by authors.

Few studies have surveyed authors on their reasons for publishing open access and their perceptions of open access journals. The present study was designed to gauge the uptake of library support for author funding and author satisfaction with open access publishing.

Results indicate that York University authors are increasingly publishing in open access journals and are appreciative of library funding initiatives. The wider implications of open access are discussed along with specific recommendations for publishers.

URL : http://crl.acrl.org/content/early/2011/06/10/crl-203.abstract