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Back to the future: authors, publishers and ideas in a copy-friendly environment

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

How could scholars survive in a copy-friendly environment jeopardizing the established system of scholarly publishing in which scientific publishers seemed to be authors’ best friends? A backward itinerary across three German Enlightenment thinkers who took part to the debate on (unauthorized) reprinting shows us ways – usual and unusual – in which culture can flourish in a copy-friendly environment.

While Fichte endorsed an intellectual property theory, took the function of publishers for granted and neglected the interests of the public, Kant saw authors as speakers and justified publishers’ rights only as long as they work as spokespersons helping writers to reach the public. Eventually Lessing’s project was designed to foster authors’ autonomy by means of a subscription system that could have worked only on the basis of a free information flow and of direct relationships with and within the public itself.

Such a condition can be compared with the situation of ancient auctores, with one difference: while the ancient communities of knowledge were educated minorities, because of the limitations of orality and manuscript media system, we have now the opportunity to take Enlightenment seriously.

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/15445

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Weblog publishing behaviour of librarianship and information science…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Weblog publishing behaviour of librarianship and information science students: a case study :

« Introduction. The ‘blogosphere’ is a space with digital information in which social networks form that offer countless application possibilities. In this technology-mediated context, it is feasible to study the performance and approaches of production, diffusion, relationship and use of information from different perspectives.
Method. Quantitative data were obtained through the regular examination of the blogs maintained by students and qualitative data were obtained from reports by the students and self-assessment questionnaires.

Analysis. Simple counts of quantitative data were obtained, without further statistical analysis. The qualitative data were reviewed for insights into the motivations of students. Results. Given a free choice, most students adopted the Blogger platform for their blogs. Most blogs consisted of content reported from elsewhere and were not continued by the students following the end of the exercise.

Conclusions. Students adopted an instrumental approach to the exercise, doing enough to complete the course requirements but not being sufficiently engaged to continue their blogs. Preliminary work based on basic competences is necessary in both collaboration processes and Web 2.0 technology to obtain satisfactory results in the use of Weblogs as teaching and learning tools. »

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/15433

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Innovative Web 2.0 technologies for integrating the learning…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Innovative Web 2.0 technologies for integrating the learning process :

« The innovative technologies of Web 2.0 have created a lot of opportunities for learning in the present web environment. Although these are largely experimental, some of them are very popular and useful. Some popular tools of Web2.0 are wikis, blogs, video sharing, podcasting, RSS, social bookmarking, and many more. Web2.0 is more than a set of ‘tools’, new technologies and services. The general internet users as well as the teachers and learners have been well adapting to these emerging technologies to integrate the learning process. The paper introduces major Web 2.0 tools and discusses their applications in learning. »

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/15432

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Towards Transparent and Scalable OpenURL Quality Metrics …

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Towards Transparent and Scalable OpenURL Quality Metrics :

« The development of link resolvers and the OpenURL framework over a decade ago paved the way for open-ended, context-sensitive linkage from databases, indexes, and abstracting services to the appropriate resources and services to meet library users’ needs. Library patrons can now retrieve more comprehensively linked scholarly information than ever before. However, even with today’s link resolver technology and the OpenURLs on which the link resolvers depend, following a reference link all the way to full-text can still frustrate library users all too often. In this article, the authors present research on why OpenURLs fail so frequently. They also describe a model for measuring the quality of OpenURL metadata, using a log processor and reporting software. The results of this study demonstrate the potential applicability of such a system as a scalable, stand-alone service for all libraries, OpenURL and full-text content providers, and link resolver vendors to evaluate and improve the completeness and consistency of their links. »

URL : http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march11/chandler/03chandler.html

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Discovering the Information Needs of Humanists When Planning…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Discovering the Information Needs of Humanists When Planning an Institutional Repository :

« Through in-person interviews with humanities faculty members, this study examines what information needs are expressed by humanities scholars that an institutional repository (IR) can address. It also asks what concerns humanists have about IRs, and whether there is a repository model other than an institutional one that better suits how they work. Humanists make relatively low use of existing IRs, but this research indicates that an institutional repository can offer services to humanities faculty that are desired by them, especially the digitization, online storage, curation, and sharing of their research materials and publications. If presented in terms that make sense to humanities faculty, and designed consciously with their needs and concerns in mind, an IR can be of real benefit to their teaching, scholarship, collaborations, and publishing. »

URL : http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march11/seaman/03seaman.html

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The costs and potential benefits of alternative scholarly…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

The costs and potential benefits of alternative scholarly publishing models :

« Introduction. This paper reports on a study undertaken for the UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), which explored the economic implications of alternative scholarly publishing models. Rather than simply summarising the study’s findings, this paper focuses on the approach and presents a step-by-step account of the research process, highlighting the combination of process mapping, activity costing and macro modelling.

Method. The analysis relies primarily on existing sources, collating activity cost information from the wide-ranging literature on scholarly communication. Where necessary, these sources were supplemented by targeted informal consultation with experts.

Analysis. We examine the costs and potential benefits of the major alternative models for scholarly publishing, including subscription publishing, open access publishing and self-archiving. Adopting a formal approach to modelling the scholarly communication process and identifying activity costs, this paper presents activity and system-wide costs for each of the alternative publishing models. It then explores the potential impacts of enhanced access on returns to R&D.

Results. We find that different scholarly publishing models could make a material difference to the costs faced by various parties and to the returns on investment in R&D that might be realised.

Conclusion. It seems likely that more open access could have substantial benefits in the longer term. While the benefits may be lower during a transitional period they would be likely to be positive for both open access publishing and self-archiving alternatives. »

URL : http://informationr.net/ir/16-1/paper469.html

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Survey of University of Toronto Faculty Awareness Attitudes…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Survey of University of Toronto Faculty Awareness, Attitudes, and Practices Regarding Scholarly Communication: A Preliminary Report :

« This report presents the results from a 2010 online survey of the University of Toronto faculty on their awareness, attitudes and practices regarding scholarly communication. The objectives were to collect evidence regarding the current practices of faculty with regard to scholarly communication – primarily scholarly publishing and dissemination; to obtain evidence of their awareness and attitudes toward the changes in practices and forms that are occurring in publishing and dissemination with the turn to the digital, and to stimulate conversation on these topics among faculty within departments, faculties and academic units across the university, as well as with other members of the scholarly communication ecosystem. The survey has five sections that ask about i) current practices ii) scholarly publishing, including copyright and peer review iii) newer practices relating to open access, subject or institutional repositories, policies and mandates iv) costs associated with scholarly communication and iv) local services. Detailed findings, including faculty comments, and a summary of findings organized around a number of broad themes that emerged out of the detailed findings are included. The summary includes comparisons with the results from a 2006 survey of faculty at the University of California.

URL : https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/26446