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Édition critique numérique avec le logiciel Ekdosis pour LuaLaTeX. L’exemple des fragments latins d’atellanes

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Autrice : Estelle Debouy

Les avantages d’une édition numérique ne sont plus à démontrer : non seulement le texte lui-même peut être enrichi de commentaires, de traductions multiples, d’annotations grammaticales, métriques, etc., mais encore, grâce à l’encodage XML-TEI, le texte et son apparat peuvent être transformés en une base de données complète consultable par le lecteur en fonction de ses besoins.

La TEI fournit des éléments normalisés très précis pour la description des sources manuscrites. Cependant, les apparats construits en XML-TEI sont moins destinés à une consultation par l’homme qu’à une analyse réalisée par la machine.

À ce titre, le logiciel Ekdosis développé par Robert Alessi est un atout précieux pour le philologue qui se lance dans l’édition critique d’un texte ancien : il lui permet en effet de saisir sous LaTeX tous les éléments constitutifs de l’édition (variantes, sources, traductions, commentaires) et de demander une sortie aussi bien vers un fichier PDF que vers un fichier XML-TEI qui pourra être l’objet de requêtes.

Ainsi, Ekdosis apparaît comme un outil qui combine deux impératifs : celui de produire une édition imprimée s’inscrivant dans une longue tradition philologique et celui de fournir ce que Donald J. Mastronarde et Richard J. Tarrant ont appelé « actionable texts for use in digital research ».

L’objet de cet article est d’exposer, à partir d’un exemple commenté tiré de mon édition des atellanes, la méthode que j’ai suivie pour saisir avec Ekdosis les éléments constitutifs d’une édition critique numérique.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/revuehn.2509

EN

Making the most of world talent for science? The Nobel Prize and Fields Medal experience

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author  : Juan Gabriel Rodríguez

Opportunities in science largely affect the accumulation of scientific knowledge and, therefore, technological change. However, there is little evidence of how much of people’s talent is actually wasted.

Here we focus on scientists with the highest performance, the recipients of the Nobel Prize and Fields Medal. We found that the average age of scientists at the time of the breakthrough was higher for researchers from less developed countries.

Moreover, individual opportunities in the world were extremely unequal by country of birth, gender significantly conditioned any participation in research, and the probability of becoming a top researcher more than doubled for individuals with parents belonging to the most favoured occupational categories.

Thus, inequality of opportunity in science at the highest level was higher than in sports excellence (Olympic medals) and educational attainment. These findings would not be so negative if opportunities in science at the highest level had increased over time.

Contrary to the expectations, our results show that opportunities in science, in contrast with humanities, have stagnated.

URL : Making the most of world talent for science? The Nobel Prize and Fields Medal experience

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04236-y

EN

Library funding for open access at KU Leuven

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Demmy Verbeke, Laura Mesotten

As main buyers of scholarly literature, research libraries have always provided essential economic support for sustaining the market of academic publishing. With the switch to open access (OA), libraries are now faced with transitioning this support from the demand (subscriptions) to the supply (publications) side.

The way in which this is currently done, in general, risks strengthening the preponderance of the for-profit approach to scholarly communication. We therefore believe that it is essential to apply library budgets to foster a greater diversity.

That is exactly the purpose of the Fund for Fair Open Access, set up by KU Leuven Libraries in 2018, which is exclusively devoted to stimulating the development of non-profit and community-led initiatives.

This is achieved by library memberships to sustain open scholarship infrastructure, by supporting diamond OA programmes and by subsidizing OA books published by Leuven University Press.

In this article, we will demonstrate the accomplished successes of the fund and share some insights we have gathered along the way, such as our decision to cease financing article processing charges, even in a Fair OA business model.

URL : Library funding for open access at KU Leuven

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.565

EN

The Uptake and Impact of a Label for Peer-Reviewed Books

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Eline Vandewalle, Raf Guns, Tim C. E. Engels

This article presents an analysis of the uptake of the GPRC label (Guaranteed Peer Reviewed Content label) since its introduction in 2010 until 2019. GPRC is a label for books that have been peer reviewed introduced by the Flemish publishers association.

The GPRC label allows locally published scholarly books to be included in the regional database for the Social Sciences and Humanities which is used in the Flemish performance-based research funding system. Ten years after the start of the GPRC label, this is the first systematic analysis of the uptake of the label.

We use a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods. Our two main data sources are the Flemish regional database for the Social Sciences and Humanities, which currently includes 2,580 GPRC-labeled publications, and three interviews with experts on the GPRC label. Firstly, we study the importance of the label in the Flemish performance-based research funding system.

Secondly, we analyse the label in terms of its possible effect on multilingualism and the local or international orientation of publications. Thirdly, we analyse to what extent the label has been used by the different disciplines.

Lastly, we discuss the potential implications of the label for the peer review process among book publishers. We find that the GPRC label is of limited importance to the Flemish performance-based research funding system.

However, we also conclude that the label has a specific use for locally oriented book publications and in particular for the discipline Law. Furthermore, by requiring publishers to adhere to a formalized peer review procedure, the label affects the peer review practices of local publishers because not all book publishers were using a formal system of peer review before the introduction of the label and even at those publishers who already practiced peer review, the label may have required the publishers to make these procedures more uniform.

URL : The Uptake and Impact of a Label for Peer-Reviewed Books

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2021.746452

EN

Perspectives on Open Science and The Future of Scholarly Communication: Internet Trackers and Algorithmic Persuasion

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Tiberius Ignat, Paul Ayris, Beatrice Gini, Olga Stepankova, Deniz Özdemir, Damla Bal, Yordanka Deyanov

The current digital content industry is heavily oriented towards building platforms that track users’ behaviour and seek to convince them to stay longer and come back sooner onto the platform. Similarly, authors are incentivised to publish more and to become champions of dissemination.

Arguably, these incentive systems are built around public reputation supported by a system of metrics, hard to be assessed. Generally, the digital content industry is permeable to non-human contributors (algorithms that are able to generate content and reactions), anonymity and identity fraud. It is pertinent to present a perspective paper about early signs of track and persuasion in scholarly communication.

Building our views, we have run a pilot study to determine the opportunity for conducting research about the use of “track and persuade” technologies in scholarly communication. We collected observations on a sample of 148 relevant websites and we interviewed 15 that are experts related to the field.

Through this work, we tried to identify 1) the essential questions that could inspire proper research, 2) good practices to be recommended for future research, and 3) whether citizen science is a suitable approach to further research in this field.

The findings could contribute to determining a broader solution for building trust and infrastructure in scholarly communication. The principles of Open Science will be used as a framework to see if they offer insights into this work going forward.

URL : Perspectives on Open Science and The Future of Scholarly Communication: Internet Trackers and Algorithmic Persuasion

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2021.748095

EN

Creating New Roles for Libraries in Academic Research: Research Conducted at the University of Calgary, 2015–2020

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : H. Thomas Hickerson, John Brosz, Leonora Crema

A recently completed study at the University of Calgary has had broad professional impact and generated increased attention to the role of academic libraries in campus research. This multiyear, evidence-based study was conceived in recognition that the role libraries have traditionally played in research is of decreasing relevance.

With support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this study employs intensive partnership among library staff, scholars, and research administrators to identify the transformational changes necessary for repositioning libraries in the research enterprise.

URL : Creating New Roles for Libraries in Academic Research: Research Conducted at the University of Calgary, 2015–2020

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.83.1.129

EN

Open access in the humanities, arts and social sciences: Complex perceptions of researchers and implications for research support

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Niamh Quigley

Adoption of open access in the humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS) is a work in progress, with lower engagement in HASS than most of the natural sciences. HASS research impacts how we live, how we learn and how we see ourselves, and research institutions should encourage and enable their HASS research communities to increase the prevalence of open access research outputs.

Six experienced HASS researchers at a single academic institution in Perth, Australia, were interviewed to explore their perceptions and experiences of open access, and any barriers that they had encountered. Thematic analysis was used to code the transcribed interviews, and generate themes.

This study found a wide variance in the adoption of open access practices among HASS researchers. Some participants are publishing via APC-based gold open access (in DOAJ listed journals), while other participants encounter multiple barriers to sharing more of their work as open access.

Confusion about aspects of open access is evident. Even among participants who support open access, some have had poor experiences of open access publishing. This research also found that some participants hold extremely complex opinions on open access, which directly influence participants’ behaviour depending on which perspective they are considering.

These perspectives are: research supervisor, editorial role at journal, funding assessor and global citizen. Within HASS a diversity of behaviours exists around open access, and research institutions need to tailor their research support services around open access and scholarly publishing for different communities of researchers.

URL : Open access in the humanities, arts and social sciences: Complex perceptions of researchers and implications for research support

DOI : https://doi.org/10.53377/lq.10937