How green is our valley?: five-year study of selected LIS journals from Taylor & Francis for green deposit of articles

Author: Jill Emery

This study reviews content from five different library and information science journals: Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, Collection Management, College & Undergraduate Libraries, Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship and Journal of Library Administration over a five-year period from 2012–2016 to investigate the green deposit rate.

Starting in 2011, Taylor & Francis, the publisher of these journals, waived the green deposit embargo for library and information science, heritage and archival content, which allows for immediate deposit of articles in these fields.

The review looks at research articles and standing columns over the five years from these five journals to see if any articles were retrieved using the OA Button or through institutional repositories.

Results indicate that less than a quarter of writers have chosen to make a green deposit of their articles in local or subject repositories. The discussion outlines some best practices to be undertaken by librarians, editors and Taylor & Francis to make this program more successful.

URL : How green is our valley?: five-year study of selected LIS journals from Taylor & Francis for green deposit of articles

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.406

A Case Study for a New Peer-Review Journal on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education

Author : Cristobal Salinas Jr.

In this exploratory case study, the interests, attitudes, and opinions of participants of the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity (NCORE) in American Higher Education are presented.

This case study sought to understand how college and university administrators and faculty perceived the need to create a peer-reviewed journal that aimed to support and create opportunities to publish research, policy, practices, and procedures within the context of race and ethnicity in American higher education.

The findings of this study reflect that the vast majority of those surveyed (n = 605) and interviewed (n = 5) support, and are interested in, having a peer-reviewed journal that focuses on race and ethnicity in American higher education.

URL : A Case Study for a New Peer-Review Journal on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications6020026

Modelling the Research Data Lifecycle

Author: Stacy T Kowalczyk

This paper develops and tests a lifecycle model for the preservation of research data by investigating the research practices of scientists. This research is based on a mixed-method approach.

An initial study was conducted using case study analytical techniques; insights from these case studies were combined with grounded theory in order to develop a novel model of the Digital Research Data Lifecycle.

A broad-based quantitative survey was then constructed to test and extend the components of the model. The major contribution of these research initiatives are the creation of the Digital Research Data Lifecycle, a data lifecycle that provides a generalized model of the research process to better describe and explain both the antecedents and barriers to preservation.

The antecedents and barriers to preservation are data management, contextual metadata, file formats, and preservation technologies. The availability of data management support and preservation technologies, the ability to create and manage contextual metadata, and the choices of file formats all significantly effect the preservability of research data.

URL : Modelling the Research Data Lifecycle

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v12i2.429

The Changing Influence of Journal Data Sharing Policies on Local RDM Practices

Authors : Dylanne Dearborn, Steve Marks, Leanne Trimble

The purpose of this study was to examine changes in research data deposit policies of highly ranked journals in the physical and applied sciences between 2014 and 2016, as well as to develop an approach to examining the institutional impact of deposit requirements.

Policies from the top ten journals (ranked by impact factor from the Journal Citation Reports) were examined in 2014 and again in 2016 in order to determine if data deposits were required or recommended, and which methods of deposit were listed as options.

For all 2016 journals with a required data deposit policy, publication information (2009-2015) for the University of Toronto was pulled from Scopus and departmental affiliation was determined for each article.

The results showed that the number of high-impact journals in the physical and applied sciences requiring data deposit is growing. In 2014, 71.2% of journals had no policy, 14.7% had a recommended policy, and 13.9% had a required policy (n=836).

In contrast, in 2016, there were 58.5% with no policy, 19.4% with a recommended policy, and 22.0% with a required policy (n=880). It was also evident that U of T chemistry researchers are by far the most heavily affected by these journal data deposit requirements, having published 543 publications, representing 32.7% of all publications in the titles requiring data deposit in 2016.

The Python scripts used to retrieve institutional publications based on a list of ISSNs have been released on GitHub so that other institutions can conduct similar research.

URL : The Changing Influence of Journal Data Sharing Policies on Local RDM Practices

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v12i2.583

Analysing researchers’ outreach efforts and the association with publication metrics: A case study of Kudos

Authors : Mojisola Erdt, Htet Htet Aung, Ashley Sara Aw, Charlie Rapple, Yin-Leng Theng

With the growth of scholarly collaboration networks and social communication platforms, members of the scholarly community are experimenting with their approach to disseminating research outputs, in an effort to increase their audience and outreach.

However, from a researcher’s point of view, it is difficult to determine whether efforts to make work more visible are worthwhile (in terms of the association with publication metrics) and within that, difficult to assess which platform or network is most effective for sharing work and connecting to a wider audience.

We undertook a case study of Kudos (https://www.growkudos.com), a web-based service that claims to help researchers increase the outreach of their publications, to examine the most effective tools for sharing publications online, and to investigate which actions are associated with improved metrics.

We extracted a dataset from Kudos of 830,565 unique publications claimed by authors, for which 20,775 had actions taken to explain or share via Kudos, and for 4,867 of these full text download data from publishers was available.

Findings show that researchers are most likely to share their work on Facebook, but links shared on Twitter are more likely to be clicked on. A Mann-Whitney U test revealed that a treatment group (publications having actions in Kudos) had a significantly higher median average of 149 full text downloads (23.1% more) per publication as compared to a control group (having no actions in Kudos) with a median average of 121 full text downloads per publication.

These findings suggest that performing actions on publications, such as sharing, explaining, or enriching, could help to increase the number of full text downloads of a publication.

URL : Analysing researchers’ outreach efforts and the association with publication metrics: A case study of Kudos

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0183217

Measuring Scientific Broadness

Authors : Tom Price, Sabine Hossenfelder

Who has not read letters of recommendations that comment on a student’s `broadness’ and wondered what to make of it?

We here propose a way to quantify scientific broadness by a semantic analysis of researchers’ publications. We apply our methods to papers on the open-access server arXiv.org and report our findings.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.04647

Predatory Publishers using Spamming Strategies for Call for Papers and Review Requests : A Case Study

Author : Alexandru-Ionut Petrisor

Spam e-mail and calls from the predatory publishers are very similar in purpose: they are deceptive and produce material losses. Moreover, the predatory publishers show evolving strategies to lure potential victims, as their number increases. In an effort to help researchers defending against their constant menace, this article aims to identify a set of common features of spam e-mail and calls from predatory publishers.

The methodology consisted of a comparative analysis of data found on the Internet and e-mails received at several addresses during December 2017 – January 2018. The results indicate that concealed, fake or disguised identity of the sender and/or of the message, mass mailing, missing or useless opt-out option and an obvious commercial character are the most prominent common features.

Moreover, the location of predatory publishers is well disguised; the analysis of the real location, found using web-based tools, suggests a joint management or at least a concerted action of several publishers, and raises additional questions related to the reasons of masking the true location.

From a theoretical standpoint, the results show, once again, that predatory publishers are a part of the worldwide scam, and should be ‘convicted’ in a similar way, including the means of legal actions. From a practical perspective, distinct recommendations were phrased for researchers, policy makers, libraries, and future research.

URL : Predatory Publishers using Spamming Strategies for Call for Papers and Review Requests : A Case Study

Alternative location : http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/article/view/12551