Archives des mots-clés : developing countries

Bibliodiversity at the Centre: Decolonizing Open Access

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Author : Monica Berger

The promise of open access for the global South has not been fully met. Publishing is dominated by Northern publishers, which disadvantages Southern authors through platform capitalism and open access models requiring article processing charges to publish.

This article argues that through the employment of bibliodiversity — a sustainable, anticolonial ethos and practice developed in Latin America — the South can reclaim and decolonize open access and nurture scholarly communities.

Self‐determination and locality are at the core of bibliodiversity which rejects the domination of international, English‐language journal publishing. As articulated by the Jussieu Call, wide‐ranging, scholarly‐community‐based, non‐profit and sustainable models for open access are integral to bibliodiversity, as is reform of research evaluation systems.

Predatory publishing exploits open access and perpetuates the marginalization of Southern scholars. Predatory journals are often also conflated with legitimate Southern journals. The article concludes with a discussion of Southern open access initiatives, highlighting large‐scale infrastructure in Latin America and library‐based publishing in Africa, which express the true spirit of open access as a commons for knowledge as a public good.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12634

Biomedical Data Sharing Among Researchers: A Study from Jordan

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Authors : Lina Al-Ebbini, Omar F Khabour, Karem H Alzoubi, Almuthanna K Alkaraki

Background

Data sharing is an encouraged practice to support research in all fields. For that purpose, it is important to examine perceptions and concerns of researchers about biomedical data sharing, which was investigated in the current study.

Methods

This is a cross-sectional survey study that was distributed among biomedical researchers in Jordan, as an example of developing countries. The study survey consisted of questions about demographics and about respondent’s attitudes toward sharing of biomedical data.

Results

Among study participants, 46.9% (n=82) were positive regarding making their research data available to the public, whereas 53.1% refused the idea. The reasons for refusing to publicly share their data included “lack of regulations” (33.5%), “access to research data should be limited to the research team” (29.5%), “no place to deposit the data” (6.5%), and “lack of funding for data deposition” (6.0%).

Agreement with the idea of making data available was associated with academic rank (P=0.003). Moreover, gender (P-value=0.043) and number of publications (P-value=0.005) were associated with a time frame for data sharing (ie, agreeing to share data before vs after publication).

Conclusion

About half of the respondents reported a positive attitude toward biomedical data sharing. Proper regulations and facilitation data deposition can enhance data sharing in Jordan.

URL : Biomedical Data Sharing Among Researchers: A Study from Jordan

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2147/JMDH.S284294

Open Access in developing countries – attitudes and experiences of researchers

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Authors : Andy Nobes, Sian Harris

Open Access is often considered as particularly beneficial to researchers in the Global South. However, research into awareness of and attitudes to Open Access has been largely dominated by voices from the Global North.

A survey was conducted of 507 researchers from the developing world and connected to INASP’s AuthorAID project to ascertain experiences and attitudes to Open Access publishing.

The survey revealed problems for the researchers in gaining access to research literature in the first place. There was a very positive attitude to Open Access research and Open Access journals, but when selecting a journal in which to publish, Open Access was seen as a much less important criterion than factors relating to international reputation.

Overall, a majority of respondents had published in an Open Access journal and most of these had paid an article processing charge. Knowledge and use of self-archiving via repositories varied, and only around 20% had deposited their research in an institutional repository.

The study also examined attitudes to copyright, revealing most respondents had heard of Creative Commons licences and were positive about the sharing of research for educational use and dissemination, but there was unease about research being used for commercial purposes.

Respondents revealed a surprisingly positive stance towards openly sharing research data, although many revealed that they would need further guidance on how to do so. The survey also revealed that the majority had received emails from so called ‘predatory’ publishers and that a small minority had published in them.

URL : Open Access in developing countries – attitudes and experiences of researchers

Alternative location : https://zenodo.org/record/3464868

Managing research data at an academic library in a developing country

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Authors : Shamin Renwick, Marsha Winter, Michelle Gill

Managing research data has become an issue for many universities. In the Caribbean, the St Augustine Campus Libraries at the University of the West Indies are keenly aware of the need to support researchers in this regard.

The objectives of this study were to identify current practices in managing research data on the campus and to determine a possible role for the Campus Libraries. A pilot study of 100 researchers on the campus was conducted. A

nalysis of the 65 valid responses revealed that while researchers owned data sets they had little knowledge or experience in managing such. This low level of awareness is instructive and validates a role for the Campus Libraries to play in supporting researchers on campus.

The Campus Libraries need to sensitize researchers about what data planning and managing research data entail as well as provide technical assistance with actual data storage.

URL : http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0340035216688703

Does Online Access Promote Research in Developing Countries? Empirical Evidence from Article-Level Data

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Authors : Frank Mueller-Langer, Marc Scheufen, Patrick Waelbroeck

Universities in developing countries have rarely been able to subscribe to academic journals in the past. The “Online Access to Research in the Environment” initiative (OARE) provides institutions in developing countries with free online access to more than 5,700 environmental science journals.

Here we analyze the effect of OARE registration on scientific output by research institutions in five developing countries. We apply a difference-in-difference estimation method using panel data for 18,955 journal articles from 798 research institutions.

We find that online access via OARE increases publication output by at least 43% while lower-ranked institutions located in remote areas benefit less. These results are robust when we apply instrumental variables to account for the information diffusion process and a Bayesian estimation method to control for self-selection into the initiative.

URL : https://ssrn.com/abstract=2870617

Positioning extension Massive Open Online Courses (xMOOCs) within the open access and the lifelong learning agendas in a developing setting

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Author : Bernard Nkuyubwatsi

Recent reports on xMOOCs indicated that underprivileged learners in need for higher education have minimally been reached by these courses. While the open access agenda is needed to reach such learners, most MOOCs were developed from societies that shifted toward the lifelong learning agenda.

In this paper, xMOOCs are positioned in both the open access and the lifelong learning agendas in a developing country context. Findings from ten xMOOCs are presented and discussed. The findings suggested that two of the ten xMOOCs may contribute directly to the open access agenda and two xMOOCs may contribute indirectly to the same agenda.

Nine xMOOCs were found to have the potential to contribute to the lifelong learning agenda. These findings may inform policies and practices that underpin opening up higher education and open education in general.

URL : Positioning extension Massive Open Online Courses (xMOOCs) within the open access and the lifelong learning agendas in a developing setting

Alternative location : http://www.jl4d.org/index.php/ejl4d/article/view/126

 

Do developing countries profit from free books? Discovery and online usage in developed and developing countries compared

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Author : Ronald Snijder

For years, Open Access has been seen as a way to remove barriers to research in developing countries. In order to test this, an experiment was conducted to measure whether publishing academic books in Open Access has a positive effect on developing countries.

During a period of nine months the usage data of 180 books was recorded. Of those, a set of 43 titles was used as control group with restricted access. The rest was made fully accessible.

The data shows the digital divide between developing countries and developed countries: 70 percent of the discovery data and 73 percent of online usage data come from developed countries. Using statistical analysis, the experiment confirms that Open Access publishing enhances discovery and online usage in developing countries.

This strengthens the claims of the advocates of Open Access: researchers from the developing countries do benefit from free academic books.

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0016.103