Comparing Published Scientific Journal Articles to Their Pre-print Versions

Academic publishers claim that they add value to scholarly communications by coordinating reviews and contributing and enhancing text during publication.

These contributions come at a considerable cost: U.S. academic libraries paid $1.7 billion for serial subscriptions in 2008 alone. Library budgets, in contrast, are flat and not able to keep pace with serial price inflation.

We have investigated the publishers’ value proposition by conducting a comparative study of pre-print papers and their final published counterparts.

This comparison had two working assumptions: 1) if the publishers’ argument is valid, the text of a pre-print paper should vary measurably from its corresponding final published version, and 2) by applying standard similarity measures, we should be able to detect and quantify such differences.

Our analysis revealed that the text contents of the scientific papers generally changed very little from their pre-print to final published versions. These findings contribute empirical indicators to discussions of the added value of commercial publishers and therefore should influence libraries’ economic decisions regarding access to scholarly publications.

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.05363

How the Scientific Community Reacts to Newly Submitted…

How the Scientific Community Reacts to Newly Submitted Preprints: Article Downloads, Twitter Mentions, and Citations :

“We analyze the online response of the scientific community to the preprint publication of scholarly articles. We employ a cohort of 4,606 scientific articles submitted to the preprint database arXiv.org between October 2010 and April 2011. We study three forms of reactions to these preprints: how they are downloaded on the arXiv.org site, how they are mentioned on the social media site Twitter, and how they are cited in the scholarly record. We perform two analyses. First, we analyze the delay and time span of article downloads and Twitter mentions following submission, to understand the temporal configuration of these reactions and whether significant differences exist between them. Second, we run correlation tests to investigate the relationship between Twitter mentions and both article downloads and article citations. We find that Twitter mentions follow rapidly after article submission and that they are correlated with later article downloads and later article citations, indicating that social media may be an important factor in determining the scientific impact of an article.”

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.2461

Usages, pratiques et besoins des chercheurs concernant les serveurs d’archives ouvertes

Le Centre Commun de Documentation de Lille1 désire mettre en place un serveur d’archives ouvertes destiné aux chercheurs dans le but de leur permettre d’archiver de façon pérenne leurs documents scientifiques et techniques et cela en toute sérénité. Dans ce cadre-là, mon stage a consisté à réaliser une étude comparative et une recherche approfondie sur les sites d’archives ouvertes tels que HAL, OATAO, SPIRE et ORBI, et cela sous forme de rapport d’audit.

J’ai ainsi essayé de distinguer les différents services (exemple : service de dépôt, service de consultation…) mis en place par les sites d’archives ouvertes, la composition de ces services en terme d’éléments structurants (exemple : divers critères de consultation, …) mais je me suis aussi placée du côté des chercheurs pour essayer de comprendre leurs pratiques actuelles en matière de dépôt, de consultation et de recherche de documents. Enfin, par l’intermédiaire d’entretiens semi-directifs, j’ai voulu savoir quels étaient leurs réels besoins en terme de services, d’architecture du site, … mais aussi de connaître leur avis et leur perception du site qu’ils utilisent actuellement.

The Lille1 Library wishes to implement a open archives website for researchers in order to enable them to archive their scientific and technical documents in a lasting way. In that context, my internship was to conduct a comparative study and thorough search on Open Archives sites as HAL, OATAO, SPIRE and ORBI in a form of audit report.

I tried to distinguish the different services set up by theses websites, the composition of theses services in terms of structural elements but I also place on the side of researchers in order to understand their current practices regarding filing, consulting and search documents. Finally, I wanted to know what their real needs in terms of services, website architecture,… but also their views and their perception of the site they use now.

URL : http://memsic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/mem_00655746/fr/