Seeking Impact and Visibility: Scholarly Communication in Southern Africa

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“African scholarly research is relatively invisible for three primary reasons:

  1. While research production on the continent is growing in absolute terms, it is falling in comparative terms (especially as other Southern countries such as China ramp up research production), reducing its relative visibility.
  2. Traditional metrics of visibility (especially the ISI/WoS Impact Factor) which measure only formal scholar-to-scholar outputs (journal articles and books) fail to make legible a vast amount of African scholarly production, thus underestimating the amount of research activity on the continent.
  3. Many African universities do not take a strategic approach to scholarly communication, nor utilise appropriate information and communications technologies (ICTs) and Web 2.0 technologies to broaden the reach of their scholars’ work or curate it for future generations, thus inadvertently minimising the impact and visibility of African research.”

“To optimise scholarly communication at Southern African universities, there are four stakeholders that can play a dynamic role in improving universities’ dissemination activity: national governments, university administrations, university academics and research funding agencies. Each of these groups contributes to research and communication practices at the institution, thereby impacting the potential visibility of Southern African scholars’ research outputs. In this chapter, we provide recommendations
tailored to each of these stakeholders with a focus on enhancing research production, open dissemination and regional collaborative opportunities.”

URL : Seeking Impact and Visibility

Alternative URL : http://www.africanminds.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/9781920677510-content2.pdf

Novel Research Impact Indicators

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Citation counts and more recently usage statistics provide valuable information about the attention and research impact associated with scholarly publications.

The open access publisher Public Library of Science (PLOS) has pioneered the concept of article-level metrics, where these metrics are collected on a per article and not a per journal basis and are complemented by real-time data from the social web or altmetrics: blog posts, social bookmarks, social media and other.

URL : Novel Research Impact Indicators
Alternative URL : http://liber.library.uu.nl/index.php/lq/article/view/8427

Resourses of open access as a tool for…

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Resourses of open access as a tool for formation of scientific rating of scientists :

Purpose. Scientific journals in open access play an important role in scientific communications. It is they are able to provide an operational studying the leading publications and their scientific substantiation in the form of reference to the works of authors that were used in the research. The achievement of high citation index is an important component of scientific activity for the modern scientist. The purpose of the article is to determine the tools to increase the citation index of scientists.
Methodology. The methods of generalization, analysis and synthesis, as well as a systematic approach were used in the research.
Findings. The university library has an important mission – to distribute the results of research activity of the university scientists. As part of this functional activity area of the scientific and technical library of DNURT a repository of scientific papers, a system of open access for scientific journals and online versions of proceedings were organized. These resources provide the opportunity for a wide range of scientists to study the results of research carried out by their colleagues in DNURT and to cite them in their own articles. During the scientometric research the library staff use the following information platforms: Google Scholar, SciVerse Scopus, DOAJ, Russian Science Citation Index, SCImago Journal & Country Rank.
Originality. The work originality is the determination of the ways to influence the formation of the high citation index for scientist.
Practical value. The article proves the feasibility of using the open access resources (electronic journals, proceedings and the institutional repositories) to gain the scientist popularity in the professional scientific community.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/22752/

arXiv e-prints and the journal of record: An analysis of roles and relationships

Since its creation in 1991, arXiv has become central to the diffusion of research in a number of fields. Combining data from the entirety of arXiv and the Web of Science (WoS), this paper investigates (a) the proportion of papers across all disciplines that are on arXiv and the proportion of arXiv papers that are in the WoS, (b) elapsed time between arXiv submission and journal publication, and (c) the aging characteristics and scientific impact of arXiv e-prints and their published version.

It shows that the proportion of WoS papers found on arXiv varies across the specialties of physics and mathematics, and that only a few specialties make extensive use of the repository.

Elapsed time between arXiv submission and journal publication has shortened but remains longer in mathematics than in physics. In physics, mathematics, as well as in astronomy and astrophysics, arXiv versions are cited more promptly and decay faster than WoS papers.

The arXiv versions of papers – both published and unpublished – have lower citation rates than published papers, although there is almost no difference in the impact of the arXiv versions of both published and unpublished papers.

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.3261

Data reuse and the open data citation advantage…

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Data reuse and the open data citation advantage :

Background: Attribution to the original contributor upon reuse of published data is important both as a reward for data creators and to document the provenance of research findings. Previous studies have found that papers with publicly available datasets receive a higher number of citations than similar studies without available data. However, few previous analyses have had the statistical power to control for the many variables known to predict citation rate, which has led to uncertain estimates of the “citation benefit”. Furthermore, little is known about patterns in data reuse over time and across datasets.

Method and Results: Here, we look at citation rates while controlling for many known citation predictors and investigate the variability of data reuse. In a multivariate regression on 10,555 studies that created gene expression microarray data, we found that studies that made data available in a public repository received 9% (95% confidence interval: 5% to 13%) more citations than similar studies for which the data was not made available. Date of publication, journal impact factor, open access status, number of authors, first and last author publication history, corresponding author country, institution citation history, and study topic were included as covariates. The citation benefit varied with date of dataset deposition: a citation benefit was most clear for papers published in 2004 and 2005, at about 30%. Authors published most papers using their own datasets within two years of their first publication on the dataset, whereas data reuse papers published by third-party investigators continued to accumulate for at least six years. To study patterns of data reuse directly, we compiled 9,724 instances of third party data reuse via mention of GEO or ArrayExpress accession numbers in the full text of papers. The level of third-party data use was high: for 100 datasets deposited in year 0, we estimated that 40 papers in PubMed reused a dataset by year 2, 100 by year 4, and more than 150 data reuse papers had been published by year 5. Data reuse was distributed across a broad base of datasets: a very conservative estimate found that 20% of the datasets deposited between 2003 and 2007 had been reused at least once by third parties.

Conclusion: After accounting for other factors affecting citation rate, we find a robust citation benefit from open data, although a smaller one than previously reported. We conclude there is a direct effect of third-party data reuse that persists for years beyond the time when researchers have published most of the papers reusing their own data. Other factors that may also contribute to the citation benefit are considered. We further conclude that, at least for gene expression microarray data, a substantial fraction of archived datasets are reused, and that the intensity of dataset reuse has been steadily increasing since 2003.”

URL : https://peerj.com/articles/175/

Open Access and the Changing Landscape of Research…

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Open Access and the Changing Landscape of Research Impact Indicators: New Roles for Repositories :

“The debate about the need to revise metrics that evaluate research excellence has been ongoing for years, and a number of studies have identified important issues that have yet to be addressed. Internet and other technological developments have enabled the collection of richer data and new approaches to research assessment exercises. Open access strongly advocates for maximizing research impact by enhancing seamless accessibility. In addition, new tools and strategies have been used by open access journals and repositories to showcase how science can benefit from free online dissemination. Latest players in the debate include initiatives based on alt-metrics, which enrich the landscape with promising indicators. To start with, the article gives a brief overview of the debate and the role of open access in advancing a new frame to assess science. Next, the work focuses on the strategy that the Spanish National Research Council’s repository DIGITAL.CSIC is implementing to collect a rich set of statistics and other metrics that are useful for repository administrators, researchers and the institution alike. A preliminary analysis of data hints at correlations between free dissemination of research through DIGITAL.CSIC and enhanced impact, reusability and sharing of CSIC science on the web.”

URL : http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/1/2/56