Étiquette : Scholarly Communication

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Metrics for openness

Authors : David M. Nichols, Michael B. Twidale

The characterization of scholarly communication is dominated by citation-based measures. In this paper we propose several metrics to describe different facets of open access and open research.

We discuss measures to represent the public availability of articles along with their archival location, licenses, access costs, and supporting information. Calculations illustrating these new metrics are presented using the authors’ publications.

We argue that explicit measurement of openness is necessary for a holistic description of research outputs.

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/10289/10842

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Networked Scholarship and Motivations for Social Media use in Scholarly Communication

Authors : Stefania Manca, Maria Ranieri

Research on scholars’ use of social media suggests that these sites are increasingly being used to enhance scholarly communication by strengthening relationships, facilitating collaboration among peers, publishing and sharing research products, and discussing research topics in open and public formats.

However, very few studies have investigated perceptions and attitudes towards social media use for scholarly communication of large cohorts of scholars at national level.

This study investigates the reasons for using social media sites for scholarly communication among a large sample of Italian university scholars (N=6139) with the aim of analysing what factors mainly affect these attitudes.

The motivations for using social media were analysed in connection with frequency of use and factors like gender, age, years of teaching, academic title, and disciplinary field. The results point out that for the most used tools the influence of the variables examined was higher in shaping scholars’ motivations.

In fact, frequency of use, age, years of teaching, and disciplinary field were found to be relevant factors especially for LinkedIn and ResearchGate-Academia.edu, while gender and academic title seemed to have a limited impact on scholars’ motivations for all social media sites considered in the study.

Considerations for future research are provided along with limitations of the study.

URL : Networked Scholarship and Motivations for Social Media use in Scholarly Communication

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i2.2859

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Organization and Delivery of Scholarly Communications Services by Academic and Research Libraries in the United Kingdom: Observations from Across the Pond

Author: Christine Fruin

INTRODUCTION

The U.K. library community has implemented collaborative strategies in key scholarly communication areas such as open access mandate compliance, and U.S. librarians could benefit from learning in greater detail about the practices and experiences of U.K. libraries with respect to how they have organized scholarly communication services.

METHODS

In order to better understand the scholarly communication activities in U.K. academic and research libraries, and how U.S. libraries could apply that experience in the context of their own priorities, an environmental scan via a survey of U.K. research libraries and in-person interviews were conducted.

RESULTS

U.K. libraries concentrate their scholarly communication services on supporting compliance with open access mandates and in the development of new services that reflect libraries’ shifting role from information consumer to information producer.

DISCUSSION 

Due to the difference in the requirements of open access mandates in the U.K. as compared to the U.S., scholarly communication services in the U.K. are more focused on supporting compliance efforts. U.S. libraries engage more actively in providing copyright education and consultation than U.K. libraries. Both U.K. and U.S. libraries have developed new services in the areas of research data management and library publishing.

CONCLUSION

There are three primary takeaways from the experience of U.K. scholarly communication practitioners for U.S. librarians: increase collaboration with offices of research, reconsider current organization and delegation of scholarly communication services, and increase involvement in legislative and policy-making activity in the U.S. with respect to access to research.

URL : Organization and Delivery of Scholarly Communications Services by Academic and Research Libraries in the United Kingdom: Observations from Across the Pond

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2157

 

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Opening Scholarly Communication in Social Sciences by Connecting Collaborative Authoring to Peer Review

Authors : Afshin Sadeghi, Johannes Wilm, Philipp Mayr, Christoph Lange

The objective of the OSCOSS research project on « Opening Scholarly Communication in the Social Sciences » is to build a coherent collaboration environment that facilitates scholarly communication workflows of social scientists in the roles of authors, reviewers, editors and readers. This paper presents the implementation of the core of this environment: the integration of the Fidus Writer academic word processor with the Open Journal Systems (OJS) submission and review management system.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04428

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Anatomy of Scholarly Information Behavior Patterns in the Wake of Social Media

Authors : Hamed Alhoori, Richard Furuta, Mohammed Samaka, Edward A. Fox

As more scholarly content is being born digital or digitized, digital libraries are becoming increasingly vital to researchers leveraging scholarly big data for scientific discovery. Given the abundance of scholarly products-especially in environments created by the advent of social networking services-little is known about international scholarly information needs, information-seeking behavior, or information use.

This paper aims to address these gaps by conducting an in-depth analysis of researchers in the United States and Qatar; learn about their research attitudes, practices, tactics, strategies, and expectations; and address the obstacles faced during research endeavors.

Based on this analysis, the study identifies and describes new behavior patterns on the part of researchers as they engage in the information-seeking process. The analysis reveals that the use of academic social networks has remarkable effects on various scholarly activities.

Further, this study identifies differences between students and faculty members in regard to their use of academic social networks, and it identifies differences between researchers according to discipline.

The researchers who participated in the present study represent a range of disciplinary and cultural backgrounds. However, the study reports a number of similarities in terms of the researchers’ scholarly activities.

Finally, the study illuminates some of the implications for the design of research platforms.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.07863

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Digital Theoria, Poiesis, and Praxis: Activating Humanities Research and Communication through Open Social Scholarship Platform Design

Author : Jon Saklofske

Background

Scholarly communication has not experienced the kinds of digital enhancements enjoyed by researchers. The continuing domination of journals and monographs as primary venues of professional exchange and validation signifies lingering habits of critical perception, but also an opportunity to imagine and implement new collaborative publishing environments, models, and platforms.

Analysis

Examples of innovative projects bottlenecked by traditional reporting methods illustrate the need for such transformative practices.

Conclusion and implications

Developing flexible digital environments to establish open social scholarship as the default mode of critical inquiry and reporting is essential to the digital transformation of scholarly communication.

URL : Digital Theoria, Poiesis, and Praxis: Activating Humanities Research and Communication through Open Social Scholarship Platform Design

Alternative location : http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/252

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Developing a theory of open access: a grounded theory based literature review

Author : Kent-Inge Andersson

The thesis presents a conceptual literature review of the subject of open access as it is reflected in literature relevant to digital library research. An approach to the grounded theory method specifically created for the purpose of performing a literature review is applied to 70 articles and conference proceedings found in the databases LISA and LISTA.

Through the coding of the literature five categories that conceptually order the subject of open access emerged; Open Access, Authors, Scholarly Communication, Libraries and Librarians, and Developing and Transitional Countries.

The conceptual relations of the categories are discussed in the presentation of the categories. The emerged theory is then validated through a review of earlier literature, which focused on literature reviews on open access.

A model of the emerged theory with explanatory narratives are then presented in the concluding chapter.

URL : http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1033071/FULLTEXT01.pdf