Archives des mots-clés : Scholarly Communication

Process as Product: Scholarly Communication Experiments in the Digital Humanities

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“Scholarly communication outreach and education activities are proliferating in academic libraries. Simultaneously, digital humanists—a group that includes librarians and non-librarians based in libraries, as well as scholars and practitioners without library affiliation—have developed forms of scholarship that demand and introduce complementary innovations focused on infrastructure, modes of dissemination and evaluation, openness, and other areas with implications for scholarly communication. Digital humanities experiments in post-publication filtering, open peer review, middle-state publishing, decentering authority, and multimodal and nonlinear publication platforms are discussed in the context of broader library scholarly communication efforts.”

URL : Process as Product: Scholarly Communication Experiments in the Digital Humanities

Alternative URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol2/iss3/11/

Publish, not Perish: Supporting Graduate Students as Aspiring Authors

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“BACKGROUND Students pursuing advanced degrees are increasingly expected to contribute to their discipline’s scholarly discourse during their tenure in graduate school. However, they are often unsure of how or where to begin the publishing process, and do not always feel comfortable asking for help from their faculty advisors or fellow students. Scholars, including librarians, have attempted to address these concerns by developing tools and services to meet the needs of future faculty. In recent years, university presses and research libraries have recognized their shared mission in furthering scholarship, with libraries themselves offering publishing education and expertise.

PROJECT OVERVIEW During the 2012-2013 academic year, subject librarians and publishing professionals at the University of Michigan Library crafted a program to address students’ questions and concerns about the publishing lifecycle. This ongoing initiative includes a multi-semester workshop series developed in concert with faculty from departments throughout campus, as well as a supplementary online toolkit that takes into account the rapidly evolving nature of scholarly communication.

LESSONS LEARNED Major takeaways from this program include: the value of student assessment in shaping publishing workshops; awareness of the discrepancies of registration numbers and actual attendance, highlighting the potential for enhanced promotion techniques; the importance of university press and faculty insight; and the benefits of collaboration among librarians, publishing professionals, and faculty members.

NEXT STEPS Future iterations of this program will incorporate in-depth assessment of each program, a more interactive learning environment, and better scheduling and promotion of the workshop series.”

URL : Publish, not Perish: Supporting Graduate Students as Aspiring Authors

Alternative URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol2/iss3/7/

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

Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the…

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Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the Light of the Digital Transition: setting the scene for a major study :

“The paper provides the results of the first phase of the research project Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the Light of the Digital Transition. It provides for an examination of the behaviours and attitudes of academic researchers as producers and consumers of scholarly information resources in the digital era in respect to how they determine authority and trustworthiness in the sources they use, cite, and publish in. The first phase of the study utilized focus groups to formulate research questions for the project as a whole. It provided the direction for the literature review, interviews, and questionnaires studies that would follow. Fourteen focus groups were held in the UK and US in order to obtain this information. A total of 66 science and social science researchers participated. The main findings were: (a) researchers play down difficulties of establishing trustworthiness, not because there are none, but because they have well-developed methods of establishing trust; (b) citation-derived metrics are becoming more important in regard to where researchers publish; (c) social media are ancillary to research, but are used for promotion of research and idea generation; (d) researchers are suspicious and confused about open access, but less so if produced by a traditional publisher; (e) there was a uniformity of perceptions/behaviour of researchers irrespective of differences in subject, country, and age; (f) although some early career researchers behave the same as their more senior colleagues this is because of a fear of the system: they actually think differently.”

URL : http://ciber-research.eu/download/20140406-Learned_Publishing_27_2-Trust.pdf

Scholarly Communication at Canadian Research Libraries Conversations with…

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Scholarly Communication at Canadian Research Libraries: Conversations with Librarians :

“INTRODUCTION. The landscape of librarianship in relation to the practice of scholarly communication is evolving. The objectives of this study were to investigate: the scope of scholarly communication activities within Canadian research libraries; the organizational structures in place to support them; and the roles of librarians who participate in them. Key challenges to its advancement and how librarians envision its future were also investigated.
METHODS Twenty-nine academic librarians from Canadian Association of Research Libraries member institutions participated in semi-structured, open-ended interviews. Interviews were analyzed for recurring themes.
RESULTS. Participants outlined initiatives, services, and structures to support scholarly communication at their institutions. Solo scholarly communication librarians, specialized teams, and committees were identified as primary structures. Liaison librarians play an essential supporting role regardless of structure. Individually, librarians are seen to have an impact as leaders and advocates in promoting scholarly communication. The concept of “librarian as researcher” is also important. Participants shared a desire for better communication and collaboration in this area. Many participants saw the need for standardized assessment and evaluation methods. Participants enumerated their greatest challenges and provided suggestions for addressing them in the future.
CONCLUSION. This study demonstrates that organizational structure can enhance scholarly communication activities in libraries. Leadership both at the personal and collective level is necessary to provide an impetus for scholarly communication activities. Librarians should be knowledgeable about the issues and be ready to deliver the “pitch.” Strengthening collaboration and communication among Canadian librarians is essential for moving the scholarly communication agenda forward.”

URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol2/iss2/3/

Starting Scholarly Conversations A Scholarly Communication Outreach Program…

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Starting Scholarly Conversations: A Scholarly Communication Outreach Program :

“As the scholarly communication system continues to evolve, academic librarians should take an active role in both developing their own knowledge and educating their campus communities about emergent topics. At Furman University, librarians developed an outreach program, aimed primarily at faculty, to increase awareness of current scholarly communication issues. Expert speakers were recruited to present throughout the year on open access, altmetrics, author’s rights, and other relevant topics. This program addressed a number of needs simultaneously—outreach to faculty; education for Furman librarians; and education for the greater library community—and affirmed the importance of providing opportunities to discuss these issues beyond the libraries. The program also further established Furman University Libraries’ role in educating and guiding its campus community through changes in scholarly communication models and practices.”

URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol2/iss1/2/

Data Curation in the OpenAIRE Scholarly Communication Infrastructure…

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Data Curation in the OpenAIRE Scholarly Communication Infrastructure :

“OpenAIRE is the European Union initiative for an Open Access Infrastructure for Research in support of open scholarly communication and access to the research output of European funded projects and open access content from a network of institutional and disciplinary repositories. This article outlines the curation activities conducted in the OpenAIRE infrastructure, which employs a multi-level, multi-targeted approach: the publication and implementation of interoperability guidelines to assist in the local data curation processes, the data curation due to the integration of heterogeneous sources supporting different types of data, the inference of links to accomplish the publication research contextualization and data enrichment, and the end-user metadata curation that allows users to edit the attributes and provide links among the entities.”

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.3789/isqv25no3.2013.03