Étiquette : scientific communication

Attitudes towards Open Access Books in the European Research Area

Auteur de l’article Par Hans Dillaerts
Date de l’article 18 juin 2025

Authors : Gabriela Manist, Maciej Mary, Magdalena Wnuk

This paper examines the challenges and opportunities of publishing Open Access (OA) books within the European Research Area (ERA), drawing on data collected through the PALOMERA project. Despite the growing interest in OA books, the landscape remains fragmented due to a lack of clear policies.

National policies are often sparse, with institutional and funder mandates typically focused on journal articles rather than monographs. An issue also highlighted is the marginalisation of non-English language works, which receive significantly less visibility than English-language publications.

Additionally, the perceived prestige of OA monographs remains a concern, with some scholars viewing them as less reputable than traditionally published works. This paper synthesises findings from 42 in-depth interviews to offer an overview of the current state of OA book publishing in Europe. It identifies areas for policy improvement to foster a more inclusive and sustainable OA landscape.

URL : Attitudes towards Open Access Books in the European Research Area

DOI : https://doi.org/10.53377/lq.21719

Étiquettes European Research Area, European Union, Gabriela Manista, Maciej Maryl, Magdalena Wnuk, open access, open access monographs, Scholarly Publishing, scientific communication

Performance of the Nigerian Open Access Repositories

Auteur de l’article Par Hans Dillaerts
Date de l’article 16 juin 2025

Authors : Binta Ladan Farouk, Karimatu Isa Maisango, Alkasim Hamisu Abdu

Research is undertaken to make human life better. This underscores the need to communicate the research results globally. The possibilities inherent in digital technologies coupled with the understanding that knowledge should be treated as a public good engender the emergence of the open access movement.

The movement aims at making research literature more freely available. Open access is implemented in two major ways: the gold route and the green route. The gold route entails making research literature freely available on publishers’ servers, whereas the green route entails using Open Access Repositories (OARs) to achieve the open access aims.

To date, a few OARs have been hosted in Nigeria to communicate the research produced in the country with the rest of the world. Therefore, this study used content analysis to assess the functionality and effectiveness of OARs hosted in Nigeria. Data were extracted from the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR), and, additionally, the contents of Nigerian repositories were analyzed.

The finding of the study revealed that there is a steady increase in OARs in Nigeria; however, the country lags when compared with its counterparts. It was also discovered that most Nigerian OARs were inaccessible owing to technical problems. At the same time, the contents of the accessible repositories are not consistent with OpenDOAR repository information sheets.

DSpace repository software continues to be the most popular in Nigeria; however, libraries were found to be lagging in housing OARs for their universities. Therefore, it is recommended that stakeholders in Nigeria double their efforts to develop OARs in the country.

URL : Performance of the Nigerian Open Access Repositories

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18293

Étiquettes Alkasim Hamisu Abdu, Binta Ladan Farouk, Karimatu Isa Maisango, Nigeria, open access, open repositories, scientific communication

Assessing the Societal Impact of Academic Research With Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Scoping Review of Business School Scholarship as a ‘Force for Good’

Auteur de l’article Par Hans Dillaerts
Date de l’article 13 juin 2025

Authors : David Steingard, Kathleen Rodenburg

This study addresses critical questions about how current evaluative frameworks for academic research can effectively translate scholarly findings into practical applications and policies to tackle societal ‘grand challenges’.

This scoping review analysis was conducted using bibliometric methods and AI tools. Articles were drawn from a wide range of disciplines, with particular emphasis on the business and management fields, focusing on the burgeoning scholarship area of ‘business as a force for good’.

The novel integration of generative AI research approaches underscores the transformative potential of AI-human collaboration in academic research. Metadata from 4051 articles were examined in the scoping review, with only 370 articles (9.1%) explicitly identified as relevant to societal impact.

This finding reveals a substantial and concerning gap in research addressing the urgent social and environmental issues of our time. To address this gap, the study identifies six meta-themes related to enhancing the societal impact of research: business applications; faculty publication pressure; societal impact focus; sustainable development; university and scholarly rankings; and reference to responsible research frameworks.

Key findings highlight critical misalignments between research outputs and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a lack of practical business applications of research insights.

The results emphasise the urgent need for academic institutions to expand evaluation criteria beyond traditional metrics to prioritise real-world impacts. Recommendations include developing holistic evaluation frameworks and incentivising research that addresses pressing societal challenges—shifting academia from a ‘scholar-to-scholar’ to a ‘scholar-to-society’ paradigm.

The implications of this shift are applied to business-related scholarship and its potential to inspire meaningful societal impact through business practice.

URL : Assessing the Societal Impact of Academic Research With Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Scoping Review of Business School Scholarship as a ‘Force for Good’

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.2010

Étiquettes Artificial intelligence, David Steingard, Kathleen Rodenburg, metrics, Research Assessment, research impact, scientific communication, societal impact

Platforms, programmability, and precarity: The platformization of research repositories in academic libraries

Auteur de l’article Par Hans Dillaerts
Date de l’article 4 juin 2025

Authors : Jean-Christophe Plantin, Andrea Thomer

We investigate in this article how repository platforms change the sharing and preservation of digital objects in academic libraries. We use evidence drawn from semi-structured interviews with 31 data repository managers working at 21 universities using the product Figshare for institutions.

We first show that repository managers use this platform to bring together actors, technologies, and processes usually scattered across the library to assign to them the tasks that they value less—such as data preparation or IT maintenance—and spend more time engaging in activities they appreciate—such as raising awareness of data sharing.

While this platformization of data management improves their job satisfaction, we reveal how it simultaneously accentuates the outsourcing of libraries’ core mission to private actors. We eventually discuss how this platformization can deskill librarians and perpetuate precarity politics in university libraries.

URL : Platforms, programmability, and precarity: The platformization of research repositories in academic libraries

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231176758

Étiquettes academic libraries, Andrea Thomer, Jean-Christophe Plantin, open repositories, platformization, scientific communication

Publication en accès ouvert et coûts d’Article Processing Charges (APC) en Argentine

Auteur de l’article Par Hans Dillaerts
Date de l’article 3 juin 2025

Auteur.ices : Fernanda Beigel, Osvaldo Gallardo, Soledad Gomez, Flavia Prado

La prolifération des revues en libre accès présente un dilemme difficile pour les chercheurs basés en Argentine, en raison des coûts élevés des APC (Article Processing Charges) qui créent un écart entre ceux qui peuvent payer pour publier et ceux qui ne le peuvent pas. Dans la première partie de ce travail, nous analysons le problème des frais APC dans différents pays d’Amérique latine et les leçons des études réalisées sur le cas de l’Argentine.

Nous décrivons ensuite la population de chercheurs faisant l’objet de l’enquête — les directeurs de projets financés au niveau national — ainsi que la méthode utilisée et ses résultats. Nous proposons une classification des pratiques de publication en libre accès avec APC en quatre groupes comprenant des chercheurs de plusieurs disciplines.

Dans chaque groupe, on observe des tendances différentes vers la publication en accès ouvert ou fermé, l’origine des fonds utilisés pour payer les APC et les disciplines dans lesquelles ce phénomène a plus ou moins d’impact. Enfin, nous analysons la section qualitative de l’enquête qui comprend les questions ouvertes auxquelles ont répondu une bonne partie des chercheurs, offrant un aperçu de leurs stratégies face au problème et les voies envisagées pour en atténuer les effets néfastes.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/140p9

Étiquettes Argentina, article-processing charges, Fernanda Beigel, Flavia Prado, open access, open access publishing, Osvaldo Gallardo, Scholarly Publishing, scientific communication, Soledad Gomez