Catégories
EN

From paper-based towards post-digital scholarly publishing: an analysis of an ideological dilemma and its consequences

Authors : Jarmo Saarti, Kimmo Tuominen

Introduction

Even though the current publishing model is based on digital dissemination, it still utilizes some of the basic principles of printed culture. Recently a policy emphasis towards open access has been set for publicly funded research.

This paper reports on a study of the practices, business models and values linked with scholarly publishing.

Method

Conceptual analysis was conducted, drawing on literature on scholarly publishing policies, practices, values and economies, with an emphasis on the structures and conflicts between license-based and open publishing models.

Results

Scholarly interests of sharing collide with commercial interests of generating profits. In the digital era, the scientific community might have a third economically viable alternative. This third way is based on what the authors call post-digital scholarly publishing.

Conclusion

Science should aim at as complete openness as possible. Scholarly activities advance best when the whole scientific community has access to both publications and research data.

What seems to stand in the way of scientific sharing is the global publishing industry in its present form. In the future, post-digital scholarly publishing might provide a means for finding an economically viable way between sharing economy and commercial interests.

URL : http://www.informationr.net/ir/22-3/paper769.html

 

Catégories
EN

A Proposed Currency System for Academic Peer Review Payments Using the BlockChain Technology

Author : Michael Spearpoint

Peer review of scholarly papers is seen to be a critical step in the publication of high quality outputs in reputable journals. However, it appears that there are few incentives for researchers to agree to conduct suitable reviews in a timely fashion and in some cases unscrupulous practices are occurring as part of the production of academic research output.

Innovations in internet-based technologies mean that there are ways in which some of the challenges can be addressed. In particular, this paper proposes a new currency system using the BlockChain as its basis that provides a number of solutions.

Potential benefits and problems of using the technology are discussed in the paper and these will need further investigation should the idea develop further. Ultimately, the currency could be used as an alternative publication metric for authors, institutions and journals.

URL : A Proposed Currency System for Academic Peer Review Payments Using the BlockChain Technology

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/publications5030019

Catégories
EN

Open Access Research Via Collaborative Educational Blogging: A Case Study from Library & Information Science

Authors : Kristen Radsliff Rebmann, Camden Bernard Clark

This article charts the development of activities for online graduate students in library and information science. Project goals include helping students develop competencies in understanding open access publishing, synthesizing research in the field, and engaging in scholarly communication via collaborative educational blogging.

Using a design experiment approach as a research strategy, focus is placed on the design of the collaborative blogging activity, open access research as a knowledge domain, and analyses of four iterations of the project.

Findings from this iterative learning design suggest several benefits of implementing collaborative educational blogging activities in distance contexts.

URL : Open Access Research Via Collaborative Educational Blogging: A Case Study from Library & Information Science

Alternative location : http://openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/article/view/665

Catégories
EN

Open notebook science as an emerging epistemic culture within the Open Science movement

Authors : Anne Clinio, Sarita Albagli

The paper addresses the concepts and practices of “open notebook science” (Bradley, 2006) as an innovation within the contemporary Open Science movement. Our research points out that open notebook science is not an incremental improvement, but it is a new “literary technology” (Shapin, Shaffer, 1985) and main element of a complex open collaboration ecosystem that fosters a new epistemic culture (Knorr-Cetina, 1999).

This innovation aimed to move from a “science based on trust” to a science based on transparency and data provenance – a shift that recognizes the ability of scientists in performing experiments, but mostly, values their capacity of documenting properly what they say they have done. The theoretical framework was built with the notion of epistemic culture (Knorr-Cetina, 1999) and the “three technologies” perspective used by Shapin and Shaffer (1985) to describe the construction by natural philosophers of “matter of fact” as “variety of knowledge” so powerful that became synonymous of science itself.

Empirically, we entered the “open lab” through a netnography that led us to understand that the epistemic culture being engendered by its practitioners is based on a “matter of proof”.

URL : https://rfsic.revues.org/3186

Catégories
FR

La communication scientifique directe vers un public élargi. L’actualité sociale traitée par des chercheurs dans les carnets de recherche Hypothèses

Auteur/Author : Ingrid Mayeur

Cette contribution entend questionner un type de médiation sociale qu’autorise la communication scientifique en régime d’accès ouvert, à savoir la divulgation de connaissances en sciences humaines et sociales – ci-après SHS – auprès d’un public dépassant la seule sphère académique.

Je prendrai pour terrain d’investigation la plateforme d’édition numérique OpenEdition, et plus spécifiquement Hypothèses, espace de blogging scientifique. Il sera question d’une modalité particulière de divulgation, qui est le traitement de l’actualité par des chercheurs à travers leurs grilles de lectures disciplinaires en sciences humaines et sociales.

Dans l’exploration du corpus, je mettrai l’accent sur les modes d’appropriation du dispositif éditorial d’Hypothèses par les chercheurs qui y commentent l’actualité, les auditoires et usages que laissent entrevoir les textes, ainsi que les procédés discursifs d’ajustement mis en œuvre.

J’espère ainsi contribuer à décrire les caractéristiques de la médiation produite par cette forme de traitement de l’actualité, pour mettre en cause le caractère direct de la communication scientifique sur un carnet de recherche en ligne inscrit dans une plateforme d’édition numérique en accès ouvert.

URL : https://rfsic.revues.org/3224

Catégories
FR

La construction de la valeur économique d’une revue en chimie. Le cas du Journal of the American Chemical Society (1879-2010)

Auteur : Marianne Noel

Dans le domaine de la chimie, la facturation de l’article à l’auteur est devenue depuis quelques années la modalité principale d’open access. Le montant des frais (appelés Article Processing Charges ou APC) varie de quelques centaines à quelques milliers d’euros par article selon la revue.

Cet article propose un récit historique (1879-2010) qui suit un mécanisme méconnu antérieur à celui du paiement à l’article : la tarification à la page. Il prend pour étude de cas le Journal of the American Chemical Society-JACS, un périodique créé en 1879 par l’American Chemical Society, la plus importante société savante en chimie.

Nous proposons une chronologie en cinq périodes qui reposent sur différentes modalités de coordination marchande. Cette enquête, réalisée dans le contexte états-unien, souligne le rôle essentiel de l’État et permet d’interroger la fonction changeante de la revue dans la longue durée.

URL : https://rfsic.revues.org/3281

 

Catégories
EN

A genealogy of open access: negotiations between openness and access to research

Author : Samuel A. Moore

Open access (OA) is a contested term with a complicated history and a variety of understandings. This rich history is routinely ignored by institutional, funder and governmental policies that instead enclose the concept and promote narrow approaches to OA.

This article presents a genealogy of the term open access, focusing on the separate histories that emphasise openness and reusability on the one hand, as borrowed from the open-source software and free culture movements, and accessibility on the other hand, as represented by proponents of institutional and subject repositories.

This genealogy is further complicated by the publishing cultures that have evolved within individual communities of practice: publishing means different things to different communities and individual approaches to OA are representative of this fact.

From analysing its historical underpinnings and subsequent development, I argue that OA is best conceived as a boundary object, a term coined by Star and Griesemer (1989) to describe concepts with a shared, flexible definition between communities of practice but a more community-specific definition within them.

Boundary objects permit working relationships between communities while allowing local use and development of the concept. This means that OA is less suitable as a policy object, because boundary objects lose their use-value when ‘enclosed’ at a general level, but should instead be treated as a community-led, grassroots endeavour.

URL : https://rfsic.revues.org/3220