Étiquette : scientific communication

Catégories
EN

Open access in the world and Latin America: A review since the Budapest Open Access Initiative

In 2012, the Open Access Movement to scientific information celebrated ten years of existence. The period, which represents the first stage of consolidation of the movement, has been analyzed to allow the planning of new phases. With the purpose of providing tools and contributing to these discussions, the article addresses the historical aspects of the international and regional constitution of Open Access Movement.

The approach was developed from a descriptive temporal narrative of the main events and initiatives identified in the scientific literature on the subject. The elements discussed in the present study work were organized under two parameters. The first refers to a temporal perspective, defined from the publication of Budapest Open Access Initiative. The second is related to brief discussion of the participation of Latin America.

As result, we present a timeline of open access in the world and in Latin America, showing the main aspects covered in the study. The goal of the study is achieved by the proposed systematization as we analyze the open access initiatives in Latin America and establish how they influenced and were influenced by other regions of the world.

URL : Open access in the world and Latin America: A review since the Budapest Open Access Initiative

Alternative location : http://ref.scielo.org/9nh4p4

Catégories
EN

Principles of the Self Journal of Science: bringing ethics and freedom to scientific publishing

I present the core principles of the “Self-Journal of Science” (SJS), an open repository as well as a new paradigm of scientific publication. Rooted in Science ethics, a full and consistent solution is proposed to address the many flaws in current systems. SJS implements an optimal peer review, which itself becomes a measurable process, and builds an objective and unfalsifiable evaluation system.

In addition, it can operate at very low costs. One of the essential features of SJS is to allow every scientist to play his full role as a member of the scientific community and to be credited for all contributions – whether as author, referee, or editor. The output is the responsibility of each scientist, and no subgroup can dictate scientific policy to all.

By fully opening up the process of publication, peer pressure becomes the force that drives output towards the highest quality in a virtuous self-regulating circle. SJS also provides a self-organizing and scalable solution to handle an ever-increasing number of articles.

URL : Principles of the Self Journal of Science: bringing ethics and freedom to scientific publishing

Alternative location : http://www.sjscience.org/article?id=46

Catégories
EN

Peer review: The current landscape and future trends

This paper is based on research commissioned by the Wellcome Trust in 2015 and catalogues current initiatives and trends in the systems and processes surrounding peer review. It considers issues such as open and interactive reviews, post-publication comments and ratings, and the platforms provided by both publishers and other organisations to support such activity; third-party peer review platforms; and measures from publishers and others to provide more recognition and rewards for peer reviewers. It also speculates on likely key trends in peer review for the future.

URL : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/leap.1008/abstract

Catégories
EN

Peer review in megajournals compared with traditional scholarly journals: Does it make a difference?

A megajournal is an open-access journal that publishes any manuscript that presents scientifically trustworthy empirical results, without asking about the potential scientific contribution prior to publication. Megajournals have rapidly increased their output and are currently publishing around 50,000 articles per year.

We report on a small pilot study in which we looked at the citation distributions for articles in megajournals compared with journals with traditional peer review, which also evaluate articles for contribution and novelty.We found that elite journals with very low acceptance rates have far fewer articles with no or few citations, but that the long tail of articles with two citations or less was actually bigger in a sample of selective traditional journals in comparison with megajournals.

This indicates the need for more systematic studies, because the results raise many questions as to how efficiently the current peer review system in reality fulfils its filtering function.

URL : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/leap.1007/abstract

Catégories
EN

Academic Social Networks and Open Access: French Researchers at the Crossroads

Researchers benefit from an increasing array of tools to enhance direct communication and the dissemination of their research findings. These include Open Access repositories, Open Access journals, or hybrid publishing. For some years, researchers have been using new ways to communicate and share their work by using academic social networks.

In an attempt to foster the development of Open Access in France, the French consortium COUPERIN (Unified Consortium of Higher Education and Research Organizations for Access to Numerical Publications) proposed that academic social networks could be used to convince researchers of becoming more involved in Open Access.

To test this hypothesis, a nationwide survey was launched in 2014 to explore whether and how these academic social networks are used to share content, but also how they compare to other Open Access classic tools. Within a month (20 May to 20 June), 1,898 researchers answered this 28-question survey. It was fully completed by 1,698 of them. This provides COUPERIN with considerable data for analysis. The respondents roughly reflect the composition of the French academic community in terms of gender and research fields, with a slight overrepresentation of young researchers/ PhD candidates.

This survey does not, however, cover the in-depth opinions of researchers on Open Access and academic social networks. It therefore only presents general tendencies. Nonetheless, the survey gives many indications as to how researchers apply Open Access. In addition, it shows how they feel about the usefulness of these networks compared to repositories when efficiently disseminating their work. This survey also takes the differences between disciplines into account and characterizes behaviour and opinions according to the different disciplinary communities and their research practices.

Finally, this survey allows us to define the main characteristics of a tool which could meet French researchers’ needs for scientific communication. The components of such an ideal tool dedicated to Open Science could include efficient repositories to easily disseminate work and improve visibility, a sharing network and the scientific stamp of peer-review.

URL : https://www.liberquarterly.eu/articles/10.18352/lq.10131/

Catégories
EN

Wikiometrics: A Wikipedia Based Ranking System

We present a new concept – Wikiometrics – the derivation of metrics and indicators from Wikipedia. Wikipedia provides an accurate representation of the real world due to its size, structure, editing policy and popularity. We demonstrate an innovative mining methodology, where different elements of Wikipedia – content, structure, editorial actions and reader reviews – are used to rank items in a manner which is by no means inferior to rankings produced by experts or other methods. We test our proposed method by applying it to two real-world ranking problems: top world universities and academic journals. Our proposed ranking methods were compared to leading and widely accepted benchmarks, and were found to be extremely correlative but with the advantage of the data being publically available.

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.01058

Catégories
FR

Les revues littéraires en ligne : entre éditorialisation et réseaux d’intelligences

Cet article propose un état des lieux sur les revues littéraires numériques. Cette tâche pourrait sembler facile si l’on considère que ces expériences existent depuis très peu de temps. Les premières revues en ligne apparaissent, en effet, au début des années 1990.

Pourtant, la question est beaucoup plus complexe que ce que l’on pourrait penser, et cela, pour une série de raisons qui seront analysées dans cet article. Il n’est tout d’abord pas évident de s’entendre sur ce que l’on définit par l’expression « revue littéraire numérique ».

D’une part car on fait référence, avec le mot « numérique », à une série d’expériences et de pratiques hétérogènes et différentes qui peuvent difficilement être regroupées ensemble. D’autre part parce que ce qu’on appelle désormais la « révolution numérique » a déterminé des changements importants quant au sens des contenus, de leur production, de leur validation et de leur distribution et a par conséquent fortement affecté la signification du mot « revue » lui-même.

Il faudra ainsi prendre séparément en considération une série de phénomènes différents et essayer de rendre compte de pratiques hétérogènes qui se chevauchent et empiètent l’une sur l’autre. L’article proposera d’abord une analyse des enjeux de la numérisation des revues, à savoir le processus de transposition des revues papier au format électronique.

Il s’attaquera ensuite aux expériences des revues numériques dès leur création pour comprendre s’il y a une différence, et laquelle, entre les premières et les secondes.

Pour finir, on tentera de comprendre en quoi le numérique en tant que phénomène culturel — et en particulier les changements de diffusion et de circulation des contenus ainsi que les différentes formes de ce que l’on appelle désormais « éditorialisation » — a transformé l’idée même de revue et donné lieu à des pratiques et à des expériences complexes et hybrides dont la place dans le panorama culturel est difficile à saisir.

URL : https://papyrus.bib.umontreal.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1866/11379/revues-litteraires-en-ligne-vitali-rosati.pdf