scientific communication – Page 189

Accessibility sustainability excellence how to expand access to…

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Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications :

“This report tackles the important question of how to achieve better, faster access to research publications for anyone who wants to read or use them. It has been produced by an independent working group made up of representatives of universities, research funders, learned societies, publishers, and libraries. The group’s remit has been to examine how to expand access to the peer-reviewed publications that arise from research undertaken both in the UK and in the rest of the world; and to propose a programme of action to that end.

We have concentrated on journals which publish research results and findings. Virtually all are now published online, and they increasingly include sophisticated navigation, linking and interactive services. Making them freely accessible at the point of use, with minimal if any limitations on how they can be used, offers the potential to reap the full social, economic and cultural benefits that can come from research.

Our aim has been to identify key goals and guiding principles in a period of transition towards wider access. We have sought ways both to accelerate that transition and also to sustain what is valuable in a complex ecology with many different agents and stakeholders. The future development of an effective research communications system is too important to leave to chance. Shifts to enable more people to have ready access to more of the results of research will bring many benefits. But realising those benefits in a sustainable way will require co-ordinated action by funders, universities, researchers, libraries, publishers and others involved in the publication and dissemination of quality-assured research findings.”

URL : http://www.researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-FINAL-VERSION.pdf

A comparison of subscription and open access journals…

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A comparison of subscription and open access journals in construction management and related fields :

“The Internet has profoundly changed the technical infrastructure for the publishing of scientific peer reviewed journals. The traditional business model of selling the content to subscribers is increasingly being challenged by Open Access journals, which are either run at low cost by voluntary academics or which sell dissemination services to authors. In addition authors in many fields are taking advantage of the legal possibilities of uploading free manuscript versions to institutional or subject-based repositories, in order to increase readership and impact. Construction Management is lagging behind many other fields in utilising the potential of the web for efficient dissemination results, in particular to academics outside the leading universities in industrialised countries. This study looks closer at the current publishing situation in construction management and related fields and compares empirical data about 16 OA journals and 16 traditional subscription journals. Of the articles published in 2011 in the subscription journals only 9 % could be found as OA copies. The overall OA availability (including article in OA journals) was 14 % for Construction Management and Economics and 29 for construction IT scholarship.”

URL : http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/AJCEB/article/view/27

Research Blogs and the Discussion of Scholarly Information…

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Research Blogs and the Discussion of Scholarly Information :

“The research blog has become a popular mechanism for the quick discussion of scholarly information. However, unlike peer-reviewed journals, the characteristics of this form of scientific discourse are not well understood, for example in terms of the spread of blogger levels of education, gender and institutional affiliations. In this paper we fill this gap by analyzing a sample of blog posts discussing science via an aggregator called ResearchBlogging.org (RB). ResearchBlogging.org aggregates posts based on peer-reviewed research and allows bloggers to cite their sources in a scholarly manner. We studied the bloggers, blog posts and referenced journals of bloggers who posted at least 20 items. We found that RB bloggers show a preference for papers from high-impact journals and blog mostly about research in the life and behavioral sciences. The most frequently referenced journal sources in the sample were: Science, Nature, PNAS and PLoS One. Most of the bloggers in our sample had active Twitter accounts connected with their blogs, and at least 90% of these accounts connect to at least one other RB-related Twitter account. The average RB blogger in our sample is male, either a graduate student or has been awarded a PhD and blogs under his own name.”

URL : http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0035869

Establishment of Institutional Mechanism for Building National Repository…

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Establishment of Institutional Mechanism for Building National Repository in Health Sciences :

“National consolidation of published and unpublished literature in the field of biomedical sciences can playa major role in scholarly communication to help the end users in providing research published in the country.Institutional repositories are a good approach for a cost-effective publishing with a cooperation and participationof each institution for capturing, preserving, managing, and nurturing the discussion. In turn, metadata can be harvested centrally to access the digital information of common interest whereas individual libraries shouldable to preserve digital assets. Institutionalisation mode has been recommended for building national digitalrepository system for the country. The public funding should be provided to apex body so as to formulatethe requisite policies for the spread of open access movement in the country and also formulate a long termsustainable model for building national level system in the country.”

URL : http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/article/view/2386

Open Access to Scientific Information A Review of…

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Open Access to Scientific Information: A Review of Initiatives :

“Open access journals are the one’s which are available online to the reader without financial, legal, ortechnical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet. Some of the scholarlyjournals are subsidised, and some require payment. However, a number of challenges remain, such as highand rising subscription prices to scientific publications, an ever-growing volume of scientific data, and theneed to select, curate, and preserve research outputs. Open access benefits researchers, innovators, teachers,students, media professionals, and the general public. It promotes global knowledge flow for the benefit ofscientific discovery, innovation, and socio-economic development.”

URL : http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/article/view/2386

Open Access Publishing Practices in a Complex Environment: Conditions, Barriers, and Bases of Power

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The system of scholarly communication is a complex environment made up of various stakeholders including not only researchers, librarians, and publishers, but also academic administrators. This paper examines conditions each group faces while also noting barriers preventing movement toward open access.

To further analyze interrelationships and interdependencies among groups, a discussion is presented using French & Raven’s bases of power to describe how members of each stakeholder group exert some degree of power upon all other groups while at the same time being influenced, either directly or indirectly, by external forces.

A better understanding of the many existing interactions and dependencies can help those who work within this system navigate ongoing changes while more successfully positioning their organizations for the future.

URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol1/iss1/10/

Scientific Utopia I Opening scientific communication Existing…

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Scientific Utopia: I. Opening scientific communication :

“Existing norms for scientific communication are rooted in anachronistic practices of bygone eras, making them needlessly inefficient. We outline a path that moves away from the existing model of scientific communication to improve the efficiency in meeting the purpose of public science – knowledge accumulation. We call for six changes: (1) full embrace of digital communication, (2) open access to all published research, (3) disentangling publication from evaluation, (4) breaking the “one article, one journal” model with a grading system for evaluation and diversified dissemination outlets, (5) publishing peer review, and, (6) allowing open, continuous peer review. We address conceptual and practical barriers to change, and provide examples showing how the suggested practices are being used already. The critical barriers to change are not technical or financial; they are social. While scientists guard the status quo, they also have the power to change it.”

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.1055