Archives des mots-clés : scientific communication

Toward a new model of scientific publishing discussion…

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Toward a new model of scientific publishing: discussion and a proposal :

“The current system of publishing in the biological sciences is notable for its redundancy, inconsistency, sluggishness, and opacity. These problems persist, and grow worse, because the peer review system remains focused on deciding whether or not to publish a paper in a particular journal rather than providing (1) a high-quality evaluation of scientific merit and (2) the information necessary to organize and prioritize the literature. Online access has eliminated the need for journals as distribution channels, so their primary current role is to provide authors with feedback prior to publication and a quick way for other researchers to prioritize the literature based on which journal publishes a paper. However, the feedback provided by reviewers is not focused on scientific merit but on whether to publish in a particular journal, which is generally of little use to authors and an opaque and noisy basis for prioritizing the literature. Further, each submission of a rejected manuscript requires the entire machinery of peer review to creak to life anew. This redundancy incurs delays, inconsistency, and increased burdens on authors, reviewers, and editors. Finally, reviewers have no real incentive to review well or quickly, as their performance is not tracked, let alone rewarded. One of the consistent suggestions for modifying the current peer review system is the introduction of some form of post-publication reception, and the development of a marketplace where the priority of a paper rises and falls based on its reception from the field (see other articles in this special topics). However, the information that accompanies a paper into the marketplace is as important as the marketplace’s mechanics. Beyond suggestions concerning the mechanisms of reception, we propose an update to the system of publishing in which publication is guaranteed, but pre-publication peer review still occurs, giving the authors the opportunity to revise their work following a mini pre-reception from the field. This step also provides a consistent set of rankings and reviews to the marketplace, allowing for early prioritization and stabilizing its early dynamics. We further propose to improve the general quality of reviewing by providing tangible rewards to those who do it well.”
URL : http://www.frontiersin.org/computational_neuroscience/10.3389/fncom.2011.00055/full

Mathematicians’ Views on Current Publishing Issues A Survey…

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Mathematicians’ Views on Current Publishing Issues: A Survey of Researchers :

This article reports research mathematicians’ attitudes about and activity in specific scholarly communication areas, as captured in a 2010 survey of more than 600 randomly-selected mathematicians worldwide. Key findings include:

  • Most mathematicians have papers in the arXiv, but posting to their own web pages remains more common;
  • A third of mathematicians have published papers in open access (OA) journals, with speed of publication being seen as the primary advantage over traditional journals, but there is substantial philosophical opposition to OA journal models that charge author fees;
  • Tenure and promotion criteria influence publishing decisions even among most tenured faculty members;
  • Mathematicians want to keep more rights to their publications than they have been allowed, but they have a high success rate in negotiating with publishers for more;
  • Online collaboration tools, such as Google Groups, are not yet widely used for research but their use is expected to rise in the near future.

Reasons behind the mathematics culture of openness were also explored.”

URL : http://www.istl.org/11-fall/refereed4.html

L’Edition scientifique en SHS face au numérique et…

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L’Edition scientifique en SHS face au numérique et à Internet: Un enjeu pour la France :

“Les révolutions en cours des supports et des pratiques tant de l’écriture que de la lecture, associées au développement du numérique ainsi qu’à la multiplication des applications internet, remettent profondément en cause les activités de l’ensemble des acteurs impliqués dans la chaine traditionnelle de l’édition, y compris les bibliothèques. Elles touchent tout particulièrement les activités scientifiques en SHS, les disciplines concernées se voyant offrir à travers elles des perspectives dans la société qui leur étaient jusque là pratiquement inaccessibles. C’est dire l’importance pour les chercheurs en SHS – en particulier français – des enjeux qui se jouent actuellement autour des politiques menées dans ce domaine.”

URL : http://ssi.sagepub.com/content/50/3-4/513.abstract.fr
doi: 10.1177/0539018411411031

Driving on the Green Road of Open Access…

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Driving on the Green Road of Open Access: The Green Factor for Successful Institutional Repository :

“In this electronic publishing age, institutions have increasingly recognized that an institutional repository (IR) is an essential infrastructure of scholarly dissemination. An institutional repository is broadly defined as a digital archive of the intellectual product created by the faculty, research staff, and students of an institution and accessible to end users both within and outside of the institution. To achieve the success, IR must require to plan, implement, evaluate maintain and sustain green factor on driving of the green road of institutional repository. This paper examines how to harness successful factors to make an institutional repository the central and authoritative source of the research materials output of institutions. There is much discussion and examination of the factors that help to build and sustain a successful repository for the long- term survival, value and usability that depends on numerous criteria have been discussed in the topic.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/16340

Heading for the Open Road Costs and Benefits…

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Heading for the Open Road: Costs and Benefits of Transitions in Scholarly Communications :

“This paper reports on a study — overseen by representatives of the publishing, library and research funder communities in the UK — investigating the drivers, costs and benefits of potential ways to increase access to scholarly journals. It identifies five different but realistic scenarios for moving towards that end over the next five years, including gold and green open access, moves towards national licensing, publisher-led delayed open access, and transactional models. It then compares and evaluates the benefits as well as the costs and risks for the UK. The scenarios, the comparisons between them, and the modelling on which they are based, amount to a benefit-cost analysis to help in appraising policy options over the next five years. Our conclusion is that policymakers who are seeking to promote increases in access should encourage the use of existing subject and institutional repositories, but avoid pushing for reductions in embargo periods, which might put at risk the sustainability of the underlying scholarly publishing system. They should also promote and facilitate a transition to gold open access, while seeking to ensure that the average level of charges for publication does not exceed circa £2,000; that the rate in the UK of open access publication is broadly in step with the rate in the rest of the world; and that total payments to journal publishers from UK universities and their funders do not rise as a consequence.”

URL : http://liber.library.uu.nl/publish/issues/2011-1/index.html?000529

Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success Research Report Version 1.0

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Over the past five years, libraries have begun to expand their role in the scholarly publishing value chain by offering a greater range of pre-publication and editorial support services. Given the rapid evolution of these services, there is a clear community need for practical guidance concerning the challenges and opportunities facing library-based publishing programs.

Recognizing that library publishing services represent one part of a complex ecology of scholarly communication, Purdue University Libraries, in collaboration with the Libraries of Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Utah, secured an IMLS National Leadership Grant under the title “Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success.” The project, conducted between October 2010 and September 2011, seeks to advance the professionalism of library-based publishing by identifying successful library publishing strategies and services, highlighting best practices, and recommending priorities for building capacity.

The project has four components: 1) a survey of librarians designed to provide an overview of current practice for library publishing programs (led by consultant October Ivins); 2) a report presenting best practice case studies of the publishing programs at the partner institutions (written by consultant Raym Crow); 3) a series of workshops held at each participating institution to present and discuss the findings of the survey and case studies; and 4) a review of the existing literature on library publishing services. The results of these research threads are pulled together in this project white paper.

URL : http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib_research/136/