Research Communications Strategy : “Thi…

Research Communications Strategy :

“This report is in two distinct, but connected, sections. They address a common theme: the scope of current OA practice and the opportunities it offers for innovation in scholarly communication methods.

*Section 1 takes as its starting point the apparent reluctance of individual academics fully to embrace OA, and suggests that the potential offered by OA for various kinds of added value might be an effective tool in advocacy.

*Section 2 considers the relation of OA to services such as Mendeley, and wonders whether our established view of OA as a way to distribute traditional research outputs more efficiently might come to seem outmoded in the face of new, non-traditional ideas about how to conduct and disseminate research.”

URL : http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/502/

Les services pour les archives ouvertes: de la référence à l’expertise

Auteur/Author : Emma Bester

En vingt ans, les archives ouvertes sont devenues des dispositifs significatifs de la communication scientifique dans de nombreux domaines. L’attention se porte aujourd’hui vers le développement de services avancés pour les archives ouvertes.

L’étude présentée ici se propose, après une première partie sur les principaux enjeux associés au développement de services pour les archives ouvertes, de dresser dans une seconde partie un état de l’art des services actuellement disponibles sur les archives ouvertes.

Les sept dispositifs sélectionnés, répondant à des critères de fiabilité, de masse critique et de couverture géographique, typologique et disciplinaire, ont été étudiés au travers d’une grille d’analyse fonctionnelle.

Outre les fonctionnalités premières d’alimentation, de validation, d’identification, de consultation et d’accession aux références et/ou documents, cette étude distingue les fonctionnalités émergentes ou services innovants de personnalisation, de publicisation, de contextualisation des références, de communication et de collaboration entre usagers.

Partant du constat que les services associées aux archives ouvertes se déportent peu à peu des seules références et/ou document pour mettre la figure de l’auteur au cœur des données d’information, la troisième partie de l’article interroge plus spécifiquement cette dimension servicielle.

On discute notamment l’opportunité d’exploiter ces dispositifs pour renouveler les circuits de mise en visibilité et d’appel à contribution des évaluateurs, rapporteurs ou experts d’un domaine scientifique.

URL : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00550933/fr/

Electronic Publishing, Knowledge Sharing and Open Access: A New Environment for Political Science

In this article, we present an overview of the major changes occurring in electronic publishing, with a focus on open access. We shall argue that the notion itself of publication is undergoing a deep transformation, as it is no longer the monopoly of a limited number of specialised companies and institutions, but, through the web, it has become an option available to an infinite number of collective and individual actors.

URL : http://www.palgrave-journals.com/eps/journal/v9/n1s/abs/eps201035a.html

Les carnets de recherche en ligne, espac…

Les carnets de recherche en ligne, espace d’une conversation scientifique décentrée :

“Le carnet de recherches produit un décentrement des lieux d’écriture vers des espaces moins codifiés et moins formels que les espaces de publication traditionnels, prenant ainsi le relais de formes plus volatiles et moins individuelles de conversation. Ce qui est en jeu est moins une économie de l’écriture que de la lecture. En jetant les bases d’une nouvelle relation au lectorat, le carnet de recherche offre l’opportunité de réinventer l’écriture scientifique autour du paradigme de la conversation, renouant ainsi avec une vieille tradition de débat scientifique, tout en se dotant d’une rhétorique adaptée au nouvel espace qui se met en place.”

URL : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00439849/fr/

Fractional counting of citations in rese…

Fractional counting of citations in research evaluation: An option for cross- and interdisciplinary assessments :

“In the case of the scientometric evaluation of multi- or interdisciplinary units one risks to compare apples with oranges: each paper has to assessed in comparison to an appropriate reference set. We suggest that the set of citing papers first can be considered as the relevant representation of the field of impact. In order to normalize for differences in citation behavior among fields, citations can be fractionally counted proportionately to the length of the reference lists in the citing papers. This new method enables us to compare among units with different disciplinary affiliations at the paper level and also to assess the statistical significance of differences among sets. Twenty-seven departments of the Tsinghua University in Beijing are thus compared. Among them, the Department of Chinese Language and Linguistics is upgraded from the 19th to the second position in the ranking. The overall impact of 19 of the 27 departments is not significantly different at the 5% level when thus normalized for different citation potentials”.

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.0359

How and why scholars cite on Twitter

Scholars are increasingly using the microblogging service Twitter as a communication platform. Since citing is a central practice of scholarly communication, we investigated whether and how scholars cite on Twitter.

We conducted interviews and harvested 46,515 tweets from a sample of 28 scholars and found that they do cite on Twitter, though often indirectly. Twitter citations are part of a fast-moving conversation that participants believe reflects scholarly impact. Twitter citation metrics could augment traditional citation analysis, supporting a “scientometrics 2.0”.

URL : http://clintlalonde.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/201_Final_Submission.pdf

E-only scholarly journals: overcoming th…

E-only scholarly journals: overcoming the barriers :

“In recent years, publishers, librarians and academics have seized the opportunities offered by the electronic publication of scholarly journals. Despite the popularity of e-journals, however, content continues to be published, acquired and used in physical printed form. In the UK, we are still some way from a wholly electronic journal environment. This study is prompted by a concern from publishers and librarians that the retention of both printed and e-journal formats adds unnecessary costs throughout the supply chain from publisher to library to user. In view of the many advantages of electronic journals, this report sets out to understand the barriers to a move to e-only provision of scholarly journals in the UK, and to investigate what various players within the scholarly communications system could do in order to encourage such a move.”

URL : http://www.rin.ac.uk/system/files/attachments/E-only_report_for_screen.pdf