A Foundational Proposal for Making the D…

A Foundational Proposal for Making the Durham Statement Real :
“This outline is an attempt to synthesize the issues surrounding the ambitious project of the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship into a coherent, though still quite preliminary solution. At the heart is the conviction that the problems of digital publishing are best solved by a stable and open organization of and by the stakeholders.”
URL : http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/working_papers/29/

Scientific journal publishing: yearly vo…

Scientific journal publishing: yearly volume and open access availability :
Introduction. We estimate the total yearly volume of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles published world-wide as well as the share of these articles available openly on the Web either directly or as copies in e-print repositories.
Method. We rely on data from two commercial databases (ISI and Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory) supplemented by sampling and Google searches.
Analysis. A central issue is the finding that ISI-indexed journals publish far more articles per year (111) than non ISI-indexed journals (26), which means that the total figure we obtain is much lower than many earlier estimates. Our method of analysing the number of repository copies (green open access) differs from several earlier studies which have studied the number of copies in identified repositories, since we start from a random sample of articles and then test if copies can be found by a Web search engine.
Results. We estimate that in 2006 the total number of articles published was approximately 1,350,000. Of this number 4.6% became immediately openly available and an additional 3.5% after an embargo period of, typically, one year. Furthermore, usable copies of 11.3% could be found in subject-specific or institutional repositories or on the home pages of the authors.
Conclusions. We believe our results are the most reliable so far published and, therefore, should be useful in the on-going debate about Open Access among both academics and science policy makers. The method is replicable and also lends itself to longitudinal studies in the future.”
URL : http://informationr.net/ir/14-1/paper391.html

Use and relevance of web 2.0 for researc…

Use and relevance of web 2.0 for researchers :
“The project enquires into the factors that influence researchers to adopt and use Web 2.0 tools, and conversely the factors that prevent, constrain or discourage usage.
The study also explores whether and how web 2.0 tools are changing researchers’ behaviour in significant ways, and what implications this might have for researchers, institutions, librarians, information professionals and funders. We sought evidence on whether web 2.0 tools are:
* making data easier to share, verify and re-use, or otherwise facilitating more open scientific practices
* changing discovery techniques or enhancing the accessibility of research information
* changing researchers publication and dissemination behaviour, (for example, due to the ease of publishing work-in-progress and grey literature), and
* changing practices around communicating research findings (for example through opportunities for iterative processes of feedback, pre-publishing, or post-publication peer review).”
URL : http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/use-and-relevance-web-20-researchers

New Gateways to Scholarly Communication …

New Gateways to Scholarly Communication through Open Access :
“The draumatic changes in 21st century has been occurred in the world of publication of scolarly communication.One of the phenomenais of Open Access Publishing Model.The open access movement is increasingly guiding the publishing practices of scholarly research. This paper will look at developments in the open access movement, how open access affects scholarly communication, and what eventual role librarians will play in its progress.”
URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/18044/

Scientometrics 2.0: Toward new metrics o…

Scientometrics 2.0: Toward new metrics of scholarly impact on the social Web :
“The growing flood of scholarly literature is exposing the weaknesses of current, citation–based methods of evaluating and filtering articles. A novel and promising approach is to examine the use and citation of articles in a new forum: Web 2.0 services like social bookmarking and microblogging. Metrics based on this data could build a “Scientometics 2.0,” supporting richer and more timely pictures of articles’ impact. This paper develops the most comprehensive list of these services to date, assessing the potential value and availability of data from each. We also suggest the next steps toward building and validating metrics drawn from the social Web.”
URL : http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2874/2570

The Accessibility of Open Access Materia…

The Accessibility of Open Access Materials in Libraries :
“Librarians often champion open access (OA) as a sustainable alternative to the current scholarly communications system, which is widely accepted as being in a state of crisis. However, there has been little insight into how far libraries are making this support tangible by providing access to OA publications in their OPACs and other library pathways. This study conducted a large-scale survey of US library holdings to determine the extent that records of journals from the Directory of Open Access Journals are held by WorldCat-affiliated Academic libraries. It then followed up with a questionnaire inquiring into the attitudes and practices of librarians from 100 libraries that were ranked highest out of the total population in terms of their holdings of DOAJ journals. The main objective of the study was to develop a better understanding of the factors influencing the incorporation of OA materials into a university library’s holdings, where and by what means they typically appear on library websites, and how librarians feel about having these materials in their collections. Our findings suggest that the majority (54%) of WorldCat-affiliated US academic libraries have at least one record for a DOAJ journal in their holdings. It additionally suggests that librarians from institutions holding high numbers of DOAJ records generally have very positive attitudes towards OA, even though most of the respondents from these institutions were largely unaware that their holdings were more heavily weighted towards DOAJ records than at comparable institutions. Regarding library selection of OA titles, a journal’s subject matter was highlighted as a more important consideration than its access model. Additional findings suggest that large publishers of OA journals tend to have a higher representation in library holdings than smaller independent publishers. ”
URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/18766/