Open Access Scholarly Communication in Malaysia :
« This paper reports on Open Access Scholarly Communication in Malaysia, investigating their use of open access repositories, advocacy undertaken, and reasons for contribution to global scholarship. The outcome wills very much in line with the stipulations willing Scholarly on Open access that will preserve and disseminate digital materials created by, or associated with the university. »
URL : http://hdl.handle.net/10760/16557
The Effect of Free Access on the Diffusion of Scholarly Ideas :
« This study examines a relationship between free access to research articles and the diffusion of their ideas as measured by citation counts. While free access should, in theory, help the diffusion of ideas, many researchers have debated the existence of the benefit of free access: reported empirical findings range from zero or negative effect to an over 300% increase of citations of non-free articles. By using a dataset from the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), an open repository of research articles, and employing a natural experiment that allows the estimation of the value of free access separate from confounding factors such as early viewership and quality differential, this study identifies the causal effect of free access on the citation counts. The natural experiment in this study is that a select group of published articles is posted on SSRN at a time chosen by their authors’ affiliated organizations or SSRN, not by their authors. Using a difference-in-difference method and comparing the citation profiles of the articles before and after the posting time on SSRN against a group of control articles with similar characteristics, I stimated the effect of the SSRN posting on citation counts. The articles posted on SSRN receive more citations even prior to being posted on SSRN, suggesting that they are of higher quality. Their citation counts further increase after being posted, gaining an additional 10-20% of citations. This gain is likely to be caused by the free access that SSRN provides. »
URL : http://mis.eller.arizona.edu/events/speakers_series/2012/mis_speaker_series_Heekyung_Kim.asp
Online survey on scientific information in the digital age :
« The public consultation ‘Online survey on scientific information in the digital age’ spurred great interest among different categories of stakeholders, with 1 140 responses received. The Commission received responses from 42 countries, including from all Member States except Ireland, Malta, Slovenia and Slovakia, with 37 % of all responses submitted by German respondents.
Respondents were asked if there is no access problem to scientific publications in Europe: 84 % disagreed or disagreed strongly with the statement. The high prices of journals/subscriptions (89 %) and limited library budgets (85 %) were signalled as the most important barriers to accessing scientific publications. More than 1 000 respondents (90 %) supported the idea that publications resulting from publicly funded research should, as a matter of principle, be in open access (OA) mode. An even higher number of respondents (91 %) agreed or agreed strongly that OA increased access to and dissemination of scientific publications. Self-archiving (‘green OA’) or a combination of self-archiving and OA publishing (‘gold OA’) were identified as the preferred ways that public research policy should facilitate in order to increase the number and share of scientific publications available in OA. Respondents were asked, in the case of self-archiving (‘green OA’), what the desirable embargo period is (period of time during which publication is not yet open access): a six-month period was favoured by 56 % of respondents (although 25 % disagree with this option).
As for the question of access to research data, the vast majority of respondents (87 %) disagreed or disagreed strongly with the statement that there is no access problem for research data in Europe. The barriers to access research data considered very important or important by respondents were: lack of funding to develop and maintain the necessary infrastructures (80 %); the insufficient credit given to researchers for making research data available (80 %); and insufficient national/regional strategies/policies (79 %). There was strong support (90 % of responses) for research data that is publicly available and results
from public funding to be, as a matter of principle, available for reuse and free of charge on the Internet. Lower support (72 % of responses) was given for data resulting from partly publicly and partly privately funded research.
Responding to the question asking whether preservation of scientific information is at present sufficiently addressed, 64 % of the respondents disagreed or disagreed strongly. The main barriers signalled in this area were: uncertainty as to who is responsible for preserving scientific information (80 %); the quality and interoperability of repositories (78 %); and the lack of a harmonised approach to legal deposit (69 %). »
URL : http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/survey-on-scientific-information-digital-age_en.pdf
It is no secret that Online Social Media (OSM) has become mainstream in recent years, and their adoption has skyrocketed. As a result of their growing popularity, numerous studies have been conducted on how the general public is using OSM.
However, very little work has been done on how scholars are using and adapting to these new tools in their professional life. In an attempt to fill this significant gap in the research literature, we recently conducted a comprehensive online survey to discover if, how and why scholars are using these new media for communication and knowledge dissemination.
In particular, we focussed on how academics in the social sciences use social media tools for professional purposes, and the implications that this might have on the future of scholarly communication and publishing practices in the age of online social media.
From Stacks to the Web: the Transformation of Academic Library Collecting :
« The existence of a ubiquitous and cheap worldwide communication’s network that increasingly makes documents easily and freely available will require a transformation of academic library collecting practice. It will be driven by a number of specific developments including: the digitization of content; the development of print repositories; the development of e-readers and print-on-demand publishing; the growth of open access; challenges to establish academic publishing organizations; and the growth of new forms of scholarship based on openness and social productivity. If academic libraries are to be successful, they will need to: deconstruct legacy print collections; move from item-by-item book selection to purchase-on-demand and subscriptions; manage the transition to open access journals; focus on curating unique items; and develop new mechanisms for funding national infrastructure »
URL : http://crl.acrl.org/content/early/2012/01/09/crl-309.abstract
Afin de mieux connaître les usages et pratiques des comportements de publications au sein des communautés scientifiques de l’Observatoire des Sciences de l’Univers de Grenoble (OSUG), un questionnaire a été diffusé sous format numérique en juin 2011.
Une première partie représente les comportements globaux des chercheurs dans les différents aspects de la publication. La deuxième et la troisième partie abordent les pratiques liées, respectivement, à l’Open Access et aux archives ouvertes, ainsi que les perceptions de ces deux modèles alternatifs dans le secteur de la publication.
La dernière partie fait une rapide synthèse du profil type des répondants et présente les mots-clés récoltés pour chaque laboratoires composant l’OSUG.
Achieving rigor and relevance in online multimedia scholarly publishing :
« This paper discusses the importance of relevance and rigor in scholarly publishing in a new media–rich world. We defend that scholarship should be useful and engaging to audiences through the use of new media, and at the same time scholarly publishers must develop and maintain methods of ensuring content accuracy and providing quality controls in the production of scholarly multimedia products. We review examples and a case study of existing scholarly publishing venues that attempt to maintain quality control standards while embracing innovative multimedia formats. We also present lessons learned from the case experience and challenges that face us in the scholarly publication of multimedia. »
URL : http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3762/3119