Archives des mots-clés : scientific communication

Open access and research dissemination in Africa

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Authors : Katie Wilson, Anthony Kiuna, Richard Lamptey, Susan Veldsman, Lucy Montgomery, Cameron Neylon, Richard Hosking, Karl Huang, Alkim Ozaygen

This paper discusses research undertaken by the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) and participants during and following an Open Knowledge international workshop held in Mauritius in September 2019.

The workshop brought together key experts to explore the role of open knowledge in the creation of equitable and inclusive global knowledge landscapes.

This paper explores the role of open access and institutional repositories in knowledge sharing and the dissemination of research output from higher education and research institutions within the African continent.

The paper reviews the landscape of research output from the African continent; analyses open access research output, overviews of institutional knowledge sharing positions and the dissemination of research output from Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02544891

Towards a typology of edited books and conference proceedings according to the applied peer-review procedures

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Author : Iva Zlodi

In the last years here is an increasing need to ensure a more objective and transparent evaluation of scientific research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. This short paper explores some of the underlying issues and suggests a study using the suvey method based on a sample of 146 publications.

The results of this study could contribute to the identification and describing distinctive types of edited books and conference proceedings according to their peer-review procedures, and thus to facilitate the recognition of their scholarly value and reliability.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02544293

Using social media to promote academic research: Identifying the benefits of twitter for sharing academic work

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Authors : Samara Klar, Yanna Krupnikov, John Barry Ryan, Kathleen Searles, Yotam Shmargad

To disseminate research, scholars once relied on university media services or journal press releases, but today any academic can turn to Twitter to share their published work with a broader audience.

The possibility that scholars can push their research out, rather than hope that it is pulled in, holds the potential for scholars to draw wide attention to their research. In this manuscript, we examine whether there are systematic differences in the types of scholars who most benefit from this push model.

Specifically, we investigate the extent to which there are gender differences in the dissemination of research via Twitter.

We carry out our analyses by tracking tweet patterns for articles published in six journals across two fields (political science and communication), and we pair this Twitter data with demographic and educational data about the authors of the published articles, as well as article citation rates.

We find considerable evidence that, overall, article citations are positively correlated with tweets about the article, and we find little evidence to suggest that author gender affects the transmission of research in this new media.

URL : Using social media to promote academic research: Identifying the benefits of twitter for sharing academic work

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229446

How Can We Use Social Media Data Related to OA Monographs

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Authors : Alkim Ozaygen, Lucy Montgomery, Cameron Neylon, Katie Wilson, RichardHosking, Karl Huang

This paper reports on a study of social media events relating to 28 Open Access (OA) monographs, published between 2014 and 2015. As with citations (Cronin 1981) social media events represent the frozen footprints of the journey that monographs take as they move through digital landscapes.

The study captured mentions of the study-set of monographs via Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia and online blogs; as well as user ratings on Google Books, Amazon and Goodreads.

Information relating to the ways in which the books were bookmarked and cited was captured via the online reference managing platform Mendeley. The benefits and limitations of different altmetrics approaches to capturing and analyzing this data are discussed.

Practical suggestions for researchers interested in the application of Altmetrics approaches to studies of monographs are also provided.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02544911

SPI-Hub™: a gateway to scholarly publishing information

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Authors : Taneya Y. Koonce, Mallory N. Blasingame, Jerry Zhao, Annette M. Williams, Jing Su, Spencer J. DesAutels, Dario A. Giuse, John D. Clark, Zachary E. Fox, Nunzia Bettinsoli Giuse

Background

Advances in the health sciences rely on sharing research and data through publication. As information professionals are often asked to contribute their knowledge to assist clinicians and researchers in selecting journals for publication, the authors recognized an opportunity to build a decision support tool, SPI-Hub: Scholarly Publishing Information Hub™, to capture the team’s collective publishing industry knowledge, while carefully retaining the quality of service.

Case Presentation

SPI-Hub’s decision support functionality relies on a data framework that describes journal publication policies and practices through a newly designed metadata structure, the Knowledge Management Journal Record™.

Metadata fields are populated through a semi-automated process that uses custom programming to access content from multiple sources. Each record includes 25 metadata fields representing best publishing practices. Currently, the database includes more than 24,000 health sciences journal records.

To correctly capture the resources needed for both completion and future maintenance of the project, the team conducted an internal study to assess time requirements for completing records through different stages of automation.

Conclusions

The journal decision support tool, SPI-Hub, provides an opportunity to assess publication practices by compiling data from a variety of sources in a single location.

Automated and semi-automated approaches have effectively reduced the time needed for data collection.

Through a comprehensive knowledge management framework and the incorporation of multiple quality points specific to each journal, SPI-Hub provides prospective users with both recommendations for publication and holistic assessment of the trustworthiness of journals in which to publish research and acquire trusted knowledge.

URL : SPI-Hub™: a gateway to scholarly publishing information

Original location : http://jmla.pitt.edu/ojs/jmla/article/view/815

The impact of institutional repositories: a systematic review

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Authors : Michelle R. Demetres, Diana Delgado, Drew N. Wright

Objective

Institutional repositories are platforms for presenting and publicizing scholarly output that might not be suitable to publish in a peer-reviewed journal or that must meet open access requirements.

However, there are many challenges associated with their launch and up-keep. The objective of this systematic review was to define the impacts of institutional repositories (IRs) on an academic institution, thus justifying their implementation and/or maintenance.

Methods

A comprehensive literature search was performed in the following databases: Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid EMBASE, the Cochrane Library (Wiley), ERIC (ProQuest), Web of Science (Core Collection), Scopus (Elsevier), and Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (EBSCO). A total of 6,593 citations were screened against predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Results

Thirteen included studies were divided into 3 areas of impact: citation count, exposure or presence, and administrative impact. Those focusing on citation count (n=5) and exposure or presence (n=7) demonstrated positive impacts of IRs on institutions and researchers.

One study focusing on administrative benefit demonstrated the utility of IRs in automated population of ORCID profiles.

Conclusion

Based on the available literature, IRs appear to have a positive impact on citation count, exposure or presence, and administrative burden. To draw stronger conclusions, more and higher-quality studies are needed.

URL : The impact of institutional repositories: a systematic review

Original location : http://jmla.pitt.edu/ojs/jmla/article/view/856

Faculty knowledge and attitudes regarding predatory open access journals: a needs assessment study

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Authors : Stephanie M. Swanberg, Joanna Thielen, Nancy Bulgarelli

Objective

The purpose of predatory open access (OA) journals is primarily to make a profit rather than to disseminate quality, peer-reviewed research.

Publishing in these journals could negatively impact faculty reputation, promotion, and tenure, yet many still choose to do so. Therefore, the authors investigated faculty knowledge and attitudes regarding predatory OA journals.

Methods

A twenty-item questionnaire containing both quantitative and qualitative items was developed and piloted. All university and medical school faculty were invited to participate.

The survey included knowledge questions that assessed respondents’ ability to identify predatory OA journals and attitudinal questions about such journals. Chi-square tests were used to detect differences between university and medical faculty.

Results

A total of 183 faculty completed the survey: 63% were university and 37% were medical faculty. Nearly one-quarter (23%) had not previously heard of the term “predatory OA journal.”

Most (87%) reported feeling very confident or confident in their ability to assess journal quality, but only 60% correctly identified a journal as predatory, when given a journal in their field to assess.

Chi-square tests revealed that university faculty were more likely to correctly identify a predatory OA journal (p=0.0006) and have higher self-reported confidence in assessing journal quality, compared with medical faculty (p=0.0391).

Conclusions

Survey results show that faculty recognize predatory OA journals as a problem. These attitudes plus the knowledge gaps identified in this study will be used to develop targeted educational interventions for faculty in all disciplines at our university.

URL : Faculty knowledge and attitudes regarding predatory open access journals: a needs assessment study

Original location : http://jmla.pitt.edu/ojs/jmla/article/view/849