Archives des mots-clés : scientific practices

Incentives and motivations for sharing research data: researcher’s perspectives

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“This study, commissioned by Knowledge Exchange, has gathered evidence, examples and opinions on current and future incentives for research data sharing from the researcher’s point of view, in order to provide recommendations for policy and practice development on how best to incentivise data access and reuse. Whilst most researchers appreciate the benefits of sharing research data, on an individual basis they may be reluctant to share their own data. This study is based on qualitative interviews with 22 selected researchers of five research teams that have established data sharing cultures, in the partner countries of Knowledge Exchange: Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The five case studies span various academic disciplines: arts and humanities, social sciences, biomedicine, chemistry and biology.”

URL : Incentives and motivations for sharing research data: researcher’s perspectives

Alternative URL : http://knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=733

An Efficiency Comparison of Document Preparation Systems Used in Academic Research and Development

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The choice of an efficient document preparation system is an important decision for any academic researcher. To assist the research community, we report a software usability study in which 40 researchers across different disciplines prepared scholarly texts with either Microsoft Word or LaTeX. The probe texts included simple continuous text, text with tables and subheadings, and complex text with several mathematical equations. We show that LaTeX users were slower than Word users, wrote less text in the same amount of time, and produced more typesetting, orthographical, grammatical, and formatting errors. On most measures, expert LaTeX users performed even worse than novice Word users. LaTeX users, however, more often report enjoying using their respective software. We conclude that even experienced LaTeX users may suffer a loss in productivity when LaTeX is used, relative to other document preparation systems. Individuals, institutions, and journals should carefully consider the ramifications of this finding when choosing document preparation strategies, or requiring them of authors.

URL : https://microblogging.infodocs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/journal.pone.0115069.pdf

DOI : 10.1371/journal.pone.0115069

Patterns of Text Reuse in a Scientific Corpus

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“We consider the incidence of text “reuse” by researchers, via a systematic pairwise comparison of the text content of all articles deposited to arXiv.org from 1991–2012. We measure the global frequencies of three classes of text reuse, and measure how chronic text reuse is distributed among authors in the dataset. We infer a baseline for accepted practice, perhaps surprisingly permissive compared with other societal contexts, and a clearly delineated set of aberrant authors. We find a negative correlation between the amount of reused text in an article and its influence, as measured by subsequent citations. Finally, we consider the distribution of countries of origin of articles containing large amounts of reused text.”

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.2716

A Survey of Physical Sciences, Engineering and Mathematics Faculty Regarding Author Fees in Open Access Journals

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“Discussions of the potential of open access publishing frequently must contend with the skepticism of research authors regarding the need to pay author fees (also known as publication fees). With that in mind, the authors undertook a survey of faculty, postdocs, and graduate students in physical science, mathematics, and engineering fields at two research universities (Cornell University and Syracuse University) asking for their experience with and opinion of paying author fees for publication of research in open access journals. The results of this survey indicated that most respondents had not decided against publishing in an open access journal due to the author fee requirement. Those who had paid them only requested or received coverage for those fees in grant line-items or from institutional sources in a few cases. Responses seemed to combine cautious optimism about open access journals with intense skepticism about their quality and intense opposition to the idea of having to pay any additional costs from their own pockets.”

URL : http://www.istl.org/14-fall/refereed1.html

The Scholarly Communications Needs of Faculty: An Evidence-Based Foundation for the Development of Library Services

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“Objectives – This exploratory research seeks to broadly understand the publishing behaviours and attitudes of faculty, across all disciplines, at the University of Saskatchewan in response to the growing significance of open access publishing and archiving. The objective for seeking this understanding is to discover the current and emerging needs of researchers in order to determine if scholarly communications services are in demand here and, if so, to provide an evidence-based foundation for the potential future development of such a program of services at the University Library, University of Saskatchewan.

Methods – All faculty members at the University of Saskatchewan were sent personalized email invitations to participate in a short online survey during the month of November 2012. The survey was composed of four parts: Current Research and Publishing Activities/Behaviours; Open Access Behaviours, Awareness, and Attitudes; Needs Assessment; and Demographics. Descriptive and inferential statistics were calculated.

Results – The survey elicited 291 complete responses – a 21.9% response rate. Results suggest that faculty already have a high level of support for the open access movement, and considerable awareness of it. However, there remains a lack of knowledge regarding their rights as authors, a low familiarity with tools available to support them in their scholarly communications activities, and substantial resistance to paying the article processing charges of some open access journals. Survey respondents also provided a considerable number of comments – perhaps an indication of their engagement with these issues and desire for a forum in which to discuss them. It is reasonable to speculate that those who chose not to respond to this survey likely have less interest in, and support of, open access. Hence, the scholarly communications needs of this larger group of non-respondents are conceivably even greater.

Conclusion – Faculty at the University of Saskatchewan are in considerable need of scholarly communications services. Areas of most need include: advice and guidance on authors’ rights issues such as retention of copyright; more education and support with resources such as subject repositories; and additional assistance with article processing charges. The University Library could play a valuable role in increasing the research productivity and impact of faculty by aiding them in these areas.”

URL : The Scholarly Communications Needs of Faculty

Alternative URL : http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/21764

 

L’offre de réseaux socio numériques pour les scientifiques : services et stratégies d’acteurs

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Auteur/Author : Emma Bester

Aux côtés des services généralistes et professionnels de sites de réseaux socio numériques (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn), se développe une offre pléthorique dédiée spécifiquement aux chercheurs (Academia.edu, ResearchGate, etc.). Nous nous interrogeons dans cet article sur la valeur ajoutée de ces services pour la communication scientifique.

L’analyse fonctionnelle portée sur un échantillon de dix sites de réseaux socio numériques dédiés aux scientifiques permet dans un premier temps d’en distinguer les caractéristiques structurelles et les caractéristiques spécifiques. La discussion aborde dans un second temps la logique d’acteurs à l’œuvre dans l’économie numérique pour l’information scientifique, en distinguant les intérêts propres des porteurs des offres des enjeux auxquels la communauté scientifique s’affronte aujourd’hui, en regard notamment du mouvement pour le libre accès.

URL : http://lesenjeux.u-grenoble3.fr/2014/02-Bester/index.html

The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast

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“This working paper explores the consequences for historians’ research practice of the twinned transnational and digital turns. The accelerating digitization of historians’ sources (scholarly, periodical, and archival) and the radical shift in the granularity of access to information within them has radically changes historians’ research practice. Yet this has incited remarkably little reflection regarding the consequences for individual projects or collective knowledge generation. What are the implications for international research in particular? This essay heralds the new kinds of historical knowledge-generation made possible by web access to digitized, text-searchable sources. It also attempts an accounting of all that we formerly, unwittingly, gained from the frictions inherent to international research in an analog world. What are the intellectual and political consequences of that which has been lost?”

URL : http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/20882/