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

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

“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/

The Practicality of Resource Sharing in Academic Law Libraries in South-western Nigeria

“This study explores the practicability of resource sharing amongst Nigerian academic law libraries by looking at academic law libraries in south-west Nigeria. Judgmental sampling technique was used in selecting four law librarians while simple random technique was used in selecting four law faculties in south west, Nigeria. Phone and electronic mails were used for gathering data from these law librarians through the use of interview research method. Data was analyzed by arranging responses into facets; thus like facets were grouped together and evidences representing issues in this study were selected and used as evidences of findings. Findings from this study showed that there is no practice of resource sharing in law libraries in south-west Nigeria. Though further findings showed that some Federal University Libraries which have equal digital strength were at the initialization stage of forming a consortium for sharing of e-resources; however law libraries were not included in the consortium; though it is assumed that they might be included later. Lack of innovation, lack of zeal, and lack of interest from the Council of Nigerian Legal Education(CNLE) on resource sharing were found as factors behind non-practicability of resource sharing in the law libraries studied. Findings also showed that the interest of Nigerian Council of Legal Education(CNLE) on collaboration by law libraries would boost immediate results. Admittance, a long old culture in which students visit other libraries and use their resources was the only form of sharing found among law libraries; and there was no written or oral agreement to it. it was also found that there was no form of written or oral policy on resource sharing in the law libraries explored. It was concluded that further studies under resource sharing be done using interview (face to face) method in order to get in-depth data on reasons behind non-practicability of resource sharing . It was also concluded that further study on this topic be made in-order to find other reasons not shown in this research findings .”

URL : http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/1120/

What Do Researchers Need? Feedback On Use of Online Primary Source Materials

“Cultural heritage institutions are increasingly providing online access to primary source materials for researchers. While the intent is to enable round-the-clock access from any location, few studies have examined the extent to which current web delivery is meeting the needs of users. Careful use of limited resources requires intelligent assessment of researcher needs in comparison to the actual online presentation, including access, retrieval and usage options. In the hopes of impacting future delivery methods and access development, this article describes the results of a qualitative study of 11 humanities faculty researchers at the University of Alabama, who describe and rate the importance of various issues encountered when using 29 participant-selected online databases.”

URL : http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july14/deridder/07deridder.html

The Determinants of Open Access Publishing: Survey Evidence from Countries in the Mediterranean Open Access Network (MedOANet)

“We discuss the results of a survey conducted between April 2013 and May 2014 in six Mediterranean countries and covering 2,528 researchers from Spain (1,291), Portugal (142), France (380), Italy (596), Turkey (131) and Greece (130). We compare the results to our German survey with 1,913 respondents. We show that there are significant differences between the scientific disciplines with respect to researcher’s awareness of and experience with both open access (OA) journals and self-archiving. Accordingly, the publishing culture (e.g. reputation, publishing language) but also other issues like age and certain policies (MedOANet) may explain why researchers make more frequent use of OA publishing in some countries and disciplines.”

URL : http://ssrn.com/abstract=2457550

Qu’est-ce qu’une archive de chercheur ?

“Au cours de sa carrière, un chercheur est amené à produire, consulter et conserver différents types de documents. Carnets, agendas, brouillons de toutes formes, livres annotés forment bien souvent la grande partie des fonds d’archives disponibles. La prise en compte et l’étude de ces documents témoignent d’une activité prenante, mais permettent surtout de saisir les évolutions, les tâtonnements et les manières de faire propres à tel ou tel chercheur. En décidant d’explorer certaines pratiques concrètes qui se matérialisent dans les archives, Jean-François Bert met l’accent sur l’aspect ordinaire de l’activité savante afin de comprendre le processus de la recherche, dans sa singularité et souvent sa grande complexité. Cet ouvrage, synthétique et richement documenté, donne les outils essentiels à une meilleure compréhension et à un usage profondément renouvelé des archives de chercheur.”

URL : http://books.openedition.org/oep/438

ResearchGate: Disseminating, communicating, and measuring Scholarship?

“ResearchGate is a social network site for academics to create their own profiles, list their publications, and interact with each other. Like Academia.edu, it provides a new way for scholars to disseminate their work and hence potentially changes the dynamics of informal scholarly communication. This article assesses whether ResearchGate usage and publication data broadly reflect existing academic hierarchies and whether individual countries are set to benefit or lose out from the site. The results show that rankings based on ResearchGate statistics correlate moderately well with other rankings of academic institutions, suggesting that ResearchGate use broadly reflects the traditional distribution of academic capital. Moreover, while Brazil, India, and some other countries seem to be disproportionately taking advantage of ResearchGate, academics in China, South Korea, and Russia may be missing opportunities to use ResearchGate to maximize the academic impact of their publications.”

URL : http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/papers/ResearchGate.pdf