Month: May 2018

Mapping the global influence of published research on industry and innovation | Nature Biotechnology

Public research is critical to the economy and to society. However, tangible economic and social impact occurs only when research outputs are combined, used and reused with other elements and capabilities, to deliver a product, practice or service. Assessing the context and influence of scholarship during the dynamic process of innovation rather than measuring ex post impact, may improve performance. With this aim, we have integrated and interconnected scholarly citations with global patent literature and created new tools to link the scholarly literature with the patent literature. The resulting tools we present here enable diverse stakeholders to freely evaluate the influence published research has on the generation and potential use of inventions as reflected by the patent system. We outline an evolving toolkit, Lens Influence Mapping, that allows assessment of individual scholarly works and aggregated outputs of authors for influence on industry and enterprise, as measured by citations within patents. This performance measure, applied at many levels and normalized by either research disciplines or technology fields of use, may expose and highlight institutional strength and practices, and guide future partnerships.

Source: Mapping the global influence of published research on industry and innovation | Nature Biotechnology

Does openness and open access policy relate to the success of universities?: EBSCOhost

Author: Olsbo, Pekka

Comment:
A brief article that speculates on a potential correlation or connectjon between open access repositories rankings (RWR) and wider university rankings (RWU) for top 4-5 universities in Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Austria. Compares changes in position in the two ranking systems from 2012 to 2013. Perhaps open access policies are a reason?  Limited data but interesting hypothesis.

Abstract.
This study takes a closer look at the Ranking Web of Universities and Ranking Web of Repositories rankings and tries to examine if there is a connection between these two rankings. Study is done by analyzing the success of University of Jyväskylä and the institutional repository JyX of the University in these rankings. Comparison shows that the JyX archive plays an important role in University’s success especially when analyzing the presence and openness of the University. By analyzing the success of eight European countries in these rankings and cross reading these findings with the development of
relative citation impact shown in a report by the Finnish Academy, some interesting common trends can be seen. The same three countries Finland, Denmark and Norway seem to be on their way up in all comparisons. Open Access activities in these countries can be seen as one explaining factor.
Olsbo, P. (2013). Does openness and open access policy relate to the success of universities? Information Services & Use 33, 87–91.

Source: Does openness and open access policy relate to the success of universities?: EBSCOhost

Ethnographic approaches to the practices of scholarly communication: tackling the mess of academia

 

Author: Donna Lanclos

Summary: A discussion of ethnographic perspectives in mapping information and learning environments. Particularly explores the ways in which people’s experience spreads beyond their institution and offers some ways to think about mapping and analysing these perspectives.

Extract: In my anthropological research in academic libraries, and in higher education generally, I have encountered a contrast between the ways that institutions approach the information systems they build and buy, and how people use those systems. Confronting the ‘mess’ of people’s everyday practice is a necessary first step towards more effectively connecting people to the resources they want and need. Here I discuss some of the ways to visualize and embrace the actual practices of people, in physical and digital contexts.

[…]

Institutionally unbounded practices are messy and unpredictable, and they are much more interesting practices to engage in. In fact, I would argue that it is our responsibility to recognize the effectiveness of those practices. Institutions would be served better by engaging in far less locked-down control of scholarly content, because any sense of control that they have is an illusion in the first place. We do not have to control people’s practices to be able to equip them to be effective practitioners. We do not have to control people’s practices to be able to equip them to be well-educated citizens who are capable of making good decisions.

Lanclos, D. (2016). Ethnographic approaches to the practices of scholarly communication: tackling the mess of academia. Insights 29. http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.316

Source: Ethnographic approaches to the practices of scholarly communication: tackling the mess of academia

Evidence of Open Access of scientific publications in Google Scholar: a large-scale analysis

Authors: Alberto Martín-Martín, Rodrigo Costas, Thed van Leeuwen, Emilio Delgado López-Cózar

Comment: This articles made use of Google Scholar (GS) to access links to available full texts of articles and reviews (limited to those with DOIs) in Web of Science (for 2009 and 2014). A python script was used to query GS (across a pool of IP addresses off-campus) for each DOI in the sample. Extracting data from GS took 3 months. Sources that provided full texts were then classified using DOAJ (publishers), OpenROAR, ROAR (repositories) and CrossRef (open license). This included manually checking about 1000 hosts as well. These were combined to determine OA status of individual DOI. Data was processed in R. The results were summarised and compared across disciplines and countries. Also, the numbers were similar to other recent large-scale studies on OA status that used similar data sets. This article also gave a good review on the literature of OA publication, licensing and copyright issues.

Abstract: This article uses Google Scholar (GS) as a source of data to analyse Open  Access (OA) levels across all countries and fields of research. All articles and reviews with a DOI and published in 2009 or 2014 and covered by the three main citation indexes in the Web of Science (2,269,022 documents) were selected for study. The links to freely available versions of these documents displayed in GS were collected. To differentiate between more reliable (sustainable and legal) forms of access and less reliable ones, the data extracted from GS was combined with information available in DOAJ, CrossRef, OpenDOAR, and ROAR. This allowed us to distinguish the percentage of documents in our sample that are made OA by the publisher (23.1%, including Gold, Hybrid, Delayed, and Bronze OA) from those available as Green OA (17.6%), and those available from other sources (40.6%, mainly due to ResearchGate). The data shows an overall free availability of 54.6%, with important differences at the country and subject category levels. The data extracted from GS yielded very similar results to those found by other studies that analysed similar samples of documents, but employed different methods to find evidence of OA, thus suggesting a relative consistency among methods.

Martín-Martín, A., Costas, R., van Leeuwen, T., & Delgado López-Cózar, E. (2018). Evidence of Open Access of scientific publications in Google Scholar: a large-scale analysis. https://doi.org/10.17605/osf.io/k54uv

Source: Evidence of Open Access of scientific publications in Google Scholar: a large-scale analysis

Does Information Really Want to be Free? Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the Question of Openness | Christen | International Journal of Communication

Does Information Really Want to be Free? Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the Question of Openness

Author: Kimberly A. Christen

Comment:
Explores and discusses indigenous perspectives of openness and how indigenous groups have developed and used digital technology to manage and share information. In particular, the author discusses the Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari archive in 2007 , developed with the Warumungu community in Tennant Creek , and expansion to the Mukurtu CMS, adaptable for use by any indigenous community, enabling them to apply their protocols to enalbe the sharing of materials.

Abstract

The “information wants to be free” meme was born some 20 years ago from the free and open source software development community. In the ensuing decades, information freedom has merged with debates over open access, digital rights management, and intellectual property rights. More recently, as digital heritage has become a common resource, scholars, activists, technologists, and local source communities have generated critiques about the extent of information freedom. This article injects both the histories of collecting and the politics of information circulation in relation to indigenous knowledge into this debate by looking closely at the history of the meme and its cultural and legal underpinnings. This approach allows us to unpack the meme’s normalized assumptions and gauge whether it is applicable across a broad range of materials and cultural variances.

 

Source: Does Information Really Want to be Free? Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the Question of Openness | Christen | International Journal of Communication

University courses in Australia: Half of degrees will soon be ‘obsolete’

Authors: news.com.au

Summary: Quite a good example of the kind of surface level engagement with issues of the future of universities. The article demonstrates a utility-based rhetoric and simplistic assumptions about value creation and return on investment. Not surprisingly it’s based on a policy report from a professional services firm and is mainly a retread of the press release.

Snippet: NEARLY half of existing university degrees could be obsolete within a decade leaving graduates with “more debt and poor job prospects” if Australia’s university system is not drastically overhauled, a new report has warned.

[…]FOUR FUTURE SCENARIOS

1. Champion University: A hands-on government actively champions universities as strategic national assets. Most students enrol in traditional undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Universities streamline operations by transforming service delivery and administration.

2. Commercial University: A hands-off government requires universities to be financially independent to ease national budget pressures. Students favour degree programs that offer work-integrated learning. Universities reposition by drawing closer to industry to collaborate on teaching and research.

3. Disruptor University: A hands-off government deregulates the sector to drive competition and efficiency. Continuous learners and their preferences for on-demand micro-certificates dominate as technology disrupts the workplace. Universities expand into new markets and services and compete against a range of new local and global educational services providers.

4. Virtual University: An activist government restructures the tertiary sector to integrate universities and vocational institutes, prioritising training and employability outcomes as humans begin to be replaced by machines. Continuous learners are the majority, preferring unbundled courses delivered flexibly and online. Universities restructure into networks that share digital platforms.

Source: EY University of the Future

frank.chung@news.com.au

Source: University courses in Australia: Half of degrees will soon be ‘obsolete’

Developing indicators on Open Access by combining evidence from diverse data sources

Authors: van Leeuwen, T., Meijer, I., Yegros-Yegros, A., & Costas, R.

Summary: A method for populating OA labels for publications on Web of Science (WoS) Database (2009-2014) using multiple sources (DOAJ, ROAD, PMC, CrossRef & OpenAIRE) is described. Choices of sources follow the sustainability and legality principles. Only 1 out of 3 validation processes is explained (which is manual checking of a sample of publications). Results show that no single source/approach provides enough OA coverage and multiple sources have to be used. A summary of OA status by EU countries (linked through CWTS in-house WoS database)  is also given. The method in this article is similar to the one used by Unpaywall. A full paper is forthcomings.

Abstract: In the last couple of years, the role of Open Access (OA) publishing has become central in science management and research policy. In the UK and the Netherlands, national OA mandates require the scientific community to seriously consider publishing research outputs in OA forms. At the same time, other elements of Open Science are becoming also part of the debate, thus including not only publishing research outputs but also other related aspects of the chain of scientific knowledge production such as open peer review and open data. From a research management point of view, it is important to keep track of the progress made in the OA publishing debate. Until now, this has been quite problematic, given the fact that OA as a topic is hard to grasp by bibliometric methods, as most databases supporting bibliometric data lack exhaustive and accurate open access labelling of scientific publications. In this study, we present a methodology that systematically creates OA labels for large sets of publications processed in the Web of Science database. The methodology is based on the combination of diverse data sources that provide evidence of publications being OA.

van Leeuwen, T., Meijer, I., Yegros-Yegros, A., & Costas, R. (2017). Developing indicators on Open Access by combining evidence from diverse data sources. In STI 2017. Open indicators: innovation, participation and actor-based STI Indicators.

Source: Developing indicators on Open Access by combining evidence from diverse data sources