Category: Articles and Resources

Articles and resources posted to the collection

The prevalence of green and grey open access: Where do physical science researchers archive their publications? | SpringerLink

Authors: Li Zhang & Erin Watson

Comment: This paper focuses on comparing green and grey (archiving in academic social media or personal/departmental website) OA, for CIHR funded research. Data is extract from WoS and Google Scholar used to determine green and grey OA. The prevalence of grey OA is highlighted, and the low up-take of green OA is shown as not attributed to publisher policies, as most do allow green. The takeaway is suggestion to rethink about ways to archive OA, given the high costs of running an institutional repository.

Abstract: The Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) implemented an open access policy for its grant recipients in 2008. We used bibliographic data from the Web of Science to find out how CIHR-funded researchers in the physical sciences self-archived their publications. We also examined the self-archiving policies of the journals in which the researchers published, and compared the citation rates of two different self-archiving approaches: the green open access route (deposit in an institutional or subject repository) and the grey open access route (deposit in an academic social network or personal/departmental website). Only 14% of the articles were openly accessible through the green open access route, while 37% could be accessed through the grey open access route. We cannot ascribe the low uptake of green open access to publishers’ self-archiving policies, as almost all journals allowed self-archiving through the green open access route. Authors deposited 31% of their publications in ResearchGate, the most popular self-archiving option in our study, while they deposited only 2.1% of their publications in institutional repositories, the least popular option. The citation rates of the various self-archiving approaches did not differ significantly. Our results suggest that it may be time to rethink how to achieve open access.

Source: The prevalence of green and grey open access: Where do physical science researchers archive their publications? | SpringerLink

Article processing charge (APC) for publishing open access articles: the Brazilian scenario | SpringerLink

Authors: Cleusa Pavan & Marcia C. Barbosa

Comment: This article provides a detailed literature on OA publication in Brazil and tracks the progress over time. This is splits among journals with different APC policies. Again, the caveat may be the sole use of Web of Science data. However, it is still interesting to note that, although the number of OA publications has increased (in absolute terms, rather than percentages), the output process/vehicle has also become endogenic locally. This is possibly driven by lack of funds. The authors suggest policies for funding APC are required to increase international publications.

Abstract: The article processing charge (APC) provides economic sustainability for scientific journals that publish in open access (OA). In this work, documents published in OA between 2012 and 2016 by authors with Brazilian affiliation are identified, the profile of these publications is analyzed and the cost of APC is estimated. In order to do so, data from 930 journals and 63,847 documents were collected from the Web of Science Core Collection. It was found that 59% of these documents were published in journals that charge APC. The total expenditures for the 5-year period were estimated at approximately USD 36 million, the weighted average cost per document at USD 957.75 and the average cost per journal at USD 1492.27. The profile of these publications shows that journals indexed by SciELO represent 67% of the 63,847 documents. The use of mega-journals increased over the period, which implies an increase in expenditure in publications, since the average APC per journal was USD 2059.77. It was observed that the OA Brazilian scientific production is characterized by an endogenic profile and has a preference for the Gold road with APC. These results suggest that policies for funding charges are required to stimulate a more international attitude.

Source: Article processing charge (APC) for publishing open access articles: the Brazilian scenario | SpringerLink

The History, Deployment, and Future of Institutional Repositories in Public Universities in South Africa – ScienceDirect

Author: Siviwe Bangani

Comment:
Another interesting paper about IRs in South Africa (SA). Web data was collected, together with interviews been conducted. A detailed history of IRs in SA is given. While many of the South African universities have signed various international declarations and initiative on OA, they often don’t have an institutional policy on OA. Various factors (obstacles and enablers) are listed. Amount of funding is relatively low compared to other countries. Varying IR sizes, types of objects in IRs, multiple language support and issues, and suggestions for development are presented and discussed.

Abstract:
This paper investigates the history, deployment, and content of institutional repositories (IRs) in public universities in South Africa. Some of the local, national and international drivers and enablers that ensure the establishment and survival of the institutional repositories are identified. Lastly, an attempt is made to determine the future of the IRs. Findings include that South African universities were among the first universities in the world to host IRs with the first IR established in 2000. The most prevalent and dominant content in South African public university collections are electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). There are signs that this is changing as more libraries cover research outputs emanating from the universities. African languages are sparsely represented in IRs in South Africa. The majority of universities in the country signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, and the Budapest Open Access Initiative. Many of them do not have their own open access policy. The driving factors include the decline in government subsidy, increase in journal subscriptions, depreciation of the South African currency, and addition of the Value Added Tax (VAT) of 14% on electronic resources by the South Africa taxman while the enabling factors include the international open access mandates, the Carnegie Foundation grants, and the National Research Foundation’s statement on open access.

Bangani S (2018) The History, Deployment, and Future of Institutional Repositories in Public Universities in South Africa. The Journal of Academic Librarianship 44(1): 39-51.

Source: The History, Deployment, and Future of Institutional Repositories in Public Universities in South Africa – ScienceDirect

Institutional Repositories in Chinese Open Access Development: Status, Progress, and Challenges – ScienceDirect

Authors: Jing Zhong & Shuyong Jiang

Comment: An interesting paper interrogating institutional repositories (IR) in China. These IRs were accessed via ROAR, OpenDOAR, SouOA and CHAIR, though many URL links were broken. The article highlighted the slow development of OA repositories in China and attributed this to the lack of policy and support at all levels. At the end of the article, it mentioned that the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China, in May 2014, released an Open Access policy statement requiring that its funded research papers be made open access in IRs within 12 months after their publication. It would be interesting to follow-up on whether this had made any significant impact.

Abstract:
Open Access (OA) movement in China is developing with its own track and speed. Compared to its western counterparts, it moves slowly. However, it keeps growing. More significantly, it provides open and free resources not only to Chinese scholars, but also to those of China studies around the world. The premise is whether we can find them in an easy and effective fashion. This paper will describe the status of the OA movement in China with a focus on institutional repositories (IR) in Chinese universities and research institutes. We will explore different IR service modules and discuss their coverage, strengths, limitation, and most importantly implications to the East Asian Collection in the US.

Zhong J & Jiang S (2016) Institutional Repositories in Chinese Open Access Development: Status, Progress, and Challenges. The Journal of Academic Librarianship 42(6): 739-744.

Source: Institutional Repositories in Chinese Open Access Development: Status, Progress, and Challenges – ScienceDirect

Virtual Issue: Measuring the Impact of Arts and Humanities Research in Europe | Research Evaluation | Oxford Academic

Authors: Authors of the articles include Clare Donovan, Sverker Sörlin, Ellen Hazelkorn, Andrew Gibson and others.

Summary: A virtual issue of Research Evaluation that covers the issue of impact from Art and Humanities research. In particular a review of the literature from Reale et al is likely useful for providing an overview of work that has been done.

Abstract: In recent years, the concept of ‘impact’, or the wider value of research for society, has climbed to the top of national and EU science policy agendas. Yet the way impact has been imagined often relates to concepts of value, and traditional measurements of impact, which emphasise cost-benefit analyses and the economic value of research, which are poorly suited to arts and humanities research (AHR). This virtual issue of Research Evaluation reflects distinct EU and national debates and characteristics important for exploring the societal value of AHR. These examples are useful for understanding AHR, and also the societal value of research in general.

Source: Virtual Issue: Measuring the Impact of Arts and Humanities Research in Europe | Research Evaluation | Oxford Academic

How significant are the public dimensions of faculty work in review, promotion, and tenure documents?

Authors:  Juan Pablo Alperin, Gustavo E. Fischman, Erin C. McKiernan, Carol Muñoz Nieves, Meredith T. Niles, Lesley Schimanski

Summary: The authors examine tenure and promotions requirements documents from 129 North American universities looking for evidence of interest in engagement, open access and other community/public focussed activities. Relatively little is found and the the word ‘community’ is often co-located with words dealing with professional and academic service suggesting an inward looking focus. Also interesting from its perspective on textual analysis as a tool for analysis.

Abstract: Much of the work of universities, even private institutions, has significant public dimensions. Faculty work in particular is often funded by public funds, is aimed at serving the public good, and is subject to public evaluation. To understand how the public dimensions of faculty work are valued, we analyzed review, tenure and promotion documents from a representative sample of 129 Canadian and American universities. We found terms and concepts related to public and community are mentioned in a large portion of documents, but mostly in ways that relate to service—an undervalued aspect of academic careers. Moreover, we find significant mentions of traditional research outputs and citation-based metrics. Such outputs and metrics reward faculty work targeted to academics, and mostly disregard the public dimensions. We conclude that institutions that want to live up to their public mission need to work towards systemic change in how faculty work is assessed and incentivized.

Alperin, J.P., Muñoz Nieves, C., Schimanski, L., Fischman, G.E., Niles, M.T. & McKiernan, E.C. (2018). How significant are the public dimensions of faculty work in review, promotion, and tenure documents? Humanities Commons [preprint]. https://doi.org/10.17613/M6W950N35

Source: How significant are the public dimensions of faculty work in review, promotion, and tenure documents? | hc:21015 | Humanities CORE

Adding the diversity dimension | Wonkhe Australia

Author: Julie-Hare

Summary: A description of a new report on Australian HE regulation and financing and its relation with diversity. The report argues that a more dynamic system that offers real student choice can be constructed within the current structural framework that includes the Australian Qualifications Framework, as well as regulation and funding responsibilities. But in order to do so it would have to take on some very sacred cows: primarily the teaching-research nexus and the subsequent cross-subsidisation of research from teaching grants.

Abstract: There is a long history of Australia and the UK shadowing each other in HE policy; it’s almost as though one acts as a testing ground for the other’s upcoming reform agenda.

The Labor opposition has already put its cards on the table for an overarching review of the post-18 sector should it win government next year and certainly there will be a lot of interest in the findings of Philip Augur’s impending report.

The case for a radical revamp of Australia’s HE regulatory and funding systems as a structural means of adding to diversity to the current monochromatic mix is the subject of a paper presented last week at the inaugural seminar of the Monash Commission.

Hare J. Adding the diversity dimension | Wonkhe | Australia [Internet]. Wonkhe. [cited 2018 Oct 3]. Available from: https://wonkhe.com/blogs/adding-the-diversity-dimension/

Source: Adding the diversity dimension | Wonkhe Australia

Elsevier journals — some facts

Leave a comment

Author: Timothy Gower
Blogpost April 24, 2014

Comment: This long blog post discusses the author’s attempts, successful in many cases, to obtain the costs of Elsevier journal subscriptions at the UK Russell Group of universities. It includes some amusing detailed correspondence with JISC and the universities. Also  related discussion around APCs and their impact on subscription costs, Elsevier costs in some US universities, Brazil. Also in the post and related comments are some useful data sources and related analysis.

Introduction: A little over two years ago, the Cost of Knowledge boycott of Elsevier journals began. Initially, it seemed to be highly successful, with the number of signatories rapidly reaching 10,000 and including some very high-profile researchers, and Elsevier making a number of concessions, such as dropping support for the Research Works Act and making papers over four years old from several mathematics journals freely available online. It has also contributed to an increased awareness of the issues related to high journal prices and the locking up of articles behind paywalls….

I  have come to the conclusion that if it is not possible to bring about a rapid change to the current system, then the next best thing to do, which has the advantage of being a lot easier, is to obtain as much information as possible about it. Part of the problem with trying to explain what is wrong with the system is that there are many highly relevant factual questions to which we do not yet have reliable answers.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Elsevier journals — some facts

Can Microsoft Academic help to assess the citation impact of academic books?

Authors: Kousha K & Thelwall M

Comment: This article examines the comparison of coverage and citations by Microsoft Academic (MA) with the Book Citation Index (BKCI) and Google Scholar (GS). It showed that, while MA’s coverage for books is still not comprehensive, it is able to find more citations in some fields than the other two sources. In particular, it has greater coverage than BKCI for some Arts & Humanities fields (though in general it is still biased towards the technical fields). MA also seems less sensitive to book editions. MA’s comparison with GS gave mixed results, with one better than the other in different fields, suggesting them as having partly complementary coverage.

Abstract: Despite recent evidence that Microsoft Academic is an extensive source of citation counts for journal articles, it is not known if the same is true for academic books. This paper fills this gap by comparing citations to 16,463 books from 2013-2016 in the Book Citation Index (BKCI) against automatically extracted citations from Microsoft Academic and Google Books in 17 fields. About 60% of the BKCI books had records in Microsoft Academic, varying by year and field. Citation counts from Microsoft Academic were 1.5 to 3.6 times higher than from BKCI in nine subject areas across all years for books indexed by both. Microsoft Academic found more citations than BKCI because it indexes more scholarly publications and combines citations to different editions and chapters. In contrast, BKCI only found more citations than Microsoft Academic for books in three fields from 2013-2014. Microsoft Academic also found more citations than Google Books in six fields for all years. Thus, Microsoft Academic may be a useful source for the impact assessment of books when comprehensive coverage is not essential.

Kousha K, Thelwall M (2018) Can Microsoft Academic help to assess the citation impact of academic books? arXiv.org: arXiv:1808.01474v1.

Source: Can Microsoft Academic help to assess the citation impact of academic books?

Citation analysis with microsoft academic

Authors: Hug SE, Ochsner M & Brandle MP

Comment: This article compares the citation analyses between Microsoft Academic (MA) and Scopus. This was compared via the output of three selected researchers. The results showed uniformity across MA and Scopus. Some limitations to MA were also pointed out.

Abstract: We explore if and how Microsoft Academic (MA) could be used for bibliometric analyses. First, we examine the Academic Knowledge API (AK API), an interface to access MA data, and compare it to Google Scholar (GS). Second, we perform a comparative citation analysis of researchers by normalizing data from MA and Scopus. We find that MA offers structured and rich metadata, which facilitates data retrieval, handling and processing. In addition, the AK API allows retrieving frequency distributions of citations. We consider these features to be a major advantage of MA over GS. However, we identify four main limitations regarding the available metadata. First, MA does not provide the document type of a publication. Second, the “fields of study” are dynamic, too specific and field hierarchies are incoherent. Third, some publications are assigned to incorrect years. Fourth, the metadata of some publications did not include all authors. Nevertheless, we show that an average-based indicator (i.e. the journal normalized citation score; JNCS) as well as a distribution-based indicator (i.e. percentile rank classes; PR classes) can be calculated with relative ease using MA. Hence, normalization of citation counts is feasible with MA. The citation analyses in MA and Scopus yield uniform results. The JNCS and the PR classes are similar in both databases, and, as a consequence, the evaluation of the researchers’ publication impact is congruent in MA and Scopus. Given the fast development in the last year, we postulate that MA has the potential to be used for full-fledged bibliometric analyses.

Hug, S.E., Ochsner, M. & Brändle, M.P. (2017) Citation analysis with microsoft academic. Scientometrics 111: 371. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2247-8

Source: Citation analysis with microsoft academic