Tag: via bookmarklet

Added by PressForward

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

The academic, economic and societal impacts of Open Access: an evidence-based review

Authors: Tennant, J.P., Waldner, F., Jacques, D.C., Masuzzo, P., Collister, L.B., and Hartgerink, C.H.J.

Comment:
Extensive review/overview of academic, social and economic impacts of OA and different stakeholders in terms of scholarly publishing north/south and briefly open data and open science.

Abstract:
Ongoing debates surrounding Open Access to the scholarly literature are multifaceted and complicated by disparate and often polarised viewpoints from engaged stakeholders. At the current stage, Open Access has become such a global issue that it is critical for all involved in scholarly publishing, including policymakers, publishers, research funders, governments, learned societies, librarians, and academic communities, to be well-informed on the history, benefits, and pitfalls of Open Access. In spite of this, there is a general lack of consensus regarding the potential pros and cons of Open Access at multiple levels. This review aims to be a resource for current knowledge on the impacts of Open Access by synthesizing important research in three major areas: academic, economic and societal. While there is clearly much scope for additional research, several key trends are identified, including a broad citation advantage for researchers who publish openly, as well as additional benefits to the non-academic dissemination of their work. The economic impact of Open Access is less well-understood, although it is clear that access to the research literature is key for innovative enterprises, and a range of governmental and non-governmental services. Furthermore, Open Access has the potential to save both publishers and research funders considerable amounts of financial resources, and can provide some economic benefits to traditionally subscription-based journals. The societal impact of Open Access is strong, in particular for advancing citizen science initiatives, and leveling the playing field for researchers in developing countries. Open Access supersedes all potential alternative modes of access to the scholarly literature through enabling unrestricted re-use, and long-term stability independent of financial constraints of traditional publishers that impede knowledge sharing. However, Open Access has the potential to become unsustainable for research communities if high-cost options are allowed to continue to prevail in a widely unregulated scholarly publishing market. Open Access remains only one of the multiple challenges that the scholarly publishing system is currently facing. Yet, it provides one foundation for increasing engagement with researchers regarding ethical standards of publishing and the broader implications of ‘Open Research’.

Tennant, J.P., Waldner, F., Jacques, D.C., Masuzzo, P., Collister, L.B., and Hartgerink, C.H.J. (2016). The academic, economic and societal impacts of Open Access: an evidence-based review. F1000Res 5.

Source: The academic, economic and societal impacts of Open Access: an evidence-based review

Publishing while Female. Are women held to higher standards? Evidence from peer review.

Author: Erin Hengel

Comment: Very strong article looking at the burden of publishing and peer review for women vs men in economics. Shows that not only do women do more work and improve their manuscripts more from the perspective of readability but that they also internalise this and produce more readable manuscripts in the first place.

Abstract: I use readability scores to test if referees and/or editors apply higher standards to women’s writing in academic peer review. I find: (i) female-authored papers are 1-6 percent better written than equivalent papers by men; (ii) the gap is two times higher in published articles than in earlier, draft versions of the same papers; (iii) women’s writing gradually improves but men’s does not-meaning the readability gap grows over authors’ careers. In a dynamic model of an author’s decision-making process, I show that tougher editorial standards and/or biased referee assignment are uniquely consistent with this pattern of choices. A conservative causal estimate derived from the model suggests senior female economists write at least 9 percent more clearly than they otherwise would. These findings indicate that higher standards burden women with an added time tax and probably contribute to academia’s “Publishing Paradox” Consistent with this hypothesis, I find female-authored papers spend six months longer in peer review. More generally, tougher standards impose a quantity/quality tradeoff that characterises many instances of female output. They could resolve persistently lower-otherwise unexplained-female productivity in many high-skill occupations.

Hengel, E. (2017). Publishing while Female. Are women held to higher standards? Evidence from peer review. (University of Cambridge). https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/270621

Source: Publishing while Female. Are women held to higher standards? Evidence from peer review.

Coherence of “open” initiatives in higher education and research: Framing a policy agenda – D-Scholarship@Pitt

Authors: Sheila Corrall and Stephen Pinfield

Comments: Discusses the range of definitions of “open” in policy contexts drawing on OER, OA and other aspects as well as controversies and the nature of disagreements.

Abstract: “Open” approaches have the potential to advance significantly the mission of higher education and research institutions worldwide, but the multiplicity of initiatives raises questions about their coherence and points to the need for a more coordinated approach to policy development. Drawing on the European e-InfraNet project, we adopt a broad definition of Open, including activity alongside content, and identify the different Open domains, their salient characteristics and relationships. We propose a high-level typology and model of Open to inform policy design and delivery, and employ Willinsky’s framework for open source and open access to discuss the theoretical underpinnings of openness, finding important commonalities among the domains, which suggests that the framework can extend to all the Open areas. We then examine potential shared benefits of Open approaches, which reinforce the argument for a unified policy agenda. We conclude with some observations on limits of openness, and implications for policy.

Corrall, S., and Pinfield, S. (2014). Coherence of “Open” Initiatives in Higher Education and Research: Framing a Policy Agenda. http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/21973/

Source: Coherence of “open” initiatives in higher education and research: Framing a policy agenda – D-Scholarship@Pitt

Openness as Tool for Acceleration and Measurement: Reflections on Problem Representations Underpinning Open Access and Open Science

Author: Jutta Heider

Abstract: Increasingly open access emerges as an issue that researchers, universities, and various infrastructure providers, such as libraries and academic publishers, have to relate to. Commonly policies requiring open access are framed as expanding access to information and hence as being part of a democratization of society and knowledge production processes. However, there are also other aspects that are part of the way in which open access is commonly imagined in the various policy documents, declarations, and institutional demands that often go unnoticed. This essay wants to foreground some of these issues by asking the overarching question: “What is the problem that open access is seen to solve represented to be?” The paper will discuss how demands to open up access to research align also with an administrative enclosure and managerial processes of control and evaluation. It will show that while demands for free and open access to research publications – created or compiled in research processes funded by public money – are seen as contributing to the knowledge base for advancing society for a common good and in that sense framed as part of a liberating discourse, these demands are also expression of a shift of control of the science community to invisible research infrastructures and to an apparatus of administration as well as subscribing to an ideal of entrepreneurialism as well as continuing a problematic and much criticized understanding of Western science as universal.

Haider, J. (2017). Openness as Tool for Acceleration and Measurement: Reflections on Problem Representations Underpinning Open Access and Open Science. In Open Divide: Critical Studies on Open Access / Edited by Ulrich Herb ; Joachim Schöpfel.(Litwin Books).

Source: Openness as Tool for Acceleration and Measurement: Reflections on Problem Representations Underpinning Open Access and Open Science

Barbarians at the gates: a half-century of unaffiliated users in academic libraries – ScienceDirect

Author: Nancy Courtney

Comment:

Abstract: Discusses effects of academic unaffiliated access, in the US. In particular how technology has impacted and limited access  from 1980s  to 2000 through licensing restrictions and replacement of print serials with ejournals delivering greater control to vendors over access to non-local users.

Courtney, N. (2001). Barbarians at the gates: a half-century of unaffiliated users in academic libraries. The Journal of Academic Librarianship 27, 473–480.

Source: Barbarians at the gates: a half-century of unaffiliated users in academic libraries – ScienceDirect