Category: Scholarly Communication

Open Access Bibliography Tops 500,000 File Requests

As of 4/30/12, the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals by Charles W. Bailey, Jr. has had over 500,000 file requests. Of those file requests, over 439,000 have been page views (either XHTML files for bibliography sections or PDF files for the entire bibliography).

In 2005, the bibliography was published by the Association of Research Libraries in print form, and ARL released an open access PDF file as well. The author then added a web site for the bibliography.

All versions of the bibliography are under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

In 2010, the author released a second version of the bibliography, Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography, as a PDF file, a paperback, and a web site under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. While the first version of the bibliography had a very wide range of included material, the second version, reflecting the rapid maturation of the field, primarily included books and published journal articles.

Since digital publication in 9/9/10, the second version has had over 153,000 file requests. Of those file requests, over 132,000 have been page views.

| Research Data Curation Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Scientific Utopia: I. Opening Scientific Communication"

Brian A. Nosek and Yoav Bar-Anan have self-archived "Scientific Utopia: I. Opening Scientific Communication" in arXiv.org.

Here's an excerpt:

Existing norms for scientific communication are rooted in anachronistic practices of bygone eras, making them needlessly inefficient. We outline a path that moves away from the existing model of scientific communication to improve the efficiency in meeting the purpose of public science—knowledge accumulation. We call for six changes: (1) full embrace of digital communication, (2) open access to all published research, (3) disentangling publication from evaluation, (4) breaking the "one article, one journal" model with a grading system for evaluation and diversified dissemination outlets, (5) publishing peer review, and, (6) allowing open, continuous peer review. We address conceptual and practical barriers to change, and provide examples showing how the suggested practices are being used already. The critical barriers to change are not technical or financial; they are social. While scientists guard the status quo, they also have the power to change it.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010: "SEP [Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography] is compiled with utter professionalism. It reminds me of the work of the best artisans who know not only every item that leaves their workshops, but each component used to create them—providing the ideal quality control." — Péter Jacsó ONLINE 27, no. 3 (2003): 73-76. | Digital Scholarship |

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (April 29, 2012)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog is now available. It provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, technical reports, and white papers.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010: "This bibliography portal demonstrates that citation lists continue to play a role in research, in spite of the availability of powerful Web and digital library search engines and the near-extinction of print bibliography publishing. Summing Up: Recommended." — J. A. Buczynski, Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries 45, no. 1 (1997): 58. | Digital Scholarship |

Modern Language Association Releases "Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media"

The Modern Language Association has released "Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media." This is the first update in 12 years.

Here's an excerpt:

The following guidelines are designed to help departments and faculty members implement effective evaluation procedures for hiring, reappointment, tenure, and promotion. They apply to scholars working with digital media as their subject matter and to those who use digital methods or whose work takes digital form.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital/Print Books | Digital Scholarship |

Rice University Faculty Senate Approves Open Access Policy

According to a tweet today by Geneva Henry, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Scholarship at Rice University’s Fondren Library, Rice University’s Faculty Senate has approved an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the Rice University Open-Access Mandate Position Paper (2/12/2012):

To assist Rice in distributing the scholarly publications, as of the date of publication, each faculty member will make available an electronic copy of his or her final version of the publication at no charge to a representative designated by the Provost's Office in an appropriate format (such as PDF) specified by the Provost's Office. The Provost's Office will make the scholarly publication available to the public in an open-access repository, the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive. Upon request, the scholarly publication will not be made available to the public for an agreed upon embargo period.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This work gives an outstanding overview of scholarship relating to the growing Open Access movement." — George Machovec, The Charleston Advisor 12, no. 2 (2010): 3. | Digital Scholarship |

Research Data Curation Bibliography

Digital Scholarship has released the Research Data Curation Bibliography. It includes over 100 selected English-language articles and technical reports that are useful in understanding the curation of digital research data in academic and other research institutions.

Most sources have been published from 2000 through 2011; however, a limited number of earlier key sources are also included.

The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works. If such versions are unavailable, italicized links to the publishers' descriptions are provided.

It is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010: "If you're looking for a reading list that will keep you busy from now until the end of time, this is your one-stop shop for all things digital preservation."— "Digital Preservation Reading List," Preservation Services at Dartmouth College weblog, February 21, 2012. | Digital Scholarship |

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (March 26, 2012)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog is now available. It provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital/Print Books | Digital Scholarship |

"Altmetrics in the Wild: Using Social Media to Explore Scholarly Impact"

Jason Priem, Heather A. Piwowar, and Bradley M. Hemminger have self-archived "Altmetrics in the Wild: Using Social Media to Explore Scholarly Impact" in arXiv.org.

Here's an excerpt:

In growing numbers, scholars are integrating social media tools like blogs, Twitter, and Mendeley into their professional communications. The online, public nature of these tools exposes and reifies scholarly processes once hidden and ephemeral. Metrics based on this activities could inform broader, faster measures of impact, complementing traditional citation metrics. This study explores the properties of these social media-based metrics or "altmetrics," sampling 24,331 articles published by the Public Library of Science. We find that different indicators vary greatly in activity. Around 5% of sampled articles are cited in Wikipedia, while close to 80% have been included in at least one Mendeley library. There is, however, an encouraging diversity; a quarter of articles have nonzero data from five or more different sources. Correlation and factor analysis suggest citation and altmetrics indicators track related but distinct impacts, with neither able to describe the complete picture of scholarly use alone. There are moderate correlations between Mendeley and Web of Science citation, but many altmetric indicators seem to measure impact mostly orthogonal to citation. Articles cluster in ways that suggest five different impact "flavors," capturing impacts of different types on different audiences; for instance, some articles may be heavily read and saved by scholars but seldom cited. Together, these findings encourage more research into altmetrics as complements to traditional citation measures.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

"Peer-Reviewed Open Research Data: Results of a Pilot"

Marjan Grootveld and Jeff van Egmond have self-archived "Peer-Reviewed Open Research Data: Results of a Pilot" in E-LIS.

Here's an excerpt:

Peer review of publications is at the core of science and primarily seen as instrument for ensuring research quality. However, it is less common to value independently the quality of the underlying data as well. In the light of the "data deluge" it makes sense to extend peer review to the data itself and this way evaluate the degree to which the data are fit for re-use. This paper describes a pilot study at EASY—the electronic archive for (open) research data at our institution. In EASY, researchers can archive their data and add metadata themselves. Devoted to open access and data sharing, at the archive we are interested in further enriching these metadata with peer reviews.

As pilot we established a workflow where researchers who have downloaded data sets from the archive were asked to review the downloaded data set. This paper describes the details of the pilot including the findings, both quantitative and qualitative. Finally we discuss issues that need to be solved when such a pilot should be turned into structural peer review functionality of the archiving system.

| Digital Scholarship |

Ithaka S+R Research Support Services for Scholars: History Project. Interim Report: Interviews with Research Support Professionals

Ithaka S+R has released the Ithaka S+R Research Support Services for Scholars: History Project. Interim Report: Interviews with Research Support Professionals.

Here's an excerpt:

Funded by the NEH, Ithaka S+R’s History Project, part of the Research Support Services for Scholars Program, will explore the information support needs and changing research practices of academic historians in the United States. The evolution of technology and its impact on scholarship in the humanities has sparked and sustained the wide-spread Digital Humanities movement. Historians in particular have engaged new technologies, and the subsequently enabled research methodologies and publication platforms are transforming the field. Consequently, many support service providers would like to better understand the evolving practices of historians and adapt their services to facilitate these new processes.

For the first phase of the Research Support Services for Scholars History Project, Ithaka S+R interviewed professionals who work in support of the scholarly life cycle of historians. Before interviewing faculty directly, it was important to establish an understanding of the breadth of support available to history faculty on campus, as well as the environment and institutions that support their research from concept to publication. The goal for this set of interviews was to explore the different types of service models currently engaged for supporting history research on campus and the challenges that research support professionals are facing in today’s rapidly evolving research environment.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital/Print Books | Digital Scholarship |

"How the Scientific Community Reacts to Newly Submitted Preprints: Article Downloads, Twitter Mentions, and Citations"

Xin Shuai, Alberto Pepe, Johan Bollen have self-archived "How the Scientific Community Reacts to Newly Submitted Preprints: Article Downloads, Twitter Mentions, and Citations" in arXiv.org.

Here's an excerpt:

We analyze the online response of the scientific community to the preprint publication of scholarly articles. We employ a cohort of 4,606 scientific articles submitted to the preprint database arXiv.org between October 2010 and April 2011. We study three forms of reactions to these preprints: how they are downloaded on the arXiv.org site, how they are mentioned on the social media site Twitter, and how they are cited in the scholarly record. We perform two analyses. First, we analyze the delay and time span of article downloads and Twitter mentions following submission, to understand the temporal configuration of these reactions and whether significant differences exist between them. Second, we run correlation tests to investigate the relationship between Twitter mentions and both article downloads and article citations. We find that Twitter mentions follow rapidly after article submission and that they are correlated with later article downloads and later article citations, indicating that social media may be an important factor in determining the scientific impact of an article.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography| Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

Users, Narcissism and Control—Tracking the Impact of Scholarly Publications in the 21st Century

The SURFfoundation has released Users, Narcissism and Control—Tracking the Impact of Scholarly Publications in the 21st Century.

Here's an excerpt:

This report explores the explosion of tracking tools that have accompanied the surge of web based information instruments. Is it possible to monitor 'real-time' how new research findings are being read, cited, used and transformed in practical results and applications? And what are the potential risks and disadvantages of the new tracking tools? This report aims to contribute to a better understanding of these developments by providing a detailed assessment of the currently available novel tools and methodologies. A total of 16 quite different tools are assessed.

The report concludes that web based academic publishing is producing a variety of novel information filters. These allow the researcher to make some sort of limited self-assessment with respect to the response to his/her work. However, this does not mean that these technologies and databases can also legitimately be used in research assessments. For this application, they need to adhere to a far stricter protocol of data quality and indicator reliability and validity. Most new tools do not (yet) comply with these more strict quality criteria.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Collaborative Yet Independent: Information Practices in the Physical Sciences

The Research Information Network, the Institute of Physics, Institute of Physics Publishing, and the Royal Astronomical Society have released Collaborative Yet Independent: Information Practices in the Physical Sciences.

Here's an excerpt:

In many ways, the physical sciences are at the forefront of using digital tools and methods to work with information and data. However, the fields and disciplines that make up the physical sciences are by no means uniform, and physical scientists find, use, and disseminate information in a variety of ways. This report examines information practices in the physical sciences across seven cases, and demonstrates the richly varied ways in which physical scientists work, collaborate, and share information and data.

| Digital Bibliographies | Digital Scholarship |

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (January 31, 2012)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog is now available. It provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital/Print Books | Digital Scholarship |

Open Access: Freedom for Scholarship in the Internet Age (Draft)

Heather Morrison has released a draft of her doctoral thesis Freedom for Scholarship in the Internet Age.

Here's an excerpt:

The purpose of this thesis is to further the work of transitioning to an open access scholarly communication system designed to support and prioritize scholarship and the public good rather than profit. The method will involve analysis of key underlying historical trends in society and how they impact scholarly communication, as well as original empirical work on the growth of open access, economic analysis to inform economic aspects of transition, and a case study of scholarly communication in the discipline of communication.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital/Print Books | Digital Scholarship |

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, Version 6

Digital Scholarship has released the Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, Version 6. It includes selected English-language articles, books, conference papers, technical reports, unpublished e-prints and other scholarly textual sources that are useful in understanding electronic theses and dissertations. Most sources have been published from 2000 through 2011; however, a limited number of earlier key sources are also included. The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works. It is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital/Print Books | Digital Scholarship |

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (December 19, 2011)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog is now available. It provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital/Print Books | Digital Scholarship |

Digital Scholarship Publication Activity in 2011

Digital Scholarship published the below works in 2011. From January 1, 2011 through November 30, 2011, Digital Scholarship had over 2.4 million visitors from 211 counties and over 11.4 million file requests, including over 8.8 million page views.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital/Print Books | Digital Scholarship |

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (November 29, 2011)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog is now available. It provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital/Print Books | Digital Scholarship |

Current News: Twitter Updates for 11/10/11

| New: Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, Version 80 | Digital Scholarship |

Version 80, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography

Version 80 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now available from Digital Scholarship as an XHTML website with live links to many included works. This selective bibliography includes over 4,000 articles, books, technical reports, and other scholarly textual sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet. The bibliography covers a wide range of topics, such as digital copyright, digital libraries, digital preservation, digital repositories, e-books, e-journals, license agreements, metadata, and open access. All included works are in English. It is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

This version marks the fifteenth year of publication of the bibliography, which was established on October 25, 1996.

Changes in This Version

The bibliography has the following sections (new/revised sections are marked with an asterisk:

Table of Contents

Dedication
1 Economic Issues*
2 Electronic Books and Texts
2.1 Case Studies and History
2.2 General Works*
2.3 Library Issues*
2.4 Research*
3 Electronic Serials
3.1 Case Studies and History*
3.2 Critiques
3.3 Electronic Distribution of Printed Journals*
3.4 General Works*
3.5 Library Issues*
3.6 Research*
4 General Works*
4.1 Research (Multiple-Types of Electronic Works)*
5 Legal Issues
5.1 Digital Copyright*
5.2 License Agreements*
6 Library Issues
6.1 Digital Libraries*
6.2 Digital Preservation*
6.3 General Works*
6.4 Metadata and Linking*
7 New Publishing Models*
8 Publisher Issues*
8.1 Digital Rights Management and User Authentication*
9 Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI*
Appendix A. Related Bibliographies*
Appendix B. About the Author*
Appendix C. SEPB Use Statistics

The following recent Digital Scholarship publications may also be of interest:

  1. E-science and Academic Libraries Bibliography , Version 1
  2. Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011
  3. Google Book Search Bibliography, Version 7

See also: Digital Scholarship Publications Overview.

E-science and Academic Libraries Bibliography

Digital Scholarship has released the E-science and Academic Libraries Bibliography. It includes English-language articles, books, editorials, and technical reports that are useful in understanding the broad role of academic libraries in e-science efforts. The scope of this brief selective bibliography is narrow, and it does not cover data curation and research data management issues in libraries in general. Most sources have been published from 2007 through October 18, 2011; however, a limited number of key sources published prior to 2007 are also included. The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works, such as e-prints and open access articles.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (August 31, 2011)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog is now available. It provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

| New: Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |