Category Archives: oa.surveys

Collaborating to support the use and development of open educational resources: a White Rose Libraries research project – Insights

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Abstract:  Interest in open educational resources (OER) has grown recently due to many external factors, including the restrictive, unsustainable and expensive business models for teaching materials that are being used by some publishers. In February 2021, the libraries of the UK White Rose University Consortium (White Rose Libraries) initiated a research project to explore the potential of OER and to create guidance in the form of an OER toolkit that could be used across all three institutions, and more widely. The project also aimed to seek improvements in the discovery of OER in the Ex Libris Primo discovery service which is used by all three libraries. This article outlines the methodology used to ascertain the needs of the libraries’ user groups to inform the development of the toolkit. A survey of academic staff across all three institutions was conducted, followed by user experience interviews. The survey findings established that more than half of respondents knew little or nothing about OER, and over half also said that they would be likely or extremely likely to consider using or adapting OER, clearly demonstrating the need for more awareness raising and guidance. The survey interview findings were then used to develop and refine the toolkit.

Full article: Data sharing and re-use in the traumatic stress field: An international survey of trauma researchers

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“Background:

The FAIR data principles aim to make scientific data more Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. In the field of traumatic stress research, FAIR data practices can help accelerate scientific advances to improve clinical practice and can reduce participant burden. Previous studies have identified factors that influence data sharing and re-use among scientists, such as normative pressure, perceived career benefit, scholarly altruism, and availability of data repositories. No prior study has examined researcher views and practices regarding data sharing and re-use in the traumatic stress field.

Objective:

To investigate the perspectives and practices of traumatic stress researchers around the world concerning data sharing, re-use, and the implementation of FAIR data principles in order to inform development of a FAIR Data Toolkit for traumatic stress researchers.

Method:

A total of 222 researchers from 28 countries participated in an online survey available in seven languages, assessing their views on data sharing and re-use, current practices, and potential facilitators and barriers to adopting FAIR data principles.

Results:

The majority of participants held a positive outlook towards data sharing and re-use, endorsing strong scholarly altruism, ethical considerations supporting data sharing, and perceiving data re-use as advantageous for improving research quality and advancing the field. Results were largely consistent with prior surveys of scientists across a wide range of disciplines. A significant proportion of respondents reported instances of data sharing and re-use, but gold standard practices such as formally depositing data in established repositories were reported as infrequent. The study identifies potential barriers such as time constraints, funding, and familiarity with FAIR principles.

Conclusions:

These results carry crucial implications for promoting change and devising a FAIR Data Toolkit tailored for traumatic stress researchers, emphasizing aspects such as study planning, data preservation, metadata standardization, endorsing data re-use, and establishing metrics to assess scientific and societal impact.

Wikimedia developers’ research needs

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“Thank you for taking the time to participate in this survey by the Wikimedia Foundation Research team to investigate how to serve Wikimedia developers.

The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation Research team is to develop models and insights utilizing scientific methods, and strengthen Wikimedia research communities in order to support technology and policy needs, and advance the understanding of the Wikimedia projects.

Wikimedia volunteer developers are one of our serving audiences, as we envision a world in which these developers can effectively leverage expertise from the Wikimedia research community to contribute to the Wikimedia projects. To serve developers in this mission, we have created this survey that aims to identify existing and suggested research needs and opportunities of Wikimedia developers….”

Contribute to the PALOMERA Survey on Open Access Book Policies – LIBER Europe

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“The PALOMERA Project (Policy Alignment of Open Access Monographs in the European Research Area) focuses on ensuring that academic books and monographs are not neglected in Open Science and Open Access (OA) policies. The project is conducting a survey on the needs, obstacles and challenges of policy-making for open access books. LIBER, as partners in the project, encourage library stakeholders and the wider research community to take part in the survey to help provide actionable recommendations for the development of open access book policies on the European, national and institutional level….”

Research Sharing Survey

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“ABOUT THE SURVEY

The survey should take about 10 minutes.
Your participation in this survey is completely voluntary, and you are free to withdraw at any time until you submit the survey. Answers will never be associated with individual participants and the results will only be analyzed in aggregate. Any research findings and survey data that are publicly shared will be anonymized.
The survey will close on September 30, 2023, 11:59 pm Pacific Daylight Time.
If you have any questions about the survey, please contact the PLOS Research Team (research@plos.org)….”

Digitally Established: Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2023

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“The key takeaways from this year’s survey are: • The return to classroom and in-person instruction post pandemic continues, though a small group of faculty report they only teach blended or online courses. • Faculty regularly incorporate a number student- and instructor-focused tools in their teaching. Every course is different however, as only textbooks, lecture slides, and online homework systems are used by more than half of faculty. • The overall reported use of inclusive access remained steady yearover-year; approximately 25% of respondents report using inclusive access at their institutions. We suspect there may be growing confusion about what inclusive access products are, as levels of awareness decreased in the same period. • There was a slight decline in belief amongst faculty that digital materials are as good of a learning option for students as print materials, and a strong belief that digital offers more flexibility; concerns about the cost of education for students remain high for both faculty and administrators. • OER awareness and use grew to the highest levels ever reported, continuing the trend: in 2022-23, 2 in 3 faculty were aware of OER, and 1 in 3 faculty required OER materials in at least one course …”

Survey of open science practices and attitudes in the social sciences | Nature Communications

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Abstract:  Open science practices such as posting data or code and pre-registering analyses are increasingly prescribed and debated in the applied sciences, but the actual popularity and lifetime usage of these practices remain unknown. This study provides an assessment of attitudes toward, use of, and perceived norms regarding open science practices from a sample of authors published in top-10 (most-cited) journals and PhD students in top-20 ranked North American departments from four major social science disciplines: economics, political science, psychology, and sociology. We observe largely favorable private attitudes toward widespread lifetime usage (meaning that a researcher has used a particular practice at least once) of open science practices. As of 2020, nearly 90% of scholars had ever used at least one such practice. Support for posting data or code online is higher (88% overall support and nearly at the ceiling in some fields) than support for pre-registration (58% overall). With respect to norms, there is evidence that the scholars in our sample appear to underestimate the use of open science practices in their field. We also document that the reported lifetime prevalence of open science practices increased from 49% in 2010 to 87% a decade later.

 

What do Australians affected by cancer think about oncology researchers sharing research data: a cross-sectional survey | medRxiv

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Abstract:  Objectives To characterise the attitudes of Australians affected by cancer towards the sharing of de-identified research data with third parties, including the public.

Design, setting, participants Anonymous online survey between October 2022 and February 2023 of adult Australians previously diagnosed with cancer.

Main outcome measures Self-reported attitudes towards the sharing of human and non-human data, and the hypothetical sharing of their anonymised medical information and responses to the survey.

Results 551 respondents contributed data to the survey. There was strong support for cancer researchers sharing non-human and de-identified human research data with medical doctors (90% and 95% respectively) and non-profit researchers (both 94%). However, this declined when participants were asked whether data should be shared with for-profit researchers (both 64%) or posted publicly (both 61%). When asked if they would hypothetically consent to researchers at their treatment location collecting and sharing their de-identified data publicly, only half agreed (50%). In contrast, after being shown a visual representation of the de-identified survey data, 80% of respondents supported sharing it publicly. A further 10% also supported public sharing of some of the survey data, with the most frequently desired information to be withheld including education history and levels of trust in healthcare stakeholders.

Conclusions Australians affected by cancer support the sharing of research data, particularly with clinician and non-profit researchers. Visualisation of the data to be shared may also enhance support for making research data publicly available. These results should help alleviate any concerns about research participants’ attitudes on data sharing, as well as boost researchers’ motivation for sharing.

The Effects of Research Data Management Services: Associating the Data Curation Lifecycle with Open Research Output | Pares | College & Research Libraries

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Abstract:  This study seeks to understand the relationship between research data management (RDM) services framed in the data curation life cycle and the production of open data. An electronic questionnaire was distributed to US researchers and RDM specialists, and the results were analyzed using Chi-Square tests for association. The data curation life cycle does associate with the production of open data and shareable research, but tasks like data management plans have stronger associations with the production of open data. The findings analyze the intersection of these concepts and provide insight into RDM services that facilitate the production of open data and shareable research.

Now in its sixth year of existence, the Open GLAM survey has just undergone a significant overhaul. Here’s what has changed. | Open GLAM

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“Since Dr Andrea Wallace and I began the Open GLAM survey in 2018, it has tracked galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) making open access content available for re-use. It’s become the go-to reference for researchers, policy makers and practitioners working in copyright and digital cultural heritage collections. Today, it lists over 1600 institutions from 56 countries that have published open access data.

The survey has grown steadily in size and complexity. Housed in a publicly accessible Google Sheet, the survey has an extensive range of data points including institution type, geographic location, rights statements, APIs, terms of use and much more. To keep this information legible, whilst incorporating new data points and expanding the granularity of the data, Andrea and I have steadily optimised the survey’s structure. This summer we’re releasing a significant new version — here are the key changes….”

A decade of surveys on attitudes to data sharing highlights three factors for achieving open science | Impact of Social Sciences

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“Over a 10 year period Carol Tenopir of DataONE and her team conducted a global survey of scientists, managers and government workers involved in broad environmental science activities about their willingness to share data and their opinion of the resources available to do so (Tenopir et al., 2011, 2015, 2018, 2020). Comparing the responses over that time shows a general increase in the willingness to share data (and thus engage in Open Science)….

The most surprising result was that a higher willingness to share data corresponded with a decrease in satisfaction with data sharing resources across nations (e.g., skills, tools, training) (Fig.1). That is, researchers who did not want to share data were satisfied with the available resources, and those that did want to share data were dissatisfied. Researchers appear to only discover that the tools are insufficient when they begin the hard work of engaging in open science practices. This indicates that a cultural shift in the attitudes of researchers needs to precede the development of support and tools for data management….

Mandated requirements to share data really do work. However, this effect was shown in the surveys as government researchers were consistently far more willing to share data than those in academia or corporations, and this willingness to share increased substantially from 2011 to 2019….

Researchers working in academia were less willing to share than those in government, but did show significant increases in willingness to share from 2011 to 2015. Researchers in the commercial sector were, unsurprisingly, the least willing to share their data….

government involvement and funding play an important role in improving the attitudes researchers have towards open science practices. The organisational influence of government funding and mandates shifts individual incentives. Researchers then realize that they lack the knowledge, tools, and training they need to properly share data, which can push the social change needed to drastically change the way that science is done for the better.”

PALOMERA Survey on Open Access Book Policies

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Purpose of study

Academic books continue to play an important role in scholarly production, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. Nevertheless, academic books have not been a focal point for open access policy-makers so far. PALOMERA is an EU-funded project that addresses this challenge.

More information: https://operas-eu.org/projects/palomera/

This survey is a contribution to an extensive collection of data on the needs, obstacles and challenges of policy-making for open access books. Based on the evidence given by the survey results, PALOMERA will provide actionable recommendations for the development of open access book policies on the European, national and institutional level. By taking part in this survey, you are making a contribution to the research needed to speed up the transformation of the book market to open access.

 

Research team

This survey on open access book policies is carried out by Bielefeld University Library, Germany (Project manager: Jan-Philip Tummes). Cooperation partner for this survey is Göttingen University Library, Germany (Project managers: Hanna Varachkina and Malte Dreyer). The project is funded by the European Union (Grant Agreement number 101094270: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101094270).

 

Study procedure – What exactly awaits you in this study?

This survey includes 35 questions within five content sections and takes approximately 15-20 minutes to fill out. You are asked to answer questions within the following survey sections:

General questions
Questions about the existence and the awareness of policies
Questions about stakeholders who are involved in policy-making
Questions about attitudes towards policy-design
Questions about attitudes towards measures to promote open access books
Questions about policy measures

This survey is anonymous, unless you voluntarily enter personal data. Due to the selected query categories/answer options, the data cannot be assigned to a specific person at any time. Further, the underlying survey software only utilises cookies which are strictly necessary for its functioning.

Until the end of this survey, you have the option to object to the storage of your survey data by cancelling the study. You can do this simply by closing the web browser window. Your data will then be deleted. After finally submitting the survey, targeted data deletion is no longer possible, as we store your data in anonymised form.

[…]

 

EveryLibrary and Book Riot Partner to Launch Parent Perceptions Survey on Public Libraries and Current Issues

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“EveryLibrary, the national political action committee for libraries, and Book Riot, the largest independent editorial book site in North America, announce a partnership to launch a comprehensive survey aimed at gathering valuable insights from parents regarding their perceptions of public libraries and current issues facing public libraries. The “Parents and Public Libraries – Perceptions Survey” will allow parents to share their experiences and opinions, contributing to improving and developing library services….”

[2308.04186] The Emergence of Preprints: Comparing Publishing Behaviour in the Global South and the Global North

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Purpose: The recent proliferation of preprints could be a way for researchers worldwide to increase the availability and visibility of their research findings. Against the background of rising publication costs caused by the increasing prevalence of article processing fees, the search for other ways to publish research results besides traditional journal publication may increase. This could be especially true for lower-income countries. Design/methodology/approach: Therefore, we are interested in the experiences and attitudes towards posting and using preprints in the Global South as opposed to the Global North. To explore whether motivations and concerns about posting preprints differ, we adopted a mixed-methods approach, combining a quantitative survey of researchers with focus group interviews. Findings: We found that respondents from the Global South were more likely to agree to adhere to policies and to emphasise that mandates could change publishing behaviour towards open access. They were also more likely to agree posting preprints has a positive impact. Respondents from the Global South and the Global North emphasised the importance of peer-reviewed research for career advancement. Originality: The study has identified a wide range of experiences with and attitudes towards posting preprints among researchers in the Global South and the Global North. To our knowledge, this has hardly been studied before, which is also because preprints only have emerged lately in many disciplines and countries.

Academicians’ awareness, attitude, and use of open access during the COVID-19 pandemic – Yigit Emrah Turgut, Alper Aslan, Nuran Varl? Denizalp, 2022

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Abstract:  The aim of this research is to reveal academics’ awareness, attitude, and use of open access. In line with the research purpose, the survey research design is adopted. This research consists 151 academics from 12 basic research areas; eight of them being Professor Dr, 17 being Associate Professor Dr, 49 being Doctor Lecturer, and 77 being Research Assistant or Lecturer. A questionnaire consisting of 19 open access and five demographic information questions was used for the data collection tool. The research results show that 75% of the academics have open access awareness and that their awareness is generally created by information that they obtain through the Internet and their friends. In addition, most of the academics indicate that their awareness of open access has increased during the pandemic period. When considering the level of academics’ use of open access, it is found that 75% of the academics use articles in open access journals for their own research and 51% of the academics do not publish any articles in open access journals.