Category Archives: oa.scholcomm

Knowledge and experience of Zambian teaching faculties with scholarly communication and dissemination practices | Emerald Insight

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Abstract:  Purpose

This paper aims to investigate the knowledge and experience of Zambian teaching faculties with scholarly communication and dissemination practices.

Design/methodology/approach

The researchers used a survey to quickly obtain information about a large sample of individuals of interest. The study population consisted of faculties from two Zambian public universities with research and publication experience. The researchers used random sampling techniques. A total of 125 valid responses were received from the selected population.

Findings

The findings show that most respondents agreed that publishing in open-access journals increased visibility and readership, had a more significant impact, facilitated collaboration and interdisciplinary research, was cost-effective and provided accessibility. Google Scholar was the most commonly used platform, followed by ResearchGate and ORCID.

Research limitations/implications

This study’s limitations focus on only two Zambian public universities. This study’s practical implications include improving the universities’ open-access policies and educating faculties on the benefits of open access.

Originality/value

This study’s originality lies in exploring the Zambian teaching faculties’ perceptions of open access and academic social networking sites. The results of this study can help universities and researchers in Zambia to understand the importance of scholarly communication and dissemination practices and help them implement effective policies for promoting open-access publishing, institutional repositories and academic social networking sites.

Exploring the Dimensions of Scientific Impact: A Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis Investigating the Influence of Gender, Mobility, and Open Access

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Abstract: The Science of Science field advances the measurement, evaluation, and prediction of scientific outcomes through the study of extensive scholarly data. For these purposes, bibliometrics is an appropriate approach that studies large volumes of scientific data using mathematical and statistical methods, and is widely used to assess the impact of papers and authors within a specific field or community. However, conducting bibliometric analyses poses several methodological, technical, and informational challenges (e.g., collecting and cleaning data, calculating indicators) which need to be addressed. This thesis aims to tackle some of these challenges and shed light on the factors influencing scientific impact, specifically focusing on open access publishing, international mobility, and influential factors on the h-index. This thesis tackles methodological contributions, such as author disambiguation and co-authorship network analysis, as they provide insights into methodological and informational challenges within bibliometric analysis. Another methodological challenge addressed in this research is the inference of gender for a significant number of authors to obtain gender-related insights. By employing gender inference techniques, the research explores gender as an influential factor in scientific impact, shedding light on potential gender inequalities within the scholarly community. The research employs a bibliometric approach and utilizes mainly Scopus, a comprehensive dataset encompassing various disciplines to make the following contributions:

• We explore the impact of publishing behavior, particularly the adoption of open access practices, on knowledge dissemination and scholarly communication. With this intention, we investigate the impact of journals flipping from closed access to open access publishing models [74]. Changes in publication volumes and citation impact are analyzed, demonstrating an overall increase in publication output and improved citation metrics following the transition to open access. However, the magnitude of changes varies across scientific disciplines. In another study [76], we utilize a dataset of articles published by Springer Nature and employ correlation and regression analyses to examine the relationship between authors’ country affiliations, publishing models, and citation impact. Utilizing machine learning approach, we estimate the publishing model of papers based on different factors. The findings reveal different patterns in authors’ choices of publishing models based on income levels, availability of Article Processing Charges waivers, and journal rank. The study highlights potential inequalities in access to open access publishing and its citation advantage.

• We investigate the association between scholars’ mobility patterns, socio-demographic characteristics, and their scientific activity and impact. By utilizing network and regression analyses, along with various statistical techniques, we investigate the international mobility of researchers. Furthermore, we conduct a comparative analysis of scientific outcomes, considering factors such as publications, citations, and measures of co-authorship network centrality. The findings reveal gender inequalities in mobility across scientific fields and countries and positive correlations between mobility and scientific success.

• Centered on the prediction of scholars’ h-index as a metric of scientific impact, another one of our studies [77] employs machine learning techniques. We examine author, coauthorship, paper, and venue-specific characteristics, in addition to prior impact-based features. The results emphasize the significance of non-prior impact-based features, particularly for early-career scholars in the long term, while also revealing the limited influence of gender on h-index prediction. 

The findings of this research hold implications for researchers, academic institutions, and policymakers aiming to advance scientific knowledge and foster equitable practices. By unviii covering the influential factors that shape scientific impact and addressing potential gender disparities, this research contributes to the broader objective of promoting diversity, inclusivity, and excellence within the scholarly community. 

Webinar – Research libraries in an Open Access world – OASPA

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“OASPA is pleased to announce our next webinar which will focus on research libraries in an Open Access world.

For the past decade or so, research libraries worldwide have advertised job openings for Open Access Librarians, Open Scholarship Librarians or Open Educational Resources Librarians to be appointed in newly established organisational units such as Offices of Scholarly Communication, Open Research Teams or Digital Scholarship Services. Job listings such as these illustrate an acknowledgment that libraries need to engage with evolutions in scholarly communication if they wish to stay relevant in the context of teaching, learning and research. At the same time, the creation of these positions and units strengthens the impression that these are new tasks for libraries, distinct from their traditional roles in scholarly communication and therefore best organised separately. Though this might have been an efficient approach when there was a pressing need to develop new skills and expertise at a high pace, we may wonder how meaningful this still is in a context where a very significant percentage of new scholarly articles are now published OA, and OA books are slowly but surely becoming mainstream.

Are our libraries prepared for this OA world or have we been lulled into a false sense of preparedness by creating these small teams in the margin without making substantial changes to the majority of our legacy processes such as acquisition and cataloguing?…”

“On the ruins of seriality”: The scientific journal and the nature of the scientific life – ScienceDirect

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Abstract:  Twenty-first-century discourse on science has been marked by narratives of crisis. Science is said to be experiencing crises of public trust, of peer review and publishing, of reproducibility and replicability, and of recognition and reward. The dominant response has been to “repair” the scientific literature and the system of scientific publishing through open science. This paper places the current predicament of scholarly communication in historical perspective by exploring the evolution of the scientific journal in the second half of the twentieth century. I focus on a new genre of scientific journal invented by Dutch commercial publishers shortly after World War II, and on its effects on the nature of the scientific life. I show that profit-oriented publishers and discipline-building scientists worked together to make postwar science more open, while also arguing that formats of scientific publication have their own agency.

 

2nd Helsinki Initiative Webinar on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication, Dec 1, 2023, 3pm (CET) | helsinki-initiative.org

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Helsinki Initiative organizes a webinar series on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication with speakers representing different expert communities and strands of work. This event includes three presentations ranging from language policies to the role of national language journals and translations in science. The event is free and open for everyone to participate without registration. A recording will be made available after the event. 

Date & time: 1 December 2023 15:00-16:30 CET

Zoom-link: https://tsv-fi.zoom.us/j/82347877173?pwd=gMmrAnbYpZa74tNR1lD13Qh5TGYM38.1 

Programme

Michael D. Gordin: The Inevitably of Translation in Scientific Communication

Science for millennia in Europe and Asia has been strongly shaped by frequent and repeated translations of scientific texts among multiple vehicular languages. As multiple vernacular languages started to displace Latin in European scientific communication in the seventeenth century, and then recede in the face of English and Russian — and eventually just English as the overwhelmingly dominant tongue — in the twentieth, the activity of translation has receded into the background but has remained no less constant. Despite some of the claims for DeepL and AI (English-)text generation, the activity of translation in scientific communication is unlikely to diminish in importance in the twenty-first century, although its modes and visibility will surely shift.

Lucía Céspedes: Implicit and explicit linguistic policies for scholarly communications in Latin America

Drawing inspiration from categories developed by the current known as Latin American Thought on Science, Technology and Development, this presentation seeks to analyze whether explicit linguistic policies for scholarly communications exist in Latin America. In such case, are they aligned with researchers’ linguistic ideologies and representations, and do they foster or hinder the region’s intrinsic multilingualism?

Vincent Larivière: The importance of French language journals for Canadian research

Many Canadian scholarly journals in the social sciences and humanities are distinguished by use of French language. This presentation discusses, based on a new study co-authored with Simon van Bellen, the relevance of national French-language journals for Canadian researchers, their role in the dissemination of knowledge on national themes, as well as the viability and sustainability of these journals.

The event is hosted by Emanuel Kulczycki and Janne Pölönen.

For further information email helsinki-initiative@tsv.fi.

 

Data Paper’s Functions in Scholarly Communication Ecosystem as Perceived by Natural Scientists – Huang – 2023 – Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology – Wiley Online Library

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Abstract:  Data papers, a new class of scholarly publication emerging from the open-science movement, foster data discovery and reuse by offering comprehensive descriptions of research data. Yet, despite their promising growth, the role of data papers in scholarly communication remains underexplored. This work therefore investigates the perceived contributions and functions of data papers to scholarly communication by interviewing 14 data-paper authors operating in the field of natural science. Using conceptual frameworks adopted from Borgman (2007) and Van de Sompel et al. (2004), we identify four general functions of scholarly communication (i.e., legitimization; dissemination; access, preservation, and curation; and rewarding). Additionally, our data lead us to propose that verification is a distinct scholarly communication, underscoring the importance of data papers in validating research findings in the context of ensuring research transparency. By elucidating the crucial role that data papers now play within the scholarly communication ecosystem, this study seeks to raise the academic community’s awareness of their fundamental position, as well as their co-existence with other forms of data publication, in advancing scientific research.

 

Putting community in scholarly communication: Partnerships with public libraries

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Abstract:  Although they have distinct missions, public libraries and academic libraries serve overlapping populations and can leverage their institutional strengths through collaboration. These diverse partnerships include sharing resources through consortia, joint-use libraries, and shared programming, such as introducing students to public library collections as resources for theses. For the scholarly communication librarian, collaborating with public libraries provides opportunities to educate about the ethical and legal use of information, advocate for the promotion and use of open resources and pedagogies, and interact with communities, particularly in rural areas, that are traditionally underserved by academic libraries. We’ll share two personal examples of the intersection between scholarly communication and public libraries.

From the body of the paper:

There are many possibilities for public libraries to benefit from open access and open education tools and resources. For example, public libraries can augment their collections and resources by • including the Directory of Open Access Journals in database lists to increase the discovery of open journal resources; • including open textbooks and other openly licensed works in public library catalogs; • using Unpaywall or the Open Access button with ILL requests or on library computers to reduce access barriers for patrons; and • incorporating journal quality indicators as part of information literacy or research instruction and reference assistance.

Similarly, academic libraries can incorporate scholarly communication issues into public services and programming by • supporting community author groups (author rights outside of the context of academic publishing); • educating business development groups on intellectual property issues and the legal and ethical use of information; • empowering public/academic makerspace programming with copyright and intellectual property information; and • intersecting with citizen science initiatives.”

 

Addressing the challenges in scholarly communication: the role of critical open access literacy | PUBMET

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Abstract:  After twenty years of the open access movement, there has been growth in the uptake of open access, and some progress has been made in achieving its original goals; however, results have been far from satisfactory, with more than half of the research literature still closed (COKI, 2022; Curry, 2018). Moreover, new concerns have arisen, such as questionable quality and the reliability of peer review, in particular predatory publishing. There are also threats to equity, including stratifications of publishing as a consequence of the exclusionary character of the author-pays model of open access, and new risks of bias and exclusion in the means of transparent evaluation (Ross-Hellauer et al., 2022). It is argued that these challenges are the result of the uncritical narratives of openness and their narrow focus on access alone which fail to address inequitable power dynamics, systemic problems and the structural barriers in scholarly publishing and knowledge production (Perry, 2020; ibid.).

These cha(lle)nges in the system of scholarly communication, coupled with recent advances in technology and the tectonic transformations in the information environment, require new (pedagogical) approaches and foci that would enable researchers and students to understand and navigate such a complex environment; for this, a holistic and integrative approach to scholarly communication and information literacy is needed (ACRL, 2013; Špiranec, 2015).

Scholarly communication, including open access, is impossible without information literacy (Hebrang Grgi?, 2016). As they are both concerned with (access to) information, open access and in particular critical information literacy largely share the same goals, ethical dimensions and values of (social and epistemic) justice, equity and democratisation. Indeed, they have been considered instrumental to achieving these, and even proclaimed a panacea and deus ex machina for the current scientific, social and political challenges and crises (Hebrang Grgi?, 2016; Kapitzke, 2003). However, literature on the intersections and interplay between open access and information literacy has been limited.

This paper seeks to intertwine these two concepts more strongly, for mutual exchange and benefit, by analysing their convergent aspects as well as the role information literacy has in the context of the complexities of the scholarly communication system and in achieving open access. The paper builds on the few empirical studies of the intersections between the two concepts (e.g. Hebrang Grgi? (2016) which confirms the importance of ‘open access literacy’), but goes beyond their functional approaches, advocating a more holistic and critical approach to open access to help reinvent it and make a more substantial progress in open access. It argues that the transformations in the information environment and the scholarly communication system require not only basic skills and competences at the core of information literacy but also specific skills of, for instance, managing scientific data and publishing in open access sources. More importantly, what is also required is critical consciousness of all the aspects of the research process including the context, power relationships, and the privileged positions in knowledge production, publishing and dissemination, and an ability to evaluate the quality and reliability of information.

The paper proposes critical open access literacy as a pedagogical methodology and strategy to confront the challenges and enable a critical understanding of the contemporary information environment and scholarly communication. In line with the tenets of critical information literacy, critical open access literacy is directed at an analysis and critique of the economic, social, political, legal and technological conditions, aspects and implications of open access and the overall scholarly communication system, as well as the power dynamics, tensions and flaws within them. This will empower students and researchers to navigate this environment successfully and potentially become champions of its transformation to make it more meaningful, reliable, equitable and democratic.

Support community led open access publishing: Help shape the future of scholarly communications – YouTube

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“International Open Access Week is an opportunity for the global research community to learn about and share the benefits of Open Access, and to inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.

This year’s theme is ‘Community over Commercialisation’ and with this in mind, Jisc and the Open Institutional Publishing Association have joined forces to discuss how libraries can come together as a community and support open access publishing initiatives. Jisc set up the Open Access Community Framework (OACF) in response to community calls to make it simpler for libraries to support open access publishing – and other similar schemes are beginning to emerge too. In this webinar, we will ask ‘what’s stopping us?’ and we will consider the levers that are at our disposal, as a strong and active community, including library and publisher perspectives.”

Scholarly communication practices and attitudes of Egyptian junior researchers: An exploratory study – ScienceDirect

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Abstract:  Arab early career researchers (ECRs) are strongly encouraged to actively participate in scholarly communication activities, as it not only enhances their academic standing but also facilitates career advancement and garnering recognition from both the scientific community and the broader public. Nevertheless, the constantly evolving landscape of scholarly communication has imposed significant challenges on researchers. This paper is dedicated to an examination of the scholarly communication practices of early career researchers in Egypt, with the overarching objective of providing insights into the transformations occurring within the scholarly communication framework, particularly within the context of developing nations.

In our paper, we employed a quantitative research design to scrutinize the scholarly communication system in Egypt. This endeavor encompassed the distribution of questionnaires to early career researchers hailing from prominent Egyptian universities, resulting in a total of 441 respondents representing various academic institutions across the country.

Our analysis revealed that junior scholars predominantly adhere to conventional scholarly methodologies in their research pursuits. This conformity is, in part, attributed to the promotion system in Egypt, which places considerable emphasis on established practices, such as single-author publication, while discouraging the utilization of informal channels for garnering recognition and accolades.

The findings of this study furnish us with a more profound comprehension of the prevailing scholarly system in Egypt, which in turn can serve as a foundation for potential system enhancement. It is imperative to acknowledge, however, that this study is not without limitations. The response rate could not be precisely quantified due to the online dissemination of the questionnaires, and the distribution of respondents across diverse scholarly disciplines exhibited significant disparities.

Communication Scholarship and the Quest for Open Access

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Abstract:  The advent of black, green, and gold open access publication models poses unique questions  for scholars of communication. Plato’s (1956) classic critique of writing in the legend of Theuth and Thamus warned that the printed word “rolls about all over the place, falling into the hands of those who have no concern with it” (pp. 69–70). More than 2 millennia later, scholars and administrators at all levels of the discipline face just such a phenomenon. As scholars of cyberspace debate whether “information wants to be free” (Levy, 2014), a communication perspective involves consideration of the importance of authorship and attribution amid an ever-shifting array of digital publishing options and subversions. The purpose of this study is to investigate the ongoing transformation of academic publishing by examining black, green, and gold open access models, the responses of the communication discipline, and ongoing questions surrounding the nature and extent of accessibility. As access options for research and publication continue to evolve, this study hopes to provide coordinates for administrators seeking to navigate questions concerning the what, how, and why of communication scholarship in a digital age. 

Varieties of diffusion in academic publishing: How status and legitimacy influence growth trajectories of new innovations – Siler – Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology – Wiley Online Library

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Abstract:  Open Access (OA) publishing has progressed from an initial fringe idea to a still-growing, major component of modern academic communication. The proliferation of OA publishing presents a context to examine how new innovations and institutions develop. Based on analyses of 1,296,304 articles published in 83 OA journals, we analyze changes in the institutional status, gender, age, citedness, and geographical locations of authors over time. Generally, OA journals tended towards core-to-periphery diffusion patterns. Specifically, journal authors tended to decrease in high-status institutional affiliations, male and highly cited authors over time. Despite these general tendencies, there was substantial variation in the diffusion patterns of OA journals. Some journals exhibited no significant demographic changes, and a few exhibited periphery-to-core diffusion patterns. We find that although both highly and less-legitimate journals generally exhibit core-to-periphery diffusion patterns, there are still demographic differences between such journals. Institutional and cultural legitimacy—or lack thereof—affects the social and intellectual diffusion of new OA journals.

 

Wrzesinski (2023) Reclaiming (Parts of) Scholarly Communication: Resilient Publishing as a Community-Driven Effort | Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society

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Wrzesinski, M. (2023). Reclaiming (Parts of) Scholarly Communication: Resilient Publishing as a Community-Driven Effort. Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.34669/wi.wjds/3.2.5

Abstract: Community-driven open-access journals foster the idea of a biblio-diverse publishing ecosystem and challenge the prevalent commercialization of academic publishing. However, despite their importance, their existence is at risk. With little to no budget, they mostly operate on the unpaid labor of their editorial teams and the free support provided by public infrastructures. The first part of this article describes the model, key functions, and governance principles of community-driven open-access journals within the business of global academic publishing. In promoting fair, resilient, and gratis open access, they contribute to the evolution of an inclusive and biblio-diverse intellectual landscape. The article then concerns itself with the challenges that community-driven publishing faces within the system of academia and academic publishing. Emphasizing the need for more funding, engagement strategies, and wider responsibility, I close with some practical suggestions for immediate aid.

 

Introducing the “Towards Responsible Publishing” proposal from cOAlition S

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“Driven by the same “duty of care for the good functioning of the science system” that inspired Plan S, the funders forming cOAlition S are now exploring a new vision for scholarly communication; a vision that holds the promise of being more effective, affordable, and equitable, ultimately benefiting society as a whole.

 

Our vision is a community-based scholarly communication system fit for open science in the 21st, that empowers scholars to share the full range of their research outputs and to participate in new quality control mechanisms and evaluation standards for these outputs….

To address these and other shortcomings, the new proposal is anchored in two key concepts that extend Plan S:

 

1. Authors, not third-party suppliers, decide when and what to publish.

 

 

In such a ‘scholar-led’ publishing system, third-party suppliers can still offer and charge for services that facilitate peer review, publication and preservation. However, they will not block scholars from sharing their work at any stage during the research and dissemination process.

 

 

2. The scholarly record includes the full range of outputs created during the research cycle, and not just the final journal-accepted version.

 

 

By making early article versions and peer review feedback critical elements of the scholarly record, a future scholarly communication system can capture research ‘in the act’. Shining a light on how research progresses towards increasingly trustworthy knowledge creation offers opportunities for reviewing and filtering scholarly outputs for the purposes of curation and research assessment….”

Mattermost vs Slack for small/medium teams: why open source matters | Cloud68.co

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Efficient communication and collaboration tools are vital for teams aiming to navigate the complexities of the work environment small and medium teams have to navigate these days. Slack, a major player in this field, has provided a platform for instant messaging, file sharing, and more, capturing the attention of businesses and organisations worldwide. However, a closer look reveals certain aspects of its business model that may not align with the best interests of all users, especially those in small and medium-sized teams. Let’s review these aspects and big tech business ethics and introduce an open-source Slack alternative that promises greater freedom and control.