235 research outputs found

    Same Question, Different World: Replicating an Open Access Research Impact Study

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    To examine changes in the open access landscape over time, this study partially replicated Kristin Antelman’s 2004 study of open access citation advantage. Results indicated open access articles still have a citation advantage. For three of the four disciplines examined, the most common sites hosting freely available articles were independent sites, such as academic social networks or article sharing sites. For the same three disciplines, more than 70% of the open access copies were publishers’ PDFs. The major difference from Antelman’s is the increase in the number of freely available articles that appear to be in violation of publisher policies

    Exploring Copyright Compliance in Self-Archiving of Scholarly Works: Nigerian Librarians’ Perspectives

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    Abstract Purpose: Low understanding and comprehension of copyright compliance have been established in the body of literature. However, there is no study to indicate the understanding of Nigerian scholars on copyright compliance in self-archiving. This study explored copyright compliance of scholarly authors in self-archiving using the perspectives of Nigerian librarians. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopts a qualitative approach, using the semi-structured interviews to collect data from a total of twenty-one (21) participants. The interview sessions were carried out using the Zoom application, and the interview transcript was analysed using thematic analysis. Findings: Findings showed that most of the scholarly authors view self-archiving platforms as media for sharing and distributing scholarly works. Results showed that while manyof the librarians complied with copyright in self-archiving, there are some that still flout copyright agreement with publishers. Results show that majority of the librarians do not have knowledge of the copyright policies of the journal outlets where they published. Originality: This study is novel as it provides librarians’ knowledge and regard for copyright compliance in self-archiving of scholarly works. It presents the understanding of Nigerian librarians on the appropriate copyright practices in complying with the sharing of published academic works. Research limitations/Implications: The study will provide the necessary guide on how to address ever-present issue of copyright compliance between authors and publishers

    The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles

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    Despite growing interest in Open Access (OA) to scholarly literature, there is an unmet need for large-scale, up-to-date, and reproducible studies assessing the prevalence and characteristics of OA. We address this need using oaDOI, an open online service that determines OA status for 67 million articles. We use three samples, each of 100,000 articles, to investigateOAin three populations: (1) all journal articles assigned a Crossref DOI, (2) recent journal articles indexed in Web of Science, and (3) articles viewed by users of Unpaywall, an open-source browser extension that lets users find OA articles using oaDOI. We estimate that at least 28% of the scholarly literature is OA (19M in total) and that this proportion is growing, driven particularly by growth in Gold and Hybrid. The most recent year analyzed (2015) also has the highest percentage of OA (45%). Because of this growth, and the fact that readers disproportionately access newer articles, we find that Unpaywall users encounter OA quite frequently: 47% of articles they view are OA. Notably, the most common mechanism for OA is not Gold, Green, or Hybrid OA, but rather an under-discussed category we dub Bronze: articles made freeto- read on the publisher website, without an explicit Open license. We also examine the citation impact of OA articles, corroborating the so-called open-access citation advantage: accounting for age and discipline, OA articles receive 18% more citations than average, an effect driven primarily by Green and Hybrid OA.Weencourage further research using the free oaDOI service, as a way to inform OA policy and practice

    Academics and copyright ownership: ignorant, confused or misled?

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    Academics and copyright ownership: ignorant, confused or misled

    Open access availability of Catalonia research output: Case analysis of the CERCA institution, 2011-2015

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    The open access availability of publications by Catalonia's CERCA research centres was analysed to determine the extent to which authors use open access journals, repositories, social networks and other websites to disseminate their research results. A sample of 3,730 journal articles published by authors from CERCA research centres between 2011 and 2015 and available on Web of Science (out of a total output of 44,423) was analysed to identify how many were available in open access, full-text format. The results revealed that 75,8% of the total (2,828 articles) had at least one version available in open access, but just 52% (1,940 articles) had at least one version available in either journals (whether pure or hybrid open access journals or those with embargo periods) or repositories, a finding that highlights the powerful role played by academic social networks in the sharp increase in open access availability. Of the 2,828 articles for which at least one open access version was found, a total of 9,868 copies were located. With respect to versions, the publisher's final version, i.e. the type formatted for publication by journal publishers, was found in 75,3% of cases. The number of articles published in open access journals (567) was very close to the number of articles published in hybrid journals or journals with embargo periods (624). Only 40,4% of the articles in the sample were located in repositories, being the subject repositories the heaviest used. Fifty percent of the articles (1,881 publications) were posted on academic social networks, the most popular of which were ResearchGate and Academia. According to thematic areas, all six areas (science, life sciences, medical and health sciences, engineering and architecture and humanities) exceeded 70% of articles in open access

    Institutional Repositories and Academic Social Networks: Competition or Complement? A Study of Open Access Policy Compliance vs. ResearchGate Participation

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    INTRODUCTION The popularity of academic social networks like ResearchGate and Academia.edu indicates that scholars want to share their work, yet for universities with open access (OA) policies, these sites may be competing with institutional repositories (IRs) for content. This article seeks to reveal researcher practices, attitudes, and motivations around uploading their work to ResearchGate and complying with an institutional OA Policy through a study of faculty at the University of Rhode Island (URI). METHODS We conducted a population study to examine the participation by 558 full-time URI faculty members in the OA Policy and ResearchGate followed by a survey of 728 full-time URI faculty members about their participation in the two services. DISCUSSION The majority of URI faculty do not participate in the OA Policy or use ResearchGate. Authors’ primary motivations for participation are sharing their work more broadly and increasing its visibility and impact. Faculty who participate in ResearchGate are more likely to participate in the OA Policy, and vice versa. The fact that the OA Policy targets the author manuscript and not the final published article constitutes a significant barrier to participation. CONCLUSION Librarians should not view academic social networks as a threat to open access. Authors’ strong preference for sharing the final, published version of their articles provides support for calls to hasten the transition to a Gold OA publishing system. Misunderstandings about the OA Policy and copyright indicate a need for librarians to conduct greater education and outreach to authors about options for legally sharing articles

    ResearchGate, Copyright, and You

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    Slides from a presentation, ResearchGate, Copyright, and You, offered at the University of Rhode Island Libraries on November 4 and November 15, 2016. ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and other websites make it easy to share your scholarly content, but is sharing on these sites safe to do? Learn about the implications of posting your research online, and find out how you can do so to have the most impact. Part of the University Libraries\u27 Search Savvy Seminar series

    Ten years of research on ResearchGate: a scoping review using Google Scholar (2008–2017)

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    Objective: To analyse quantitatively the articles published during 2008–2017 about the academic social networking site ResearchGate. Methods: A scoping bibliometric review of documents retrieved using Google Scholar was conducted, limitedto publications that contained the word ‘ResearchGate’ in their title and were published from 2008 to 2017. Results: The search yielded 159 documents, once a preliminary list of 386 documents retrieved from Google Scholar was filtered, which eliminated about 60% of the results that were bibliographic citations and not documents. Papers in journals were the most numerous type of documents (n = 73; 46%), followed by conference papers (n = 31; 19.5%). Contributing eight publications, two Spanish scholars (Delgado López-Cózar and OrduñaMalea, who were co-authors in each case) were the most prolific authors writing on this topic during the ten-year period. The keywords most used in the documents were ‘ResearchGate’ and ‘Altmetrics’. The publications were cited frequently since 2014 (more than 90% of the total cites fell in that period), and those with more than one author werethe most cited ones. The authors of the documents were mainly librarians and information science professionals, who wrote primarily as co-authors with colleagues from their own institutions, mostly published in English. Conclusions: Interest in ResearchGate has grown since 2015, as evident from the number of articles published and the citations they received. Keywords: Academic social networks, bibliometrics, scholarly communicatio

    Ten years of research on ResearchGate: a scoping review using Google Scholar (2008–2017)

    Get PDF
    Objective: To analyse quantitatively the articles published during 2008–2017 about the academic social networking site ResearchGate. Methods: A scoping bibliometric review of documents retrieved using Google Scholar was conducted, limitedto publications that contained the word ‘ResearchGate’ in their title and were published from 2008 to 2017. Results: The search yielded 159 documents, once a preliminary list of 386 documents retrieved from Google Scholar was filtered, which eliminated about 60% of the results that were bibliographic citations and not documents. Papers in journals were the most numerous type of documents (n = 73; 46%), followed by conference papers (n = 31; 19.5%). Contributing eight publications, two Spanish scholars (Delgado López-Cózar and OrduñaMalea, who were co-authors in each case) were the most prolific authors writing on this topic during the ten-year period. The keywords most used in the documents were ‘ResearchGate’ and ‘Altmetrics’. The publications were cited frequently since 2014 (more than 90% of the total cites fell in that period), and those with more than one author werethe most cited ones. The authors of the documents were mainly librarians and information science professionals, who wrote primarily as co-authors with colleagues from their own institutions, mostly published in English. Conclusions: Interest in ResearchGate has grown since 2015, as evident from the number of articles published and the citations they received. Keywords: Academic social networks, bibliometrics, scholarly communicatio

    ResearchGate versus Google Scholar: Which finds more early citations?

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    ResearchGate has launched its own citation index by extracting citations from documents uploaded to the site and reporting citation counts on article profile pages. Since authors may upload preprints to ResearchGate, it may use these to provide early impact evidence for new papers. This article assesses the whether the number of citations found for recent articles is comparable to other citation indexes using 2675 recently-published library and information science articles. The results show that in March 2017, ResearchGate found less citations than did Google Scholar but more than both Web of Science and Scopus. This held true for the dataset overall and for the six largest journals in it. ResearchGate correlated most strongly with Google Scholar citations, suggesting that ResearchGate is not predominantly tapping a fundamentally different source of data than Google Scholar. Nevertheless, preprint sharing in ResearchGate is substantial enough for authors to take seriously
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