Scholarly Communication Initiatives Department Jan 2018 - June 2019 Report

This report highlights the major accomplishments of the Scholarly Communication Initiatives Department (SCI) with a special emphasis on statistics from Digital Scholarship@UNLV, our institutional repository. The report reflects activities from January 2018 through June 2019. The significant highlights during this time include the 5 millionth download of a digital item from Digital Scholarship@UNLV, adding over 3,000 full-text theses and dissertations written at UNLV from 1977-2008, establishing pilot projects to support open access and research data management efforts, releasing the 2013 and 2017 Solar Decathlon collections, and hosting an ambitious and engaging Open Access Week slate of activities

Researcher’s Choice or Just a Necessity? The Consequences of Publishing in a Predatory Journal

The research community has been continuously investigating the issue of predatory journals. With the rapid development of technology and the world, online publishing has also accelerated, making it crucial to publish and disseminate scientific results as quickly as possible due to the “publish-or-perish” phenomenon. The number of open-access, online-only journals is increasing each year. Predatory publishers and journals have taken advantage of this trend by engaging in profit-driven, unethical practices. This article discusses how the predator phenomenon affects those involved in scientific communication. The research aims to address the following questions: What are the detrimental impacts of predatory journals on individuals involved in scientific communication? What causes researchers to publish in predatory journals? What is the relationship between publication pressure and publishing in predator journals

Health and Medical Researcher Publishing Patterns and How Libraries Support Them

Changing business models in scholarly publishing means that researchers have increased choices as to where to submit their articles. Choices are made on the basis of perceived quality of the journal, the speed of publishing, and how close a match there is between the journal scope and the article topic. Additionally, there is an increasing concern as to whether the journals are predatory. This paper reports on a study which sought to understand how health researchers go about selecting where to publish and the support that they receive in this regard from librarians and related staff. The research confirms that knowledge of a specific journal is still the predominant factor for researchers and that they prefer to rely on their own judgment. Librarians are providing the tools such as databases and whitelists by which better choices can be made whilst exploring new roles in advising and training researchers. Predatory journals are being selected by some, chiefly as a consequence of a lack of awareness amongst researchers and the need for some to publish swiftly and at low cost

Writing Literature Reviews in Church-Based Research

Because of the knowledge explosion taking place, literature reviews in church-based research are needed more than ever. Summaries and syntheses of previous research make this knowledge available to practitioners and help researchers focus on what remains unknown. In contrast to empirical studies, literature reviews rely on previously published studies to make conclusions and advance theory. These studies may include both church-based research and more general research that is not particularly Christian. In contrast to meta-analyses which focus on synthesizing statistical information, literature reviews focus on conceptual synthesis and theory advancement. To write a literature review, authors must first choose a research problem to address. An initial review of past literature will help them focus on a narrower research question, most likely in an iterative process, to choose a specific topic. The authors must also consider the purpose of their review in light of past research and theoretical contributions that they can make to the chosen topic

What I learned from predatory publishers

This article is a first-hand account of the author’s work identifying and listing predatory publishers from 2012 to 2017. Predatory publishers use the gold (author pays) open access model and aim to generate as much revenue as possible, often foregoing a proper peer review. The paper details how predatory publishers came to exist and shows how they were largely enabled and condoned by the open-access social movement, the scholarly publishing industry, and academic librarians. The author describes tactics predatory publishers used to attempt to be removed from his lists, details the damage predatory journals cause to science, and comments on the future of scholarly publishing

Writing Literature Reviews in Church-Based Research

Because of the knowledge explosion taking place, literature reviews in church-based research are needed more than ever. Summaries and syntheses of previous research make this knowledge available to practitioners and help researchers focus on what remains unknown. In contrast to empirical studies, literature reviews rely on previously published studies to make conclusions and advance theory. These studies may include both church-based research and more general research that is not particularly Christian. In contrast to meta-analyses which focus on synthesizing statistical information, literature reviews focus on conceptual synthesis and theory advancement. To write a literature review, authors must first choose a research problem to address. An initial review of past literature will help them focus on a narrower research question, most likely in an iterative process, to choose a specific topic. The authors must also consider the purpose of their review in light of past research and theoretical contributions that they can make to the chosen topic

Bridging the Technical Issues for Successful Research: Role of Librarians in Bangladesh

Very simply, research is the systematic investigation to explore new knowledge for scientific achievement. Research comprises creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of humans, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications” (OECD, 2015). Research carried out by scientists and researchers has made an enormous impact on the world over the centuries specially for developing countries like Bangladesh. Research can make a significant contribution to the growth and development of any nation. Research and the library are closely interconnected with one another. Libraries especially academic and special libraries responsible for research support that is treated as central pillar in their mission. A “researcher life cycle” approach was applied to identify researcher information needs. Librarians continue to play a central role in conducting successful research and are expanding beyond their traditional duties for delivering high quality information services to engage themselves more as educators, technological guides, and communicators. Librarians should pace more and more into a leadership role develop major initiatives and conduct training to increase research reproducibility. The present paper focuses on the basic technical issues of efficient research skills and highlights the librarians’ competencies for research support of Bangladesh for guiding researchers for conducting successful research and ensuring a better work environment to do research. This paper mainly explores the proper referencing and citations, submission of manuscript in impact journals, find out predatory journals and selection for publishing articles in open access journals. This study also highlights the use and impact of various online databases such as Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus in order to explore citation status, h index and research performance of an individual author, country and institution. The study also investigates the role of the library in addressing present and future challenges to bridge technical issues of conducting research in Bangladesh. An attempt has been made to identify the major problems for submission manuscripts in high impact journals and to indicate some possible solutions for developing research information management systems, and efforts to improve training and support for researchers to enhance the research productivity of researchers in Bangladesh. Finally, the study illustrates a real picture of scientific outputs of renowned organizations in Bangladesh using Scopus database