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

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

Auto-archivage des publications scientifiques : Synthèse d'enquêtes menées auprès des chercheurs

Cette étude a pour objet de dresser un panorama des enquêtes réalisées auprès des chercheurs concernant l'auto-archivage de leurs publications. Le but est de pointer ce qu'elles révèlent des motivations et freins des chercheurs, ainsi que des différences qui apparaissent selon les disciplines

Academics and copyright ownership: ignorant, confused or misled?

Academics and copyright ownership: ignorant, confused or misled

Open access and promotion and tenure evaluation plans at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire

Department and program evaluation plans at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire were examined to see if these documents provide evidence that could be used to justify supporting the publication of peer-reviewed open access articles toward tenure and promotion. In an earlier study, the authors reveal that faculty members at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire are more unaware of open access publishing than their counterparts at larger universities. These findings dovetail with other studies that show that faculty members are reluctant to publish in open access journals because of concerns about the quality of those journals. The existing body of scholarship suggests that tenure-line faculty fear publishing in open access journals because it could adversely impact their chances of promotion and tenure. The authors of this current study sought to determine if department and program evaluation plans could influence negative perceptions faculty have of open access journals. The implications of this study for librarians, scholarly communication professionals, tenure-line faculty, departments, and programs are addressed

Finding open access articles using Google, Google Scholar, OAIster and OpenDOAR

Purpose – The paper seeks to demonstrate the relative effectiveness of a range of search tools in finding open access (OA) versions of peer reviewed academic articles on the WWW. Design/methodology/approach – Some background is given to why and how academics may make their articles OA and how they may be found by others searching for them. Google, Google Scholar, OAIster and OpenDOAR were used to try to locate OA versions of peer reviewed journal articles drawn from three subjects (ecology, economics, and sociology). Findings – Of the 2519 articles 967 were found to have OA versions on the WWW. Google and Google Scholar found 76.84% of them. The results from OpenDOAR and OAIster were disappointing, but some improvements are noted. Only in economics could OAIster and OpenDOAR be considered a relative success. Originality/value - The paper shows the relative effectiveness of the search tools in these three subjects. The results indicate that those wanting to find OA articles in these subjects, for the moment at least, should use the general search engines Google and Google Scholar first rather than OpenDOAR or OAIster

Journal author rights and self-archiving: the case of Spanish journals

Contiene 10 figuras y una tablaOpen access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. The lack of clarity of publisher permissions for archiving in OA repositories affects the adoption of the green OA route. This paper explores editorial policies and elf-archiving conditions in 1,615 Spanish scholarly journals. 48% are published by university and research institutions, 25% by associations/societies, and 17% by commercial publishers; social sciences and humanities (SSH)accounted for 67% of the journals (44.5% and 22.5%, respectively) followed by health sciences (20%); 71% offered gratis access immediately after publication, and 11% after an embargo; 31% provided some mention of author rights. Self-archiving was specifi cally allowed by 65% of the journals; 52% were classified as ROMEO-blue, 12% as green and 15% as white, and 21% could not be classifi ed; 21%, mostly in SSH, used some type of Creative Commons license.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. Proyecto coordinado refs. CSO2011-29503-C02-01 CSO2011-29503-C02-02.Peer reviewe

Awareness and Use of Self-Archiving Options among Librarians in Public University Libraries in Bayelsa State, Nigeria

The study examined the awareness and use of self-archiving options among librarians in public university libraries in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. Specifically, the study identified the level of awareness, means of becoming aware of, extent of use of self-archiving options and factors motivating the use of self-archiving options by the librarians. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. The population of the study consisted of twenty-seven librarians of public university librarians in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. This figure comprised eleven librarians of Federal University Otuoke Library and sixteen librarians of Niger Delta University Library. An online questionnaire was used for data collection. The instrument was validated by two experts in the Department of Library and Information Science in Niger Delta University, Bayelsa State. The researcher distributed twenty-seven soft copies of the draft of the validated questionnaire to the librarians via social media platforms such as Federal University Otuoke Library Whatsapp Group, Niger Delta University Library Whatsapp Group, Bayelsa State Chapter of the Nigerian Library Association Whatsapp Group and Personal Whatsapp Accounts. Out of the twenty-seven questionnaires distributed, twenty-five questionnaires were properly completed, returned and found usable for data analysis. This produced a response rate of 92.59%. The data collected was analyzed using weighted mean and standard deviation. Findings revealed that the level of awareness of self-archiving options by the librarians was low. It also showed that the librarians gained awareness of self-archiving options by doing personal research, conference/seminar/workshop attendance, interaction with professional colleagues and reading professional literature. Moreso, it indicated that the extent to which the librarians used self-archiving options was low. Lastly, it revealed that the desire to enjoy wider research visibility of research works and personal recognition were the factors that motivated the use of self-archiving options by the librarians. The study recommended that the librarians should make conscious efforts to participate in institutional repository affairs, attend conferences/seminars/workshops, make more use of online publishing to increase their awareness of self-archiving options; the librarians should cultivate the habit of exploring the use of self-archiving options like Kudos, Mendeley.com etc. to draw global attention to their research papers and increase their use of self-archiving options

The Accessibility Quotient: A New Measure of Open Access

INTRODUCTION The Accessibility Quotient (AQ), a new measure for assisting authors and librarians in assessing and characterizing the degree of accessibility for a group of papers, is proposed and described. The AQ offers a concise measure that assesses the accessibility of peer-reviewed research produced by an individual or group, by incorporating data on open availability to readers worldwide, the degree of financial barrier to access, and journal quality. The paper reports on the context for developing this measure, how the AQ is calculated, how it can be used in faculty outreach, and why it is a useful lens to use in assessing progress towards more open access to research. METHODS Journal articles published in 2009 and 2010 by faculty members from one department in each of MIT’s five schools were examined. The AQ was calculated using economist Ted Bergstrom’s Relative Price Index to assess affordability and quality, and data from SHERPA/RoMEO to assess the right to share the peer-reviewed version of an article. RESULTS The results show that 2009 and 2010 publications by the Media Lab and Physics have the potential to be more open than those of Sloan (Management), Mechanical Engineering, and Linguistics & Philosophy. DISCUSSION Appropriate interpretation and applications of the AQ are discussed and some limitations of the measure are examined, with suggestions for future studies which may improve the accuracy and relevance of the AQ. CONCLUSION The AQ offers a concise assessment of accessibility for authors, departments, disciplines, or universities who wish to characterize or understand the degree of access to their research output, capturing additional dimensions of accessibility that matter to faculty

Motivations for self-archiving on an academic social networking site:A study on researchgate

© 2019 ASIS & T This study investigates motivations for self-archiving research items on academic social networking sites (ASNSs). A model of these motivations was developed based on two existing motivation models: motivation for self-archiving in academia and motivations for information sharing in social media. The proposed model is composed of 18 factors drawn from personal, social, professional, and external contexts, including enjoyment, personal/professional gain, reputation, learning, self-efficacy, altruism, reciprocity, trust, community interest, social engagement, publicity, accessibility, self-archiving culture, influence of external actors, credibility, system stability, copyright concerns, additional time, and effort. Two hundred and twenty-six ResearchGate users participated in the survey. Accessibility was the most highly rated factor, followed by altruism, reciprocity, trust, self-efficacy, reputation, publicity, and others. Personal, social, and professional factors were also highly rated, while external factors were rated relatively low. Motivations were correlated with one another, demonstrating that RG motivations for self-archiving could increase or decrease based on several factors in combination with motivations from the personal, social, professional, and external contexts. We believe the findings from this study can increase our understanding of users' motivations in sharing their research and provide useful implications for the development and improvement of ASNS services, thereby attracting more active users