35,021 research outputs found
Ten-Year Cross-Disciplinary Comparison of the Growth of Open Access and How it Increases Research Citation Impact
Lawrence (2001)found computer science articles that were openly accessible
(OA) on the Web were cited more. We replicated this in physics. We tested
1,307,038 articles published across 12 years (1992-2003) in 10 disciplines
(Biology, Psychology, Sociology, Health, Political Science, Economics,
Education, Law, Business, Management). A robot trawls the Web for full-texts
using reference metadata ISI citation data (signal detectability d'=2.45; bias
= 0.52). Percentage OA (relative to total OA + NOA) articles varies from 5%-16%
(depending on discipline, year and country) and is slowly climbing annually
(correlation r=.76, sample size N=12, probability p < 0.005). Comparing OA and
NOA articles in the same journal/year, OA articles have consistently more
citations, the advantage varying from 36%-172% by discipline and year.
Comparing articles within six citation ranges (0, 1, 2-3, 4-7, 8-15, 16+
citations), the annual percentage of OA articles is growing significantly
faster than NOA within every citation range (r > .90, N=12, p < .0005) and the
effect is greater with the more highly cited articles (r = .98, N=6, p < .005).
Causality cannot be determined from these data, but our prior finding of a
similar pattern in physics, where percent OA is much higher (and even
approaches 100% in some subfields), makes it unlikely that the OA citation
advantage is merely or mostly a self-selection bias (for making only one's
better articles OA). Further research will analyze the effect's timing, causal
components and relation to other variables.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 3 table
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 Antelmanâs 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 publishersâ PDFs. The major difference from Antelmanâs is the increase in the number of freely available articles that appear to be in violation of publisher policies
Estimating the potential impacts of open access to research findings
Advances in information and communication technologies are disrupting traditional models of scholarly publishing, radically changing our capacity to reproduce, distribute,
control, and publish information. The key question is whether there are new opportunities and new models for scholarly publishing that would better serve researchers and better communicate and disseminate research findings. Identifying access and efficiency limitations under the subscription publishing model, this paper explores the potential impacts of enhanced access to research outputs using a modified Solow-Swan model, which introduces âaccessibilityâ and âefficiencyâ parameters into calculating returns to R&D. Indicative impact ranges are presented for Government, Higher Education and Australian Research Council R&D expenditures. We conclude that there may be substantial benefits to be gained from more open access to research findings
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Openness and education: a beginnerâs guide
While recent high-profile developments such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have placed renewed emphasis on the idea of openness in education, different notions of open in relation to education can be found dating back to the 1960s. This document builds on recent research undertaken to trace this history, acknowledging that there is no single root of âopenâ in this context, but to map the different ways of thinking about open education that have come to bear on the field we see today. Mapping of themes across time aims to provides those new to the field with a useful overview of the history and introduction to the concept of openness, and ways to explore the literature further. Each section of this document will summarise the nature of one of the themes, and its relationship to the broader network. Additionally, the document provides an annotated bibliography, through summaries of five of the most influential publications across a range of perspectives in each theme
Harnad Comments on Canadaâs NSERC/SSHRC/CIHR Draft Tri-Agency Open Access Policy
The Draft Canadian Draft Tri-Agency Open Access Policy is excellent in preserving fundeesâ free choice of journal, and afree choice about whether or not to use the research funds to pay to publish in an OA journal. However, deposit in the fundeeâs institutional repository immediately upon acceptance for publication needs to be required, whether or not the fundee chooses to publish in an OA journal and whether or not access to the deposit is embargoed for 12 months. This makes it possible for the fundeeâs institution to monitor and ensure timely compliance with the funder OA policy and it also facilitates providing individual eprints by the fundee to individual eprint requestors for research purposes during any embargo. Institutional repository deposits can then be automatically exported to any institutional-external repositories the fundee, funding agency or institution wishes. On no account should compliance with funding agency conditions be left to the publisher rather than the fundee and the fundeeâs institution
Maximizing Research Impact Through Institutional and National Open-Access Self-Archiving Mandates
No research institution can afford all the journals its researchers may need, so all articles are losing research impact (usage and citations). Articles made âOpen Access,â (OA) by self-archiving them on the web are cited twice as much, but only 15% of articles are being spontaneously self-archived. The only institutions approaching 100% self-archiving are those that mandate it. Surveys show that 95% of authors will comply with a self-archiving mandate; the actual expe-rience of institutions with mandates has confirmed this. What institutions and funders need to mandate is that (1) immediately upon acceptance for publication, (2) the authorâs final draft must be (3) deposited into the Institutional Repository. Only the depositing needs to be mandated; set-ting access privileges to the full-text as either OA or Restricted Access (RA) can be left up to the author. For articles published in the 93% of journals that have already endorsed self-archiving, access can be set as OA immediately; for the remaining 7%, authors can email the eprint in re-sponse to individual email requests automatically forwarded by the Repository
Maximizing research impact through institutional and national open-access self-archiving mandates
No research institution can afford all the journals its researchers may need, so all articles are losing research impact (usage and citations). Articles made âOpen Access,â (OA) by self-archiving them on the web are cited twice as much, but only 15% of articles are being spontaneously self-archived. The only institutions approaching 100% self-archiving are those that mandate it. Surveys show that 95% of authors will comply with a self-archiving mandate; the actual experience of institutions with mandates has confirmed this. What institutions and funders need to mandate is that (1) immediately upon acceptance for publication, (2) the authorâs final draft must be (3) deposited into the Institutional Repository. Only the depositing needs to be mandated; setting access privileges to the full-text as either OA or Restricted Access (RA) can be left up to the author. For articles published in the 93% of journals that have already endorsed self-archiving, access can be set as OA immediately; for the remaining 7%, authors can email the eprint in response to individual email requests automatically forwarded by the Repository
The Extraction of Community Structures from Publication Networks to Support Ethnographic Observations of Field Differences in Scientific Communication
The scientific community of researchers in a research specialty is an
important unit of analysis for understanding the field specific shaping of
scientific communication practices. These scientific communities are, however,
a challenging unit of analysis to capture and compare because they overlap,
have fuzzy boundaries, and evolve over time. We describe a network analytic
approach that reveals the complexities of these communities through examination
of their publication networks in combination with insights from ethnographic
field studies. We suggest that the structures revealed indicate overlapping
sub- communities within a research specialty and we provide evidence that they
differ in disciplinary orientation and research practices. By mapping the
community structures of scientific fields we aim to increase confidence about
the domain of validity of ethnographic observations as well as of collaborative
patterns extracted from publication networks thereby enabling the systematic
study of field differences. The network analytic methods presented include
methods to optimize the delineation of a bibliographic data set in order to
adequately represent a research specialty, and methods to extract community
structures from this data. We demonstrate the application of these methods in a
case study of two research specialties in the physical and chemical sciences.Comment: Accepted for publication in JASIS
A review of the characteristics of 108 author-level bibliometric indicators
An increasing demand for bibliometric assessment of individuals has led to a
growth of new bibliometric indicators as well as new variants or combinations
of established ones. The aim of this review is to contribute with objective
facts about the usefulness of bibliometric indicators of the effects of
publication activity at the individual level. This paper reviews 108 indicators
that can potentially be used to measure performance on the individual author
level, and examines the complexity of their calculations in relation to what
they are supposed to reflect and ease of end-user application.Comment: to be published in Scientometrics, 201
Negating the Gender Citation Advantage in Political Science
Open-access (OA) advocates have long promoted OA as an egalitarian alternative to traditional subscription-based academic publishing. The argument is simple: OA gives everyone access to high-quality research at no cost. In turn, this should benefit individual researchers by increasing the number of people reading and citing academic articles. As the OA movement gains traction in the academy, scholars are investing considerable research energy to determine whether there is an OA citation advantageâthat is, does OA increase an articleâs citation counts? Research indicates that it does. Scholars also explored patterns of gender bias in academic publishing and found that women are cited at lower rates in many disciplines. Indeed, in many disciplines, men enjoy a significant and positive gender citation effect (GCE) compared to their female colleagues. This article combines these research areas to determine whether the OA citation advantage varies by gender. Using Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney (WMW) tests, the nonparametric analog to the independent samples T-test, I conclude that OA benefits male and female political scientists at similar rates. Thus, OA negates the gender citation advantage that typically accrues to male political scientists
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