Trustworthiness and Authority of Scholarly Information in a Digital Age: Results of an International Questionnaire

An international survey of over 3600 researchers examined how trustworthiness and quality are determined for making decisions on scholarly reading, citing, and publishing and how scholars perceive changes in trust with new forms of scholarly communication. Although differences in determining trustworthiness and authority of scholarly resources exist among age groups and fields of study, traditional methods and criteria remain important across the board. Peer review is considered the most important factor for determining the quality and trustworthiness of research. Researchers continue to read abstracts, check content for sound arguments and credible data, and rely on journal rankings when deciding whether to trust scholarly resources in reading, citing, or publishing. Social media outlets and open access publications are still often not trusted, although many researchers believe that open access has positive implications for research, especially if the open access journals are peer reviewed

What Makes Persistent Identifiers Persistent?

This essay sketches technical and non-technical issues around persistent identifiers (henceforth PIs) in a manner which makes no attempt to be complete. Our goal is to rescue the core notions from the obscurity which detail and completeness burdens them with. A reader willing to entertain the idea of their necessity should be able to cut to the chase and follow a more complex and involved debate after reading this. Our hope is that in isolating the core issues we will enable a more founded discussion of the social and political issues involved in PIs.Persistent Identifier, handle, DOI, data, trust, URN, RePEc

Removing the Silencer : Coverage and Protection of Physician Speech Under the First Amendment

The physician–patient relationship rests on a bedrock of trust. Without trust, patients—and for that matter, physicians—are less willing to divulge information critical to providing accurate medical diagnoses and treatments. The state of Florida seemingly ignored this when its legislature, with support from the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun advocates, enacted the Firearm Owners Privacy Act (FOPA), a statute that restricts physicians from questioning their patients about firearm ownership. In Wollschlaeger v. Governor of Florida , the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that FOPA did not regulate physician speech but, instead, regulated physician conduct. As such, the law was exempted from First Amendment scrutiny. But almost one year to the day after publishing its first Wollschlaeger opinion, the Eleventh Circuit sua sponte vacated its original opinion and substituted in its place a brand new opinion—one holding that FOPA was subject to First Amendment scrutiny, but nonetheless passed constitutional muster. This Note uses the diverging Wollschlaeger opinions as a vehicle to analyze the First Amendment’s coverage and protection of physician speech. Specifically, it argues that an uninhibited line of communication is required to protect the trust necessary for an effective physician–patient relationship. This logical underpinning leads to the conclusion that the First Amendment presumptively covers physician speech and, furthermore, that physician speech should be subject to intermediate scrutiny—a level of scrutiny that FOPA cannot meet

What Others Say About This Work? Scalable Extraction of Citation Contexts from Research Papers

This work presents a new, scalable solution to the problem of extracting citation contexts: the textual fragments surrounding citation references. These citation contexts can be used to navigate digital libraries of research papers to help users in deciding what to read. We have developed a prototype system which can retrieve, on-demand, citation contexts from the full text of over 15 million research articles in the Mendeley catalog for a given reference research paper. The evaluation results show that our citation extraction system provides additional functionality over existing tools, has two orders of magnitude faster runtime performance, while providing a 9% improvement in F-measure over the current state-of-the-art

Collaborative yet independent: Information practices in the physical sciences

In many ways, the physical sciences are at the forefront of using digital tools and methods to work with information and data. However, the fields and disciplines that make up the physical sciences are by no means uniform, and physical scientists find, use, and disseminate information in a variety of ways. This report examines information practices in the physical sciences across seven cases, and demonstrates the richly varied ways in which physical scientists work, collaborate, and share information and data. This report details seven case studies in the physical sciences. For each case, qualitative interviews and focus groups were used to understand the domain. Quantitative data gathered from a survey of participants highlights different information strategies employed across the cases, and identifies important software used for research. Finally, conclusions from across the cases are drawn, and recommendations are made. This report is the third in a series commissioned by the Research Information Network (RIN), each looking at information practices in a specific domain (life sciences, humanities, and physical sciences). The aim is to understand how researchers within a range of disciplines find and use information, and in particular how that has changed with the introduction of new technologies

‘My printer must, haue somwhat to his share’: Isabella Whitney, Richard Jones, and crafting books

Given Isabella Whitney’s reputation as the first English professional woman writer, her books are fertile ground for the recent material turn in the study of early modern women’s writing. Women’s engagement in book production meant that their texts were mediated through the work of booksellers, printers, and other agents in the print trade. We need to remember that writers make texts, but books are made by publishers and printers. Whitney’s own working relationship with her printer-publisher, Richard Jones, is well-known. Yet, the precise nature of Jones’s role in the production of Whitney’s books and her fashioning as an “Auctor” remains shadowy, largely because questions of agency have not been explored through the technologies of book production. To understand the ways in which Whitney’s texts were mediated through print, and her participation in this process, this essay will focus on how her books of poetry were made, starting with the role of her printer-publisher, Richard Jones