6,746 research outputs found
A Comparison Of Adult- And Peer-Mediated Intervention For Autism: A Case Study
This study examined the response of a young child with autism to two play-based intervention conditions: adult-mediated and peer-mediated. The client was five years old, demonstrated moderate-to-severe autism, and exhibited developmental functioning between the 14 to 34 month level. The peer-mediated condition, based on a modified Integrated Play Group approach, utilized a typically developing peer who was three years of age. The study utilized an ABAB alternating treatment design to compare the impact of the adult- and peer-mediated interventions. Results from the current study suggest that the adult-mediated intervention resulted in increased engagement and more sophisticated social-communicative behaviors than the peer-mediated approach for the child with autism. Clinical implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed
Scientific journals, overlays and repositories: a case study of costs and sustainability issues
Publishing scientific research is an area of study that attracts interest
from various stakeholders such as publishers, academic and research staff,
libraries and funders. In the past decade increased journal subscription fees
prompted calls for cheaper and more efficient means of accessing the scientific
literature. Factors such as the expansion of digital repositories, the introduction
of open source journal management software, an increasing awareness within
the scholarly community at large of the issues around open access, and an
increasing readiness within the publishing community to experiment with new
models, suggest that the circumstances may now be right for new models of
scientific publishing to be explored, as well as potential business models and
sustainable solutions around them. This paper explores some of the issues
around the costs and sustainability of a prospective journal model known as the
overlay journal. We present estimates of initial start up costs for such a model,
discuss the factors that would influence scientists in deciding whether to
publish in a journal overlaid onto a public repository; and report their views on
the relative importance of different features and functions of a journal in terms
of funding priorities
Consortial routes to effective repositories
A consortial approach to the establishment of repository services can help a group of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to share costs, share technology and share expertise. Consortial repository work can tap into existing structures, or it can involve new groupings of institutions with a common interest in exploring repository development. This Briefing Paper outlines some of the potential benefits of collaborative repository activity, and highlights some of the technical and organisational issues for consideration
Exploring aspects of scientific publishing in astrophysics and cosmology: the views of scientists
Scientists in astrophysics and cosmology make much use of the arXiv repository. Concerns raised by scientists in those fields about publication costs and delays, and the transparency and validity of the peer review process, raised questions about levels of satisfaction with existing publishing models. This paper discusses the results from a community survey in the fields of astrophysics and cosmology, conducted as part of an investigation into the feasibility of an "overlay journal" model in these disciplines. Six hundred and eighty three (683) researchers provided information about their academic/research background, their research practices, and their attitudes, both as producers and consumers of information, to the traditional journal publishing system, and gave their reaction to the overlay publication model. The survey results indicate that scientists in these disciplines are, in general, favourably disposed towards new publishing models, although some important caveats and concerns, particularly regarding quality, were highlighted
Investigating overlay journals: introducing the RIOJA Project
Introduces the RIOJA (Repository Interface to Overlaid Journal Archives) project, a 1-year partnership between UCL (University College London), Imperial College London, and the Universities of Glasgow, Cambridge and Cornell. The project will work with the Astrophysics community to investigate aspects of overlay journals.
For the purposes of the project, an overlay journal is defined as an open access, quality-assured journal whose content is held on one or more repositories
Repository Steering Groups
A well-chosen, well-informed and committed Steering
Group can make an important contribution to the
sustained success of a repository. This Briefing Paper
highlights some of the issues for consideration when
planning the role, remit and composition of a repository
Steering Group
RIOJA (Repository Interface to Overlaid Journal Archives) project: final report
RIOJA (Repository Interface to Overlaid Journal Archives) was a 18-month partnership
between UCL (University College London), Imperial College London, and the Universities Glasgow, Cambridge and Cornell. The project was funded by the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee, UK). The project team worked with the Astrophysics community investigate aspects of overlay journals. For the purposes of the project, an overlay was defined as a quality-assured journal whose content is deposited to and resides more open access repositories.
The project had both technical aims and supporting, non-technical aims. The primary
technical deliverable from the project was a toolkit for the creation and maintenance overlay journals. The toolkit supports the exchange of data between a repository and piece of journal software. It supports functions such as author validation, metadata
extraction from the source repository, and submission tracking. The toolkit is platform-neutral and could, in theory, be employed by any journal using content from any number repositories, in any discipline. The project also implemented a demonstrator overlay applying the RIOJA toolkit to the arXiv subject repository, and a demonstrator
implementation of the RIOJA tool for GNU EPrints.
Aside from creating the demonstrator and its underlying tools, the project aimed to acceptibility and feasibility of the overlay model. First, a large-scale survey of the
Astrophysics community was undertaken. The survey collected data about research publishing practices within this community, and probed its reaction to the principle publishing. Second, the views of editors and publishers in this discipline were sought
through interviews. These views were added to findings from the literature and summarised
in a more general report on issues around the sustainability of an overlay journal
EMBRACE (EMbedding Repositories And Consortial Enhancement) project: final report
EMBRACE (EMBedding Repositories And Consortial Enhancement) was an 18-month project led by UCL on behalf of the SHERPA-LEAP (London Eprints Access Project) Consortium, a group of 13 University of London institutions with institutional repositories.
The project had two strands, technical and strategic. In its technical strand, EMBRACE aimed to implement a number of technical improvements to enhance the functionality of the SHERPA-LEAP repositories. In a concurrent strategic strand, EMBRACE set out to investigate the challenges of embedding repositories of digital assets in institutional strategy to ensure repository sustainability.
The technical work of the project resulted in the successful enhancement of the partner repositories, and a cover page generating tool has been released on an open source basis. The strategic work delivered two main outputs: a full report on the work of RAND in drawing on stakeholder interviews which identifies drivers for, and barriers to, repository sustainability; and a supplementary, "briefing paper" digest of the main report, concentrating on the interventions which can be taken by repository managers and champions to address the challenges of embedding repositories. Both documents are in the public domain. The Briefing Paper is explicitly designed for adaptation and local customisation by HEIs. The RAND report emphasises the importance of establishing a clear vision for the repository, and of close communication with stakeholders, if a repository is to succeed
Publishing scientific research: is there ground for new ventures?
This paper highlights some of the issues that have been reported in surveys carried out by the RIOJA (Repository Interface for Overlaid Journal Archives) project (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ls/rioja). Six hundred and eighty three scientists (17% of 4012 contacted), and representatives from publishing houses and members of editorial boards from peer-reviewed journals in astrophysics and cosmology provided their views regarding the overlay journal model. In general the scientists were disposed favourably towards the overlay journal model. However, they raised several implementation issues that they would consider important, primarily relating to the quality of the editorial board and of the published papers, the speed and quality of the peer review process, and the long-term archiving of the accepted research material. The traditional copy-editing function remains important to researchers in these disciplines, as is the visibility of research in indexing services. The printed volume is of little interest
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