Institutional Repositories and Academic Social Networks: Competition or Complement? A Study of Open Access Policy Compliance vs. ResearchGate Participation

INTRODUCTION The popularity of academic social networks like ResearchGate and Academia.edu indicates that scholars want to share their work, yet for universities with open access (OA) policies, these sites may be competing with institutional repositories (IRs) for content. This article seeks to reveal researcher practices, attitudes, and motivations around uploading their work to ResearchGate and complying with an institutional OA Policy through a study of faculty at the University of Rhode Island (URI). METHODS We conducted a population study to examine the participation by 558 full-time URI faculty members in the OA Policy and ResearchGate followed by a survey of 728 full-time URI faculty members about their participation in the two services. DISCUSSION The majority of URI faculty do not participate in the OA Policy or use ResearchGate. Authors’ primary motivations for participation are sharing their work more broadly and increasing its visibility and impact. Faculty who participate in ResearchGate are more likely to participate in the OA Policy, and vice versa. The fact that the OA Policy targets the author manuscript and not the final published article constitutes a significant barrier to participation. CONCLUSION Librarians should not view academic social networks as a threat to open access. Authors’ strong preference for sharing the final, published version of their articles provides support for calls to hasten the transition to a Gold OA publishing system. Misunderstandings about the OA Policy and copyright indicate a need for librarians to conduct greater education and outreach to authors about options for legally sharing articles

Density profiles of a self-gravitating lattice gas in one, two, and three dimensions

We consider a lattice gas in spaces of dimensionality D = 1; 2; 3. The particles are subject to a hardcore exclusion interaction and an attractive pair interaction that satisfies Gauss\u27 law as do Newtonian gravity in D = 3, a logarithmic potential in D = 2, and a distance-independent force in D = 1. Under mild additional assumptions regarding symmetry and fluctuations we investigate equilibrium states of self-gravitating material clusters, in particular radial density profiles for closed and open systems. We present exact analytic results in several instances and high-precision numerical data in others. The density profile of a cluster with finite mass is found to exhibit exponential decay in D = 1 and power-law decay in D = 2 with temperature-dependent exponents in both cases. In D = 2 the gas evaporates in a continuous transition at a nonzero critical temperature. We describe clusters of in_nite mass in D = 3 with a density pro_le consisting of three layers (core, shell, halo) and an algebraic large-distance asymptotic decay. In D = 3 a cluster of finite mass can be stabilized at T \u3e 0 via con_nement to a sphere of finite radius. In some parameter regime, the gas thus enclosed undergoes a discontinuous transition between distinct density profiles. For the free energy needed to identify the equilibrium state we introduce a construction of gravitational self-energy that works in all D for the lattice gas. The decay rate of the density profile of an open cluster is shown to transform via a stretched exponential for 1 \u3c D \u3c 2 whereas it crosses over from one power-law at intermediate distances to a different power-law at larger distances for 2 \u3c D \u3c 3

Data from: Institutional Repositories and Academic Social Networks: Competition or Complement? A Study of Open Access Policy Compliance vs. ResearchGate Participation

This data corresponds to the article "Institutional Repositories and Academic Social Networks: Competition or Complement? A Study of Open Access Policy Compliance vs. ResearchGate Participation." (2017-08-07