12,087 research outputs found
Health sciences faculty perception and practices on OA scholarly communication
No full textThis study sought to investigate the faculty’s awareness, attitudes and use of open scholarly communication in Tanzanian health sciences universities. Based on a questionnaire survey, 415 faculty members were selected through a stratified random sampling from a population of 679 in
all eight health sciences universities in Tanzania. The response rate was 71.1%. The study found a high level of engagement with scholarly publishing, where senior members were more likely to participate in scholarly communication as journal authors, referee and editors. The majority of
respondents were aware about open access (OA) issues; however, a small proportion of faculty’s research materials was made available in OA. Senior faculty with more proficient technical skills are more likely to use OA than junior faculty. Major barriers to OA usage were related to ICT
infrastructure, awareness, skills, journal author pay model, and copyright and plagiarism concerns. This study recommends the following: universities to improve information and communication technology infrastructure, and develop institutional repositories and policies, and librarians to create awareness about OA, conduct information literacy programmes, and provide information services on copyright management issues and other related OA aspects. This is first comprehensive and detailed study focusing on the health sciences faculty use behaviour of OA initiatives in Tanzania, and reveals findings that are useful for planning and implementing OA initiatives in other institutions with similar conditions
Maximizing Research Impact Through Institutional and National Open-Access Self-Archiving Mandates
No full textNo research institution can afford all the journals its researchers may need, so all articles are losing research impact (usage and citations). Articles made “Open Access,” (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 author’s 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
Ethics of Open Access to Biomedical Research: Just a Special Case of Ethics of Open Access to Research
No full textThe ethical case for Open Access (OA) (free online access) to research findings is especially salient when it is public health that is being compromised by needless access restrictions. But the ethical imperative for OA is far more general: It applies to all scientific and scholarly research findings published in peer-reviewed journals. And peer-to-peer access is far more important than direct public access. Most research is funded to be conducted and published, by researchers, in order to be taken up, used, and built upon in further research and applications, again by researchers, for the benefit of the public that funded it -- not in order to generate revenue for the peer-reviewed journal publishing industry (nor even because there is a burning public desire to read [much of] it). Hence OA needs to be mandated for all research
Open access archiving and article citations within health services and policy research
No full textPromoting uptake of research findings is an objective common to those who fund, produce and publish health services and policy research. Open access (OA) is one method being employed to maximize impact. OA articles are online, free to access and use. This paper contributes to growing body of research exploring the “OA advantage” by employing an article-level analysis comparing citation rates for articles drawn from the same, purposively selected journals. We used a two-stage analytic approach designed to test whether OA is associated with (1) likelihood that an article is cited at all and (2) total number citations that an article receives, conditional on being cited at least once. Adjusting for potential confounders: number of authors, time since publication, journal, and article subject, we found that OA archived articles were 60% more likely to be cited at least once, and, once cited, were cited 29% more than non-OA articles
Open access self-archiving: An author study
No full textThis, our second author international, cross-disciplinary study on open access had 1296 respondents. Its focus was on self-archiving. Almost half (49%) of the respondent population have self-archived at least one article during the last three years. Use of institutional repositories for this purpose has doubled and usage has increased by almost 60% for subject-based repositories. Self-archiving activity is greatest amongst those who publish the largest number of papers. There is still a substantial proportion of authors unaware of the possibility of providing open access to their work by self-archiving. Of the authors who have not yet self-archived any articles, 71% remain unaware of the option. With 49% of the author population having self-archived in some way, this means that 36% of the total author population (71% of the remaining 51%), has not yet been appraised of this way of providing open access. Authors have frequently expressed reluctance to self-archive because of the perceived time required and possible technical difficulties in carrying out this activity, yet findings here show that only 20% of authors found some degree of difficulty with the first act of depositing an article in a repository, and that this dropped to 9% for subsequent deposits. Another author worry is about infringing agreed copyright agreements with publishers, yet only 10% of authors currently know of the SHERPA/RoMEO list of publisher permissions policies with respect to self-archiving, where clear guidance as to what a publisher permits is provided. Where it is not known if permission is required, however, authors are not seeking it and are self-archiving without it. Communicating their results to peers remains the primary reason for scholars publishing their work; in other words,
researchers publish to have an impact on their field. The vast majority of authors (81%) would willingly comply with a mandate from their employer or research funder to deposit copies of their articles in an institutional or subject-based repository. A further 13% would comply reluctantly; 5% would not comply with such a mandate
Managing open access (OA) workflows at the University of St Andrews: challenges and Pathfinder solutions
No full text© 2014. Janet Aucock. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use and distribution provided the original author and source are credited.This article arose out of a presentation given to the UKSG seminar on ‘Managing Open Access: pain points and workflows’. It presents a case study on the workflows in place at the University of St Andrews and how these are developing to meet funder compliance policies and the challenge of the new HEFCE Research Excellence Framework (REF) open access (OA) policy. The case study describes the research environment at St Andrews and in particular the challenges faced and how these may be answered. Since the seminar in May 2014, the Open Access Research Publications Support Team has engaged in a ‘Lean’ exercise to evaluate and streamline workflows within the institution. St Andrews is also now a partner in the LOCH project, one of the Jisc Pathfinder projects. The paper gives an update on recent activities and looks at strategies and practical ideas for improving workflows and removing pain points.Publisher PD
Scholarly communication and open access : research communities and their publishing patterns [New Trends in Scholarly Communication : how do Authors of different research communities consider OA?]
No full textAt the time of the Budapest Declaration, self-archiving supporters looked like a revolutionary, "anti-commercial publishers" movement. Today, after some years debate (and technological innovation in research and scientific e-publishing), antagonist positions are able to compromise and consider the tradeoffs.
What is really changing in the Authors' attitude towards institutional or disciplinary repositories, and peer reviewed open access journals?
Many recent papers have investigated these topics. From these sources we can note that Biomedical Authors behave differently from Physicists, Astronomers and Mathematicians, who have been using open archives for such a long time. Therefore we intend to analyze these different trends in the diverse communities.
Several aspects also deserve a careful attention: the role of new OA journals in evaluation processes (i.e. their impact and citations), implementation and maintenance costs of institutional repositories, the evolution of bibliometric indicators.
We intend also to discuss the role of libraries in service innovation and e-publishing promotion. The main areas where a key role may be played are: institutional repository management and users' training, the promotion of OA journals and information about evaluation methods (both qualitative and quantitative).
We think that the transition towards new communication models may be a great opportunity that libraries have to be ready to support
Ocean acidification state in the Ross Sea surface waters: physical and biological forcing
No full textThe Ross Sea is vulnerable to Ocean Acidification (OA) due to its relatively low total alkalinity and because of increased CO2 solubility in cold water. OA induced decreases in the saturation state (Ω) for calcite and aragonite have potentially serious consequences for Antarctic food webs. Throughout the ocean, mesoscale processes (on spatial scales of 10-100 km and temporal ranges from hours to days) have first-order impacts on phytoplankton physiochemical controls and are critical in determining growth patterns and distribution. The circulation of the surface waters in the Ross Sea is affected by the presence of small-scale structures such as eddies, fronts and filaments, which can penetrate deep below the surface layer and hence influence the intensity of the bloom by supplying nutrients and trace elements, such as iron. Little is known about the effects of mesoscale structures on the carbonate system , but predicting future surface OA state and estimating future CO2 fluxes on a regional scale require understanding of the mesoscale processes controlling the carbonate system.
To this purpose, water samples were collected in January 2014 in the framework of Ross Sea Mesoscale experiment (RoME) Project to evaluate the physical and biological forcing on the carbonate system at distance between stations of 5-10 km. Remote sensing supported the determination of the sampling strategy and helped positioning each sampling station. Total alkalinity, pH, dissolved oxygen, phytoplankton pigments and composition were investigated in combination with measurements of temperature, salinity and current speed. Total inorganic carbon, sea water CO2 partial pressure and Ω for calcite and aragonite were calculated from the measured total alkalinity and pH. In addition, continuous measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentration were completed. Different mesoscale physical features, such as fronts and eddies were observed in the investigated areas, which influenced the distribution of chemical parameters and of phytoplankton community in terms of biomass concentration (Chl-a) and species composition. The carbonate system properties in surface waters exhibited mesoscale variability with a horizontal length scale of about 10 km. Our results document substantial spatial heterogeneity and complexity in surface water carbonate system properties and the magnitude of the CO2 flux at a horizontal length scale of about 10 km, emphasizing the importance of mesoscale events to regional biogeochemistry. We believe that the resolution of these short length scale distributions provides insight into the biogeochemical dynamics which drive surface and subsurface variability in the Ross Sea
Conference Institutional archives for research: experiences and projects in Open Access Istituto Superiore di Sanità Rome, 30 November - 1 December 2006
No full textThe Congress was organised into four sessions: 1) Open Access (OA) and authors: support from the international community; 2) OA in Italy: knowledge and tools to write and search; 3) institutional policies for OA; 4) opportunities and services to develop OA. It was aimed at achieving the following objectives: a) make authors of biomedical publications aware of the benefits of depositing research material in digital open archives and publishing in OA peer-reviewed journals; b) outline the impact of the OA publishing model on the assessment of research output; c) enhance the adoption of policies encouraging the OA paradigm; d) promote cooperation between research institutions in Italy and abroad to share resources and experiences on institutional repositories. A useful introductory bibliography on the OA publishing model in the biomedical field is included in the Appendix
Ocean acidification state in the Ross Sea surface waters: physical and biological forcing.
No full textThe Ross Sea is vulnerable to Ocean Acidification (OA) due to its relatively low total alkalinity and because of increased CO2 solubility in cold water. OA induced decreases in the saturation state (Ω) for calcite and aragonite have potentially serious consequences for Antarctic food webs. Throughout the ocean, mesoscale processes (on spatial scales of 10-100 km and temporal ranges from hours to days) have first-order impacts on phytoplankton physiochemical controls and are critical in determining growth patterns and distribution. The circulation of the surface waters in the Ross Sea is affected by the presence of small-scale structures such as eddies, fronts and filaments, which can penetrate deep below the surface layer and hence influence the intensity of the bloom by supplying nutrients and trace elements, such as iron. Little is known about the effects of mesoscale structures on the carbonate system , but predicting future surface OA state and estimating future CO2 fluxes on a regional scale require understanding of the mesoscale processes controlling the carbonate system.
To this purpose, water samples were collected in January 2014 in the framework of Ross Sea Mesoscale experiment (RoME) Project to evaluate the physical and biological forcing on the carbonate system at distance between stations of 5-10 km. Remote sensing supported the determination of the sampling strategy and helped positioning each sampling station. Total alkalinity, pH, dissolved oxygen, phytoplankton pigments and composition were investigated in combination with measurements of temperature, salinity and current speed. Total inorganic carbon, sea water CO2 partial pressure and Ω for calcite and aragonite were calculated from the measured total alkalinity and pH. In addition, continuous measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentration were completed. Different mesoscale physical features, such as fronts and eddies were observed in the investigated areas, which influenced the distribution of chemical parameters and of phytoplankton community in terms of biomass concentration (Chl-a) and species composition. The carbonate system properties in surface waters exhibited mesoscale variability with a horizontal length scale of about 10 km. Our results document substantial spatial heterogeneity and complexity in surface water carbonate system properties and the magnitude of the CO2 flux at a horizontal length scale of about 10 km, emphasizing the importance of mesoscale events to regional biogeochemistry. We believe that the resolution of these short length scale distributions provides insight into the biogeochemical dynamics which drive surface and subsurface variability in the Ross Sea
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