Friday, August 2, 2013

Social media’s politics of circulation have profound implications for how academic knowledge is discovered and produced.

From LSE
As social media and other new forms of media emerge as influential ways to communicate academic knowledge, David Beer argues academics may need to pay more attention to the politics of circulation that increasingly define how academic knowledge is discovered and transmitted. If we don’t understand the politics of data circulations that define contemporary media cultures then we may also find that academic practice is reshaped without sufficient reflection and reaction.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

The Structure of Scholarly Communications Within Academic Libraries


This article provides a brief review of the findings recently published in a SPEC Kit, which focuses on ARL Libraries. The main intention, though, is to provide a wider context of  *scholarly communication activities across a variety of academic libraries. To do that, a survey of non-ARL Libraries was administered to review relevant positions, library organizations, and the variety of scholarly communication services offered. Lastly, a set of scholarly communication core services is proposed.

Definitions from Wikipedia
*Scholarly communication is the process of academics, scholars and researchers sharing and publishing their research findings so that they are available to the wider academic community (such as university academics) and beyond.

*Scholarly communication is the creation, transformation, dissemination and preservation of knowledge related to teaching, research and scholarly endeavors. Among the many scholarly communications issues include author rights, the peer review process, the economics of scholarly resources, new models of publishing (including open access and institutional repositories), rights and access to federally funded research, and preservation of intellectual assets

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Interesting new feature: Elsevier and Dryad Implement Reciprocal Linking Between Datasets and Published Research Articles



"Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, and the Dryad Digital Repository, a leading archive for scientific and medical research data, today announced that they have implemented two-way linking between their respective content. The Dryad Digital Repository provides facilities for archiving, discovery and accessibility of data files associated with any published article in the sciences or medicine, as well as software scripts and other files important to the article. Dryad is a nonprofit organization committed to its mission of making data publicly available for research and educational reuse. All datasets stored by Dryad receive persistent, resolvable Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to allow their proper citation. ....."

10 Emerging Educational Technologies and How They Are Being Used Across the Globe

10 emerging ed technologies
Cloud Computing (12 Months or Less)
Mobile Learning (12 Months or Less)
Tablet Computing (12 Months or Less)
MOOCs (12 Months or Less)
Open Content (2-3 Years)
Learning Analytics (2-3 Years)
Games and Gamification (2-3 Years)
3D Printing (4-5 Years)
Virtual and Remote Laboratories (4-5 Years)
Wearable Technology (4-5 Years)

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Embargoes Can Only Go So Far to Help New Ph.D.'s Get Published, Experts Say

From the CHE
 .......editors at two university presses backed away from offering her a book contract for a revised version of her dissertation, which is about urban public hospitals and the care of the poor in Houston in the mid-20th century, upon learning that it was posted online. Some half-dozen other editors voiced interest in her work at scholarly conferences and then said they could not publish a monograph based largely on a dissertation readily available online.
She was forced to shelve efforts to publish a revised version of her dissertation with a university press.......

The Impending Demise of Greedy For-Profit Scientific Publishers (Part I)

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The Impending Demise of Greedy For-Profit Scientific Publishers (Part I)

Historians Seek a Delay in Posting Dissertations

.... why would someone work years to produce a dissertation and then insist that it not be seen for as many as six more years?....university presses are known to be skeptical about agreeing to publish a book when the Ph.D dissertation it is based on is readily available online.......“The idea of locking up ideas for six years is not right,” said Heather Joseph, the executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, which favors open research. “The thing that bothered us the most is that it was a one-dimensional response to a multidimensional issue, and a missed opportunity.”........

Monday, July 29, 2013

Bibliometrics of individual researchers

Bibliometrics of individual researchers

....key topic at a special plenary at the 14th ISSI Conference two weeks ago in Vienna. The plenary was an initiative taken by Jochen Gläser (Technical University Berlin), Ismael Rafols (Ingenio, Spanish National Research Council / Polytechnical University Valencia), Wolfgang Glänzel (Leuven University) and myself. The plenary aimed to give a new stimulus to the debate how to apply, and how not to apply, performance indicators of individual scientists and scholars. Although not a new debate – the pioneers of bibliometrics already paid attention to this problem – it has become more urgent because of the almost insatiable demand for objective data and indicators in the management of universities and research institutes. ......

Publishing Your Dissertation Online: What’s a New Ph.D. to Do?

Publishing Your Dissertation Online: What’s a New Ph.D. to Do? (from CHE)

Early this week, the American Historical Association (AHA) released a controversial statement that strongly advised graduate programs and libraries to adopt a policy allowing the embargoing of the publication of completed dissertations online for up to six years. The statement has generated much praise and much criticism. Supporters of the statement argue that it protects junior authors, given that in the current academic climate a completed, published, single-authored monograph continues to be the standard for tenure and promotion in fields like history. Opponents of the statement counter with several arguments: that making the dissertation research public, rather than keeping it embargoed for years, allows the junior scholar to gain credit for his or her work; that the revision necessary to turn a dissertation into a book makes the two significantly different scholarly works; and finally, that the AHA should actively consider rethinking the book as a gold standard for advancement.