libraryspace: I am HIV positive…What? Who? When? Where? Why?... ...

libraryspace: I am HIV positive…What? Who? When? Where? Why?... ...:

Magwaza Nkululeko                                                 Magagula Mbongiseni                
HIV/AIDS is ravaging Sou...

'Dodgy' articles in academic journals threatens integrity of SA science

News24 | 

12 September 2017

 

Recent study reveals spike in number of articles from researchers in predatory journals

Cape Town - University scholars who publish their research in "dodgy" online scientific journals may be compromising their integrity in the new race to publish swiftly and prolifically, the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) acknowledged this week.

The department was responding to queries after education experts raised serious concerns over the steady increase of South African research papers published in foreign "predatory journals", that often dispense with the time-honoured peer review process, or simply provide fake peer reviews.

Predatory journals have been described as publications that prey on young and unsuspecting scholars to submit their manuscripts, solely to make money from the scholars - often imitating the names of legitimate academic journals.

While these journals claim to be based in the United States, UK, Canada or Australia, most appear to operate from Pakistan, India or Nigeria.

Writing in the current issue of the SA Journal of Science, Stellenbosch University education expert Prof Johann Mouton said a recent study showed that there had been a sudden spike in the number of articles from South African researchers in journals that were considered to be predatory.

'A matter of urgency'
Mouton and his colleague Astrid Valentine warned that subsidies from the Department of Higher Education and Training appeared to be driving a trend that could bring the country's higher education system into disrepute and devalue the quality of scientific publishing.

They urged the department, "as a matter of urgency", to review its list of approved journals that allow scholars to claim a subsidy for publication costs.Assuming that all the South African papers published in predatory journals each received a R1 000 subsidy, then up to R300m had been paid to local universities by government in recent years for publication in predatory journals.

Responding to queries on Monday, the department acknowledged that Mouton's research had highlighted the magnitude and prevalence of publication in predatory journals by South African authors and universities.

While it stopped short of announcing an immediate review or moratorium on its approved list of journals that qualify for subsidy payments, the department said publication in predatory journals tarnished the quality and integrity of researchers and their universities.
The department said it had already taken action when there was evidence of unethical practices at play in the publication of journal articles and it had also funded a new research project – led by Prof Mouton – to ensure that government only funded "quality research".

If there was satisfactory evidence that any journals named by Mouton were involved in predatory publishing, no further subsidies would be paid for articles published in these journals.
"The department is committed to incentivising good research and to ensuring that research productivity is rewarded. However, vanity or predatory publishing will not be recognised, and it is expected that all institutions uphold high standards with respect to the research outputs.

In the SA Journal of Science article, Mouton and Valentine commented: "It is important to emphasise that it is not our view intention to lay blame on individual academics who have published in predatory journals. There is enough evidence to indicate that many academics are quite unaware of these practices.

"Young and inexperienced scholars are often advised by senior academics to publish in such journals without knowing that this may compromise their academic career."

News24

Changing the Culture in Scholarly Communications

“All too often, leaders see cultural initiatives as a last resort, except for top-down exhortations to change… But cultural intervention can and should be an early priority—a way to clarify what your company is capable of, even as you refine your strategy.”

So say Jon R. Katzenbach, Ilona Steffen, and Caroline Kronley, writing in the Harvard Business Review.

We are equally guilty of not prioritizing cultural change in scholarly communications. So I was delighted to see that the theme for this year’s FORCE2017 meeting is Changing the Culture – a great opportunity to engage with colleagues from across the scholarly communications community on key questions such as: What needs to change in our culture and why? Who are our stakeholders and how are we going to involve them? What are the most effective ways to change the culture; which approach works best – carrot, stick, or both? How will we measure success? More

Watching the Future: Tracking Library Trends

2017

Librarians are more relevant than ever. We have no good reason to be on the defense and every reason to take the offensive. Conversation in our field is fraught with too much navel gazing and not enough looking at external evidence that many things are going well. We share too many stories about the bad stuff and too rarely share the successes. Yet we are an adaptive profession. Positive change is our tradition; let’s talk about that!....

An Industrial Revolution for libraries
I love following the folks who are involved in the Startup Library mentality: the ability to grasp and engage in an emerging culture for librarianship focused on change, innovation, experimentation and finding the future. While some worry about a continuing malaise in our field where the stories are all bad and we’re all doomed, I choose to focus on indications of positive, transformational change.


From: Lucidea Think Clearly Blog,   author Stephen Abram
http://blog.lucidea.com/watching-the-future-tracking-library-trends    9/5/2017
        
 

Open Access, future publishing trends, & implications for libraries

Return of the Big Brands: How Legacy Publishers Will Coopt Open Access

"Unsurprisingly, the Activist perspective caught fire in libraries, where open access was seen as a means to offset the growing market dominance of a handful of scholarly publishers. Unacknowledged then and now in library circles is that a fully OA universe is one without libraries..."

"Thus we have the cascading model: articles rejected by the editors of the big brand-name journal are directed to other publications in the same family. This cascade can be to toll-access publications (the shining example is the line extension of the Nature Publishing Group) or to OA venues that exist to soak up the funding from OA mandates. The toll-access variant is challenged, however, by the limitations of library budgets. It just may be that no one is going to be able to emulate Nature, as Nature got there first (the value of strategic vision) before libraries were sidelined as publishing growth markets. Thus practitioners of the cascading model are likely to move to the Gold OA model..."

"Libraries will continue to purchase large aggregations, though from fewer and fewer publishers; and funding bodies will continue to build the market for mandated OA publication with attendant APCs (simultaneously and causally reducing the amount of money that goes toward research). Library publishing will suffer as more authors migrate to the branded OA services. The publishing market for scholarly material will grow.." 

Reflection & comment by Joseph Esposito

from: the scholarly kitchen posted Oct 14, 2015

Academic publishers reap huge profits as libraries go broke

 'Oligarchy' of publishers

5 companies publish more than 50 per cent of research papers, study finds

(53 per cent of scientific papers, 70 per cent of papers in the social sciences)

Larivière says the cost of the University of Montreal's journal subscriptions is now more than $7 million a year  – ultimately paid for by the taxpayers and students who fund most of the university's budget. Unable to afford the annual increases, the university has started cutting subscriptions, angering researchers.
"The big problem is that libraries or institutions that produce knowledge don't have the budget anymore to pay for [access to] what they produce," Larivière said.

 Vincent Larivière, University of Montreal           From: CBC News June 15th 2015 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/

The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era

Essentially, they've become an oligarchy, Larivière and co-authors Stefanie Haustein and Philippe Mongeon say in a paper published last week in the open access, non-profit journal PLOS ONE.

Practicing Critical Information Literacy. Interview with Troy Swanson. By Brian Mathews

 Practicing Critical Information Literacy. Interview with Troy Swanson.

June 10, 2015, 1:56 pm

By Brian Mathews

From: The Ubiquitous Librarian blog

Joint Australia and Africa research boosts citations

The Australia-Africa Universities Network, which has been running for going on three years with 10 institutions from each of the two regions, already has 16 collaborative research programmes underway in areas such as food security, mining and minerals, public sector reform, public health and education.

Interestingly, research at Murdoch University in Australia has shown that citations per paper with African co-authors is far higher than the university’s average citation per paper.

Article from University World News
Karen MacGregor  29 May 2015 Issue No:369

7 Classrooms: library as pedagogical incubator

By Brian Mathews

Interesting post from The Ubiquitous Librarian blog!

I, library robot

Connecticut library has acquired two fully-automated, walking, talking robots to provide independent assistance to its patrons. The robots, set to begin their duties at the Westport, Conn., library Oct. 11, will teach computer programming skills, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The robots, Vincent and Nancy, stand just shy of 2 feet tall. They walk, grasp, move around walls, talk, listen and have facial-recognition software. They speak 19 languages.
But library robots Nancy and Vincent will not be shelving books or explaining the Dewey Decimal System -- at least, not at first.

 Reported October 1 2014 by Carolyn Kellogg of the Los Angeles Times

Research Information Literacy: Addressing Original Researchers' Needs

Interesting article

Abstract

Information literacy for faculty, doctoral students and other research-based graduate students, post-docs, and other original researchers is complex. There are fundamental differences between the processes of inquiry used by original researchers as compared to students or even faculty who are synthesizing information to find answers. Original research is different from information synthesis for discovery. Therefore, the information literacy processes to train and support those researchers are different. Analysis of the inquiry-oriented parts of the current and emerging information literacy Standards and Framework shows significant differences in the approach needed for teaching research information literacy. Promising instructional outcomes for information literacy training based around original research include gap analysis, theoretical and methodological discovery, and practical skills like funding search and analysis.

What Does Your Repository Do?: Understanding and Calculating Impact

Librarians working in scholarly communications need to understand how to calculate and explain how including work in a repository affects its impact. This presentation describes the current state of research and practice into metrics for repositories including traditional metrics and newer alternative metrics, and some preliminary results of a research study assessing the usage and impact of a Digital Commons repository.
Heller, Margaret, "What Does Your Repository Do?: Understanding and Calculating Impact" (2014). University Libraries: Faculty Publications & Other Works. Paper 28.

How academic libraries may change when Open Access becomes the norm

From  Musings about Librarianship blog:   "The trend I am increasingly convinced that is going to have a great impact on how academic libraries will function is the rise of Open Access.  As Open Access takes hold and eventually becomes the norm in the next 10-15 years, it will disrupt many aspects of academic library operations and libraries will need to rethink the value-add they need to provide to universities....."

Information Literate

EdTech Digest: What 10,000 students and 1,200 librarians told us about research skills.

GUEST COLUMN | by Emily Gover and Michele Kirschenbaum

4 reasons why Google Scholar isn’t as great as you think it is

Education and Life-long Learning of an Academic Librarian

Do read the editorial in the latest issue of the Journal of Academic Librarianship

"The diploma that hangs in the wall of our offices is a reminder that we were given the foundation we need to achieve the things we have dreamt about, but it is up to all of us to develop new skills and learn new processes if we want to survive."

Google vs Librarians!

Article in the Chicago Tribune Jobs section
"....access to a wealth of information on the Internet has placed even more importance on librarians.."

Creating Innovators : Can the Library Contribute?

An interesting article by Natasha Johnson from Purdue University looks at  three common themes which characterize innovators, viz., play, purpose, and passion and wonders how academic librarians can foster creativity in "library as space", in information literacy (allow failures!), in stimulating students' interests (displays, social media, etc.??) and in encouraging their development.

(I have ordered a copy of the book which Johnson used as the basis of her article for the Rhodes Library -  Wagner, T. 2012. Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World. New York: Simon and Schuster.)

Altmetrics for Institutions

Altmetrics for Institutions - excellent presentation by Jean Liu from Altmetrics.

Why I Gave Up Google Glass: form, function, and fashion

Why I Gave Up Google Glass

By Brian Mathews 

Since experiencing the Google Glass demo by Joe Murphy at SAOIM, this post makes for interesting reading.