Exploring the scholarly communication styles of Arab social science and humanities scholars

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study of scholarly communication behaviour among Arab scholars. The main objective of this study is to determine how Egyptian and Saudi Arabian social sciences and humanities scholars engage in scholarly communication practices. The study used a mixed‐methods approach. A questionnaire was answered by a sample of 104 participants, followed by interviews with 36 participants to gain insight into the scholarly communication behaviour of the Arab scholars. The analysis demonstrated that participants use different styles of scholarly communication approaches. Most of the participants do use informal (social media) channels to communicate their research findings (particularly ResearchGate and Facebook), although priority is given to formal over informal publication in peer reviewed journals. Responses showed that the promotional systems of both countries dictate publication choices of scholars, reducing the amount of collaboration by ranking co‐publications lower than sole publications and favouring printed journals over online‐only journals.     

Where and how early career researchers find scholarly information

This article presents findings from the first year of the Harbingers research project started in 2015. The project is a 3‐year longitudinal study of early career researchers (ECRs) to ascertain their current and changing habits with regard to information searching, use, sharing, and publication. The study recruited 116 researchers from seven countries (UK, USA, China, France, Malaysia, Poland, and Spain) and performed in‐depth interviews by telephone, Skype, or face‐to‐face to discover behaviours and opinions. This paper reports on findings regarding discovery and access to scholarly information. Findings confirm the universal popularity of Google/Google Scholar. Library platforms and web‐scale discovery services are largely unmentioned and unnoticed by this user community, although many ECRs pass through them unknowingly on the way to authenticated use of their other preferred sources, such as Web of Science. ECRs are conscious of the benefits of open access in delivering free access to papers. Social media are widely used as a source of discovering scholarly information. ResearchGate is popular and on the rise in all countries surveyed. Smartphones have become a regularly used platform on which to perform quick and occasional searches for scholarly information but are only rarely used for reading full text.     

Open access metadata: current practices and proposed solutions

Nearly every major publisher offers open access content of some sort, but open access metadata standards are non‐existent amongst content providers. Users, librarians, content providers, and technology vendors who offer OpenURL resolvers and discovery services all stand to benefit from standardized ways to indicate what content is open access and what is not. Additionally, all stakeholders would benefit from a standardized method by which one can ascertain what form of open access any content may be; indeed, there are many definitions of open access. There is ample evidence that every publisher handles their content metadata differently and this creates inefficiencies in the scholarly information supply chain and leads to user confusion. Many initiatives are currently working on solutions to these problems including the NISO KBART workgroup, NISO's Open Discovery Initiative, and NISO's very recently created Open Access Initiative. There are also pre‐existing concepts based on services, such as CrossRef's CrossMark service and discovery systems that hold promise with respect to open access content and metadata.     

Data,disciplines, and scholarly publishing

Data are becoming an essential product of scholarship, complementing the roles of journal articles, papers, and books. Research data can be reused to ask new questions, to replicate studies, and to verify research findings. Data become even more valuable when linked to publications and other related resources to form a value chain. Types and uses of data vary widely between disciplines, as do the online availability of publications and the incentives of scholars to publish their data. Publishers, scholars, and librarians each have roles to play in constructing a new scholarly information infrastructure for e‐research. Technical, policy, and institutional components are maturing; the next steps are to integrate them into a coherent whole. Achieving a critical mass of datasets in public repositories, with links to and from publisher databases, is the most promising solution to maintaining and sustaining the scholarly record in digital form.     

The role of learned societies in national scholarly publishing

This study examines the role of learned societies as publishers in Finland based on bibliographic information from two Finnish databases. We studied the share of learned societies' peer‐reviewed publication channels (serials with ISSNs and book publishers with distinct ISBN roots) and outputs (journal articles, conference articles, book articles, and monographs) in Finland. We also studied the share of learned societies' open access (OA) publications. In 2018, there were 402 peer‐reviewed publication channels in Finland. In 2011–2017, the number of peer‐reviewed publications from scholars working in Finnish universities and published in Finland was 17,724. Learned societies publish around 70% of these channels and publications, mostly in the fields of humanities and social sciences. Learned societies in Finland focus on journal publishing, whereas university presses and commercial publishers focus on book publishing. In 2016–2017, 38.4% of the learned societies' outputs were OA. This study concludes that Finnish learned societies play an integral part in national scholarly publishing. They play an especially important role in journal publishing, as commercial publishers produce only 2.6% of Finnish journals and book series, and only 1.4% of the journal articles from scholars working in Finnish universities.     

Evolving Institutional Approaches to Subsidizing End User Access to Research Databases: A Case Study

This paper reviews work of the Getty Art History Information Program (AHIP, recently renamed the Getty Information Institute) over the past decade to subsidize end user on-line access to scholarly research databases. A brief history of AHIP's work in the area is followed by a summary of a study of subsidized access to Dialog databases by Getty Center resident scholars which was reported in a series of papers by Marcia Bates, professor of Library Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. This study provided a touchstone for an assessment of the relative merits and opportunities associated with the various contractual arrangements and incentive strategies employed by AHIP with vendors such as Dialog, consortia such as the Research Libraries Group, and a CD-ROM publication program. The effectiveness of each of these methods in reaching the user is compared to print publications and the experimental offer of access to some of the AHIP databases over the World Wide Web.     

The effects of open access on un-published documents: A case study of economics working papers

The use of scholarly publications that have not been formally published in e.g. journals is widespread in some fields. In the past they have been disseminated through various channels of informal communication. However, the Internet has enabled dissemination of these un-published and often unrefereed publications to a much wider audience. This is particularly interesting seen in relation to the highly disputed open access advantage as the potential advantage for low visibility publications has not been given much attention in the literature. The present study examines the role of working papers in economics during a 10-year period (1996–2005). It shows that working papers are increasingly becoming visible in the field specific databases. The impact of working papers is relatively low; however, high impact working paper series have citation rate levels similar to the low impact journals in the field. There is no tendency to an increase in impact during the 10 years which is the case for the high impact journals. Consequently, the result of this study does not provide evidence of an open access advantage for working papers in economics.     

A label for peer‐reviewed books? Some critical reflections

The recently established quality label for peer‐reviewed publications in Flanders has lately aroused some interest in the international literature on scholarly communication. Although the so‐called GPRC‐label is in principle a welcome initiative, its implementation, from 2010 onwards, has already engendered several unexpected side‐effects. This article discusses these pitfalls and traces their origin in the Flemish performance‐based research funding system. It also points to a number of hard‐to‐solve practical problems if the quality label were to be implemented in an international context. In this way, it aims to temper the enthusiasm with which the label has been welcomed, both in Flanders and internationally.     

Search,Serendipity, and the Researcher Experience

ABSTRACT

Lettie Conrad reported on the findings of original research on academic user experience with serendipitous discovery in scholarly research. This research has been released as the fourth installment of a series about discoverability as part of the SAGE White Papers. This research was designed to examine how students and faculty seek content beyond the search box. The researchers being studied take advantage of unplanned or unexpected content discoveries such as selecting a link in an e-mail alert, following a trail of citations within an important paper, or making use of recommendations. The study found that researchers decide to follow recommendations, either machine generated or from an acquaintance, based on a combination of perception of relevance to the field of study, access to the recommended article, and trust in the provider. SAGE has used these findings to enhance its products to better showcase content to users and then help them to more readily make sense of it.     

学术期刊服务科研的方法及提升策略

学术期刊可通过选题策划、学术审核、指导论文写作、刊发指南类文章、举办学术会议、举办科研方法及论文写作讲座等为科研工作服务.学术期刊应重视对科研服务能力的建设,通过为学术研究提供更多的支撑,不断提高学术期刊的生存力.     

图书馆情报学主要研究方法:了解、选择及使用

[目的/意义]研究方法在学术研究中发挥着至关重要的作用。确认图书馆情报学领域主要的研究方法，并对它们进行了解熟悉，以在开展研究时能合理选择、灵活使用，确保研究质量。[方法/过程]对近2 000篇图书馆情报学领域的研究文献以及相关研究方法论文进行内容分析，在此基础上对研究方法的类分命名、图书馆情报学界主要的研究方法的确定、特点和使用注意事项进行介绍和讨论。[结果/结论]研究方法应以数据收集法而不是数据分析法命名。图书馆情报学领域常用的研究方法包括实验法、问卷法、理论研讨法、内容分析法、访谈法和书目计量法，每种方法都有各自的特点。因而在选择使用时，既应根据具体研究课题及研究方法之特性，也要考虑使用注意事项，并尽量在同一研究中采用两种或更多的方法，以扬长避短，更有效地展开研究。     

How does duplicate tweeting boost social media exposure to scholarly articles?

Duplicate tweeting is a kind of behavior that a user posts the same or substantially similar original tweets to one or several topics multiple times in a row, which is commonly used to boost social media exposure to online information. However, how this behavior boosts social media exposure to online information, especially to scientific publications, is still unclear. In this study, we use the number of retweets an article received as a proxy for social media exposure to the article. Based on the duplicate tweeting records of 12,263 users on Twitter from 2011 to 2017, we find that social media exposure to scholarly articles has a significant marginal effect as the number of duplicate tweeting (k) increases. It ramps up a peak value when k is between 2 and 4 and goes down when k takes a greater value. We also find that a longer posting interval can sharply reduce social media exposure to scholarly articles, and posting non-duplicate content can significantly improve the exposure. Our findings not only help scientists and journal publishers effectively improve the social impact of their research outputs but also advance the understanding of the diffusion processes of scholarly articles.     

Social Media Research: An Assessment of the Domain's Productivity and Intellectual Evolution

The purpose of this study is to conduct a bibliographic investigation and meta-analysis of the full body of social media scholarship produced over eight years, since the domain's emergence in 2004. A total of 610 journal and conference papers were carefully reviewed and subjected to bibliometric and meta-analysis techniques. A number of research questions pertaining to country, institutional, and individual productivity, as well as research design and data practices in the social media field, were proposed and answered. Our results reveal two main challenges faced by the field. First, the social media domain displays limited intellectual diversity in terms of productive and impactful actors—individual, institutions, and countries—as well as publications that have hitherto skewed the domain's focus in a limited direction. Second, the research design approaches and data practices characterizing the domain seem to reflect methodological singularity characterized by a strong tendency for cross-sectional, individual-level, survey or case-based studies. Furthermore, speculative and anecdotal evidence, based on personal opinions and armchair hypotheses, is extremely widespread and stand in the way of the domain's methodological and theoretical advancement. These challenges not only help to improve one's understanding of the identity and intellectual core of social media as a distinct scientific field but can also further prompt academic debate and careful (re)examination of the domain's scholarly practices and assumptions to ensure its future advancement in the most productive manner.     

Unpublishable research: examining and organizing the ‘file drawer’

It is well known that a number of research outcomes are not reported (the so‐called ‘file drawer problem’). It is generally assumed that what is not reported are ‘negative results’. Our study approaches the issue from a new angle by exploring what researchers perceive to be ‘unpublishable’. A survey regarding ‘unpublishables’ was sent out to 2,535 faculty members at Indiana University. Forty of these individuals consented to in‐depth interviews, which more fully explored these academics' views on the issue of unpublishable work. Our results indicate that there are several types of research besides negative results that are perceived to be unpublishable yet worthy of publication. Moreover, there is a great diversity within and across disciplines as to what constitutes ‘unpublishable’ research. Respondents indicated that academic discourse would benefit from the formal dissemination of papers that included inconclusive or null results, as well as replication and refutation studies. The results of our study suggest that there is a perceived gap in scholarly communication, which is to the detriment of science. These results can be used by administrators, educators, and publishers in order to refine scholarly communication practices so as to create a more robust, accurate literature and to inform future generations of researchers.     

Should scholarly societies embrace open access (or is it the kiss of death)?

In assessing the role that organizations of scientists with publishing activities – such as scholarly societies – can or should play in furthering the science and practice in their chosen fields, they face a dilemma: should they primarily be fund‐raising organizations for other activities in their disciplines, using their publications to bring in the necessary money, or should they be promoters of efficient scholarly communication and use their publications more directly to that end – for instance, by embracing ‘open access‘.     

New ways of building,showcasing, and measuring scholarly reputation

The article reports on a study of the views and actions of nearly a hundred scholars – mostly academic researchers from four European countries and four disciplines – in regard to scholarly reputation in the Science 2.0 age. It specifically looks at the role that 'emerging reputational mechanisms and platforms are playing in building, maintaining, and showcasing scholarly reputation in the digital age. Popular examples of such platforms are ResearchGate and Academia.edu . Data were obtained through one‐to‐one interviews and focus groups, supported by desk research. The main findings were: (a) it is early days and uptake is light and patchy with platforms largely used for non‐reputational purposes, such as sharing documents; (b) most users were passive and did not fully engage with the social aspects of the platforms; (c) the reputational focus was very much on just one scholarly activity (research), on just two outputs of that activity (publications and conferences) and one measurement of that activity (citations), but there are the stirrings of change; (d) young researchers are set to profit most from the emerging platforms.     

Growth and nature of international LIS research: An analysis of two journals

The study explores the publication trends of scholarly journal articles in two core Library and Information Science (LIS) journals indexed under ScienceDirect Database during the period for the period 2000–2010, and for the “Top 25 Hottest Papers” for 2006–2010. It examines and presents an analysis of 1000 research papers in the area of LIS published in two journals: The International Information & Library Review (IILR) and Library & Information Science Research (LISR). The study examines the content of the journals, including growth of the literature, authorship patterns, geographical distributions of authors, distribution of papers by journal, citation pattern, ranking pattern, length of articles, and most cited authors. Collaboration was calculated using Subramanyam's formula, and Lotka's law was used to identify authors' productivity. The results indicated that authors' distributions did not follow Lotka's law. The study identified the eight most productive authors with a high of 19 publications in this field. The findings indicate that these publications experienced rapid and exponential growth in literature production. The contributions by scientists from India are examined.     

Evolution and adoption of contributor role ontologies and taxonomies

Contributor Role Ontologies and Taxonomies (CROTs) are standard vocabularies to describe individual contributions to a scholarly project or research output. Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) is one of the most widely used CROTs, and has been adopted by numerous journals to describe author's contributions, and recently formalized as a ANSI/NISO standard. Despite these developments, there is still much work left to be done to improve how CROTs are used across different research domains, research output types, and scholarly workflows. In this paper, we describe how CROTs could be extended to include roles from various disciplines in an ethical and inclusive manner. We explore potential approaches to apply CROTs to diverse research objects and various disciplines; as well as envision their integration into various scholarly workflows, such as promotion and tenure in academic institutions. Lastly, we discuss potential mechanisms for wide adoption and use. While acknowledging that improving current systems of attribution is a slow and iterative process, we believe that engaging the community in the evolution of CROTs will ultimately enhance the ethical attribution of credit and responsibilities in scholarly publications.     

Growth and nature of international LIS research: An analysis of two journals

The study explores the publication trends of scholarly journal articles in two core Library and Information Science (LIS) journals indexed under ScienceDirect Database during the period for the period 2000–2010, and for the “Top 25 Hottest Papers” for 2006–2010. It examines and presents an analysis of 1000 research papers in the area of LIS published in two journals: The International Information & Library Review (IILR) and Library & Information Science Research (LISR). The study examines the content of the journals, including growth of the literature, authorship patterns, geographical distributions of authors, distribution of papers by journal, citation pattern, ranking pattern, length of articles, and most cited authors. Collaboration was calculated using Subramanyam's formula, and Lotka's law was used to identify authors' productivity. The results indicated that authors' distributions did not follow Lotka's law. The study identified the eight most productive authors with a high of 19 publications in this field. The findings indicate that these publications experienced rapid and exponential growth in literature production. The contributions by scientists from India are examined.