Cost analysis of a project to digitize classic articles in neurosurgery

In summer 2000, the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library at Yale University began a demonstration project to digitize classic articles in neurosurgery from the late 1800s and early 1900s. The objective of the first phase of the project was to measure the time and costs involved in digitization, and those results are reported here. In the second phase, metadata will be added to the digitized articles, and the project will be publicized. Thirteen articles were scanned using optical character recognition (OCR) software, and the resulting text files were carefully proofread. Time for photocopying, scanning, and proofreading were recorded. This project achieved an average cost per item (total pages plus images) of $4.12, a figure at the high end of average costs found in other studies. This project experienced high costs for two reasons. First, the articles contained many images, which required extra processing. Second, the older fonts and the poor condition of many of these articles complicated the OCR process. The average article cost $84.46 to digitize. Although costs were high, the selection of historically important articles maximized the benefit gained from the investment in digitization.     

The BMJ online: lessons from a 20‐year digital presence

• The current BMJ is a far cry from the 1995 ‘brochureware’ site.
• Journals need to be flexible in their delivery mechanisms to meet user needs.
• Online publishing provides an opportunity to extend the target readership.
• Responding to user demands to be balanced against proactive development.
• Not everything works, but it is better to be innovating than overly cautious.

     

On the methodological problems of new ideas and approaches to press concentration research

This article considers various European approaches to press concentration research, analyzing their individual strengths and weaknesses. The author argues that research on concentration has not kept pace with press developments and that the weaknesses in the separate approaches to exploring concentration have obscured the real nature and extent of the problem. He then offers a model for concentation research that integrates the various approaches to provide a broader understanding of the effects of press concentration.     

The story so far: a summary of the contributions to the ‘Dissertations into practice’ feature

The ‘Dissertations into practice’ feature began life in March 2012 with a dual aim: to encourage students and new professionals to write for publication and to highlight the impact of student research on policy and practice. This article reflects on the initiative and to summarise what has been achieved so far. It highlights the diverse range of contributions to the feature so far and proves that student research can and does influence policy and practice. It also demonstrates that, with a bit of encouragement and support, students are willing and able to write for academic publication. AM     

Contributing factors to long‐term citation count in marine and freshwater biology articles

Researchers have investigated factors thought to affect the total number of citations in various academic disciplines, and some general trends have emerged. However, there are still limited data for many fields, including aquatic sciences. Using papers published in 2003–2005 (n = 785), we investigated marine and freshwater biology articles to identify factors that may contribute to the probability of citation and for cumulative citation counts over 10 years. We found no relationships with probability of citation; however, we found evidence that for those that were cited at least once, cumulative citations were related to several factors. Articles cited by books received more citations than those never cited by books, which we hypothesized to be indicative of the impact an article may have in the field. We also found that articles first cited within 2 years of publication received more cumulative citations than those first cited after 2 years. We found no evidence that self‐citation (as the first citation) had a significant effect on total citations. Our findings were compared with previous studies in other disciplines, and it was found that aquatic science citation patterns are comparable to fields in science and technology but less so to humanities and social sciences.     

The Gutenberg‐e project: opportunities and challenges in publishing born‐digital monographs

The Gutenberg‐e project was created as an experiment to explore whether peer‐reviewed, born‐digital monographs would alter the way in which historical scholarship is presented, whether scholars would receive the same professional credit for these publications as for work published in print, and whether the project would enable publication of monographs that would otherwise be turned down by university presses for financial reasons. The project reached the following conclusions: authors and publishing staff collaborated in creating new models of scholarship and writing; over the course of the project, attitudes toward digital publications evolved toward acceptance of this new form of publication; the time and costs involved in creating these models exceeded expectations; continued experimentation is necessary in order to keep up with authors' growing expectations in publishing digital scholarship.     

对目录学核心问题的研究综述

文章对目录学核心问题讨论做了一次专门的学习与研究。     

Mass communication research on China from 2000 to 2010: a meta-analysis

This study presents a meta-analysis of mass communication research on China from 2000 to 2010. It reveals patterns in authorship, methodological and theoretical approaches, medium, and area of focus, through a content analysis of 159 articles published in 20 major communication journals. Eight frameworks frequently used by communication scholars to study China are identified in a follow-up analytical review. The paper concludes with discussion on the implications of the findings and suggestions for future work.     

Scholarly communication trends — voices from the vortex: a summary of specialist opinion

The views of specialists (academics, librarians, publishers and information scientists) on trends in scholarly communications were canvassed by means of structured questions. A greater commonality of views was found than might have been expected.     

Preparing students for research: faculty/librarian collaboration in a pre‐doctoral physical therapy research course

In this article, guest writers Susan Bigelow and Dr Salome Brooks from Springfield College, Massachusetts, present an overview of their evaluative research study in which a faculty professor and the liaison librarian collaborated to develop an information literacy course entitled Physical Therapy (PT) and Health care Research Skills, in order to teach necessary information literacy skills to upper‐level undergraduate PT students. Triangulation of the Physical Therapy and Information Literacy standards in alignment with the course objectives strengthened the collaboration, course development and expectations of student performance. Student performance was assessed through formal and expected evaluative means, and the preliminary evidence suggests some key successes in the course outcomes. H.S.     

Differences within the mainland Chinese press: a quantitative analysis

This paper reports the results of a content analysis of five newspapers selected from the Chinese daily press. The research was conducted as part of an international project designed to explore the relationship between journalistic self-conceptions and journalistic practice. This paper reports only upon journalistic practice, in particular the extent to which different models of journalism are present. The results of the analysis demonstrate, firstly, that while the concept of a uniform ‘national media system’ is of some utility in comparative studies, there are, even in the highly structured Chinese case, very significant differences within a single country. Secondly, it demonstrates that the common division of the Chinese press into a politically oriented party press and a market-oriented commercial press is inadequate to explain the identifiable differences between titles in the sample. A four grouping solution fits the data much better and demonstrates that there are newspapers that combine strong evidence of indicators of the party press with strong evidence of indicators of the commercial press. As a consequence, the claim that marketization will necessarily lead to conflicts with the party appears to be mistaken.     

对某课题组所发表系列论文中“假引”现象的思考

通过对某课题组所发表系列论文中“假引”现象的分析,阐述以期刊影响因子作为单篇论文学术质量评价指标的局限性及正确认识“假引”现象对单篇论文学术质量评价的意义。认为对于单篇论文应运用期刊影响因子、总被引频次并结合同行评议及论文的社会价值等进行综合评价,并应采取相应的措施减少甚至杜绝“假引”问题。     

Lay summaries of open access journal articles: engaging with the general public on medical research

This study investigates attitudes to ‘lay’ or ‘plain‐English’ summaries of open access (OA) journal articles in the context of engaging the public with medical research. It places lay summaries in the wider contexts of patients' information‐seeking behaviour and OA publishing activities. It reports the results of qualitative research involving two stakeholder groups: employees of organizations with a stake in communicating OA medical research to the public, and members of the public who have experience of accessing online medical research. It shows that patient access to the research literature is seen as one of a number of important sources of information that can help them manage their health conditions as ‘informed patients‘. However, accessing the literature was reported to be problematical, particularly because of paywalls, and there were also difficulties in using it, including language barriers. Lay summaries were seen to make a helpful contribution to improving patient access to information. There is, however, a clear need to gather more evidence about the costs and benefits of such an approach and also on the potential ways in which OA can create benefits for the general public.