Technology & Unequal Participation: Access to Electronic Working Paper Repositories and Scholarly Participation In Elite Scientific Communities (original) (raw)

A bit more to it: Scholarly Communication Forums as Socio-Technical Interaction Networks

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2002

In this article, we examine the conceptual models that help us understand the development and sustainability of scholarly and professional communication forums on the Internet, such as conferences, pre-print servers, field-wide data sets, and collaboratories. We first present and document the information processing model that is implicitly advanced in most discussions about scholarly communications-the "Standard Model." Then we present an alternative model, a model that considers information technologies as Socio-Technical Interaction Networks (STINs). STIN models provide a richer understanding of human behavior with online scholarly communications forums. They also help to further a more complete understanding of the conditions and activities that support the sustainability of

Scholarly literature and the press: scientific impact and social perception of physics computing

Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2014

The broad coverage of the search for the Higgs boson in the mainstream media is a relative novelty for high energy physics (HEP) research, whose achievements have traditionally been limited to scholarly literature. This paper illustrates the results of a scientometric analysis of HEP computing in scientific literature, institutional media and the press, and a comparative overview of similar metrics concerning representative particle physics measurements. The picture emerging from these scientometric data documents the relationship between the scientific impact and the social perception of HEP physics research versus that of HEP computing. The results of this analysis suggest that improved communication of the scientific and social role of HEP computing via press releases from the major HEP laboratories would be beneficial to the high energy physics community.

The role of the Internet in informal scholarly communication

Journal of the American Society for Information …, 2006

The present analysis looks at how scientists use the Internet for informal scientific communication. It investigates the relationship between several explanatory variables and Internet use in a cross-section of scientists from seven European countries and five academic disciplines (astronomy, chemistry, computer science, economics, and psychology). The analysis confirmed some of the results of previous U.S.-based analyses. In particular, it corroborated a positive relationship between research productivity and Internet use. The relationship was found to be nonlinear, with very productive (nonproductive) scientists using the Internet less (more) than would be expected according to their productivity. Also, being involved in collaborative R&D and having large networks of collaborators is associated with increased Internet use. In contrast to older studies, the analysis did not find any equalizing effect whereby higher Internet use rates help to overcome the problems of potentially disadvantaged researchers. Obviously, everybody who wants to stay at the forefront of research and keep upto-date with developments in their research fields has to use the Internet.

Communication of Scientists Through Scientific Publications: Math-Net.Ru as a Case Study

2020

We present a study of two scientific collaboration graphs built using data drawn from Math-Net.Ru, an all-Russian mathematical portal. One of the graphs is a citation-based scientific collaboration graph. It is an oriented graph with no loops and multiple edges. Its vertices denote authors of papers, while the arcs connecting these vertices denote that the first author has, in at least one of his papers, cited the work of the second author. The second graph is a coauthorship-based graph. It is a non-oriented graph, where the vertices denote authors, while edges connecting two vertices indicates that the two authors have coauthored at least a paper. We conduct a traditional study of the main characteristics of both graphs, such as degrees of vertices, influence of vertices, diameter, mean distance, connected components and clustering. Both graphs are found to have a similar connectivity structure – both have a giant component and several small components. Using the two graphs, we spl...

Astrophysicists and physicists as creators of ArXiv-based commenting resources for their research communities. An initial survey

Information Services & Use, 2018

This paper conveys the outcomes of what results to be the first, though initial, overview of commenting platforms and related 2.0 resources born within and for the astrophysical community (2004-2016). Experiences were added, mainly in the physics domain, for a total of twenty-two major items, including four epijournals-and four supplementary resources, thus casting some light onto an unexpected richness and consonance of endeavours. These experiences rest almost entirely on the contents of the database ArXiv, which adds to its merits that of potentially setting the grounds for web 2.0 resources, and research behaviours, to be explored. Most of the experiences retrieved are UK-and US-based, but the resulting picture is international, as various European countries, China and Australia have been actively involved. Final remarks about creation patterns and outcome of these resources are outlined. The results integrate the previous studies according to which the web 2.0 is presently of limited use for communication in astrophysics and vouch for a role of researchers in the shaping of their own professional communication tools that is greater than expected. Collaterally, some aspects of ArXiv's recent pathway towards partial inclusion of web 2.0 features are touched upon. Further investigation is hoped for.

The effect of'Open Access' upon citation impact: An analysis of ArXiv's Condensed Matter Section

Arxiv preprint cs/0611060

This article statistically analyses how the citation impact of articles deposited in the Condensed Matter section of the preprint server ArXiv (hosted by Cornell University), and subsequently published in a scientific journal, compares to that of articles in the same journal that were not deposited in that archive. Its principal aim is to further illustrate and roughly estimate the effect of two factors, 'early view' and 'quality bias', upon differences in citation impact between these two sets of papers, using citation data from Thomson Scientific's Web of Science. It presents estimates for a number of journals in the field of condensed matter physics. In order to discriminate between an 'open access' effect and an early view effect, longitudinal citation data was analysed covering a time period as long as 7 years. Quality bias was measured by calculating ArXiv citation impact differentials at the level of individual authors publishing in a journal, taking into account co-authorship. The analysis provided evidence of a strong quality bias and early view effect. Correcting for these effects, there is in a sample of 6 condensed matter physics journals studied in detail, no sign of a general 'open access advantage' of papers deposited in ArXiv. The study does provide evidence that ArXiv accelerates citation, due to the fact that that ArXiv makes papers earlier available rather than that it makes papers freely available.

e-Research Infrastructures and Scientific Communication

2007

parts to get a sense of the layers and dynamics involved. Against this background, we can begin to see how access to and input to these systems can be problematic, particularly for developing societies. After sketching some of the ongoing initiatives to do this, we return to our main question: the outlook for the impact of e-Research on scientific and scholarly communication, particularly in the developing world. Emergent Patterns in Scientific and Scholarly Communication Currently, there is something akin to a paradigm shift taking place in scientific and scholarly communication. The intensity and impact of this shift differs across the heterogeneous fields of research that constitute the sciences, social sciences and arts and humanities. In areas such as biomedical research, genomics, computer science and particle physics, for example, the processing, storage and dissemination of 'data' is gaining importance, though practices with regard to 'openness' varies across disciplines. Networked databases, such as the RCSB (Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics) Protein Data Bank, have already become a core component of the information infrastructure in bioinformatics. Simulated, synthetic and in-silico data are playing an increasing central role in a number of other disciplines. For example, the British Atmospheric Data Center now have an archiving policy for simulated data (deterministic predictions (or hindcasts) based on algorithmic models as well as statistical analyses or composites of either or both of simulations and real data 1). Born digital data and the algorithms associated with them are increasingly becoming recognized as valid scientific outputs by the institutions that govern academic research. At the same time, however, traditional gatekeepers play a differential role across disciplinary communities. Some disciplines rely on the traditional system of publishing and peer review more than others-depending on factors such as the nature of scholarly recognition, intellectual pluralism, and certainty in research techniques and outcomes. In those fields where informal communication has historically played a critical role in establishing priority over ideas, the notion of 'open science' and the sharing of data may have more valence than in areas where formal communication plays a more central role in the dissemination of ideas. Disciplines that rely more on formal communication tend to be characterized by less-densely populated research niches, are more intellectually pluralistic and tend to use monograph style modes of communication to convey ideas (Becher and Trowler, 2001). Studies of patterns of computer-mediated communication within disciplines have shown that those disciplines that rely more on rapid informal communication, such as particle physics, are more likely to incorporate the internet into their knowledge dissemination practices. Consequently, we can observe the emergence of a fragmented communication system in relation to e-Research.

Innovating Science Open Access and the Situated Field of Physics

In the recent academic debate about Internet-related technologies, in particular web-based ones, these technologies have been conceptualised as a means to democratise innovation, or foster a new and innovative form of organization. In the face of this hype on the transformational role of the Internet and the Web, a suitable dose of academic scepticism requires an empirical discussion on whether it is appropriate to consider the Web and the Internet as able to bring about such radical innovation in organizations.

The role of arXiv, RePEc, SSRN and PMC in formal scholarly communication

Purposes-The four major Subject Repositories (SRs), arXiv, Research Papers in Economics (RePEc), Social Science Research Network (SSRN) and PubMed Central (PMC), are all important within their disciplines but no previous study has systematically compared how often they are cited in academic publications. In response, this article reports an analysis of citations to SRs from Scopus publications, 2000 to 2013. Design/methodology/approach-Scopus searches were used to count the number of documents citing the four SRs in each year. A random sample of 384 documents citing the four SRs was then visited to investigate the nature of the citations. Findings-Each SR was most cited within its own subject area but attracted substantial citations from other subject areas, suggesting that they are open to interdisciplinary uses. The proportion of documents citing each SR is continuing to increase rapidly, and the SRs all seem to attract substantial numbers of citations from more than one discipline. Research limitations/implications-Scopus does not cover all publications, and most citations to documents found in the four SRs presumably cite the published version, when one exists, rather than the repository version. Practical implications – SRs are continuing to grow and do not seem to be threatened by Institutional Repositories (IRs) and so research managers should encourage their continued use within their core disciplines, including for research that aims at an audience in other disciplines. Originality/value-This is the first simultaneous analysis of Scopus citations to the four most popular SRs.