Authors:Michael Grote; Hege Charlotte Lysholm Faber , Andrea Gasparini Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) will drastically influence and change the working methods of scholars and researchers. This paper presents findings from a broad, national survey and a workshop focusing on the challenges and opportunities the advancement of AI poses for PhD candidates, seen from the perspective of library staff working with research support in a number of research libraries in Norway. The paper looks into how research libraries could adapt to the development, addresses the roles of various stakeholders and proposes measures regarding the support of PhD candidates in the responsible use of AI-based tools. Based on insights from the survey and the workshop, the paper also shows what is lacking in the libraries' research support services concerning the understanding and utilisation of AI-based tools. The study reveals a degree of uncertainty among librarians about their role in the AI academic nexus. For the development of competences of teaching staff in academic libraries, the paper recommends to integrate AI-related topics into existing educational resources and to create arenas for sharing experiences and knowledge with relevant partners both within and outside the university. PubDate: Tue, 27 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +020
Authors:Sumiko Asai Abstract: Although Big Deal contracts that provide access rights to all electronic journals published by the publisher initially gained favor with university libraries, some libraries have terminated these contracts owing to increased charges since the 2010s. Consequently, they are faced with the problem of selecting journals for purchase within their limited budgets. This study investigates the factors affecting the number of downloads, representing journal demand, to provide libraries with guidance on journal selection. The download equation for 1485 hybrid journals published by Springer Nature is formulated using ordinary least squares. The results found that 5% and 50% of the 1485 journals generated approximately 30% and 85% of the downloads in 2022, respectively. Downloads are concentrated in fewer journals, although the Pareto principle does not apply to hybrid journals. Demand concentration implies that libraries do not need to maintain access rights to all journals. Recently, a few leading publishers have provided access rights to almost all electronic journals based on transformative agreements aiming to promote open access. Therefore, this study’s findings raise the issue of the rationale for bundling electronic journals in transformative agreements, which is similar to Big Deal. Moreover, the results of the download estimation reveal that hybrid journals with more open access articles, larger citation scores, and longer histories acquire more downloads. These findings indicate that open access accelerates the dissemination of research. PubDate: Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +020
Authors:Cristina Faba-Pérez; Margarita Pérez-Pulido Abstract: This article deals with issues related to university plagiarism, students' knowledge of it, and its academic, economic, legal, social, and ethical repercussions. The project covers various university degree courses of the Faculty of Documentation and Communication Sciences of the University of Extremadura. The objective was to analyse the real knowledge that students have about plagiarism and its repercussions, and to verify the students' situation regarding their knowledge of plagiarism, its typology, and its possible consequences. The methodological approach was based on a previous study about the legal and ethical regulations that affect this issue in general and the university environment in particular. Once the analysis of these documents had been carried out, a 17-item Likert-scale questionnaire was prepared which was responded to by a total of 267 students doing different degree courses of the aforementioned Faculty. Simple descriptive statistics were used to analyse the results. They showed that the group with most knowledge about plagiarism and its repercussions was that of the Master's course students (2.27 out of 3). Of the options proposed as a means of identifying plagiarism, that most frequently identified (83.85%) was reproducing a text in a work without citing the author. In general, the questionnaire results indicated that, although the scores were in the top half of the possible values in all cases, they were far from optimal in all of the degree courses analysed. In conclusion, it can be said that plagiarism has become an essential issue throughout the university world, particularly with the use of technology in the academic setting and its problems regarding intellectual property and copyright. The methodology used, applied to the degree courses of the Faculty of Documentation and Communication Sciences of the UEx, allows the context to be analysed, the problem and its causes to be identified, and the imbalances to be corrected, since in many cases students are unaware that they are plagiarising. PubDate: Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +020
Authors:Stefano De Paoli; Paula Forbes, Giulio Andreini, Maciej Maryl, Marta Błaszczyńska Abstract: GoTriple is a novel discovery platform for Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in Europe. Discovery is a phase of research where scholars seek to locate resources for their work, such as publications or previous projects. The paper details the work done for involving the SSH community in the codesign of GoTriple, focusing on the research discovery activities. It is an investigation of the user needs and barriers toward digital discovery for the SSH community, conducted through codesign. This work encompassed interviews, a questionnaire, codesign workshops and evaluation activities. The paper reports on some outcomes for the codesign and how user needs were identified and served by novel designs supporting discovery for SSH. This process of design is both concerned with creating digital tools for discovery and with the creation of a community of users that could make the platform thrive. The main contribution of the work is therefore the identification of the user needs for digital discovery in SSH and a series of insights on the design with the user community. The paper comprises a report on how codesign principles do support such work. PubDate: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +020
Authors:Doreen Siegfried Abstract: The article describes how ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics is working to strengthen its perception as a competent partner and promoter of Open Science for its target group of economic researchers. This article describes the challenges, goals and opportunities of impact-oriented communication for libraries using the example of the ZBW. The article describes the path from the challenges and goals of the concrete communication activities and the evaluation of the impact-oriented communication work. PubDate: Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +010
Authors:Benedikt Fecher; Raffaela Kunz, Nataliia Sokolovska, Marcel Wrzesinski Abstract: The digital platforms we are dealing with in this article are auxiliary tools that do not produce anything themselves but provide an infrastructure for service providers and users to meet. They have potentially unlimited scaling potential and have become the central places of exchange. In academia we can also observe that research and its communication becomes more digital and that digital services are aiming to become platforms. In this article we explore the concept of digital platforms and their potential impact on academic research, firstly addressing the question: To what extent can digital platforms be understood as a specific type of research infrastructure' We draw from recent literature on platforms and platformisation from different streams of scholarship and relate them to the science studies concept of research infrastructures, to eventually arrive at a framework for science platforms. Secondly, we aim to assess how science platforms may affect scholarly practice. To this end, we relate common platform practices to scientific practice. Thirdly, we aim to assess to what extent science is platformized and how this interferes with scientific understandings of quality and autonomy. In the end of this article, we argue that the potential benefits of platform infrastructure for academic pursuits cannot be ignored, but the commercialization of the infrastructure for scholarly communication is a cause for concern. Ultimately, a nuanced and well-informed perspective on the impact of platformisation on academia is necessary to ensure that the academic community can maximize the benefits of digital infrastructures while mitigating negative consequences. PubDate: Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +010