1. Open access: new science-tech policy
Author: The Editorial Board Blog
In a welcome move, a discussion is made on a draft science, technology and innovation policy under which bulk subscriptions of important scientific journals around the world are to-be-made freely accessible in India. This move could have positive and far-reaching implications for the pursuit of science and education in the country. For one, publicly-funded research will become legally available to students, members of the scientific community as well as other citizens, a privilege that was hitherto hard to come by given the prohibitive costs of science journals. There are reportedly over 3,000-4,000 high-impact scientific journals, most of which are so expensive that they become the single-biggest item of cost for even prominent institutes.
The full entry can be read: Here.
2. Four guiding principles for choosing frameworks and indicators to assess research impact
Author: Elena Louder, Carina Wyborn, Chris Cvitanovic and Angela Bednarek
Selecting a framework for assessing research impact can be difficult, especially for interdisciplinary studies and research in fields that do not have established forms impact assessment. In this blog, Elena Louder, Carina Wyborn, Christopher Cvitanovic, Angela T. Bednarek, outline few principles for researchers designing impact assessment criteria for their work and suggest how a closer appreciation of how assessment frameworks are dependent on particular forms of knowledge production and dissemination is critical to making the right choice. These principles provide a set of overarching principles to help researchers, funders and/or practitioners alike to choose the most appropriate framework (or combination of frameworks) for their specific purpose and context, irrespective of their field of discipline.
The full entry can be read: Here.
3. Guest post — Evaluating publishers as partners with libraries and higher education
Author: Rachel Caldwell
Traditional, quantifiable, collections-based metrics overlook a wide range of important aspects of relationships between academic libraries, their institutions, and suppliers of one kind or another. One such aspect is determining whether the business practices of a supplier/vendor support or match the mission and values of the library. Many vendors supplying academic libraries with collections and other resources engage in practices that are not only markedly out of step with the values of libraries but also misaligned with the broader values of many public institutions of higher education (HE). Publishers and citation index providers are important examples of vendors often out of sync with such values, not least because of the tremendous amounts of money institutions of HE pay them.
The full entry can be read: Here.
4. 5 Considerations for knowledge managers leveraging scientific literature for text and data mining
Author: Garrett Dintaman
With the amount of available information continuously growing, R&D-intensive companies increasingly turn to text and data mining of full-text scientific literature – both at scale and in context of discrete projects – to extract information and power their knowledge supply chain. Considering end-to-end workflow, corpus parameters, volume, timeliness, and licensing will help a knowledge manager uncover the optimum workflow for their organisation to consume full-text content. Text mining, for many, is a new and exciting technology that can drastically improve research and innovation within an organisation.
The full entry can be read: Here.
5. Going beyond paywalls: Open up world of science with new policy
Author: Soham D Bhaduri
It is surprising to note that, in today’s age, a fair share of scientific knowledge should remain behind paywalls. The ideal of free knowledge sharing is at least a couple of centuries old, however, the academic publishing world has been rather slow to embrace it. While scientific knowledge can be freely shared, it is formidably costly to produce. The costs of producing research in journals, including the rigorous scrutiny that such information is subjected to, often militate against such a free-sharing model, making it financially unsustainable for publishers. One should not forget, that in the quest to further science and research in the country, an open science policy can at best be a useful adjunct—ultimately, it is how much invested in the sciences that are of central importance.
The full entry can be read: Here.
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