Open Access (OA) is a model for publishing scholarly peer reviewed journals, made possible by the Internet. The full text of OA journals and articles can be freely read, as the publishing is funded ...through means other than subscriptions. Empirical research concerning the quantitative development of OA publishing has so far consisted of scattered individual studies providing brief snapshots, using varying methods and data sources. This study adopts a systematic method for studying the development of OA journals from their beginnings in the early 1990s until 2009. Because no comprehensive index of OA articles exists, systematic manual data collection from journal web sites was conducted based on journal-level data extracted from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Due to the high number of journals registered in the DOAJ, almost 5000 at the time of the study, stratified random sampling was used. A separate sample of verified early pioneer OA journals was also studied. The results show a very rapid growth of OA publishing during the period 1993-2009. During the last year an estimated 191 000 articles were published in 4769 journals. Since the year 2000, the average annual growth rate has been 18% for the number of journals and 30% for the number of articles. This can be contrasted to the reported 3,5% yearly volume increase in journal publishing in general. In 2009 the share of articles in OA journals, of all peer reviewed journal articles, reached 7,7%. Overall, the results document a rapid growth in OA journal publishing over the last fifteen years. Based on the sampling results and qualitative data a division into three distinct periods is suggested: The Pioneering years (1993-1999), the Innovation years (2000-2004), and the Consolidation years (2005-2009).
The Internet has recently made possible the free global availability of scientific journal articles. Open Access (OA) can occur either via OA scientific journals, or via authors posting manuscripts ...of articles published in subscription journals in open web repositories. So far there have been few systematic studies showing how big the extent of OA is, in particular studies covering all fields of science.
The proportion of peer reviewed scholarly journal articles, which are available openly in full text on the web, was studied using a random sample of 1837 titles and a web search engine. Of articles published in 2008, 8.5% were freely available at the publishers' sites. For an additional 11.9% free manuscript versions could be found using search engines, making the overall OA percentage 20.4%. Chemistry (13%) had the lowest overall share of OA, Earth Sciences (33%) the highest. In medicine, biochemistry and chemistry publishing in OA journals was more common. In all other fields author-posted manuscript copies dominated the picture.
The results show that OA already has a significant positive impact on the availability of the scientific journal literature and that there are big differences between scientific disciplines in the uptake. Due to the lack of awareness of OA-publishing among scientists in most fields outside physics, the results should be of general interest to all scholars. The results should also interest academic publishers, who need to take into account OA in their business strategies and copyright policies, as well as research funders, who like the NIH are starting to require OA availability of results from research projects they fund. The method and search tools developed also offer a good basis for more in-depth studies as well as longitudinal studies.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the information practices of the researchers in biomedicine using the domain analytical approach.
Design/methodology/approach
The domain analytical ...research approach used in the study of the scientific domain of biomedicine leads to studies into the organization of sciences. By using Whitley’s dimensions of “mutual dependence” and “task uncertainty” in scientific work as a starting point the authors were able to reanalyze previously collected data. By opening up these concepts in the biomedical research work context, the authors analyzed the distinguishing features of the biomedical domain and the way these features affected researchers’ information practices.
Findings
Several indicators representing “task uncertainty” and “mutual dependence” in the scientific domain of biomedicine were identified. This study supports the view that in biomedicine the task uncertainty is low and researchers are mutually highly dependent on each other. Hard competition seems to be one feature, which is behind the explosion of the data and publications in this domain. This fact, on its part is directly related to the ways information is searched, followed, used and produced. The need for new easy to use services or tools for searching and following information in so called “hot” topics came apparent.
Originality/value
The study highlights new information about information practices in the biomedical domain. Whitley’s theory enabled a thorough analysis of the cultural and social nature of the biomedical domain and it proved to be useful in the examination of researchers’ information practices.
ABSTRACT
The open access (OA) model for journals is compared to the open source principle for computer software. Since the early 1990s nearly 1,000 OA scientific journals have emerged – mostly as ...voluntary community efforts, although recently some professionally operating publishers have used author charges or institutional membership. This study of OA journals without author charges shows that their impact is still relatively small, but awareness of it is increasing. The average number of research articles per year is lower than for major scientific journals but the publication times are shorter.
ABSTRACT
The long‐established peer‐review practices in scholarly journals have remained largely unchanged by the introduction of the Internet. Nevertheless, critique of the shortcomings of current ...practices (bias, slowness, etc.) have led to many publishers and journals experimenting with novel ways of performing and organizing peer review, enabled by e‐publishing and new revenue models. This article proposes a taxonomy of such innovations and discusses a number of cases where, for instance, the assignment of reviewers is handled differently from current best practice. New models, which seem particularly attractive to manuscript authors, are acceptance of any scientifically valid articles as practiced in ‘megajournals‘. and increased transparency about how the peer‐review process in a particular journal works.
ABSTRACT
This study examines aspects of scholarly journal publishing in the Nordic countries. On average half of Nordic journals publish online. In most Nordic countries, commercial publishers ...predominate; however, in Finland the majority are society publishers. The number of open access journals is low, in line with international figures. There is concern to maintain local languages in journal publishing. A majority of the journals publishing in local languages are within social science, humanities, and arts; the STM sector publishes in English. English‐language publications are favoured in research assessments, international recognition, and impact, while the visibility of local‐language scholarly journals in international databases is low. The Nordbib program supports Nordic scholarly journals and fosters co‐operation with publishing companies and learned societies over migration to e‐publishing; it also supports open access. The article discusses future challenges for journal publishing, pointing out the problems of small journal publishers and the need for co‐operation between stakeholders.
This paper reviews literature on dictionary-based cross-language information retrieval (CLIR) and presents CLIR research done at the University of Tampere (UTA). The main problems associated with ...dictionary-based CLIR, as well as appropriate methods to deal with the problems are discussed. We will present the structured query model by Pirkola and report findings for four different language pairs concerning the effectiveness of query structuring. The architecture of our automatic query translation and construction system is presented. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Introduction. Describes and analyses the information environment of research work in molecular medicine. We presume an interdependence between the information environment, the research process and ...the related work tasks.
Method. This is a qualitative case study using mixed methods. Empirical data were gathered using two surveys and six semi-structured thematic interviews.
Analysis. Analysis was carried out on the merged data of the two surveys. Respondents were divided into groups and information resources were categorized.
Results. The information environment consists of broad categories of data, tools, published material and interpersonal communication. The usage of portals and other integrated resources was substantial. The role of PubMed was central in searching scientific facts. Google was used to locate general Web pages, research groups, methods and tools. Interpersonal communication seemed to be effective in providing information about methods and tools among groups which do laboratory work. The problems reported concerned lack of knowledge about useful resources and how to use them properly, some query formulation problems were also reported, e.g. problems with acronyms, personal names and gene name synonymy.
Conclusions. The information related tasks occupied much of the researchers' time. If information problems were solved, more time to the research would be released. The database and tool interfaces should be easier to use. Introducción. Describe y analiza el entorno de información del trabajo de investigación en medicina molecular. Presumimos una interdependencia entre el entorno de información, el proceso de la investigación y las tareas de trabajo relacionadas.
Método. Éste es un estudio de casos cualitativo que usa métodos mixtos. Se recogieron los datos empíricos usando dos estudios y seis entrevistas temáticas semi-estructuradas.
Análisis. El análisis se realizó sobre los datos fusionados de los dos estudios. Los entrevistados fueron divididos en grupos y se categorizaron los recursos de información.
Resultados. El entorno de información consiste en amplias categorías de datos, herramientas, material publicado y comunicación interpersonal. El uso de portales y otros recursos integrados fue sustancial. El papel de PubMed era central en los hechos de investigación científica. Se usó Google para localizar páginas Web generales, grupos de investigación, métodos y herramientas. La comunicación interpersonal parecía ser efectiva para proporcionar información sobre métodos y herramientas entre grupos que hacen trabajo de laboratorio. Los problemas informados están relacionados con la falta de conocimiento sobre recursos útiles y sobre cómo usarlos apropiadamente, algunos problemas de formulación de consultas también fueron informados, por ejemplo los problemas con siglas, nombres personales y sinonimia de nombres de genes.
Conclusiones. La información relacionada con las tareas, ocuparon mucho tiempo de los investigadores. Si se resolvieran los problemas de información, se liberaría más tiempo para la investigación. La base de datos y las interfaces de las herramientas deben ser más fáciles usar.
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