Wednesday 29 February 2012

Connotea: Bookmarks matching tag oa.new (50 items)

Connotea: Bookmarks matching tag oa.new (50 items)


An Academic Hopes to Take the MLA Into the Social Web - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Posted: 29 Feb 2012 05:08 AM PST

 
An Academic Hopes to Take the MLA Into the Social Web - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education
chronicle.com
"A blog post changed Kathleen Fitzpatrick's professional life. Now she's helping to infuse the spirit of blogging into scholarly societies and shaking up academic publishing in the process. In 2006 Ms. Fitzpatrick, now 44, was an associate professor of English at Pomona College, struggling to get her first scholarly book published. The text was finished, and it had been favorably reviewed twice, but it remained in limbo as she searched for a publisher, leaving the ideas locked on private hard drives. In a post on a blog called The Valve, she proposed that scholars should share their draft monographs online and let them go through peer review the way blog posts do—with comments by knowledgeable colleagues....She said that her "big mouth" on the issue got the attention of like-minded researchers, and she soon co-founded a project called MediaCommons that put her idea into action, providing an open platform for scholarly peer review of books. Suddenly she was a rising star in digital humanities....Rosemary G. Feal, the MLA's executive director, not only listened to her ideas but when the group decided to start a new office devoted to scholarly communication, she helped hire her to try them out. Last year Ms. Fitzpatrick started the gig, and she is now working to create a bloglike platform, called MLA Commons, for the group's 30,000-plus members...."

Tracking Scholarly Influence Beyond the Impact Factor - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Posted: 29 Feb 2012 05:05 AM PST

 
Tracking Scholarly Influence Beyond the Impact Factor - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education
chronicle.com
"[PLoS] publisher emphasizes a variety of article-level metrics: usage statistics and citations, sure, but also how often an article is blogged about or bookmarked and what readers and media outlets are saying about it. The approach is part of a broader trend toward altmetrics, alternative ways of measuring scholarly influence. Go to any PLoS article online and you will find a “metrics” tab at the top of the screen. That gives you five categories, including article usage, citations, social networks (currently the bookmarking sites CiteULike and Connotea), blogs and media coverage, and PLoS readers (that’s a ratings system that lets users give an article one to five stars). Readers’ comments get a tab of their own. PLoS began experimenting with article-level metrics in July 2009....[PLoS ONE publisher Peter Binfield] hopes scholars will see the advantages of “post-publication commentary and discussion” around an article. “The intention is to have a dialogue with the author, where a reader might see a problem or have a question and the author might be able to respond, and keep a running record or what people thought about the article,” he says....The usefulness of many of these data sources depends on just how much information third-party sites are willing to share. “Openness facilitates more re-use and discovery,” Mr. Binfield explains. Over all, the publisher believes that article-level metrics give PLoS a competitive advantage over publishers who don’t share information. “We see this as a powerful thing that demonstrates the power of open access,” Mr. Binfield says. “We really would like to see it adopted much more widely, and for every publisher to provide this kind of data on their articles.” ..."

Tracking Scholarly Influence Beyond the Impact Factor

Posted: 29 Feb 2012 04:43 AM PST

 
Tracking Scholarly Influence Beyond the Impact Factor
chronicle.com
“A very blunt instrument” is how Peter Binfield of the Public Library of Science describes the impact factor...Mr. Binfield is the publisher of the journal PLoS One and the PLoS community journals, like PLoS Computational Biology. PLoS works on an open-access model; the impact factor doesn’t reign supreme there as it does at so many subscription-based operations. Instead, the publisher emphasizes a variety of article-level metrics: usage statistics and citations, sure, but also how often an article is blogged about or bookmarked and what readers and media outlets are saying about it...PLoS began experimenting with article-level metrics in July 2009. The approach involves “a large basket of metrics,” Mr. Binfield says, but the two most significant categories are citations and usage statistics...PLoS has had more mixed results with some other article-level metrics. Readers have showed little taste for the five-star rating system...[But] Mr. Binfield hopes scholars will see the advantages of “post-publication commentary and discussion” around an article...Over all, the publisher believes that article-level metrics give PLoS a competitive advantage over publishers who don’t share information. “We see this as a powerful thing that demonstrates the power of open access,” Mr. Binfield says. “We really would like to see it adopted much more widely, and for every publisher to provide this kind of data on their articles.”

Purpose of scholarly journals articulated in “The Introduction” to Philosophical Transactions (Monday, March 6, 1665)

Posted: 28 Feb 2012 01:27 PM PST

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