Research Portal News

Subscription to BioMed Central (BMC)

BioMed Central is an internet publishing platform, recently purchased by Springer.  They publish a suite of 233 Open Access peer-reviewed biomedical journals online, which are now joined by another, more social science-oriented set of offerings (81 journals) from SpringerOpen.  Authors pay for successful submissions – around R10 000 per article, which is at the lower end of the Open Access spectrum – which can then be accessed freely by anyone with an internet connection, and which can be shared under Creative Commons licencing.  Many BMC journals are listed with the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and have Impact Factors.  It is an acknowledged fact that more developing country authors publish with Open Access journals than with established print publishers – probably because publication costs may be waived for them, although not generally for South Africans  - and that Open Access publication guarantees significantly better visibility and better citation of an article

UCT researchers were authors on nearly 270 BMC journal articles in the period 2007-2011, with 80 published in 2011 and 14 so far in 2012 – indicating a significantly rising trend. This represents at least R800 000 in publication costs for 2011 alone, which will mainly have been borne by the authors concerned from their research grants.

BMC offers a subscription package – already taken up by the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Stellenbosch, and now also by UCT - which at the "top end" rate (above GBP20 000/yr), offers a 15% discount per article fee, and free repository connection to all institutional BMC-published articles, and a branded institutional web page linking to all the articles.  This represents a considerable saving on costs that will be incurred in any case, with significant added benefits.  Moreover, subscription will allow automatic tracking by the Research Office of all submissions and acceptances, and of all expenses incurred.  I note that one can ALSO apply to the Research Office for assistance with publication costs!

The services provided by BMC with subscription will serve to showcase UCT publications, probably significantly increase access to UCT scholarship, and considerably add to the visibility of the UCT brand.

From Caroline Dean in UCT Libraries:

We have a 1 month trial of ISI's Book Citation tool. 

"To access the Book Citation Index, please go to your Web of Science subscription and scroll down to find a breakdown of the different Citation databases, there you’ll be able to select or deselect the BKCI. I’ve attached a screenshot. You also have the option to refine for it within your result list on the refining panel.

Book Citation Index

Scholarly books typically provide an overall comprehensive analysis of a topic and in many fields of study the publication of a book is viewed as essential for promotion and tenure, particularly in the humanities.

Coverage:

• Thomson Reuters’ Book Citation Index will cover approximately 30 000 books by launch date with 10,000 books added annually. This citation index will favor Social Science and Arts & Humanities and they anticipate a coverage in these fields as high as 75%.
• Content will consist of Scholarly books that represent fully referenced articles of original research, or reviews of the literature:

-Both multi-authored and single-authored

- Series and non-series

- Encyclopedias, Reference Books generally not included, though graduate level texts may be considered.

- of Books and individually-authored Book Chapters.

- Capture of all fundamental bibliographic information as well as author cited references.                                                                                                                                                                

Read more about this on their website: http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/bookcitationindex/

To view the books that are covered in this index, please visit the following link: http://wokinfo.com/mbl/

Should you want to see a presentation on the Book Citation Index: http://wokinfo.com/media/ppt/ala2011-bkci.ppt "

Enjoy! 

I thought this was a pimp index, until I discovered Smirnoff until Alan Cann deconstructed it for me.  Now I THINK I know what it is...B-)  From the SURF Foundation, then, via the imitable AJC:

What is the scientific and social impact of my research publications? This question has been of interest to scientists and scholars since the inception of modern science 400 years ago. But it was hard to answer. This may now be changing. Scholarship is transforming into a variety of digital networked forms. These developments have created new possibilities and challenges in the evaluation of the quality of research. This is of interest to research funders assessing the quality of research. It is also relevant to the individual researchers interested in assessing their career development. This report explores the explosion of tracking tools that have accompanied the surge of web based information instruments. Is it possible to monitor ‘real-time’ how new research findings are being read, cited, used and transformed in practical results and applications? And what are the potential risks and disadvantages of the new tracking tools? This report aims to contribute to a better understanding of these developments by providing a detailed assessment of the currently available novel tools and methodologies. A total of 16 quite different tools are assessed.  

Anyone who has taken a walk down our leafy avenues recently cannot fail to have noticed just how many of our students are clutching / using iPads tablet PCs lately.

With a fruit-themed device pretty much dominating.

The following article in The Chronicle of Higher Education describes how twenty-five percent of US college students surveyed said they owned a tablet - and how they preferred to read course materials on it. 

It is also evident that the teaching staff of this august institution have not been such eager adopters - which has knock-on effects when it comes to translating course materials for iPads the devices.  I note, incidentally, that the University of Adelaide in 2011 was supplying ALL first-time entering Science students with an (actual) iPad - and allowing them to keep it if they passed.

While we will almost certainly not be doing this, I am sure, it would be a good idea for the Centre for Educational Technology and the tech-savvy among us to start moving lecture / study / informational materials onto these platforms.  And to take note of the previous post here when they do that.... 

I thank AJ Cann for pointing me to this via Twitter. The picture is just to drool over.

Open Access publishing is a relatively straightforward proposition to get your head around: you write something, it gets refereed and accepted, you pay for it to be published, and it is made freely available on a web site.  It is then accessed by the eager multitudes interested few, who will benefit thereby, and who will hopefully cite it.  It is an increasingly popular way to publish, and appears to be beneficial to developing country science and scientists

Open Content is another story: Wikipedia defines it as "creative workthat others can copy or modify", but it is a lot more complicated than that - largely to do with the many degrees of freedom that one can specify.

Open Educational Resources are something of a hybrid of the other two categories: OER are basically teaching / learning materials made available via web and other means, for free - but which can be subject to certain limitations concerning reuse and/or alteration if the author so wishes.

What is becoming clearer as the dust of innovation subsides, is that the three categories in fact blur into each other in a continuum of information: Open Access publications are used for Open Content materials; OER are derived from both and may be or become Open Content, and so on.

It is also clear that the eResearch space at UCT joins seamlessly with the Open Content space, and that the overlap will have to be amicably managed so that there is no duplication, or dropping of things between two stools.

Our community will be pleased to hear this is well in hand, and that the Open UCT folk are well acquainted with the eResearch Portal crew, and both know and tolerate the OER crowd. And this is exciting, because the possibilities for synergy are becoming apparent: that is, understanding the ways in which eResearch requirements and resources impinge upon Open Content and OER and vice-versa, could open up very valuable new ways of doing things at UCT, that will advance research, scholarship and learning activities.

A concrete example right now would be the use of Open Access published material on UCT web sites for teaching purposes. Another is the "research-led" development of OER that can and will be used by outside individuals and institutions, and add to UCT's visibility and reputation. A future application will be the linking of "Scholarly Publications" accessible via the researcher Profiles into OER and OC, for an effective UCT Electronic Press.

I attended a regrettably minor part of the recent "Open Education Week" at UCT recently, where I heard some very interesting news from Stellenbosch University: their Director of Library IT and Communication, Reggie Raju, dropped the bombshell that SU supports Open Access publishing by their researchers to the tune of R 2 million per annum.

Two.  Million.  Rand.

That's about TWO HUNDRED OA articles, given an average cost of R10K each.

UCT supports us with...with...well, actually, they do not formally support such activity at all - although the Research Office IS working on a deal with BioMed Central that will give PARTIAL support to UCT authors, for this family of publications only.

I have been making the case for over two years now that supporting publications in Open Access journals is the right thing to do: the articles bring in FAR more subsidy than they cost to publish (by a factor of 10 or more); they put UCT in a global shop window; they allow access to our scholarship by anybody, for free - which is why developing country scientists are using OA journals preferentially both for access to information, and for publishing - where the author costs are reduced or waived, which increasingly is not the case for SA scientists.

Lead, follow - or get left behind, UCT! 

This is a slideshow that will have been given at the panel discussion of Open Education Week on Tuesday 6th March.  The theme was: What does Open Education mean for Higher Education in Africa?

Eve Gray kindly shared this via Twitter: VERY interesting presentation by Jason Priem

iTunes U

The announcement by Apple Inc recently about the launch of the iTunes U application for the iPad and iPhone, and related enhancements in online courseware development for iTunes U, has created rather a buzz in academic circles around the world.  You see, heavyweight institutions like Harvard and Oxford Universities, MIT, and the mighty British Open University, seem to be making a lot of courseware available there - for free.

There has accordingly been some interest here at UCT in getting official approval for courseware submissions.  It's difficult to know what's not to like about this: visibility from all over the world, promotion of the UCT brand, uptake of UCT-developed materials by other institutions, and new things to do for the Centre for Educational Technology, among others.

Oh, there is the "Apple factor" to possibly worry about, meaning the locking-in of participants to one technology and one interface - but iTunes works on both PCs and Macs, which should take care of that objection, and I remind you, most offerings are FREE.

While this may not immediately appear to have relevance to the eResearch Portal (as we are coming to know it), it certainly does for the instruction of research students - which is after all, a core activity of researchers at this institution.

iBooks Author

Another announcement from Steve's Company was of less general interest, but loomed large in the interest bubble of committed iPad enthusiasts.  Like me, it seems almost redundant to say. 

This was that Apple was making available - for free - the iBooks Author app, for constructing iBooks for use on the iPad.  There has been a lot of grumbling about the EULA for this as well, given that it is necessary to use ONLY Apple's online store to sell anything developed for sale - which completely ignores the fact that it is possible to circulate iBooks for free via email or other electronic means, to any iPad user you like.

I have been having a great deal of fun with this: it is also an EXCELLENT means of painlessly making PDFs for instructional or informational purposes, which can of course be opened on any platform.

We WILL assimilate you....