Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Versions of academic papers and open access : attitudes and current practice among
economics researchers
Frances Shipsey, VERSIONS Project,
Library, London School of Economics and Political Science
Open Scholarship Conference, University of Glasgow, 20 October 2006
20 October 2006 / 2
Outline
• The versions problem and an illustration• Recent projects and initiatives addressing versions• Some results from the VERSIONS Project user
requirements study• Examples of good practice
20 October 2006 / 3
What questions are there relating to versions?
• Identity • Provenance• Trust• Discovery• User needs – best version(s)• IPR• and more …
20 October 2006 / 4
‘The processes of authorship, which often involve a series of drafts that are circulated to various people, produce different versions which in an electronic environment can easily go into broad circulation; if each draft is not carefully labeled and dated it is difficult to tell which draft one is looking at or whether one has the “final” version of a work.’Clifford Lynch, “Accessibility and Integrity of Networked Information Collections”, Office of Technology Assessment, Congress of the United States, August 1993, p68. http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS30119
20 October 2006 / 5Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Ireland and X Communications
20 October 2006 / 6
FRBR – a hierarchical model
• Work – expression – manifestation - item• ‘On a practical level, the degree to which bibliographic
distinctions are made between variant expressions of a work will depend to some extent on the nature of the work itself, and on the anticipated needs of users.’Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records: Final Report. IFLA Study Group on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records. Approved by the Standing Committee of the IFLA Section on Cataloguing. K.G.Saur, München 1998
UBCIM Publications – New Series Vol 19. http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr.pdf
20 October 2006 / 7
RIVER – Scoping Study on Repository Version Identification (RIVER)
• Rightscom Ltd and partners London School of Economics and Political Science Library, University of Oxford Computing Services, March 2006. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/RIVER%20Final%20Report.pdf
• Defined two broad classes of requirement for version identification:• Collocation• Disambiguation
– ‘Identifying that two digital objects which happen to share certain attributes […] have no contextually meaningful relationship’
– ‘Understanding the meaning of the relationship between two digital objects where one exists [without inspecting and comparing the objects themselves]’
20 October 2006 / 8
JISC Eprints Application Profile Working Group
• Carried out within JISC Digital Repositories Programme• Approach based on FRBR and the DCMI Abstract
Model• Provides more detail and structure than simple Dublin
Core• Deals with versions very well• Work carried out June-August 2006
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/Eprints_Application_Profile
20 October 2006 / 9
NISO/ALPSP Working Group on Versions of Journal Articles
• Publisher-led group, with larger review group made up of publishers, librarians and other stakeholders
• Draft documents including Terms and Definitions for versions (March 2006)
– Author’s Original– Accepted Manuscript– Proof– Version of Record– Updated Version of Record
http://www.niso.org/committees/Journal_versioning/JournalVer_comm.html
20 October 2006 / 10
The VERSIONS Project
• VERSIONS : Versions of Eprints – user Requirements Study and Investigation of the Need for Standards
• Funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) under the Digital Repositories Programme
• London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) - lead partner
• Nereus – consortium of European research libraries specialising in economics – associate partner
• Runs from July 2005 to February 2007• www.lse.ac.uk/versions
20 October 2006 / 11
The Library of the London School of Economics - www.lse.ac.uk/library
20 October 2006 / 12
Nereus – a network of European economics research libraries www.nereus4economics.info
20 October 2006 / 13
Economists Online – a pilot search service - http://nereus.uvt.nl/eo
20 October 2006 / 14
Focus on economics
• Known preprint culture – working papers and use of RePEc archive
• Sue Sparks report on disciplinary differences:• ‘What is the single most essential resource you use, the
one that you would be lost without?’ Economists responded:
• 18.2% preprints• 9.1% postprints• 54.5% journal articles• 18.2% datasets
Sue Sparks. JISC Disciplinary Differences Report. Rightscom Ltd, August 2005. Appendix C, Table 43. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/Disciplinary%20Differences%20and%20Needs.doc
20 October 2006 / 15
Versions Project – user requirements study 2006
• Online survey ‘Versions of academic papers online - the experience of authors and readers’, conducted May-July 2006
• 464 responses from academic researchers• 76% of researcher respondents from economics and
econometrics• 24% professors, 33% lecturer/associate professors,
15% post-doc researchers, 23% research students• Good geographic spread of responses • 133 responses from stakeholders – separate survey
20 October 2006 / 16
Respondents by subject discipline
Q3. Which subject discipline are you engaged in?
76%
3%
6%
3%12%
Economics and Econometrics(UOA 34)
Accounting and Finance (UOA35)
Business and ManagementStudies (UOA 36)
Physics (UOA 19)
Other
20 October 2006 / 17
VERSIONS Survey researcher respondents
• Research active – 50% wrote 4 or more papers in past 2 years
• Very active in disseminating through different research outputs, eg working papers, conference papers/presentations, book chapters, journal articles) – 59% typically produce 4 or more different types of research output from a research project, 33% produce 5 or more types of output
• Wide range of dissemination channels used – personal or institutional website, RePEc, SSRN, etc
• Create and keep many personal copies of revisions
20 October 2006 / 18
Do authors have the ‘final author version’?
Q7.d. Final author version produced by yourself/co-authors - agreed with the journal, following referee
comments
90%
6% 1%1%2%
Keep permanently
Keep until updated versionproduced (if applicable)
Do not produce/have thisversion
Don't know
Don't produce papers
20 October 2006 / 19
Depositing final author version if invited
Q16. Would you provide a final author version if invited by your university?
81%
5%
13% 1%
Yes
No
Don't know
Don't producepapers
Key Perspectives survey of researchers in 2005 asked about author intentions regarding mandatory deposit: 81% said they would comply willingly.
Alma Swan and Sheridan Brown. Open Access Self-Archiving: An Author Study (Sponsored by JISC). Key Perspectives, 2005.
20 October 2006 / 20
Attitudes towards providing final author versions
Q16. Attitudes towards providing final author versions
0 100 200 300 400 500
OK - helps me to disseminate quickly
OK - provided readers aware not publishedversion
OK - provided link to published version
Would take too much time
Consider this version inferior
Place published PDF on personal website aspriority
Provide to peer on email request
Concerned about loss of citations
Unsure whether copyright permits
Intend to provide in future
Strongly agree/Agree
Slightly/Strongly disagree
Don't know/don't produce
20 October 2006 / 21
33
385100
274191
116
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400
Draft version circulated to colleagues or peers -before submission
Submitted version
Final author version
Publisher proof
Published version - PDF
Don't know
Don't know
Q19. Which of the following versions of your academic papers are you interested in making openly accessible to
the general public, if permitted
20 October 2006 / 22
Multiple versions – experience of readers
Q22. When searching, how frequently do you find more than one full text version / copy available online?
17%
37%
39%
5% 2%
Very frequently
Frequently
Sometimes
Never
Don't know
20 October 2006 / 23
Q23. If you find multiple versions and / or copies of the same work, is it generally quick and easy to establish
which one(s) you wish to read?
54%41%
5%
Yes
No
Do not find multipleversions / copies
20 October 2006 / 24
Citing versions
339
3358
22 120
50100150200250300350
Cite th
e published version only
Cite both th
e published version and th
e ear...
Cite th
e earlier a
uthor version th
at I have re
ad
Do not cite
any version of the paper if
I hav...
Don't know
Q24. If you read an earlier version of a paper that has been published in a journal, how do you prefer to cite it?
20 October 2006 / 25
Identifying versions – researchers’ priorities
Q no Question Essential or very important
Essential, very important, or interesting
Essential
Q34 A method of indicating which is the published version 88.13% 98.23% 43.69%
Q35 A method of indicating which is the author's latest version of a paper
80.41% 95.62% 30.41%
Q28 A standardised way of recording and displaying the date of manuscript completion
67.59% 92.71% 22.36%
Q30 A standardised note in the description of the paper stating that it is the latest revision available
57.00% 82.19% 16.28%
Q26 A standardised terminology to describe each stage in the process of developing a research output
50.60% 91.33% 9.16%
Q29 A standardised way of referring to different revisions by version number
45.90% 85.13% 11.54%
Q32 A method of linking records together so all versions of a given paper are retrieved by searches and presented as a group (collocation):
41.69% 81.84% 6.91%
Q27 A standardised terminology to describe how one version relates to another (for example B is a digital copy of A, C is a digital revision of A):
41.69% 88.83% 6.70%
Q33 A method of comparing the text of different versions and displaying the differences between them
38.50% 79.07% 5.68%
Q31 Notes provided by the author, describing how one version relates to another
37.72% 84.81% 4.56%
20 October 2006 / 26
How are versions handled in OA repositories?
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
Within singlerepositories
Across multipleopen accessrepositories
Throughinternet search
engines
Stakeholder Qus 4-6. How well do you feel that versions of academic papers are currently identified ...
Don't know
Very badly
Quite badly
Quite well
Very well
20 October 2006 / 27
ArXiv – collocation and disambiguation
20 October 2006 / 28
CCLRC - ePubs repository – collocation and disambiguation
20 October 2006 / 29
EPrints repositories – latest version
http://cogprints.org/615/
20 October 2006 / 30
Google Scholar - collocation
20 October 2006 / 31
What is needed?
• Improved metadata allowing for relationships and links to be established – Eprints Application Profile, FRBR
• Comparing content of versions – open formats, eg XML• Clear identification of publisher version and
differentiation between other versions• Repository software should implement version control
mechanisms (Fedora already includes this)• Author awareness about version management –
institutional support for management of authoring process, through version control systems, eg Subversion, CVS
• More versioning information in the digital object itself
