Scholarly Communication in Library and Information Services: The Impacts of Open Access Journals and E-Journals on a Changing Scenario

By Bhaskar Mukherjee

This book has been written with a view to understand the validity of the perceptions of Open Access (OA) e-journals in the Library and Information Science (LIS) field. Using relevant OA journals this book presents and evaluates journals qualitatively and quantitatively. Over the last three hundred years scholarly journals have been the prime mode of transport in communicating the scholarly research process. However in the last few decades, a changing scenario has been witnessed in their form and format. OA is an innovative idea that attracts a fair amount of support and opposition around the world because it bridges the gap between digitally divided scholars by solving the pricing and permission crises that have imbalanced the scholarly communication process. Some scholars are of the opinion that OA has led to a chaotic environment where anyone can publish anything. Scholarly Communication in Library and Information Services records, in detail, the impact by accessing the journals’ web site qualitatively and quantitatively in measuring the important elements such as articles, authors, countries, subjects and cited references. Finally, the book calculates the impact factor using synchronous and asynchronous approaches.

• First ever study to extensively evaluate LIS Journals’ Web site qualitatively by using a newly developed set of criteria
• LIS OA journals are also evaluated quantitatively
• Counts citations of LIS OA articles in terms of formal citations by using Google Scholar

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: Jul 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9781780632087

Bhaskar Mukherjee

Dr Bhaskar Mukherjee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Library and Information Science, Guru Ghasidas University, Villaspur, Chattisgarh, India. As a young science graduate and doctorate in the field of Library and Information Science, Dr Mukherjee has been serving this profession since last 14 years at various positions. He has added 30 research articles so far in various highly reputed journals like JASIST, Scientometrics, LISR, IFLA, Journal of Academic Librarianship, etc. in the field. He is recipient of Raja Rammohun Roy Foundation award for contributing best article. Currently he is also serving as reviewer of various highly reputed journals in the field and allied fields. His research interests are webometrics, open access, information storage and retrieval and knowledge organisation.

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Preface

The process of scholarly communication has changed through history. Just as Gutenberg’s invention of movable type replaced the ‘Shruti’ (or oral) communication process of the ancients, so, too, has Charles Babbage’s invention of computers replaced paper with the less-paper world. Although the mode of delivery of scholarly communication has changed from the oral to the written to the printed and now to the electronic, the form and function of scholarly communication means have remained essentially unchanged in the last three centuries. One of the most important means of scholarly communication is the journal. Scholarly communication through journals was first reported in 1665. During the last 340, information technology – from moveable type to electronic bits – has considerably influenced this most important means of scholarly communication. However, over the past two decades, there has been a significant increase in the price of research journals – both print and electronic, which further hindered the accessibility of scholarly journals. ‘What is the value of scientific research if the results are not shared freely?’ has become the question among scholars internationally. The ‘Open Access’ movement, which calls for the free availability of research literature, was born out of discontent with rising costs. During 1995–1997 there was a tremendous increase in the number of research journals which are available freely on the web. The main goal of these scholarly Open Access electronic journals is to bridge the gap between digitally divided scholars by solving the pricing and permission crises that have imbalanced the scholarly communication process.

In Library and Information Science, like all other disciplines, a considerable amount of literature is now being published in Open Access electronic journals. Most of them are scholarly, a few of them less scholarly. However, some scholars are of the opinion that Open Access has led to a chaotic environment where anyone can publish anything. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to scholarly publication through Open Access journals is the weight of tradition. In fact, priced journals have consolidated their reputation within scientific field over decades. On the other hand, Open Access journals are new, mostly developed in the late 1990s. A similar hierarchy of prestige needs to crystallize in the Open Access environment. So, it is interesting to verify whether such perceptions are valid in the case of Open Access journals in Library and Information Science. It is also essential to verify that OA journals in Library and Information Science have an impact in scholarly communication process. The present study is an attempt to search answers to such questions by assessing the quality, quantity and impact of Open Access journals in Library and Information Science. For this purpose various qualitative and quantitative techniques have been applied simultaneously to Open Access journals in this discipline. The qualitative technique has been used by applying various established criteria; on the other hand, the quantitative approach has been used by applying various webometrics techniques.

The present book entitled Scholarly Communication in Library and Information Services (LIS): the impacts of Open Access journals and e-journals on a changing scenario is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of scholarly communication first, and then discusses various issues associated with electronic journals and Open Access journals. Chapter 2, ‘Open Access journals in Library and Information Science’, outlines all available Open Access journals in LIS discipline first, and then discusses selected Open Access journals in brief. Chapter 3 discusses the concept of qualitative and quantitative techniques, and reviews various past literature. In chapter 4 we develop a tool-box of criteria by which we evaluate the web sites of three non-Open Access and 17 Open Access journals qualitatively. In chapter 5, we applied quantitative techniques to evaluate journal contents. Web citations analysis and impact factor analysis are discussed in chapter 6. In chapter 7 motivation for creation of hyperlinks is analyzed. Chapter 8 presents the summary and conclusion drawn out of the findings of the study as well as some suggestions and scope for further research. At the end, a bibliography has been appended followed by three appendices (I, II and III) containing criteria of incorporating journals in the most popular databases: indexing/abstracting services; list of articles having more than five web citations; and distribution of articles by year in various citation strata. All the bibliographic details used in this research are according to Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed., 2001) with slight modifications.

1

Changing scenario of scholarly communication: Journals, e-journals and Open Access journals

Introduction

In 1991, the Nobel Prize recipient Joshua Lederberg made a speech entitled ‘Communication as the Root of Scientific Progress’ (Lederberg, 1993). In this speech, he indicated the significance of scholarly literature, scholarly publishing and scholarly communication for the progress of science. Progress made by mankind from the Stone Age to the Google Age is largely due to research, and the resultant new information has led to the development of a ‘knowledge society’. In a knowledge society, knowledge generated through research is a critical national resource. But it is not enough to focus only on the generation of knowledge. It is equally essential to spread and share this knowledge – methods, new processes, products – and finally to evaluate it with colleagues and students. For sharing, various communication means, formal and/or informal, are used both locally and on a worldwide scale. These communication means, along with research results, establish a system of scholarly communication.

Scholarly communication

The concept of ‘scholarly communication’ (SC) originated with the ancient Greeks although it was not known by that name, nor did clear distinctions between formal and informal means exist. It was informal, as in peripatetic discussions at the Academy in Athens and formal, as in Aristotle’s writings (Feather & Sturges, 2003). In Western Europe, scholarly communication came to depend increasingly on the universities and this trend is now established worldwide. Now, the term ‘scholarly’ is generally used in the academic domain – especially in the higher education curriculum for activities that entail research or investigation. Scholarly communication is generally used to describe how this research is communicated among peers and is finally evaluated.

Definition from the literature

There is no single agreed-upon definition of the term ‘scholarly communication’. Sometimes the term is narrowly defined to include exclusively the peer-reviewed literature published upon completion of research (Rowlands et al., 2004) but broadly speaking, it includes all forms of communication between peers (Harnad, 1999a). Still others view scholarly communication as a much more inclusive process that represents all forms of dissemination of research output. As observed by C. L. Borgman, scholarly communication is

the study of how scholars in any field (e.g. physical, biological, social and behavioural sciences, humanities and technology) use and disseminate information through formal and informal channels. The study of scholarly communication includes the growth of scholarly information, the relationships among research areas and disciplines, the information needs and uses of individual user groups, and the relationships among formal and informal methods of communication. (Borgman, 2000)

This definition of scholarly communication is broad in scope, covering a wide range of information- and communication-related phenomena in scholarly environments. It is certainly an important topic in the study of scholarly communication to explore how information needs and uses of individual scholar groups affect their communication patterns. Peter Lyman, on the other hand, identified the importance of information technology in the processes of scholarly research and for scholars to communicate and share information (Lyman, 1997).

To quote the definition of the Library Services, University College London (2003), ‘scholarly communication is the method and route by which academic information is passed from author to reader, via various intermediaries such as libraries and publishers’. Scholarly communication, in this context, is a process whereby the results of research are made available to others through publication and preservation. Jankowski (2009) viewed scholarly communication as the presentation of research findings to an audience external to the research project, home department or institution of the researcher, for the purpose of sharing and contributing to knowledge.

Recently, however, the advent of computer mediated communication (CMC) has redefined scholarly communication. CMC literature explores how resources use computer networks to communicate with each other, independent of print journals (Peek & Pomerantz, 1998). This scholarly electronic communication includes the distribution of scholarly articles, research papers and messages by electronic means as opposed to their distribution by paper media. Peter Lyman, in this regard, defines scholarly communication as a term that originated with the growth in importance of information technology in the processes of scholarly research and for scholars to communicate and share information. For Lyman, scholarly communication is a term ‘invented to frame both print publication and digital communication within a single functional schema’ in an environment where information technology both changes the processes of research and creates new kinds of information products and services that were not available in a print environment. In a more descriptive way, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) defines scholarly communication as

the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. The system includes both formal means of communication, such as publication in peer- reviewed journals, and informal channels, such as electronic listservs. (ACRL, 2004)

Means of scholarly communication

Although the study of scholarly communication is broad in scope and a diverse group of scholars contributed from different perspectives for different purposes, many studies distinguished communication behavior between formal and informal domains (Lievrouw, 1988). Crawford (1971), for example, referred to informal communication as ‘a person-to- person relation’, in which a scientist selects other scientists to communicate his/her works to; and formal aspects of scholarly communication as a scholar’s communication behavior demonstrated through scholarly publications including journals, books, abstracts/indexes and papers for well-established conferences. Sometimes, healthy discussions among peers build up ‘the invisible college’ of an informal communication network (Price, 1963). The advantage of this form is that the verbal channels are rapid and effective for conveying information and that they are easy and pleasant to use. New research workers, however, to a large extent lack this informal network.

While informal communication is primarily studied using social network analysis methods based on sociometric data which record the frequency or strength of direct and indirect social choices or contacts and are often obtained through surveys and/or interviews, formal scholarly communication is primarily studied through bibliometric approaches which seek ‘to shed light on the processes of written communication and on the nature and course of development of a discipline (in so far as this is displayed through written communication), by means of counting and analyzing the various facets of written communication’ (Pritchard,