STM Consultation on Sharing via Scholarly Collaboration Networks (SCNs)
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H. Frederick Dylla presented on scholarly collaboration networks (SCNs) and the STM Association's efforts to develop principles for sharing articles via SCNs. Key points: - SCNs like Academia.edu, ResearchGate, and Mendeley allow researchers to share articles and collaborate, with millions of users and documents uploaded. - STM formed a working group to examine sharing on SCNs and drafted voluntary principles to clarify sharing policies in a way that benefits researchers and supports publishers' business models. - After an open comment period, revised principles were published allowing sharing within research groups including non-subscribers, while publishers will work to quantify usage on SCNs through standards like COUNTER.
STM Consultation on Sharing via Scholarly Collaboration Networks (SCNs)
- 1. ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston January 9, 2016 STM Consultation on Sharing via Scholarly Collaboration Networks (SCNs) H. Frederick Dylla Executive Director Emeritus, American Institute of Physics Chair, STM Working Group on Scholarly Collaboration Networks The Hunter Forum 2016 ALA Midwinter Meeting January 9, 2016
- 2. ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston January 9, 2016 What are SCNs • SCNs are platformsthat allow researchersto developand maintain professionalrelationships.Some enable: • Discussion or research and informationexchange • Sharing of researchresults,articlesand data. • Not typically used for group interactionsand activities more akin to social networks (e.g.,LinkedIn,Facebook)or workplacetools (e.g., SharePoint,Google Docs) • STM*workinggroup identified 40+ such networks *STM – The InternationalAssociationofScientific,TechnicalandMedicalPublishers (STM) is an internationaltradeassociationorganizedandrun for the benefit of scholarly, scientific,technical,medicalandprofessionalpublishers.(www.stm-assoc.org)
- 3. ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston January 9, 2016 SCNs are Growing in Popularity • SCNs have grown substantially* in recent years, particularly in the “big” three – Academia.edu, ResearchGate, and Mendeley – Registered users: Academia.edu 15+ million users, ResearchGate 5+ million, Mendeley 3.5+ million – Uploaded documents: Mendeley reported that its users had uploaded 470+ million documents,and ResearchGate reported that 14 million are “accessible”via its platform. *CCC/CLAReport onScholarly CollaborationPlatforms,M. Ware,November 27,2014 (CCC/Outsell)
- 4. ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston January 9, 2016 SCNs are Growing in Popularity To put this in perspective… DropBoxis largesttool for the privatesharing of documents—threeyears ago, it had 100Musers sharing 1 billionfiles a day!—and Google Scholar holds about 160Mdocuments.
- 5. ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston January 9, 2016 SCNs: The 21st Century Embodiment of a Standard Academic Practice Scholars have shared various versions of their scholarly articles with their colleagues since the journal first appeared (1665). Online versions and online distribution makes this process much easier. • Good for scholars and for scholarship with the promotion of the publication to wider audiences. Authors, readers, funding agencies and publishers share the same primary goal: provide access to publications.
- 6. ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston January 9, 2016 The Role of Scholarly Publishers Scholarly publishers handle all aspects of the publication process(editorial/peerreview management, composition/tagging,online distributionand archiving).These activities requireincome. • Given that subscription income is still the dominant business model for scholarly publications, unfettered access to the highest value version (publisher’s version of record) can cause economic harm. • Clearly,the open access modelis one means of providing wide access.
- 7. ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston January 9, 2016 The Role of Scholarly Publishers The present situation with distribution and access to licensed (subscription) content on such networks is ambiguous and needs to be simplified for all parties. Publishers want to encourage use of such networks without endangering their ability to provide and maintain valuable publications.
- 8. ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston January 9, 2016 STM Seeks Clarity and Consensus STM assembled a working group in Sept. 2014 to examine the current landscape of article sharing via SCNs and publishers’ role. Ten publishers, both for profit and not-for-profit, and some of whom owned or interacted with SCNs, took part. ‘Voluntary principles for article sharing on scholarly collaboration networks’ were drafted and posted it for a two month STM Open Consultation in early 2015 inviting wide participation among all stakeholder groups.
- 9. ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston January 9, 2016 Voluntary Principles for Article Sharing on SCNs The principles are meant to: • clarify how, where, and what contentshould be shared using these networks and sites, • improve the experience for all stakeholders • encourage publishers and SCN’s to work together to facilitate sharing, benefiting researchers, institutions,and society as a whole. • All comments and a summary are posted on the STM website • Key recommendation: Principles should be: clear, simple, uniform
- 10. ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston January 9, 2016 Response to STM’s Open Consultation • Based on the community’s constructivefeedback, a revised set of principleswas posted August 28. http://www.stm-assoc.org/stm-consultations/scn-consultation-2015/ • Posting includesan explanation of the changes made to the principles.
- 11. ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston January 9, 2016 Voluntary Principles: Key Points • Publishers commit to facilitate the dissemination and discovery of their authors’ scholarly articles. • Sharing should be allowed within a research collaboration group (to be defined by the group) - Allow article sharing between subscribers and non- subscribers within the group - Include commercial researchers, subject to publisher policy or appropriate licensing - Include members of the wider public participating with the group
- 12. ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston January 9, 2016 Voluntary Principles: Key Points • Publishers and libraries should extend their collective use of standards such as COUNTER to quantify article use on networks. • Publishers and standards organizations should continue to work together on tools that facilitate sharing (article versioning and access rights metadata). • Publisher policies on research collaboration group sharing and public posting of articles should be clear and easily discoverable.
- 13. ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston January 9, 2016 Next Steps for SCN Working Group Publisher posting policy - Several publishers (e.g. NPG, Wiley, Elsevier) have issued/in the process of issuing policies to address posting via SCNs. Article tagging project - To support implementation, a working group is developing a technical solution based on tagging XML metadata in scholarly articles. – Participants include publishers, platforms and Crossref – Draft design for trackable article sharing by Q1, 2016 The SCN working group continues to reach out for wider involvement, including non-publisher owned networks and librarian networks – Seeking librarian involvement and/or endorsement – Comments/updates on progress, email scnproject@stm-assoc.org – Updates will continually be posted on: www.stm-assoc.org/stm-consultations/scn-consultation-2015/
- 14. ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston January 9, 2016 References STM Association’s voluntary principles statement and consultation on article sharing networks: www.stm-assoc.org/stm-consultations/scn-consultation-2015/ Richard Van Noorden, Online collaboration: Scientists and the Social Network. Nature 512, 126–129 doi:10.1038/512126a. CCC/CLA Report Scholarly Collaboration Platforms, M.Ware, Outsell,Nov.,2014 F. Dylla interview with Scholarly Kitchen, Feb. 24,2015
- 15. ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston January 9, 2016 Acknowledgments STM member organizations participating in the SCN working group: AAAS, American Chemical Society, American Institute of Physics, AIP Publishing, Digital Science, Elsevier, IEEE, John Wiley & Sons, Nature Publishing Group, Springer Science+Business Media and Taylor & Francis Group STM Association: Michael Mabe; Matt McKay