High Cost of Publishing in the Humanities and Social Sciences

It costs more to publish an article in a humanities or social sciences (HSS) journal than to publish one in a science, technical, or medical (STM) journal – over three times as much, according to a report soon to be released by the National Humanities Alliance in the United States.

The full report is to be released as soon as possible, according to NHA committee chairman William E. Davis. In the meantime, a summary by Jennifer Howard in July 20th's Chronicle of Higher Education [subscription required] has been generating much discussion and comment.

Given the high reported cost - an average $9,994 per article in HSS to an average $2,670 in STM - most conclude that the author-pays open access model that serves STM publications will not be feasible for HSS researchers, for whom less grant money is available in the first place to cover such costs. Nevertheless, the NHA chairman says that he and other HSS publishers will figure out some alternative open access model that will suit HSS. “We will,” Mr Davis said, “because we have to.”

Also mentioned in the report is the finding that acceptance rates are significantly lower for articles submitted to HSS journals - 11% for HSS, to STM's 42%. HSS researchers are thus further disadvantaged in an environment where numbers of publications are used as a measure of success.

It is on this last finding that Kathleen Fitzpatrick focuses on the MediaCommons blog. Fitzpatrick suggests that, as the pre-publication filtering needs of HSS publications are so strong and therefore so expensive, and as we are no longer constrained by the bounds of what we can print and ship, it might be better to eliminate all but the most functional pre-publication print review. A journal's editorial staff could look over each article to ensure that it is basically appropriate, then post it online and allow the readers to do the peer review. The Houghton report in the UK, summarised here, analysed and costed this model and concluded that "Open access self-archiving with overlay services would result in a saving of over 50% on subscription publishing."

An interesting alternative response to the report comes from Cathy Davidson, co-founder of the Humanities, Arts, Science & Technology Advanced Collaboratory. Davidson suggests in this blog post that "Perhaps universities simply need to consider the cost of running humanities and social science publishing as one of the intrinsic costs of these fields, offset by the enormous number of students we teach ... and the lower equipment and technology costs".

Blogs worth subscribing to - plus how to ...

There are two great blogs, one from DCU and one from UCC, that concern themselves with Higher Education in Ireland.

The first is Ferdinand von Prondzynski’s A University Blog: Diary of a University President http://universitydiary.wordpress.com/. Blogging since June 2008, the Dublin City University President blogs about issues that interest him, some personal, some of great interest to Irish researchers. The blog has built up a good following, so comment and debate can be lively. See, for example, last week’s post on Research, economics and trench warfare.

The second interesting blog comes from Steve Hedley of University College Cork’s Faculty of Law. Ninth Level Ireland: Irish University Politics, News and Law http://9thlevelireland.wordpress.com/ mainly links to news and discussion elsewhere on the web, usefully tagging each post with the flag of the country concerned, but also includes on the sidebar some excellent overviews and links. Check out, for example, The fees issue under Politics on the blog's sidebar.

How to subscribe to a blog:
There is an excellent video from Lee LeFever of Common Craft here, describing in plain English and in under 4 minutes how to subscribe to blogs and news sites. It's well worth a look.

Graduate Junction's first ever online international poster competition

July 2009

Poster Competition Update
Greetings!

Graduate Junction's first ever online international poster competition is now well underway and posters are beginning to flood in from across the world. But don't worry there is still plenty of time to get your entry in.
The closing date is 15th October 2009 and all you have to do to enter is create an A1 poster of your research, aimed at a non-subject specific audience and then submit your poster online. The winners will be chosen by a combination of academic and non-academic judges' scores from around the world as well as votes from the members of Graduate Junction. There is the chance to win an iPod as well as a selection of fantastic cash prizes. For MORE INFORMATION please visit www.graduatejunction.org/posters

Summary of responses to query about research impact factor tools and tips

Summary of responses to query about research impact factor tools and tips - from JISC MAIL

Treat with caution – different institutions and subject areas recognise different metrics differently and some don’t recognise them as reliable measure of impact. Advise them about the tools but advise them about possible limitations too. The Sciences and Health Sciences seem to have more reliable data so tend to be able to rely on these more.

ISI suite of products is market leader. Thomson ISI is a key player and the most long-standing founded in 1960.

Web of Knowledge and SCOPUS seem to be the two main competitors for this market. Several institutions are looking at SCOPUS but it is expensive (no price given). SCOPUS enables you to see the number of citations for journal titles. SCOPUS has a better range of citations than ISI for some subjects.
Web of Knowledge is the source of all ISI citations used in other product lines. It allows you to do a citation search or to find an author’s h-index rather than just looking at the impact of a journal. The h-index is an index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output put forward in 2005 by the American physicist, Jorge Hirsch. Use the Author Finder tool in Web of Knowledge for this. The Journal Citation Reports product in Web of Knowledge includes a number of indicators including the Journal Impact Factor. You pay extra on top of your WOK sub to access JCR. JCR is published annually and comes out 6-7 months after the end of the year. In-cites can be used for looking at an institution. http://isiwebofknowledge.com/incites/.

Other tools people mentioned were:
http://www.scimagojr.com/ - developed from rankings in Scopus
Sci-Bytes http://sciencewatch.com/dr/sci/ - gives small snapshots of the statistics from Journal Citation Reports, e.g. the "Top 10 journals in education", in the latest issue.
Essential Science Indicators
ScienceWatch.com
SciImago - a free website based on the Scopus dataset.
Google scholar plus Publish or Perish software which you can download offers better range of citations for SOME disciplines
Eigenfactor.org – free website
The Washington and Lee University School of Law http://lawlib.wlu.edu/LJ/index.aspx - a useful tool for law researchers.

Some very kind people sent lists of useful reading and further information, including introductions to the topic:
Eugene Garfield "The Agony and the Ecstasy — The History and Meaning of the Journal Impact Factor", 2005 http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/jifchicago2005.pdf - good background information and discussion of pros and cons
From DLIST: http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1030/ - a useful article with further reading listed
Thomson Reuters’ website - useful information, discussion and links to articles: http://science.thomsonreuters.com/citationimpactcenter/
http://isiwebofknowledge.com/media/pdf/UsingBibliometricsinEval_WP.pdf - introduction to bibliometrics
http://libraryconnect.elsevier.com/lcp/0901/LCP0901.pdf - introduction to bibliometrics
http://www.inria.fr/inria/organigramme/documents/ce_indicateurs_en.pdf - includes the negative aspects
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~jacso/savvy-mcb.htm - Prof Peter Jasco, University of Hawaii. He has written extensively on the subject of citation metrics and different info resources that provide these metrics
http://www.pnas.org/content/102/46/16569.full.pdf
PLoS Medicine Editors, & McKenna, H. (2006). Impact factor game. PLoS Medicine, 3(6), e291.

Excellent overview of the current discussions on the use of metrics compiled by Alison Robson
Alison Robson BA PGDip PGCHE
Academic Librarian (Law, Accounting and Finance)

New bloggers at Read Around Research

If you've had a look at my profile, you will have seen that I am the Research Support Librarian at the University of Limerick.

In the Irish Universities you'll find my fellow research support librarians in NUIG, TCD and DCU. I've asked those librarians to join me on this blog, and as you will see, Jessica Eustace from TCD has arrived, posting video introductions to blogs, wikis and RSS feeds. The videos were created by a great group called Common Craft.

Way back in pre-blog days I had arranged for some creative (i.e. pen and paper) writing time off this summer, so I've been remiss in posting here. I will remain largely offline and with family (it being summer!) until the end of August while my fellow bloggers settle in here. I look forward to posting on Read Around Research issues when I return.

Welcome:
Jessica Eustace, TCD
Jack Hyland, DCU
Rosarie Coughlan and Gwen Ryan, NUIG

Utube - Easy Explanation for what Blogs are for

Final one, utube video on how to use Blogs and what they are for: A video for people who wonder why blogs are such a big deal.

UTube Video on how to use WIKIS

Hi This is a great video explaining how to use wikis for collaboration: