Google Starts Ranking Journals

 On April 1 2012,  Google announced a new feature to its Scholar service ...  called Google Scholar Metrics. The service follows the same principle that has made Google's web search engine so successful - when you are unsure what a user is looking for, give them a list of options ranked by a metric of popularity. In this instance, the users are academics ready to submit their next breakthrough but are uncertain which journal to choose. The solution Scholar Metrics offers is a database summarizing the sway of the distributors of scholarship "to help authors as they consider where to publish their new research".

Here's how it works. Google creates a list of all the articles a journal has published in a specified period of time. The citations to each article are counted in order to determine the publication's h-index, which is the largest number "h" such that each of the set of "h" articles were cited "h" or more times. As an example of how the h-index is calculated, consider a publication that has had six total articles having 2, 18, 11, 3, 22, and 9 citations, respectively. This gives the journal an h-index of four. Articles meeting the h-index criterion constitute the h-core. In the example, the core is the articles with 18, 11, 22 and 9 citations. Within the h-core, the median of the citation counts is used to assess the typical influence among the most highly cited set and is reported as the h-median.

[more]

Source and Links Available At

[http://bit.ly/HxHipX]

Investigation of Peer Review Processes For Digital Humanities Monographs

April Loebick /  April 10 2012 / 1:57 pm

The University Press of North Georgia (UPNG) recently won a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Digital Start-Up grant for $24,923. This NEH Level I funding supports the press’s exploring peer review processes for publishing born-digital book length scholarly monographs in the Humanities in order to encourage their support, acceptance, and use in academia.



Project participants from the North Georgia College & State University community are BJ Robinson, UPNG Director and NEH Grant Project Director; April Loebick, UPNG Managing Editor; Markus Hitz, Professor of Computer Sciences; Chris Jespersen, Dean of the School of Arts & Letters; and Denise Young, Executive Director of Institutional Effectiveness. Other participants include the Directors of the University Press of Akron, the University Press of Florida, and Wayne State University Press. Advisory Board project members are Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Scholarly Communication, Modern Language Association; Kathy Kiloh, Director of Athabasca University Press; Saskia deVries, Director of Amsterdam University Press; and members of the Open Textbook Consortium.

NEH Digital Start-Up grants are designed to encourage innovations in the digital humanities. Level I funding supports brainstorming sessions, data gathering, and initial planning. With this consortia of peers and publishing groups, UPNG will develop and pilot a model for peer review and eventual electronic publishing of single-author, digital monographs ; this model will involve sharing resources among small university presses to ensure economic viability and to help alleviate the pressures facing academic publishing.

[more]

Source and Fulltext Available At

[http://upnorthgeorgia.org/?p=804]

PLoS Computational Biology Goes Wiki

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Daniel Mietchen

Today saw an important step forward towards a wikification of scholarly workflows: PLoS Computational Biolog published an article that did not only follow the journal’s own author guidelines but also those for writing articles on the English Wikipedia, where a copy of the journal article has been pasted into [[Circular Permutation in Proteins]], where it shall live on in the hands of the wiki community.

The article is the first in a new manuscript track – Topic pages – that adds a dynamic component to articles published in the journal, as explained in the accompanying editorial:

This month, we have published our first Topic Page on “Circular Permutations in Proteins” by Spencer Bliven and Andreas Prlić [6] as part of our Education section. Topic Pages are the version of record of a page to be posted to (the English version of) Wikipedia. In other words, PLoS Computational Biology publishes a version that is static, includes author attributions, and is indexed in PubMed. In addition, we intend to make the reviews and reviewer identities of Topic Pages available to our readership. Our hope is that the Wikipedia pages subsequently become living documents that will be updated and enhanced by the Wikipedia community, assuming they are in keeping with Wikipedia’s guidelines and policies, either by individuals, or, perhaps as is already happening in medicine and molecular and cell biology, by something more organized, or with a more formal review structure. We also hope this will lead to improved scholarship in a changing medium of learning, in this case made possible by the Creative Commons Attribution License that we use.

[more]

Source and Access to the Fulltext and Associated Links Are Available Via

[http://bit.ly/HprjLq]

BTW: In 2005, I gave an invited presentation at the TICER intenational conference at Tilburg University, The Netherlands, titled

"Wikis: Disruptive Technologies for Dynamic Possibilities”

The presentation reviews the general nature and structure of select wikis, the features and functions of popular wiki software engines, and describes the content and use of wikis by select businesses, colleges and universities, and libraries.The presentation also speculated about the wiki as an environment, framework, and venue for Disruptive Scholarship, my proposed model for alternative scholarly authorship, review, and publishing.

A Link to the PPT is Available at

[http://disruptivescholarship.blogspot.com/]

More recently, I gave a presentation at the _Science in the 21st Century_ conference in Waterloo, Canada, titled

"The Wiki: An Environment For Scholarly Conversation and Publishing"

 A "wiki is a ... collaborative space ... because of its total freedom, ease of access, and use, [and] simple and uniform navigational conventions ... ." "[It] ... is also a way to organize and cross-link knowledge ..." Ward Cunningham, Father of The Wiki (Leuf and Cunningham, 2001, 16). Most wikis provide the user with a set of navigation or utility tools such as the ability to create and edit a page, view recently changed pages, and rollback to previous page versions. In addition, many wikis include a discussion forum for proposed page changes.

Among its many perceived benefits are its potential for facilitating a more creative environment and expanding knowledgebase, and a significant ability to harness the power of diverse point-of-views in creating collaborative works.

In this presentation, we will speculate on the Wiki as a digital environment that not only supports current scholarly practices, but more importantly, offers a framework for their enhancement and transformation.

Access to the PPT as well as associated A/V is available via

[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2008/09/wiki-environment-for-scholarly.html]

Altmetrics in the Wild: Using Social Media to Explore Scholarly Impact

Jason Priem,  Heather A. Piwowar, Bradley M. Hemminger

Abstract

In growing numbers, scholars are integrating social media tools like blogs, Twitter, and Mendeley into their professional communications. The online, public nature of these tools exposes and reifies scholarly processes once hidden and ephemeral. Metrics based on this activities could inform broader, faster measures of impact, complementing traditional citation metrics. This study explores the properties of these social media-based metrics or "altmetrics", sampling 24,331 articles published by the Public Library of Science.

We find that that different indicators vary greatly in activity. Around 5% of sampled articles are cited in Wikipedia, while close to 80% have been included in at least one Mendeley library. There is, however, an encouraging diversity; a quarter of articles have nonzero data from five or more different sources. Correlation and factor analysis suggest citation and altmetrics indicators track related but distinct impacts, with neither able to describe the complete picture of scholarly use alone. There are moderate correlations between Mendeley and Web of Science citation, but many altmetric indicators seem to measure impact mostly orthogonal to citation. Articles cluster in ways that suggest five different impact "flavors", capturing impacts of different types on different audiences; for instance, some articles may be heavily read and saved by scholars but seldom cited. Together, these findings encourage more research into altmetrics as complements to traditional citation measures.

Source and Fulltext Available Via

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.4745]

See Also

Altmetrics in the Wild: Towards Creating a Live CV

[http://bit.ly/GMntvD]

Webcast > Article-Level Metrics | Peter Binfield | April 12, 2012

Building New Measures for Impact: Article Level Metrics

Free SPARC online event / Thursday, April 12, 2012 / 12:00 - 1:00PM EST

>>> Registration is Free, but Required <<<

In March 2009, the Public Library of Science (PLoS) became the first publisher to track transparent and comprehensive information about the usage and reach  of published articles - rather than journals - so that the academic community has another avenue to help assess their value. These measures are called "Article-Level Metrics (ALMs)," and currently include:

• Article Usage Statistics - HTML pageviews, and PDF and XML downloads;
• Citations - From Web of Science, PubMed Central, Scopus, and Crossref:
• Social Bookmarks - currently from CiteULike and Connotea;
• Comments - left by article readers
• Notes - also from readers
• Blog posts - aggregated from a variety of sources

A primary aim of Article Level Metrics is to provide the academic community with new ways to evaluate individual articles directly on their own merits, rather than on the reputation of the journal in which they happen to be published. As a result, Article Level Metrics  hold the promise of helping new ways for measuring and evaluating research quality and impact - to evolve.

Source and link To Registration Available Via

[http://sparc.arl.org/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=105]

Presentation Now Available (04-12-12)

[http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/binfield-alm.pdf]

Webcast Now Available )03-23-13)

[http://www.arl.org/sparc/media/Binfield_Webcast_Article_Level_Metrics.shtml] 

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UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE SCHOLARSHIP FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS 2012

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN

Non-EU/EEA countries

FIELD OF STUDY

· Applied Mathematics · Applied Physics · Biomedical Engineering · Business Administration · Business Information Technology · Chemical Engineering · Civil Engineering and Management · Communication Studies · Computer Science · Construction Management and Engineering · Educational Science and Technology · Electrical Engineering · Embedded Systems · European Studies

· Health Sciences · Human Media Interaction · Industrial Design Engineering · Industrial Engineering and Management · Environmental and Energy Management · Mechanical Engineering · Nanotechnology · Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society · Public Administration, · Science Education and Communication · Sustainable Energy Technology · Systems and Control · Telematics

LEVEL OF STUDY

Master

SHORT DESCRIPTION

Twente University Scholarships (UTS) are scholarships for excellent students from non-EEA countries, applying for a graduate program (MSc) at the University of Twente.

REQUIREMENTS FOR APPLICATION

To qualify for a UTS, candidates must Fulfill the following requirements:

-	Have been admitted to one of the above mentioned graduate program at University of Twente before December 15 for round 1 or March 15 for round 2

-	Have graduated with excellent results in their (under-) graduate programs, where excellency is based on overall CGPA

-	Comply with the conditions to obtain a Dutch visa

http://www.nuffic.nl/international-students/how-to-prepare/visas-and-permits/long-stay-visa

-	Comply with the overall Academic IELTS English language test standard 6.5 (or TOEFL iBT of 90) and an additional 6.0 (TOEFL iBT 20) on the subscore of speaking skills

-	Have the nationality from a non-EU/EEA country and not being eligible for a Dutch study grant

-	Have finished a possible pre-master at the University of Twente

-

Students who are not directly admitted to a master, but wants to start a 'pre-master' programs can already apply for a UTS. If they do not finish the pre-master with a CGPA of 7.5 out of 10, they can not be granted UTS. They must also comply with above mentioned requirements for UTS, including English language test scores.

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATION

15 December and 15 March each year.

SCHOLARSHIP AMOUNT

There are two possible UTS amounts for one and two year study program for two year study program. The student can only chose and apply for one of these. The stated amounts are given per year of study.

The scholarship amounts from Which the student will chose by application are

a.	€ 22,500 two year master program

b.	€ 20,000 one year master programs

c.	€ 12,500 two year master program

d.	€ 10,000 one year master programs

exception on these amounts are made ​​for the two year study programPhilosophy of Science, Technology and Society , a non-technical study, for Which the following scholarship amounts to be chosen from: large scholarship = 20.000 € = 10.000 € small

APPLICATION INFORMATION

You can only be nominated for a UTS by your faculty, and on condition you are (provisionally) admitted to the MSc program you registered for.

To obtain the application form please send an email to scholarship [at] so.utwente.nl with the following information:

·	your name and student number

·	The Master program you are admitted to