Author: John Morrison

Categories
Technical Themed Sessions

Enriching Digital Citation Networks using Web 2.0 Principles: The Session Blog

Presenter: James Williams, Session Abstract

July 10, 2009 at 4:30 p.m.

james-williams-small
Photo taken at PKP 2009, with permission

Background
James Williams is Manager, Information Systems at the eScholarship Research Centre at The University of Melbourne (http://www.esrc.unimelb.edu.au). His background is in Computer Science and Linguistics.  James’ work focuses on eResearch and eScholarship, archiving and print on demand.

Session Overview

This session was a technical session, which laid the context and groundwork for a plug-in aimed at leveraging the network for citations. This session also highlights that some of the features of this plug-in are about to be implemented in the Referral plug-in coming with OJS 2.3. The author is planning to take his plug-in further by building on the work that has been done with the OJS Referral plug-in.

The context and groundwork included: Scholarly Contribution and Statistical Measurement; Bibliometrics – the h-Index and Journal Impact Factor; Indexes, Citators, Aggregators, etc.; What is Scholarship? What is Significant?; Developing Online Research Support Infrastructure; Scope – Scholarly Publishing and OJS Development. The key driver behind the paper had been to lead up to a plug-in which could capture and expose citation data, though this has been, to a certain extent, scooped by the Referral plug-in in the coming OJS 2.3. So OJS created a “heart broken Australian”, though one who is expected to make a full recovery.

In Australia, extensive dialogue around the measurement of academics’ scholarly research. Much of this is controversial. One key measure discussed is citation measures. Two citation measures come up in these discussions: the h-index and the journal impact factor. Many questions have been raised about this and attempts made to improve these measures, but questions remain about the extent to which they can be relied upon. The h index is from a paper by Hirsh, (2005). Crudely, it is the average number of citations that an author’s publications achieved in a year. Though its calculation is more complex than this.

Further problems with citation measures include statistical considerations with these measures which vary greatly between disciplines, so citations counts can vary greatly for statistical reasons. The source of these citations is the different indexes (Scopus, ISI Web Of Science, PubMed, Google Scholar) though each of these measures citations differently.

So, in general, what is needed is to develop intelligent digital citation networks, increase the discoverability of significant research contributions, harness the footprints caused by active network behaviour, provide greater statistical detail for transparency, and surface this information as much as possible for richer bibliometric reporting.

So, more specifically, what is needed is to track referrer information where it’s available: referring  website/link/journal, date of referral and number of incoming hits from each referrer. As each referring URL,  site, or journal is detected, it then becomes a known information source – an external, digital citation. We then surface this URL, site, or journal on the originating journal. Users of our (originating) journal, unaware of the external citation, can then find other people referring to this resource, and so, the networked community expands, develops, and evolves. This is the intent behind our planned digital citation plug-in, but which, as previously mentioned has been partially scooped by the Referral plug-in in OJS 2.3. So we are going to look at the Referral plug-in and talk further with PKP about this and build on the work that PKP has done.

Session Questions

Q. I’d like to know more about the h index?
A: Hirsh (2005) and others have expanded this. Peter Jascoe has also written a paper on this

Q. What software should use would where citations need to be checked in the publication process? How can we auto check and fix citations?
A. For OJS, the Resolver plug-in will help. L8X could also help.

References and Related Links

eScholarship Research Centre, University of Melbourne

Hirsh, J.E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Retrieved on July 12, 2009 from http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~palsberg/hirsch05.pdf

OJS Plugins

Top Scholars in Computer Science, as calculated by the h index

What is Web 2.0? (includes translations in Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish)

Categories
Technical Themed Sessions

The Latest Developments in XML Content Workflows: The Session Blog

Presenter: Adrian Stanley, Session Abstract

July 10, 2009 at 11:00 a.m.

Background

Adrian Stanley is the Chief Executive Officer for The Charlesworth Group (USA). Prior to this Adrian worked for 4 year as Production Director for Charlesworth China setting up their Beijing office. The Charlesworth Group offers cutting edge automated typesetting services, as well as Rights and Licensing opportunities for publishers in the China market. Adrian is an active committee member for the SSP (Society for Scholarly Publishers), The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP North American Chapter), the Council of Science Editors (CSE), as well as working on a key project with the Canadian Association of Learned Journals; he has 20 years experience working in the publishing/printing sector.

Session Overview

This session was a technical session, yet one which tried to keep the technology basic and focused more on the benefits of the technology for the publishing process, particularly the benefits of XML. Charlesworth works with XML and XML workflows. Their aim is to support publishers. This session showcased their tools.

The benefits of using XML are the automation and time saving in the publisher’s workflows. But more fundamentally XML adds energy to data. The presenter took a short poem and showed it as text, then HTML then XML. The change in the poem was less how it looked than what it now was. In XML, it now had substantial additional information encoded with the poem.

Benefits of XML are numerous, adding more information and data about an article, data that is both machine and human readable. The presenter referred to the excellent pre-conference workshop in the PKP 2009 conference by Juan Pablo Alperin for further information on XML.

autoproof_process
Image taken from presenter's presentation at PKP 2009, with permission

AutoProof Process Timeline diagram highlights the 10 minute process that Charlesworth’s AutoProof performs. It takes a styled file, converts it to XML and then outputs it in production ready PDF format. Charlesworth provides some Microsoft Word macros that help apply tagging and styling, to prepare documents in Microsoft Word for import to this process and ultimately XML. The presenter took us through this process showing each stage.

The presenter then showed the Online Tracking System that allows a view into each stage in the AutoProof process. From one screen, the publisher and editor can run the entire publishing process.

Next some examples of the many other types of AutoProof publications that are possible were shown. It’s not just journals e.g. program and abstract meetings, ebooks, dictionaries, etc can be handled. As long as files coming to AutoProof are structured, many types of documents can be used and created. So what AutoProof is doing is simplification and reduction of time in the workflow process, using XML at its core.

In addition AutoProof supports incorporating XML into the PDF, to make PDFs more readable and searchable. Storing the metadata in the PDF file (using XMP) could make it much easier to import a large collection of PDF files into a reference manager. XMP combines XML metadata within the PDF file. The presenter showed a sample XML Packet (XMP) page.

Other applications and developments with XML are also possible including auto generation of table of contents and Index, author proofing of link to PDF form XML, creating XML in multiple DTDs (document type definition), etc.

So in summary the goals of AutoProof are to enhance publications, customize how much or how little the publisher wants to do with XML, provide integrations with other systems and provide the basis for further developments e.g. authoring templates. Lastly, the presenter showed an example of OJS journal using AutoProof. Every reference automatically picked up the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and automatically creates web links to the references.

Session Questions
Q: How much of publishing workflow did the James Journal use?
A: The James Journal allowed forward and backward linking, see the references in this James Journal article. They used most of our services; most fundamentally we created the XML. Because they used a lot of our services they were able to publish this magazine with a part-time editor.

Q: What about integration with OJS?
A: So we are working on creating integration with OJS

Q: What are the costs?
A: Broad range, depending on services that you need. The important point however, is to start to work out how much the alternatives of using your staff time is in fact really costing you. That is where we can help you make savings by significantly reducing the amount of staff time you need to dedicate to the publication process.

References and Related Links

AutoProof

AutoProof Overview Leaflet

Charlesworth Group

Charlesworth Group launches new open access OJS journal

DTDs (document type definition)

DOI (Digital Object Identifier)

The James Journal

XML-Based Workflow and Process Management Standards

XMP

Categories
Technical Themed Sessions

XML and Structured Data in the PKP Framework: The Session Blog

Presenter: MJ Suhonos, Session Abstract

July 10, 2009 at 11:00 a.m.

Background

MJ Suhonos is a system developer and librarian with the Public Knowledge Project at Simon Fraser University. He has served as technical editor for a number of Open Access journals, helping them to improve their efficiency and sustainability. More recently, he leads development of PKP’s Lemon8-XML software, as part of their efforts to decrease the cost and effort of electronic publishing, while improving the quality and reach of scholarly communication.

Session Overview

“Lemon8-XML is a web-based application designed to make it easier for non-technical editors and authors to convert scholarly papers from typical word-processor editing formats such as MS-Word .DOC and OpenOffice .ODT, into XML-based publishing layout formats.” (Lemon8-XML).

This was a packed session, 50+ attendees. This technical session attempted to give a fairly non technical overview of the L8X software and its relationship to the PKP software suite and equally importantly to highlight the rich benefits that are provided by using XML workflow and the foundation it provides for the future.

The big question is why use XML workflow. Using XML workflow allows numerous things to be possible. These include interaction with other web services (direct interaction with indexes and better interaction with online reading tools); automatic layout (generate html and/or PDF on the fly); complex citation interaction (forward and reverse linking which allows the discovery of everyone who cited you anywhere on the web; advanced bibliometrics, not just impact measures; resource discovery (universal metadata can find related works; and rich document data allows search engine to be much more effective; the document becomes the metadata (remove separation between article and document so all information is in one place. This is the goal of L8X, to convert articles into structured xml and thus enable these benefits. This is also future proofing as XML makes documents fundamentally open, convertible and preservable. Archiving XML (which is text) is much more flexible than archiving PDF files.

Using XML allows connection and communication to all these systems and means of display. We are also future proofing, as XML will be able to be modified into future formats, as its just text.

Where does this fit within PKP framework? Already being used in OJS (import and export and exposing metadata to OAI harvesters). But the next goal is to apply these benefits to all kinds of scholarly work e.g. journal articles, proceedings, theses, books / monographs. So moving L8X into the PKP web application library will allow all these features to be made available to the whole PKP framework. So that’s the near term future plans for L8X. In the long term, beyond the next few years, the goal is to work on this concept of the doc is the metadata by building support for multiple XML formats in the web application library (WAL) and the merging of annotation, reading tools and comments directly into the article.

The distributed resource-linking diagram at the end of the presentation, some find complex. Essentially, structured metadata is needed to make this a reality, which is to let applications in the publication sphere all talk to each other.

Session Questions
Question: How automatic is automatic into XML for non-technical people? When can I just upload my doc and have it magically turn into XML?
Answer: Probably not ever, but it is semi automatic already. Some tools, like L8X, automate part of this process. Some things can be automated, but some will always require human effort.

Question: Will I be able to use L8X in my applications after this is integrated into the PKP framework?
Answer: We would like to be make L8X available for use after it becomes part of the framework and without requiring the framework. We are considering this for the future.

References and Related Links

Lemon8-XML

Lemon8-XML demo server (login: lemon8  password: xmldoc)

NLM Journal Publishing Tag Set

Open Journal Systems

OpenURL Overview

XML Introduction

Categories
Editor-Themed Sessions

Visibility, Quality and Empowerment: the Journals Online Project at INASP: The Session Blog

Presenter: Sioux Cumming, Session Abstract

July 9, 2009 at 4:00 p.m.

Background

Sioux Cumming, originally from Zimbabwe, works with the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP). Sioux works on the INASP Journals Online project (JOLs) where there are now five JOLs (BanglaJOL in Bangladesh, NepJOL in Nepal, PhilJOL in Philippine, SLJOL in Sri Lanka and VJOL in Vietnam). Sioux identifies new journals to be included, works with the editors of the journals to load new issues and keeps the websites up to date. She records the statistics relating to the usage of the sites and produces newsletters for each of them. Sioux is also involved in training editors in the publishing workshops and she assists in the AuthorAID project.

Session Overview

INASP isn’t well known in the Western world. INASP’s mission is to increase worldwide access to academic information. PERii is INASP’s main programme. INASP negotiates deeply discounted licenses with journal publishers for developing countries. Less well known is INASP’s work to make local research well known to the rest of the world. So INASP is both trying to make western journals accessible to developing countries and getting developing countries journals accessible to the whole world. INASP is funded by Department for International Development (UK) and Swedish Cedar.

Africa Journals Online (AJOL) was established in 1998 and the experiences with that have led to improvements and led to the subsequent migration to Open Journal Systems (OJS). AJOL has now been transferred to a local host and managed by them, as INASP’s mandate is to always to pass on to local resources.

AJOL was a continent wide site with 26 countries represented (now with 350 journals), but in Asia, each country wanted its own site, so Nepal and Vietnam JOLs were followed by Bangladesh JOL and PhilJol and lastly SLJOL in 2008. So 5 country based JOLs have been created in the last couple years, to finally be followed by a continent wide journal – AsiaJOL.

Workshops are the primary tool for launching a journal online (JOL). Online tutorials, CDs or remote training are just not effective. Many of these editors have little prior experience with a website, so a series of 3-4 day workshops are needed. So first they bring editors together and discuss online issues (open access movement, being online, the need for a strategic plan), then another after we’ve established a JOL (more strategic issues, improving quality of the JOL, increasing visibility of the JOL and how to load content) and then a 3rd workshop is editorial (working with editors, working with reviews, how roles related and how to use peer review system online).

A lot of monitoring of JOLs is done. In summary, across the 5 Asian JOLs there are 133 journals of which 76% of the articles are full text (open access full text). This is different from AJOL, there is more buy-in to open access in these Asian countries. There are 6500 articles all together and there have been 1.3 million views of all these articles and 800000 visits since these 5 Asian JOLs started. These figures are small, but these are journals, which had not previously had wide circulation. More encouraging is that data is showing that people are coming from the US and UK to look at these JOLs, from 200 countries in total to view these journals.

INASP encourages editors to monitor their own views i.e. which articles are viewed most, which least and then to determine what course of action to take with this data. Testimonials are also collected and are important to funders.

INASP has provided a web presence to journals which had none before or were buried deep in university web sites. Now if you search for any of these journals on Google Scholar, they come up. This is a cheap and simple program for getting journals accessible. INASP pays the hosting charges. All journals become part of a community as editors and teams meet other from other disciplines in workshops. This develops a network of production teams. The workshops have been very successful, face to face contact is important. JOL newsletters are produced every 6 months and subscribing to them is an easy way to understand what is happening with a JOL.

Session Questions

Question: We need to collect research about the work of these journals, to see how increase in submissions is related to viewing and how this relates to numbers of reviewers. All this builds a research culture and community. We need to start showing the growth of this community.  How big is the submission plus review community, when you start to add these together we start to measure a research network, a research network enabled by this open access journal.
Answer: Yes, I agree. We do need to do this.

Question: Where did additional submissions come from?
Answer: Some journals are not yet accepting online submissions. For those that are, they are getting a lot from Nigeria, Turkey, Iran and India. Bangladesh journal of Botany has a lot of submissions from Turkey. So a lot of south – south communication is occurring.

References and Related Links

AuthorAID

AuthorAID@INASP

International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP)

Journals OnLine (JOL) Projects (INASP)

Bangladesh Journals Online (BanglaJOL)

Nepal Journals Online (NepJOL)

PERii

Philippine Journals Online (PhilJOL)

Sri Lanka Journals Online (SLJOL)

Vietnam Journals Online (VJOL)

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