Students like iPad and Apps but do not purchase ebooks

In spite of constant media attention around new forms of technology and especially e-books students still appear to be reticent about embracing new technologies in their studies. (…)

The students in the group, who studied a range of subjects at universities in and around London, felt there was a constant push for them to move to digital but they were resisting it. Although respondents were seeing increasingly more iPads and e-readers at university and they expected more use of e-books in the future, they were unanimous in the hope that this wouldn’t come at the expense of face-to-face time and hard-copy texts. (…)

The students in the focus group said that they used a wide range of online sources and databases (mentions included JSTOR, Project MUSE, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Athens, Emerald journals, LexisLibrary, Westlaw UK, ISI Web of Knowledge and Inspiration). They also used search resources including Google Scholar and Wikipedia. However, it was startling (and distinctly disheartening to the publishers watching the group) how little the students bought digital study resources and e-books. (…)

Medical students had by far the greatest use of apps for their studies…

Read further:

Kedros, Jenny. Focus group reveals reticence about move to digital. Research Information, 28th of February 2012.
http://www.researchinformation.info/news/news_story.php?news_id=902

Medical publications: Pharma companies are conservative on their choices

Peer-review and Impact factor are the factors which influence the most the pharma companies for their journals selection.

 

McGuire, Ryan. Medical journal selection: pharma’s real estate search. PharmaPhorum, Online on 20th of February 2010.
http://www.pharmaphorum.com/2012/02/20/medical-journal-selection-pharma%E2%80%99s-real-estate-search/

Social Search: Google to crawl Google+… and only Google+

Update February 2012:
Users ‘don’t like’ Google’s new search tool.
http://www.infotoday.eu/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Users-dont-like-Googles-new-search-tool-80761.aspx

According Martin Belam, Google has promised to add some pieces of social information into its algorithms.

Anyway, it looks like that the new “Search Plus Your World” function tends to “forget” Twitter, Facebook, Flickr… and is likely to favour its own social network Google+…

Belam, Martin. Would you like some social with your search? Google launches “Search, plus Your World”. FUMSI, online the 16 th of January, 2012.
http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/find/65955

SharePoint 2010 do’s and don’ts (FUMSI)

70% of organisations in the Western world have adopted SharePoint. Is the organisation you work in one of those, or are you one of the 30% who are still considering whether SharePoint is a tool that you could use?

Read further: Mullan, James. SharePoint 2010 do’s and don’ts. FUMSI, 21st of February, 2012.

http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/manage/66603 

Science Social Not-working

By Mark Drapeau, in the Huffington Post, about Research Gate, and the social networks for Scientists in general.

“A “Facebook for Scientists”? It may sound silly, or redundant, but it’s becoming more of a reality. Maybe. (…)

ResearchGate has already convinced roughly 1.4 million researchers to become members and begin sharing. On it, you can search your email accounts to find people you know, read PDF documents of research papers, and chat with others about why a particular lab technique isn’t working for you. Reportedly, the service is appealing to young researchers in their 20′s.

None of this is particularly original. There have long been scientists on Facebook and LinkedIn and connecting via other websites like Scienceblogs. There have long been stores of PDF documents online, and searchable databases of them (particularly if you work at a university). There have long been job boards where you might find your next gig. And there have long been discussion boards or similar places where you could ask questions about lab techniques or which conference to attend this year. (…)

But the ecosystem seems even worse, because many others have tried and failed, or tried and not necessarily caught on, or tried and are much more like “science publication management software” than a social network where people openly share. They have names like Academia.edu, Laboratree, Mendeley, myExperiment, and Epernicus. (…)

The scientific community fundamentally operates under the notion that a peer-reviewed research paper published in a traditional research journal is the discrete end-product of a series of experiments aimed at testing one or more hypotheses. Anyone who has actually been a laboratory scientist knows that this is a complete farse; I need not even elaborate on why. Nevertheless, publishing such papers is the primary yardstick by which you are judged as a grad student, postdoctoral fellow, and professor, even at the more senior levels. On top of that, the same exact research published in a “good” journal vs. an “okay” journal is somehow emotionally different to the reader. The only reason why is perceived prestige of some publications vs. others regardless of actual long-term value of the research. (…)

These are two-fold. One, a culture of secrecy whereby the more “secret” information (vs. community / shared information) is perceived as more valuable. Two, a culture of discrete publications (vs. living knowledge and data sets) whereby people are primarily judged by traditional processes dating back, in the case of science, a couple hundred years. And while there are some well-intentioned, smart people discussing Science 2.0 and what it would take for that to happen, it is in my opinion extremely unlikely that the entire system of how academic science operates in the U.S. will change within the venture capital-backed funding cycle of one of the science social networking companies like ResearchGate. (…)

Drapeau, Mark. Social Networks for Scientists Won’t Work. The Huffington Post, 17th of February 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-drapeau/social-networks-for-scientists_b_1282692.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

US Inc. 500: less blogging, more Facebooking

To read in Information Today Europe:

For the last five years the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Center for Marketing Research has been conducting a study about the use of social media in the 500 fastest growing organisations in the US (The Inc. 500.)  The first study, conducted in 2007, found that these companies were much more likely to have adopted blogs than those in the ‘traditional’ Fortune 500.

The latest findings show that the use of blogging in the Inc. 500 companies is declining for the first time. Blogging had declined to 37% from 50% in 2010. (…)

However, as blogging reaches maturity in these organisations, the use of other social media, including Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Mobile apps, texting, Twitter and YouTube, is growing.  74% of responding companies were using Facebook, and 73% using LinkedIn. (…)

Read further:

Val Skelton, A blog post about the decline of blogging. Information Today Europe Blog, 2nd of February 2012.

http://www.infotodayeurope.com/2012/02/02/a-blog-post-about-the-decline-of-blogging/

 

 

 

Pharma 3.0: is Social Media the Third Element?

Mark Owen wonders what means Pharma 3.0:

“When I first heard the term “Pharma 3.0” I thought that it was the latest in the trend to put “x.0” (where x = 2, or higher) after everything. I was delighted to find out that it wasn’t, and there is a (reasonably) well-defined “Pharma 1.0, and 2.0” (…)

This is what defines “Pharma 1.0” -  the age of the “Blockbuster”.

However, Pharma companies also realized that there is more than just having a “really great product”. “Pharma 2.0” is a period where there was a recalibration to do business leaner, nimbler and more focused on emerging realities. Effectively, the focus was on redefining the business model.

There are no precise dates when the next “Pharma x.0” period is entered, but “Pharma 3.0” has started to emerge.

Pharma 3.0 can be described loosely as “Pharma + Web 2.0”. (…)

That is, “social media” plays a big role.  The advent of social media has brought a voice to the end consumer. With a greater wealth of knowledge at their hands, the patient has become more knowledgeable about their ailments, and more critical of the medicines they are taking. Insurance companies and governments are also now starting to look for real value in the medicines that they are paying for, rather than just relying on the claims of the pharmaceutical company.

As a result, the pharmaceutical company has had to redefine who the “customer is”. No longer is the customer the Medical Doctor. Now more focus is put on delivering real value to the patient.

Owen, Mark. Pharma 3.0, AIIM, Posted on 30th of January 2012.
http://www.aiim.org/community/blogs/expert/Pharma-30

A strong need for better access to scientific publications in Europe

Obvious results after a public consultation, open from from 15.07.2011 to 09.09.2011, which concerned access to scientific publications and scientific data as well as the preservation of scientific information. Stakeholders were given the opportunity to comment on the state of play, barriers and potential policy actions in these areas.

Nearly 90 percent of respondents supported the idea that publications resulting from publicly funded research should, as a matter of principle, be in open access (OA) mode and that data from publicly funded research should be available for reuse free of charge on the internet. Furthermore, 83 percent called for policy formulation at the EU level and 86 percent agreed on the development of an EU network of repositories. 

Asked about barriers to accessing scientific publications the high price of journals/subscriptions (89 percent) and the limited budget of libraries (85 percent) were identified as key issues. The main barriers to access research data were identified as lack of funding to develop and maintain the necessary infrastructures (80 percent); the insufficient credit given to researchers for making research data available (80 percent); insufficient national/regional strategies/policies (79 percent) as well as the lack of incentives for researchers (76.4 percent).

Self-archiving (‘green OA’) or a combination of self-archiving and OA publishing (‘gold OA’) were identified as the preferred ways for increasing the number and share of scientific publications available in OA mode. The majority (56 percent of respondents) prefer an embargo period (that is the period of time during which a publication is not yet open access) of six months.

Finally, respondents were also concerned that the preservation of scientific information is currently insufficiently addressed.

The survey on scientific information in the digital age is available at

http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/survey-on-scientific-information-digital-age_en.pdf