David Hubbard

Corrections in the Chemical Literature: Their Number and Nature

Corrections, errata, and corrigenda have played a vital role in maintaining the integrity of the scholarly journal record. Being cognizant of these corrections has always been a challenge for researchers and their management a bane to librarians. Identification of corrections has been made easier with the indexing of corrections by a few commercial databases and more recently by some publishers linking corrections to articles on their e-journal platforms. Few studies have examined the nature of these corrections, especially outside of the biomedical literature where article retraction has been the primary focus. This paper quantifies and qualifies the nature of corrections within the field of chemistry and compares the effectiveness of Scopus and Web of Science in locating corrections within scholarly journals. The study found that the correction rate averaged about 1.4 percent for the journals examined. While there were numerous types of corrections, chemical structures, omission of relevant references, and data errors were some of the most frequent types of published corrections.

Open access publishing and author rights: A local and comparative study of selected ARLs

This bibliometric study was performed to gain a better understanding of open access (OA) journal publishing at a large U.S. research university. While there is an increasing amount of aggregated data about OA publishing, there are few studies that examine local institutional OA publishing patterns. This study addresses that deficiency. Publications for Texas A&M University (TAMU) were located using Scopus and the Gold OA journals among those publications were identified. It was determined that approximately 9% of the articles published at TAMU were in Gold OA journals. Most of these journals were concentrated in Science (Q), Medicine (R), Agriculture (S), and Technology (T). The author rights of these journals were also examined and categorized. The majority of journals examined allowed authors to retain copyright, but more than 20% required the authors to transfer some or all of their copyright. To provide context and comparison, the percentage of Gold OA articles among 16 peer institutions, all public Association of Research Libraries (ARLs), was also determined using Web of Science. Gold OA publishing among the 16 peer institutions was between 4.99% and 9.45%. Scopus indicated a higher level of Gold OA publishing at TAMU compared to Web of Science.

Open access citation advantage? A local study at a large research university: Open Access Citation Advantage? A Local Study at a Large Research University

This study examines the open access citation advantage of gold open access (OA) journal articles published at a large U.S. research university. Most studies that examine the open access citation advantage focus on specific journals, disciplines, countries or global output. Local citation patterns may differ from these larger patterns. Since many OA advocates mention the open access citation advantage when promoting OA journal publishing on university campuses, an understanding of local patterns is crucial. This study reports on a method and compares average citation counts for subscription and gold OA journal articles using Web of Science. Gold OA physics journals showed a definite open access citation advantage, whereas other disciplines showed no difference or no open access citation advantage.

Chemical Lecture Demonstrations: An Opportunity for Engagement through Collections, Instruction, and Reference

ABSTRACT Chemical lecture demonstrations have been used as a pedagogical tool since at least the founding of chemistry as a discipline in the 1600s. This paper describes how science librarians can engage chemistry faculty and students through chemical lecture demonstrations. This paper describes chemical lecture demonstrations–including history and efficacy–and discusses how science librarians can engage chemistry faculty and students through collections, instruction, and reference in support of this pedagogy. In addition to outlining a research guide and lesson plan for chemical lecture demonstrations, this paper identifies chemical lecture demonstration monographs found in WorldCat® and analyzes the holdings of those monographs within the thirty-six-member Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) consortium.

Geovisualization of Bibliographic Data Using ArcGIS

This study examined the geographic aspects of literature involving the visualization of bibliographic data published by authors residing in the contiguous United States. ArcGIS was used to visualize networks of cited-citing publications and co-authors for 102 publications based on first author institutional affiliation. Spatial statistics and other tools within ArcGIS were used to explore the clustering of research activity and test the “death of distance” hypothesis among co-authors. Both the “producers” and “consumers” of the scholarly output were found to be clustered. Visual inspection of the thematic maps found research activity concentrated in the following cities: Bloomington, IN, Philadelphia, PA, Sandia, NM, Stillwater, OK, and Tucson, AZ. Over half of the co-authorship (60%) occurred among authors within the same ZIP code. The cited-citing publication network and co-author network maps shared a characteristic pattern indicating that many producers and consumers also co-authored with each other. While the number of co-authored publications in the field of visualization of bibliographic data increased from 1995–2009, the average co-author distance remained unchanged over that period.

Chemistry book reviews: their value, sources, and number

Purpose – Chemistry book reviews serve as an aid to collection development, as well as an educational function for bibliographers and subject specialists. This study aims to outline a methodology for locating book reviews for a subject literature and characterizing the books reviewed.Design/methodology/approach – This study utilized UlrichsWeb Global Serials Directory to identify chemistry periodicals containing book reviews. Criteria were applied to limit the periodicals identified to those publishing ten or more book reviews in 2009 and held by 25 or more libraries. The books reviewed by the periodicals were characterized in terms of the quantity, subject coverage, overlap, lag time, and compared to chemistry books published in 2009. Books reviewed by the chemistry periodicals were also compared to general science and other periodicals known to contain chemistry book reviews.Findings – A total of 11 chemistry periodicals met the criteria and collectively they published 445 book reviews in 2009. Three ch...