Jadranka Stojanovski

Open Source Solutions for Libraries: ABCD vs Koha.

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to present an overview of the two open source (OS) integrated library systems (ILS) – Koha and ABCD (ISIS family), to compare their “next-generation library catalog” functionalities, and to give comparison of other important features available through ILS modules. Design/methodology/approach - Two open source ILSs, Koha and ABCD, were compared in-depth according to their functionalities and characteristics. A checklist was created for each module: acquisition, cataloging, serials, patron management and circulation, reports and statistics, and administration. For an online catalog module, a separate checklist with “new generation catalog” characteristics was created. Authors also defined an additional set of criteria which could influence the decision process and selection of appropriate ILS like funding, metadata schema, preferred ILS functionalities, provided support, and the role of the IT department, and computer and network infrastructure in the library. Findings - Evaluation of ILSs reveals that Koha has more functionalities than ABCD, especially those connected with the “next generation library catalog”. If library is using UNIMARC or MARC21 format for bibliographic description and has a good IT support, Koha is an open source ILS with wide community which has to be considered for implementation. ABCD has great metasearch possibilities and is worth to be considered for libraries using other or no metadata schemas or without IT support. Research limitations/implications – The research was limited to two research libraries and their praxis and experiences. Further analysis can include other open source ILSs. Practical implications – This study can help libraries preparing to migrate to open source ILS to choose an appropriate ILS. Originality/value – This is the first comprehensive study conducted on Koha and ABCD comparing all modules in details.

The Croatian national open access journal platform

Until recently, Croatian scientific journals were accessible only in print form and only to a relatively small audience. A national online journals platform was therefore planned to offer publishers a simple tool for building online versions of their journals and to make them open access. The platform, named Hrčak, was launched in 2006, supported by governmental funds. It currently includes 170 open access (OA) journals. Most journals include backfiles from 2006 onwards; the average archived period is 6.3 years. 56.5% of the journals come from the fields of social sciences and humanities. Metadata from the Hrčak platform are regularly harvested by OA repositories. To increase the number of Croatian journals covered by relevant bibliographic and full‐text databases, Hrčak has forged links with Elsevier, Thomson Reuters and EBSCO. So far, the main achievements include assisting publishers in the process of electronic publishing, and improving accessibility to Croatian scientific output.

Do Croatian open access journals support ethical research? Content analysis of instructions to authors

Introduction The aim of our study was to investigate the extent to which Instructions to authors of the Croatian open access (OA) journals are addressing ethical issues. Do biomedical journals differ from the journals from other disciplines in that respect? Our hypothesis was that biomedical journals maintain much higher publication ethics standards. Materials and methods This study looked at 197 Croatian OA journals Instructions to authors to address the following groups of ethical issues: general terms; guidelines and recommendations; research approval and registration; funding and conflict of interest; peer review; redundant publications, misconduct and retraction; copyright; timeliness; authorship; and data accessibility. We further compared a subset of 159 non-biomedical journals with a subset of 38 biomedical journals. Content analysis was used to discern the ethical issues representation in the instructions to authors. Results The groups of biomedical and non-biomedical journals were similar in terms of originality (χ2 = 2.183, P = 0.140), peer review process (χ2 = 0.296, P = 0.586), patent/grant statement (χ2 = 2.184, P = 0.141), and timeliness of publication (χ2 = 0.369, P = 0.544). We identified significant differences among categories including ethical issues typical for the field of biomedicine, like patients (χ2 = 47.111, P < 0.001), and use of experimental animals (χ2 = 42.543, P < 0.001). Biomedical journals also rely on international editorial guidelines formulated by relevant professional organizations heavily, compared with non-biomedical journals (χ2 = 42.666, P < 0.001). Conclusion Low representation or absence of some key ethical issues in author guidelines calls for more attention to the structure and the content of Instructions to authors in Croatian OA journals.

Visibility and (alt)metrics of the Croatian Open Access (OA) journals

See video of the presentation. For a small research community from the so called scientific periphery its important to publish in the well-established international journals as well as to make their papers published in local journals visible to the international audience. In this paper we present how the portal of the Croatian scientific journals HRCAK influence the visibility of more than 300 included Open Access (OA) journals. Longitudinal shifts in journal content and distribution among scientific disciplines are observed. Different kind of journal and article metrics have been analysed and compared for HRCAK OA journals indexed in Scopus and Web of Science databases, examining the effect of OA on usage and citations. The results of the continuous work with Croatian journal publishers, National board for scholarly publishing responsible for subsidizing journal editorials, and with the most popular bibliographic databases producers are presented. Some desirable directions for the future development of the scholarly publishing in Croatia are indicated.

Is peer review evolving in the open access environment? A survey of Croatian open access journals

Most of the journals in Croatia adopted the open access (OA) model and their content is freely accessible and available for reuse without restrictions except that attribution be given to the author(s) and journal. There are 444 Croatian scholarly, professional, popular and trade OA journals available in the national repository of OA journals Hrcak, and 217 of them use peer review process as the primary quality assurance system. The goal of our study was to investigate the peer review process used by the Croatian OA journals and the editors’ attitude towards open peer review. An online survey was sent to the Hrcak journal editors with 39 questions grouped in: journal general information, a number of submitted/rejected/accepted manuscripts and timeliness of publishing, peer review process characteristics, instructions for peer reviewers and open peer review. Responses were obtained from 152 editors (141 complete and 11 partial). All journals employ peer review process except one. The data were collected from February to July 2017. The majority of journals come from the humanities (n=50, 33%) and social sciences (n=37, 24%). Less represented are journals from the field of biomedicine (n=22, 14%), technical sciences (n=16, 11%), natural sciences (n=12, 8%), biotechnical sciences (n=10, 7%) and interdisciplinary journals (n=3, 2%). Average journal submission is 54 manuscripts per year, but there are big differences among journals: maximum submission is 550 manuscripts, and minimum just five. In average journal publishes 23 papers after the reviewers’ and editors’ acceptance. In average it takes 16 days for sending the manuscript to the reviewer, 49 days for all the reviewers to send the journal a detailed report on the manuscript, 14 days to the editors’ decision, and another 60 days for the paper to be published. External peer review process where reviewers are not members of the editorial board or employees of the journal’s parent institution was used by 86 journals (60%). Other journals use external peer review process where reviewers are not members of the editorial board but could be employees of the journal’s parent institution (n=40, 28%), and editorial peer review. Remaining 10% journals combine previous three types of the peer review. Only 20% journals use exclusively reviewers from abroad, 44% are combining international and national reviewers, and 36% journals use only reviewers from Croatia. The majority of journals provide two reviews for each manuscript, and the process is double blind. Detailed instructions for peer reviewers are provided by less than half of the journals (n=57, 40%), but ethical issues like plagiarism, conflict of interest, confidentiality etc., are neglected. Usually, a reviewer is not informed of the final decision upon the manuscript, and reviews are not shared among reviewers. Somehow surprising was the opinion of the majority of the editors that reviewers must get credit for their efforts (n=121, 85%). On the other hand, editors are not familiar with the concept of open peer review, which can be easily used for that purpose. Some editors believe that open peer review is related to the identity disclosure: both authors’ and reviewers’ (n=35, 25%), reviewers’ (n=27, 19%), and authors’ identity (n=14, 10%). For many editors open peer review implies publicly available reviews (n=65, 36%) and authors’ responses (n=46, 33%). Open peer review is an unknown concept for some editors (n=32, 23%). In spite of all criticism traditional peer review is predominant in Croatian OA journals. Our findings show that traditional peer review is still the preferred review mechanism for the majority of journals in the study.

Corrigendum to: Does small equal predatory? Analysis of publication charges and transparency of editorial policies in Croatian open access journals

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.11613/BM.2017.032.].

INDEXING OF MAPING SCIENCE JOURNALS

Bibliometric analyses based on citations are most often at the forefront where scientific publications are concerned. A fact often neglected is that the visibility and availability of scientific publications are basic prerequisites for future reading, citation and influence. Journal visibility can be significantly improved by providing open access and availability through popular online databases. In this study, we investigated 112 mapping science journals to determine the visibility of scientific publications in a smaller interdisciplinary field. In addition to other data, we collected data on open access, indexing, subject areas within the Web of Science and Scopus bibliographic databases and the number of journals in these databases. The coverage of mapping science journals in 14 bibliographic databases was analyzed. Only 11% of the titles from the journals analyzed were indexed in 10 or more databases. Google Scholar, Scopus, Bibliotheca Cartographica and GEOBASE include most mapping science journals, while only 19 are included in Web of Science. A comparison indicates more thorough coverage of an individual journal in Web of Science than in Scopus. Only a few mapping science journals appear in the Directory of Open Access Journals, despite the large number of open access mapping science journals available. Adding subject categories within databases does not facilitate finding mapping science journals, which are dispersed among numerous, mostly inadequate categories in the Web of Science and Scopus databases.

Alternative metrics approach to Croatian OA journals

There are many ways in which todays readers can express their interest, positive attitude, acknowledgment or tribute to the specific online article. One of the traditional way is to put the article in the reference list, e.g. to cite it in own article. The concept of citation is very old, but recently citations started to be used in the various mathematical formulas, giving us different kind of indicators, very well known as JIF (Journal Impact Factor), SJR (Scimago Journal Rank), Eigenfactor Score, etc. Without intention to diminish the importance of the citations in the peer reviewed journals, channels of the scholarly communications are changing, and papers are used, bookmarked, mentioned, shared, and cited using different platforms and tools, social media and web applications. Trying to capture usage based on visits and downloads, in addition to the citations, can give us more comprehensive picture about popularity and impact of Croatian Open Access (OA) journals, especially having in mind that Web of Science and Scopus are indexing only part of the Croatian scholarly journals.

Implementing the additional knowledge in the Croatian Scientific Bibliography

The Croatian Scientific Bibliography - CROSBI is a bibliography web site that stores information about scientific papers published in Croatia in the last 15 years. At the present, CROSBI consists of over 400,000 records and is daily accessed and updated by a large number of researchers. As the appearance and purpose of database (and hence its structure) changed over the years, some inconsistencies emerged, and existing data could not be used to its fullest potential, e.g. linking papers from the same journal or conference, or analysis of scientific activity in relation to the place of article publication. This paper explores the possibilities of improving and enriching the CROSBI database, using different techniques, from data cleaning and sanity checking, to creating links between CROSBI and similar online bibliographic databases. In order to improve data quality, book records from CROSBI were linked to the corresponding Google Books records, and using Semantic Web technologies, a number of links between CROSBI and online bibliographic databases was created. The resulting data set can be used to further improve the quality of CROSBI by creating a recommender system, or to improve and open up new possibilities in the analysis of existing data.