Marta Severo

Open access to research data in electronic theses and dissertations: an overview

– Print theses and dissertations have regularly been submitted together with complementary material, such as maps, tables, speech samples, photos or videos, in various formats and on different supports. In the digital environment of open repositories and open data, these research results could become a rich source of research results and data sets, for reuse and other exploitation. The paper aims to discuss these issues. , – After introducing electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) into the context of eScience, the paper investigates some aspects that impact the availability and openness of data sets and other supplemental files related to ETD (system architecture, metadata and data retrieval, legal aspects). , – These items are part of the so-called “small data” of eScience, with a wide range of contents and formats. Their heterogeneity and their link to ETD need specific approaches to data curation and management, with specific metadata and identifiers and with specific services, workflows and systems. One size may not fit for all but it seems appropriate to separate text and data files. Regarding copyright and licensing, data sets must be evaluated carefully but should not be processed and disseminated under the same conditions as the related PhD theses. Some examples are presented. , – The paper concludes with recommendations for further investigation and development to foster open access to research results produced along with PhD theses. , – ETDs are an important part of the content of open repositories. Yet, their potential as a gateway to underlying research results has not really been explored so far.

Intangible cultural heritage webs: Comparing national networks with digital methods

The 2003 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Convention for the safeguard of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is addressed to the States and assigns them several tasks. However, no State can accomplish all these tasks without mobilizing a wide network of institutions, associations, and individuals. The national ICH policies intersect, overlap, and often transform the existing relationships among these actors. This study aims at comparing several national networks (France, Italy, and Switzerland) involved in the implementation of the 2003 UNESCO Convention to highlight national trends and specificities. The analysis has employed an innovative methodology based on digital methods and is aimed at exploring the landscapes of websites dedicated to the intangible heritage. By analyzing the hyperlinking strategies of ICH actors, we have identified the specific web topology of each nation, showing which actors are central and peripheral, whether clusters or cliques are formed, and who plays the roles of authority and hub.

Egyptian e-diaspora: Migrant websites without a network?

The definition of Egyptian migration as a diaspora has been much debated and often denied. This article investigates the phenomenon of the Egyptian diaspora through an innovative approach based on an analysis of the digital activity and the presence of Egyptian connected migrants. Following the methodology of the e-Diaspora project, we found a weakly connected network of websites, with many isolated nodes, little clusterization and no authorities or hubs. The fact that the traditional approach of the e-diaspora yielded few results prompted us to follow a new research strategy combining data from Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Because of a particularly fortuitous coincidence with the Egyptian revolt, we could investigate the mobilization of Egyptian migrants in pursuit of their voting rights on the micro-blogging platform Twitter. Through Twitter data, we identified links that were not visible through traditional Web-mapping techniques, and we could observe the emergence of a transnational Egyptian community debating and fighting for a common cause.

Spatial Aspects of Personification in International News

Together with politics, international news is often considered to be one of the most prestigious fields of journalism. However, making international news attractive is increasingly difficult. Today, one of the main strategies employed by journalists consists in mentioning individuals in the news. The reader is supposed to identify with the mentioned individual(s), and the story is expected to be more successful as a consequence. This paper investigates the interest of using quali-quantitative content analysis to study the semiotics of international news. We analyse six daily newspapers from three developed countries and examine three complementary aspects of the relation between individuals and international news: the level of personification, the type of individual mentioned and the geographical scale to which individuals is connected.