Academic Productivity

An excellent article published last month in the Chronicle celebrates Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary by observing that today the project doesn’t represent “the bottom layer of authority, nor the top, but in fact the highest layer without formal vetting” and, as such, it can serve as “an ideal bridge between the validated and unvalidated Web”. An increasing number of university students use Wikipedia for “pre-research”, as part of their course assignments or research projects. Yet many among academics, scientists and experts turn their noses up at the thought of contributing to Wikipedia, despite a growing number of calls from the scientific community to join the project (see for instance this recent initiative of the Association for Psychological Science or this call for biomedical experts to help contribute rigorous public health information in Wikipedia).

A survey has been launched by the Wikimedia Research Committee to understand why scientists, academics and other experts do (or do not) contribute to Wikipedia, and whether individual motivation aligns with shared perceptions of Wikipedia within different communities of experts. The survey is anonymous and takes about 20 min to complete. Whether you are an active Wikipedia contributor or not, you can take the survey and help Wikipedia think of ways around barriers to expert participation.

Project SOAP (Study of Open Access Publishing) is a two-year project, funded by the European Commission under FP7. The project is currently running a survey to understand the perception of Open Access publishing in the academic/research community. You can participate in the survey by following this link. Participants sharing their email address for further collaboration with the project automatically enter a prize draw for an Apple iPad.

Judith Simon and Diego Ponte from the LiquidPub project are seeking participants for a a survey about scientific publishing and the Web 2.0.

The aim of the survey is to gauge the potential acceptance of a Web 2.0 inspired production and dissemination of scientific publications by different scientific communities and by practitioners. The survey is hence tailored for researchers in all domains as well as for people working in the publishing industry.

Judith promised to report back on the results of the survey

My colleague Alastair is conducting a survey about online academic collaboration, use of tools and attitudes to technology in the Academia as part of the Qlectives project. All participants who supply an email address (and complete the questionnaire by the 14 November) will be entered into a prize draw.
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