9.1 Social Networks for Research and Open Access: French Researchers at the Crossroads
Creators: name: Okret-Manville, Christine
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2015
Subjects: research, Open Access, France, COUPERIN

description: To enhance direct communication and dissemination of research findings, researchers benefit from an increasing array of tools: open access repositories, open access journals, free access publishing in hybrid journals. For some years, researchers also tend to use new ways to communicate and share their works, using social networks for research. In an attempt to foster the development of Open Access in France, the French consortium COUPERIN (Unified Consortium of Higher Education and Research Organisations for Access to Numerical Publications) put forward the hypothesis that social networks for research could perhaps be a valuable medium to reach researchers and convince them to become more involved in Open Access. To test this hypothesis, a nationwide survey was launched in 2014 to explore whether and how these social networks for research are used by French researchers to share content, but also how they are regarded compared with Open Access ‘classical’ tools. Within a month (20 May to 20 June), 1,898 researchers answered this 28-question survey, completed by 1,698 of them, providing COUPERIN with much data to analyse. The respondents roughly reflect the composition of the French academic community in terms of gender and research fields, with a slight overrepresentation of young researchers/ PhD candidates. This survey does not cover in depth researchers’ opinions about Open Access and social networks for research, and as such presents only global tendencies which would require complementary studies. Nonetheless, it gives many indications as to their use and practice of Open Access, their feelings about the usefulness of these networks compared with repositories to share their findings efficiently. The survey also takes into account differences between disciplines and characterises behaviour and opinions according to the different disciplinary communities and their research practices. Finally, this survey allows us to define the main characteristics of a tool which could meet French researchers’ needs in terms of scientific communication, putting together the efficiency of repositories to easily disseminate works and give them visibility, the sharing functionality of a network, and the scientific stamp of peer-reviewing, thus highlighting the components of an ideal tool dedicated to Open Science. <strong>Christine Okret-Manville</strong> has a PhD in History, a degree in Political Science (Sciences Po Paris), and a diploma in archive and library science (Ecole nationale des chartes, Paris). She started her career in the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research, in charge of the development of electronic documentation, and various libraries networks projects. She joined the Library of the Paris-Dauphine University in 2005 and was appointed Deputy Director in 2012. She is in charge of the documents management department, library services for researchers, and administers the university repository BIRD (http://basepub.dauphine.fr). She is also involved in the Open Access Working Group of the French consortium Couperin where she leads a working party on best practices, and in the Digital Scientific Library think-tank on Open Access formed by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.