Disseminating research with web CV hyperlinks

Abstract

Some curricula vitae (web CVs) of academics on the web, including homepages and publication lists, link to open‐access (OA) articles, resources, abstracts in publishers' websites, or academic discussions, helping to disseminate research. To assess how common such practices are and whether they vary by discipline, gender, and country, the authors conducted a large‐scale e‐mail survey of astronomy and astrophysics, public health, environmental engineering, and philosophy across 15 European countries and analyzed hyperlinks from web CVs of academics. About 60% of the 2,154 survey responses reported having a web CV or something similar, and there were differences between disciplines, genders, and countries. A follow‐up outlink analysis of 2,700 web CVs found that a third had at least one outlink to an OA target, typically a public eprint archive or an individual self‐archived file. This proportion was considerably higher in astronomy (48%) and philosophy (37%) than in environmental engineering (29%) and public health (21%). There were also differences in linking to publishers' websites, resources, and discussions. Perhaps most important, however, the amount of linking to OA publications seems to be much lower than allowed by publishers and journals, suggesting that many opportunities for disseminating full‐text research online are being missed, especially in disciplines without established repositories. Moreover, few academics seem to be exploiting their CVs to link to discussions, resources, or article abstracts, which seems to be another missed opportunity for publicizing research.