Purpose: Implementing and maintaining Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) program at a national level encounters numerous difficulties in particular from technical, legal, business, and financial perspective. Business model (BM) is a tool to help to address business-driven challenges, such as business feasibility and viability, as one of the important aspects. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the BM practiced by different national Electronic Theses and Dissertations (NETDs) cases.Design/methodology/approach: BM of seven NETDs programs have been studied through an online questionnaire; besides, programs’ websites were observed and related documents were examined. Business model canvas (BMC) was used to describe the business rationale behind the selected cases.Findings: Most of the NETDs programs lack a documented BM. The main value of these programs is sharing ETDs which is offered to academics through online channels; skillful staff and proper hardware/software are their main resources to do so. Furthermore, their key activities are developing hardware/software and negotiating with ETDs owners as their key partners. All these activities required huge cost which is generally covered by public funding.Originality/value: This study pioneers in applying BM concept into field of NETDs. Therefore, the major contribution of this study is to provide an analysis of NETDs programs’ BM through BMC. Furthermore, the paper provides recommendations on how ETDs could be implemented in a cost effective, sustainable, and viable way.

(1) Background: Since the 1990s, theses and dissertations—a key part of scientific communication—have evolved significantly with advances in information and communication technologies. (2) Methods: This study reviews 99 publications examining these changes, drawing insights from international conferences and empirical studies in the field. (3) Results: Historically, a major challenge in managing PhD theses has been the shift to electronic formats, resulting in the creation of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). This shift involves four main tasks: adopting new digital formats, updating institutional workflows between departments, graduate schools, and academic libraries, implementing updated bibliographic standards (such as metadata and identifiers), and utilizing new tools and channels for distribution. With open science becoming a widespread research policy across many countries and institutions, ensuring open access for ETDs is an added challenge—though a substantial portion of ETD content remains restricted to institutional or library networks. Today, ETD management is on the brink of a new era, with advancements in data-driven science and artificial intelligence. (4) Conclusions: The development of ETDs varies significantly across different countries, regions, and institutions due to technological, organizational, and legal differences. It is essential for academic libraries and other stakeholders to address the challenges identified while considering these variations.

Bibliometrics professionals are crucial in universities and research institutions, supporting research analytics, evaluation, and strategic decisions. Despite their importance, many lack formal training or access to professional networks, often relying on self-taught methods that can lead to the misuse of metrics and indicators. This limits the usefulness of bibliometric data and raises concerns about research integrity, particularly in citation practices. A global survey within the Library and Information Science (LIS) community explored training experiences, gaps, and interests, especially around research integrity. The results revealed critical knowledge gaps, including the need for a deeper understanding of bibliometric principles, responsible metrics use, advanced analysis techniques, and awareness of indicators' limitations and biases. Highlighting these deficiencies aims to engage the STI indicators community, prompting collective action to better equip bibliometrics practitioners. Proper training is essential to prevent the misuse of indicators, which can undermine research quality and academic evaluation.

Altmetric.com and PlumX are two prominent tools for collecting alternative metrics data. This study has two main objectives: first, to evaluate how the choice between Altmetric.com and PlumX affects the results of alternative metrics analysis, and second, to investigate the social impact of ‘hot papers’ through the alternative metrics data provided by these platforms. We employed a descriptive and exploratory approach, gathering common alternative metrics from 4236 hot papers using both Altmetric.com and PlumX. The data collected included various alternative metrics such as policy mentions, Mendeley readers, Wikipedia mentions, blog mentions, Facebook mentions, and news mentions, in addition to citation counts from Scopus. We conducted descriptive statistics and inferential analyses to examine the relationships between citations and alternative metrics, as well as to compare the data obtained from both platforms. Our findings indicate that PlumX has broader coverage of hot papers compared to Altmetric.com. While the mean and individual values of alternative metrics differ between the two platforms, the median and geometric mean are similar. Both Altmetric.com and PlumX demonstrate that publications with higher citation counts tend to receive more online attention. Notably, all alternative metrics for Immunology and Chemistry showed statistically significant differences between the two platforms, whereas in Mathematics, alternative metrics (with the exception of Mendeley readers) did not exhibit significant differences. The findings suggest that researchers should be aware of potential variations in data captured by different alternative metrics platforms. Additionally, interpreting alternative metrics data requires caution, considering the research fields and the specific platform used.

Preprints have emerged as efficient tools for fast and free dissemination of scientific findings. The present study explores the evolving landscape of preprints among the field of neuroscience and examines patterns and evolution of citations to preprints over time in this field. Leveraging bibliometric methods, we identified over 33,000 citations (1993-2022) to preprints within neuroscience publications indexed in Scopus. The findings elucidate a significant temporal increase in the number of documents citing preprints, reaching a peak of around 60 per 1,000 Scopus documents in 2021. Diverse document types, particularly reviews, exhibit a growing reliance on preprints as references. The most frequently cited preprint servers include bioRxiv, ArXiv, medRxiv, and PsyArXiv. Leading journals such as eLife and PLOS Computational Biology have cited preprints more than others. The United States takes the lead in citing preprints, followed by the United Kingdom and Germany. Using Scite.ai, motivations underlying preprint citations and the context in which they were cited were explored and the results are indicative of the “mentioning” nature of 93% of citations to preprints. Furthermore, the introduction and discussion sections have shown to include the highest number of citations to preprints. The findings highlight the dynamic transformation of preprints in neuroscience field.