Hal-humanities and social sciences

HAL - Hyper Article Online is an open archive; a tool for the dissemination of scientific results that is part of the international open access movement. This open, international and multidisciplinary archive collects and disseminates scientific documents. It provides free and open access to research results for the entire scientific community.

A partnership convention in favour of open archives was signed in April 2013 by the AMUE, ANDRA, ANR, BNF, BRGM, CDEFI, CEA, CEE, CGE, CIRAD, CNRS, CPU, CSTB, IFPEN, IFREMER, IFFSTAR, INERIS, INRA, INRIA, INSERM, INVS, IRD, IRSN, IRSTEA and Institut Pasteur. HAL is now a national platform present in the Ministry's roadmap for research infrastructures.

The management of the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences invites its researchers to place their publications and scientific works on this inter-organizational and institutional (research and higher education) platform.

Why submit?

HAL-humanities and social sciences is a tool for direct scientific communication between researchers. In a single deposit, this self-archiving tool optimizes the visibility, accessibility, speed of diffusion and impact of the production deposited. The objectives of HAL-humanities and social sciences are the following:

  • To ensure fast and simple online publication of the results of its research;
  • To limit the entry of references to a single system, with a single access point for the entire scientific community;
  • To guarantee accessibility to the full text. The data available should be consultable and extractable from anywhere via internet access;
  • To enable better dissemination of scientific research: access to the full text and unpublished documents (seminars, draft papers);
  • To offer better visibility: Google, Google Scholar, Oaister, Isidore, etc.;
  • To interconnect with global reference bases such as RePec in economics (ArXiv in physics and mathematics);
  • To increase the citation rate. According to the latest studies, an open access article is cited five times more than an article in a paper journal;
  • To time-stamp the repositories and thus validate scientific anteriority. A unique number is attributed to each document, with a certified date (this proves authorship of the document);
  • To archive for the long-term, providing perennial documents, format stability and URLs (perennial URLs for stable digital citation).

HAL-humanities and social sciences enables researchers, laboratories and institutions the possibility to visualize and develop their scientific production.

With a single entry, depositing in HAL-humanities and social sciences allows the management of publication lists and the supplying of institutional databases such as RIBAC. It is possible from any connected computer, at any time, to export articles as a list or to create a web page with its publications automatically updated. Similarly, an institution (via a portal) or a laboratory (via a collection) can display in its own graphic environment the list of its publications that can be consulted in full text, extracted and updated automatically.

Hal-SHS en chiffres

  • En juin 2017, HAL-SHS regroupe environ 120 000 documents avec texte intégral dont plus de 10000  thèses ;
  • Les SHS représentent près de 25 % de l’ensemble des dépôts dans HAL, première discipline devant l'informatique et la physique ;
  • Les dépôts de documents dans HAL et HAL-SHS ont progressé d’environ 18 à 20 % par an sur les dernières années : 47 965 dépôts en texte intégral en 2014 (3997 par mois) et 58 532 dépôts en texte intégral en 2016 (4877 par mois).

Social media and open archives: HAL versus Academia.edu or Research Gate

More and more researchers are present on social networks, especially those that are specifically designed for science and researchers and teacher-researchers, such as Research Gate, Academia.edu or My Science Work.

All these networks are based on the principle of putting the full text of articles online. They advocate open access and encourage users to share knowledge by depositing their research.

Transmitting data and the full text of publications to private companies such as Research Gate or Academia means giving these private companies the rights to the data and to the deposited scientific work.

Depositing in an open archive such as HAL is therefore more secure and controlled and guarantees a contrariothat work remains within the framework of public research. This allows a more complete and richer description of the scientific research and especially genuinely ensures an open, free and perennial access to the data.

In the research community, there is a certain confusion between these two tools, and therefore between the issues of visibility and those of open access.

The Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences wants to encourage researchers to use social media with caution and for what they are, i.e. tools for dissemination and networking. HAL remains the preferred tool to guarantee perennial data and free access.

The Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences advises users of Academia.edu or Research Gate not to deposit their files in an open archive such as HAL and then link to these files from either of the social networks. It is better to link to the publications deposited in HAL rather than a deposit on the social network site.

The STI pole of the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences is available to answer all your questions about researchers' social networks and their use.