Étiquette : scientific communication

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EN

Paying for Publication with Peer Review Design and Simulation of a Fee-Free, Credit-Based Open Access Journal for Information Technology

Author : Murat Ozer

Open access publishing has moved much of the cost of scholarly communication from readers to authors, while the labor of peer review remains unpaid and unevenly shared.

This paper describes the design of Quorum: An Open Journal of Information Technology (this http URL), a journal that charges neither readers nor authors and uses peer review as its currency instead. Every first complete review a scholar writes on a manuscript earns one credit, and one credit pays for one submission.

Each manuscript receives three double-blind reviews from reviewers matched automatically by expertise, and editorial decisions follow published rules rather than editor discretion.

The paper documents the credit ledger, a bootstrapping mechanism called the genesis block, a reviewer search that widens after seven days and opens the paper to volunteers, the decision rules, and the integrity safeguards. An agent-based simulation, run for two simulated years with 40 replications per scenario, evaluates these choices.

Without the genesis block, no paper was submitted in any replication. With it, a community growing from 40 to about 330 members submitted about 603 papers, and papers waited a median of 7 days for a full review panel.

The day-7 escalation had a modest effect in a large community but a decisive one in a small community of about 60 members, where removing it left 48.8% of papers without a panel after 60 days, compared with 4.6% with it. Unspent credits also accumulated to about 3.7 per member after two years, which points to a policy choice the journal will face as it grows.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.33864

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FR

Usage et ré-usage des données de la recherche : les intersections du compromis au prisme de la médiation des connaissances

Author : Sylvie Marciset-Sognos

Cet article examine les enjeux scientifiques du partage et du ré-usage des données dans un contexte marqué par la « datafication » et les mutations de la communication scientifique numérique.

La science ouverte, devenue priorité politique, met en tension souveraineté, gouvernance des données en soulevant des enjeux éthiques, économiques, politiques et épistémologiques. En mobilisant la notion de compromis chez Ricœur (1991) et la notion de médiation en Sciences de l’information et de la communication, l’analyse observe les intersections entre ordres de grandeur et figures de médiation.

À partir de la littérature récente sur le ré-usage des données en SHS, elle expose les difficultés de leur gestion ouverte et questionne le « travail scientifique des données » (data scholarship) comme agencement complexe des relations entre données et recherche.

URL : https://lesenjeux.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/2026/dossier/06-usage-et-re-usage-des-donnees-de-la-recherche-les-intersections-du-compromis-au-prisme-de-la-mediation-des-connaissances/

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FR

Gouvernance et circulation des données dans les archives ouvertes en Afrique : le cas de DICAMES

Author : Alphée Yannick Hilaire Ngalli Ngomo

Cette étude analyse la collection numérique DICAMES pour comprendre sa gouvernance et la circulation des données. Mobilisant une méthodologie bibliométrique, elle révèle une répartition géographique inégale et des biais structurels dans les métadonnées.

L’article préconise une normalisation des données et une double validation pour corriger ces lacunes. Au-delà des aspects techniques, il mobilise les notions de souveraineté informationnelle et de diplomatie scientifique, concluant sur la nécessité de faire de ces archives des leviers stratégiques pour renforcer la position de l’Afrique dans le paysage scientifique mondial.

URL : https://lesenjeux.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/2026/dossier/07-gouvernance-et-circulation-des-donnees-dans-les-archives-ouvertes-en-afrique-le-cas-de-dicames/

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EN

Risk and uncertainty in digital preservation: A survey of CoreTrustSeal certified repositories

Author : Rebecca D. Frank

Digital repositories certified as trustworthy through systems such as CoreTrustSeal (CTS) are expected to demonstrate readiness for the ongoing work of long-term digital preservation.

Yet certification processes rest on largely positivistic assumptions about risk: that risks can be identified, classified, and quantified, and that all parties will interpret risk information consistently.

This article challenges that assumption by applying a social constructionist lens to examine how staff members from CTS certified repositories understand risk and characterize uncertainty in the context of digital preservation. Drawing on survey data from 88 respondents across the CTS community (a 54% response rate), the study uses qualitative coding to analyze open-ended responses about the most significant risks and uncertainties facing certified repositories.

Findings show that respondents understood risk in terms of concrete threats across five categories: finance, legal, organizational infrastructure, repository processes, and technical infrastructure.

Financial sustainability, staffing, and technical infrastructure were particularly prominent. Respondents characterized uncertainty in three areas: finance, data and infrastructure, and the Designated Community. Notably, sources of uncertainty were primarily external to the repository, and respondents frequently treated risk and uncertainty as overlapping or interchangeable concepts.

These findings reveal that even repositories that have passed an external audit continue to face significant interconnected threats, particularly around the ability to sustain funding, retain expertise, and maintain infrastructure over time.

The study contributes to information science scholarship by demonstrating that technical and procedural standards alone cannot address the complex challenges of digital preservation, and that attention to how practitioners construct meaning around risk is essential for improving both certification systems and preservation practice.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/09610006261486056

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EN

Opening Pandora’s box: Paper mills in conference proceedings

Authors : Anna Abalkina, Marie Kunešová, Yagmur Ozturk, Solal Pirelli

Objective

Paper mills are a growing threat to the integrity of science, yet their penetration in conference proceedings remains underexplored despite conferences being more important than journals in some scientific subfields. This study aims to identify papers in conference proceedings whose titles have been offered for sale on social media platforms.

Methods

We collected publication offers for more than 4,000 unique paper titles or topics from more than 200 social media channels and used semi-automated methods along with human assessment to match offers with papers published in IEEE conference proceedings.

Results

We identified 2,062 papers in 366 IEEE conference proceedings, accounting for up to 23.5% of an individual conference. These problematic papers are coauthored by more than 7,500 researchers from over 2,000 institutions or companies in 56 countries. The identified papers demonstrate collaboration anomalies, high diversity of affiliations per paper, citation manipulation, a predominance of six-author papers, and content irregularities.

Conclusions

Our findings show that paper mills are a large, organized, and often public market that commercializes scientific misconduct.

URL : Opening Pandora’s box: Paper mills in conference proceedings

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2026.2733727

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EN

Awareness of Predatory Journals and Open Access: an online survey among Italian Researchers

Authors : Silvia Maccarini, Núria Bautista-Puig, Eva Méndez

This study investigates Italian academics’ awareness, perceptions, and experiences of predatory publishing, a phenomenon recognised as a threat to research integrity and scholarly communication. An online survey of researchers affiliated with Italian universities and research institutes yielded 258 responses, which were analysed.

Results show that awareness of predatory publishing is high: almost half of respondents (47.9%) had discussed it with colleagues, and more than one-third had encountered it as authors, reviewers, or readers. Familiarity varies across dimensions, with predatory journals and spam emails being most recognised, and fraudulent websites and podcasts less so. 30% of participants reported personal experience of editorial misleading, mainly as authors, and 76% had received spam or phishing solicitations. Significant differences emerged by professional title and age, with senior researchers demonstrating greater awareness and greater exposure to training.

Most participants perceive predatory publishing as having a moderate or high impact on scientific integrity, but only half have received training in research ethics or use verification tools. Open-ended responses show concern about the “publish or perish” culture and the difficulty of distinguishing legitimate from predatory journals. The findings highlight awareness and vulnerability in the Italian academic publishing landscape.

URL : Awareness of Predatory Journals and Open Access: an online survey among Italian Researchers

DOI : https://doi.org/10.36253/jlis.it-720

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EN

Recent Advances and Trends in Research Paper Recommender Systems: A Comprehensive Survey

Authors : Iratxe Pinedo, Mikel Larrañaga, Ana Arruarte

As the volume of scientific publications grows exponentially, researchers increasingly face difficulties in locating relevant literature. Research Paper Recommender Systems have become vital tools to mitigate this information overload by delivering personalized suggestions.

This survey provides a comprehensive analysis of Research Paper Recommender Systems developed between November 2021 and December 2024, building upon prior reviews in the field. It presents an extensive overview of the techniques and approaches employed, the datasets utilized, the evaluation metrics and procedures applied, and the status of both enduring and emerging challenges observed during the research. Unlike prior surveys, this survey goes beyond merely cataloguing techniques and models, providing a thorough examination of how these methods are implemented across different stages of the recommendation process.

By furnishing a detailed and structured reference, this work aims to function as a consultative resource for the research community, supporting informed decision-making and guiding future investigations in the advances of effective Research Paper Recommender Systems.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2508.08828