Social Media Analysis of High-Impact Information and Communication Journals: Adoption, Use, and Content Curation

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Authors : Jesús Cascón-Katchadourian, Javier Guallar, Wileidys Artigas

The use of social media to disseminate academic content is increasing, particularly in scientific journals. This study has the following two main objectives: first, exploring the use of social media by high-impact academic journals in two different SJR categories (Library and Information Sciences and Communication), and second, analyzing content curation carried out by the world’s most influential journals in both areas. The research methodology is descriptive with a quantitative approach regarding the items studied.

The study finds that COM journals have a stronger social media presence than LIS journals, and X dominates in both categories and regions as the top social network, with significant influence as the only platform. On the other hand, content curation was found to a high degree in both areas, especially in the LIS area, with 93% vs. 80% in COM. The study highlights that both COM and LIS journals primarily focus on promoting recent articles, with COM diversifying content more than LIS. In terms of the content curation techniques used in both areas, the majority are abstracting and summarizing.

URL : Social Media Analysis of High-Impact Information and Communication Journals: Adoption, Use, and Content Curation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications13010005

Scholarly Podcasting for Research Dissemination: A Scoping Review

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Authors : Lindsay Persohn, Stephanie Branson

The purpose of this scoping review is to understand ways in which podcasting is used to communicate research findings and mobilize knowledge to a public audience. We address the use of podcasting as a broad research dissemination tool, as opposed to podcasting as a tool in formal education contexts. We summarize findings of individual studies, then identify themes across those studies. We offer definitions of specialized terms, as well as affordances and constraints of scholarly podcasting.

We found scholarly podcasting allows a way for researchers to share research knowledge with the public, mobilizing knowledge more readily to a broader audience. We draw parallels to and outline departures from traditional publishing. We offer directions for future research, noting that podcasting holds the potential to impact public understanding of research by moving beyond the traditional forms of knowledge dissemination to cultivate a more equitable future for research.

URL : Scholarly Podcasting for Research Dissemination: A Scoping Review

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440241311694

Using bibliometrics to detect questionable authorship and affiliation practices and their impact on global research metrics: A case study of 14 universities

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Authors : Lokman I. Meho, Elie A. Akl

From 2019 to 2023, a subset of 80 highly published universities demonstrated research output increases exceeding 100%, compared to the global average of 20%. Among these, 14 institutions showed significant declines in first authorship rates, raising questions about their authorship and affiliation practices.

This study employed bibliometric analysis to examine shifts in authorship and affiliation dynamics at these universities. Key findings include a 234% rise in total publications, a 23 percentage point drop in first authorship rates, and an increase in hyper-prolific authors from 23 to 177. International collaborations surged, and several universities exhibited sharp rises in multiaffiliated publications. Additionally, the proportion of articles published in top 10% journals increased by 11 percentage points, and the proportion of articles ranked among the world’s top 10% most cited grew by 12 percentage points.

These trends raise concerns about the integrity of authorship and affiliation practices as they deviate from normative behavior, far exceeding those observed nationally and at top-ranked universities—Caltech, MIT, Princeton, and UC Berkeley.

The study emphasizes the need for collaborative reforms by universities, ranking agencies, publishers, and other entities, highlighting the importance of each entity’s role in preserving academic integrity and ensuring the reliability of global research metrics.

URL : Using bibliometrics to detect questionable authorship and affiliation practices and their impact on global research metrics: A case study of 14 universities

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00339

Evaluating the linguistic coverage of OpenAlex: An assessment of metadata accuracy and completeness

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Authors : Lucía Céspedes, Diego Kozlowski, Carolina Pradier, Maxime Holmberg Sainte-Marie, Natsumi Solange Shokida, Pierre Benz,
Constance Poitras, Anton Boudreau Ninkov, Saeideh Ebrahimy, Philips Ayeni, Sarra Filali, Bing Li, Vincent Larivière

Clarivate’s Web of Science (WoS) and Elsevier’s Scopus have been for decades the main sources of bibliometric information. Although highly curated, these closed, proprietary databases are largely biased toward English-language publications, underestimating the use of other languages in research dissemination.

Launched in 2022, OpenAlex promised comprehensive, inclusive, and open-source research information. While already in use by scholars and research institutions, the quality of its metadata is currently still being assessed. This paper contributes to this literature by assessing the completeness and accuracy of OpenAlex’s metadata related to language, through a comparison with WoS, as well as an in-depth manual validation of a sample of 6836 articles.

Results show that OpenAlex exhibits a far more balanced linguistic coverage than WoS. However, language metadata are not always accurate, which leads OpenAlex to overestimate the place of English while underestimating that of other languages. If used critically, OpenAlex can provide comprehensive and representative analyses of languages used for scholarly publishing, but more work is needed at infrastructural level to ensure the quality of metadata on language.

URL : Evaluating the linguistic coverage of OpenAlex: An assessment of metadata accuracy and completeness

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24979

Open Science at the University of Toronto. Exploration of Researcher, Staff and Librarian Perspectives

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Authors : Madelin Burt-D’Agnillo, Mindy Thuna

Objective: The impetus for this project is to begin to understand open science practices and obstacles at the University of Toronto. This project uses open-ended questions to understand the ways in which university-affiliated individuals learn about, think about, and interact with open science. The goal of this study is to showcase the complexity and diversity of activity and challenges in this domain to help determine how best to move open science forward.

Methods: From March to October 2022, 45 semi-structured interviews were conducted with faculty, graduate students, librarians and administrative staff. Interviews were conducted and recorded using Zoom and the audio was transcribed using Otter.ai. As part of a commitment to open science practices, a data management plan was created and with participant consent, 26 transcripts were uploaded to Dataverse. Data analysis used structured coding and thematic development to investigate responses.

Results: The core finding of this study is that there is no singular status of open science at University of Toronto. The qualitative findings reflect a diversity of opinions, practices and relationships to open science.

Conclusion: For open science practices and scholarship to have longevity, there must be systemic changes to adopt more open activities. The University of Toronto is well positioned to guide the transition and harness open principles to move into the future.

URL : Open Science at the University of Toronto. Exploration of Researcher, Staff and Librarian Perspectives

DOI : https://doi.org/10.21083/partnership.v19i2.7847

Sustaining the “frozen footprints” of scholarly communication through open citations

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Author : Zehra Taşkın

This review examines the role of open citations in fostering transparency, reproducibility, and accessibility in scholarly communication. Through a critical synthesis of diverse sources—articles, proceedings, presentations, datasets, and blog posts—it explores the motivations behind citing, the evolving meanings of citations, and key milestones in the open citation movement. Particular attention is given to initiatives like OpenCitations and the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC), highlighting their contributions to advancing open scholarship.

Key findings indicate that open citations democratize research by providing free access to citation data, improving discoverability, and facilitating the creation of public citation graphs. Technological advancements, such as advanced data models and reference mining tools, have significantly contributed to the management and utilization of citation data. Despite these benefits, challenges such as ensuring data quality and standardization, addressing structural inequalities in citation networks, and achieving universal publisher adoption persist.

The study concludes with recommendations for future efforts, emphasizing policy advocacy, technological innovation, global collaboration, and educational initiatives to promote the widespread adoption and effective use of open citations. These strategies aim to make the “frozen footprints” of scholarly communication accessible to all, fostering a more equitable and transparent scientific landscape.

URL : Sustaining the “frozen footprints” of scholarly communication through open citations

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24982

‘As of my last knowledge update’: How is content generated by ChatGPT infiltrating scientific papers published in premier journals?

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Author : Artur Strzelecki

The aim of this paper is to highlight the situation whereby content generated by the large language model ChatGPT is appearing in peer-reviewed papers in journals by recognized publishers. The paper demonstrates how to identify sections that indicate that a text fragment was generated, that is, entirely created, by ChatGPT. To prepare an illustrative compilation of papers that appear in journals indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus databases and possessing Impact Factor and CiteScore indicators, the SPAR4SLR method was used, which is mainly applied in systematic literature reviews.

Three main findings are presented: in highly regarded premier journals, articles appear that bear the hallmarks of the content generated by AI large language models, whose use was not declared by the authors (1); many of these identified papers are already receiving citations from other scientific works, also placed in journals found in scientific databases (2); and, most of the identified papers belong to the disciplines of medicine and computer science, but there are also articles that belong to disciplines such as environmental science, engineering, sociology, education, economics and management (3).

This paper aims to continue and add to the recently initiated discussion on the use of large language models like ChatGPT in the creation of scholarly works.

URL : ‘As of my last knowledge update’: How is content generated by ChatGPT infiltrating scientific papers published in premier journals?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1650