Archives des mots-clés : scientific communication

Case for the double-blind peer review

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Author : Lucie Tvrznikova

Peer review is a process designed to produce a fair assessment of research quality prior to publication of scholarly work in a journal. Demographics, nepotism, and seniority have been all shown to affect reviewer behavior suggesting the most common, single-blind review method (or the less common open review method) might be biased.

A survey of current research suggests that double-blind review offers a solution to many biases stemming from author’s gender, seniority, or location without imposing any major downsides.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.01408

Ten considerations for open peer review

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Authors : Birgit Schmidt, Tony Ross-Hellauer, Xenia van Edig, Elizabeth C Moylan

Open peer review (OPR), as with other elements of open science and open research, is on the rise. It aims to bring greater transparency and participation to formal and informal peer review processes.

But what is meant by `open peer review’, and what advantages and disadvantages does it have over standard forms of review? How do authors or reviewers approach OPR? And what pitfalls and opportunities should you look out for?

Here, we propose ten considerations for OPR, drawing on discussions with authors, reviewers, editors, publishers and librarians, and provide a pragmatic, hands-on introduction to these issues.

We cover basic principles and summarise best practices, indicating how to use OPR to achieve best value and mutual benefits for all stakeholders and the wider research community.

URL : Ten considerations for open peer review

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.15334.1

Communicating data: interactive infographics, scientific data and credibility

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Authors : Nan Li, Dominique Brossard, Dietram A. Scheufele, Paul H. Wilson, Kathleen M. Rose

Information visualization could be used to leverage the credibility of displayed scientific data. However, little was known about how display characteristics interact with individuals’ predispositions to affect perception of data credibility.

Using an experiment with 517 participants, we tested perceptions of data credibility by manipulating data visualizations related to the issue of nuclear fuel cycle based on three characteristics: graph format, graph interactivity, and source attribution.

Results showed that viewers tend to rely on preexisting levels of trust and peripheral cues, such as source attribution, to judge the credibility of shown data, whereas their comprehension level did not relate to perception of data credibility. We discussed the implications for science communicators and design professionals.

URL : Communicating data: interactive infographics, scientific data and credibility

DOI : https://doi.org/10.22323/2.17020206

Open Science Practices Adopted by Latin American & Caribbean Open Access Journals

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Authors : Andre Appel, Ivonne Lujano, Sarita Albagli

The objective of this study is to investigate how Open Science (OS) values and practices have influenced open access (OA) journals publishers in Latin American and the Caribbean (LA&C) countries.

Our key research question is: to what extent are these practices being adopted by LA&C journals? In order to address this question, we conducted a survey with a sample of LA&C journals listed on the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) database.

The results reveal that many journals are somewhat aware of or informed about most of open science practices being discussed, but just some of them have already successfully adopted those practices.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01800164v3

Inequality in Knowledge Production: The Integration of Academic Infrastructure by Big Publishers

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Authors : Alejandro Posada, George Chen

This paper attempts to illustrate the implications of a simultaneous redirection of the big publishers’ business strategy towards open access business models and the acquisition of scholarly infrastructure utilizing the conceptual framework of rent-seeking theory.

To document such a transformation, we utilized financial databases to analyze the mergers and acquisitions of the top publicly traded academic publishers. We then performed a service analysis to situate the acquisitions of publishers within the knowledge and education life-cycles, illustrating what we term to be their vertical integration within their respective expansion target life-cycles.

Implications of higher education institutions’ increased dependency towards the companies and increased influence by the companies on the institution and individual researcher were noted from the vertical integration of products.

Said vertical integration is analyzed via a rent theory framework and described to be a form of rent-seeking complementary to the redirection of business strategies to open access. Finally, the vertical integration is noted to generate exclusionary effects upon researchers/institutions in the global south.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01816707

Global Scholarly Collaboration: from Traditional Citation Practice to Direct Communication

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Authors : Sergey Parinov, Victoria Antonova

The development of recent research information systems allows a transformation of citations in the full text of research papers into interactive elements. Such interactivity in some cases works as an instrument of direct scholarly communications between citing and cited authors.

We discuss this challenge for research e-infrastructure development including opportunities for improvements in research cooperation and in collaboration mechanisms for the global research community.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01816700

The State of The Art in Peer Review

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Author : John Tennant

Scholarly communication is in a perpetual state of disruption. Within this, peer review of research articles remains an essential part of the formal publication process, distinguishing it from virtually all other modes of communication.

In the last several years, there has been an explosive wave of innovation in peer review research, platforms, discussions, tools, and services. This is largely coupled with the ongoing and parallel evolution of scholarly communication as it adapts to rapidly changing environments, within what is widely considered as the ‘open research’ or ‘open science’ movement.

Here, we summarise the current ebb and flow around changes to peer review and consider its role in a modern digital research and communications infrastructure and discuss why uptake of new models of peer review appears to have been so low compared to what is often viewed as the ‘traditional’ method of peer review.

Finally, we offer some insight into the potential futures of scholarly peer review and consider what impacts this might have on the broader scholarly research ecosystem.

DOI : https://dx.doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/C29TM