Will Moralization of Science Lead to “Better” Science?

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Author : Yves Gingras

In the fall of 2018, The US National Science Foundation (NSF) implemented a new policy on sexual harassment. A few months later, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), took a further step in the fight against harassment by announcing that researchers accused of harassment, but not yet found guilty, could nonetheless be excluded from the lists of potential reviewers of submitted projects.

We also observe a recent tendency to call for the retraction of published peer-reviewed results on the basis that their conclusions are considered to go against the moral convictions of some social groups, though the lack of validity of the results has not been proven.

It is certainly a legitimate question to ask whether these kinds of policies and moral critiques, which directly link the practice of science to the moral behavior of the scientists in the larger society, do not initiate a profound transformation in the relations between science and society by adding to the usually implicit norms governing the scientific community a new form of moralization of the scientists themselves.

We analyze these recent events in terms of a new process of moralization of science and ask whether these new rules of conduct may lead to doing better or more robust science.

URL : Will Moralization of Science Lead to “Better” Science?

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.35995/jci02020004

Reproducible research practices and transparency across linguistics

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Authors : Agata Bochynska, Liam Keeble, Caitlin Halfacre, Joseph V. Casillas, Irys-Amélie Champagne, Kaidi Chen, Melanie Röthlisberger, Erin M. Buchanan, Timo B. Roettger

Scientific studies of language span across many disciplines and provide evidence for social,  cultural, cognitive, technological, and biomedical studies of human nature and behavior. As it becomes increasingly empirical and quantitative, linguistics has been facing challenges and limitations of the scientific practices that pose barriers to reproducibility and replicability.

One of the  proposed solutions to the widely acknowledged reproducibility and replicability crisis has been the implementation of transparency practices,  e.g., open access publishing, preregistrations, sharing study materials, data, and analyses, performing study replications, and declaring conflicts of interest.

Here, we have assessed the prevalence of these practices in 600 randomly sampled journal articles from linguistics across two time points. In line with similar studies in other disciplines, we found that 35% of the articles were published open access and the rates of sharing materials, data, and protocols were below 10%. None of the articles reported preregistrations, 1% reported replications, and 10% had conflict of interest statements.

These rates have not increased noticeably between 2008/2009 and 2018/2019, pointing to remaining barriers and the slow adoption of open and reproducible research practices in linguistics.

To facilitate adoption of these practices, we provide a range of recommendations and solutions for implementing transparency and improving reproducibility of research in linguistics.

URL : Reproducible research practices and transparency across linguistics

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5070/G6011239

The Oligopoly’s Shift to Open Access. How the Big Five Academic Publishers Profit from Article Processing Charges

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Authors : Leigh-Ann Butler, Lisa Matthias, Marc-André Simard, Philippe Mongeon, Stefanie Haustein

This study aims to estimate the total amount of article processing charges (APCs) paid to publish open access (OA) in journals controlled by the five large commercial publishers Elsevier, Sage, Springer-Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wiley between 2015 and 2018.

Using publication data from WoS, OA status from Unpaywall and annual APC prices from open datasets and historical fees retrieved via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, we estimate that globally authors paid $1.06 billion in publication fees to these publishers from 2015–2018.

Revenue from gold OA amounted to $612.5 million, while $448.3 million was obtained for publishing OA in hybrid journals. Among the five publishers, Springer-Nature made the most revenue from OA ($589.7 million), followed by Elsevier ($221.4 million), Wiley ($114.3 million), Taylor & Francis ($76.8 million) and Sage ($31.6 million).

With Elsevier and Wiley making most of APC revenue from hybrid fees and others focusing on gold, different OA strategies could be observed between publishers.

URL : The Oligopoly’s Shift to Open Access. How the Big Five Academic Publishers Profit from Article Processing Charges

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00272

Varieties of diffusion in academic publishing: How status and legitimacy influence growth trajectories of new innovation

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Authors : Kyle Siler, Vincent Larivière

Open Access (OA) publishing has progressed from an initial fringe idea to a still-growing, major component of modern academic communication. The proliferation of OA publishing presents a context to examine how new innovations and institutions develop.

Based on analyses of 1,296,304 articles published in 83 OA journals, we analyze changes in the institutional status, gender, age, citedness, and geographical locations of authors over time. Generally, OA journals tended towards core-to-periphery diffusion patterns.

Specifically, journal authors tended to decrease in high-status institutional affiliations, male and highly cited authors over time. Despite these general tendencies, there was substantial variation in the diffusion patterns of OA journals. Some journals exhibited no significant demographic changes, and a few exhibited periphery-to-core diffusion patterns.

We find that although both highly and less-legitimate journals generally exhibit core-to-periphery diffusion patterns, there are still demographic differences between such journals. Institutional and cultural legitimacy—or lack thereof—affects the social and intellectual diffusion of new OA journals.

URL : Varieties of diffusion in academic publishing: How status and legitimacy influence growth trajectories of new innovation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24844

Scientific divulgation before the post-truth and the crisis of credibility of science in the context of Digital Humanities

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Authors : Dheyvid Adriano do Livramento Chaves, Edgar Bisset Alvarez

This article proposes to reflect, in the light of Digital Humanities, on the influence of post-truth on the credibility crisis of science. The objective is to identify the role of scientific divulgation in the recovery of science’s credibility and combat post-truth and the possibilities of using social networks for scientific divulgation by public universities.

When defining itself as descriptive, the research seeks to accomplish an analysis of the benefits and contributions that can result in the contextualization of the problem with the field of knowledge regarding the Digital Humanities.

The results showed that scientific divulgation through social networks contributes to combating the effects of post-truth culture and, consequently, recovering the credibility of science.

Finally, it was concluded that the protagonists actors in the promotion of scientific divulgation strategies are public universities, because they have the democratization of access to knowledge as a social commitment.

URL : Scientific divulgation before the post-truth and the crisis of credibility of science in the context of Digital Humanities

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1590/2318-0889202335e2377317

Presence and consequences of positive words in scientific abstracts

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Authors : Moritz Edlinger, Finn Buchrieser, Guilherme Wood

Abstracts are the showcase of scientific studies, crafted to make an impression on the reader within a limited space and to determine the amount of attention each study receives. Systemic conditions in the sciences may change the expressive norm and incentive scientists to hype abstracts to promote their work and career. Previous studies found that terms such as “unprecedented”, “novel” and “unique” have been used increasingly in recent history, to describe one’s own research findings.

The present study investigates the use of valence-loaded scientific jargon in the abstracts of scientific articles. Sentiment analysis with dictionaries specifically attuned to detect valence-loaded scientific jargon was employed to analyze more than 2,300,000 MEDLINE abstracts from the fields of psychology, biology, and physics. Results show that over the last four decades, abstracts have contained an increasing amount of valence-loaded scientific jargon, as previously observed in earlier studies.

Moreover, our results reveal that the positive emotional content of abstracts is increasing in a way that cannot be accounted for by the increase in text length, which has also been observed in the same time period. There were small differences between scientific disciplines. A detailed analysis of the distribution of valence-loaded scientific jargon within abstracts reveals a strong concentration towards the end of the text.

We discuss these results in light of psychological evidence relating positive emotions with the propensity to overestimate the value of information to inform judgment and the increase in the competition for attention due to a pressure to publish.

URL : Presence and consequences of positive words in scientific abstracts

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04864-6

Gender diversity and publication activity—an analysis of STEM in the UK

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Authors : Yasaman Sarabi, Matthew Smith

Gender diversity in STEM remains a significant issue, as the field continues to be a male dominated one, despite increased attention on the subject. This article examines the interplay between gender diversity on projects funded by a major UK research council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and the publication activity of a project, as measured by the average journal quality of project publication output, over a 10-year period.

The proportion of female representation and leadership on these projects remains very low. For the projects examined as part of this study, over 70% of these projects have no female representation, and less than 15% have a female lead.

This study does not find a significant relationship between gender diversity and journal quality output. This study highlights that an important avenue for future work is the development of alternative metrics to assess the performance of research projects in a discipline characterized by very low levels of gender diversity, to fully unpack the impact of project team gender diversity on project output activity.

URL : Gender diversity and publication activity—an analysis of STEM in the UK

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvad008