Archives des mots-clés : scientific practices

Research Data Sharing and Reuse Practices of Academic Faculty Researchers: A Study of the Virginia Tech Data Landscape

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Author : Yi Shen

This paper presents the results of a research data assessment and landscape study in the institutional context of Virginia Tech to determine the data sharing and reuse practices of academic faculty researchers.

Through mapping the level of user engagement in “openness of data,” “openness of methodologies and workflows,” and “reuse of existing data,” this study contributes to the current knowledge in data sharing and open access, and supports the strategic development of institutional data stewardship.

Asking faculty researchers to self-reflect sharing and reuse from both data producers’ and data users’ perspectives, the study reveals a significant gap between the rather limited sharing activities and the highly perceived reuse or repurpose values regarding data, indicating that potential values of data for future research are lost right after the original work is done.

The localized and sporadic data management and documentation practices of researchers also contribute to the obstacles they themselves often encounter when reusing existing data.

URL : Research Data Sharing and Reuse Practices of Academic Faculty Researchers: A Study of the Virginia Tech Data Landscape

Alternative location : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/10.2.157

Contributorship and division of labor in knowledge production

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Scientific authorship has been increasingly complemented with contributorship statements. While such statements are said to ensure more equitable credit and responsibility attribution, they also provide an opportunity to examine the roles and functions that authors play in the construction of knowledge and the relationship between these roles and authorship order.

Drawing on a comprehensive and multidisciplinary dataset of 87,002 documents in which contributorship statements are found, this paper examines the forms that division of labor takes across disciplines, the relationships between various types of contributions, as well as the relationships between the contribution types and various indicators of authors’ seniority.

It shows that scientific work is more highly divided in medical disciplines than in mathematics, physics and disciplines of the social sciences, and that, with the exception of medicine, the writing of the paper is the task most often associated with authorship.

The results suggest a clear distinction between contributions that could be labelled as ‘technical’ and those that could be considered ‘conceptual’: While conceptual tasks are typically associated with authors with higher seniority, technical tasks are more often performed by younger scholars.

Finally, results provide evidence of a u-shaped relationship between extent of contribution and author order: In all disciplines, first and last authors typically contribute to more tasks than middle authors.

The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the results for the reward system of science.

URL : http://crctcs.openum.ca/files/sites/60/2016/04/Contributorship-Preprint.pdf

Innovations in scholarly communication – global survey on research tool usage

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Many new websites and online tools have come into existence to support scholarly communication in all phases of the research workflow. To what extent researchers are using these and more traditional tools has been largely unknown.

This 2015-2016 survey aimed to fill that gap. Its results may help decision making by stakeholders supporting researchers and may also help researchers wishing to reflect on their own online workflows. In addition, information on tools usage can inform studies of changing research workflows.

The online survey employed an open, non-probability sample. A largely self-selected group of 20663 researchers, librarians, editors, publishers and other groups involved in research took the survey, which was available in seven languages.

The survey was open from May 10, 2015 to February 10, 2016. It captured information on tool usage for 17 research activities, stance towards open access and open science, and expectations of the most important development in scholarly communication.

Respondents’ demographics included research roles, country of affiliation, research discipline and year of first publication.

URL : Innovations in scholarly communication – global survey on research tool usage

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.8414.1

Les pratiques de recherche documentaire, de publication et de diffusion scientifique des productions de la recherche à l’Université Paris-Sud : questionnaire à destination des chercheurs, enseignants-chercheurs et doctorants

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Il s’agit de l’analyse détaillée des réponses à une enquête en ligne à destination des chercheurs, enseignants-chercheurs et doctorants de l’université Paris-Sud sur leurs pratiques de recherche documentaire, de publication et d’archivage de leurs productions scientifiques.

Cette enquête a été réalisée du 3 février au 7 avril 2015 dans le cadre du projet du Schéma Directeur numérique de l’université Paris-Sud de réservoir des productions de la recherche à des fins d’archivage systématique, de diffusion et de valorisation.

URL : Les pratiques de recherche documentaire, de publication et de diffusion scientifique des productions de la recherche à l’Université Paris-Sud

Alternative location : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/hal-01292693v1

Beams of Particles and Papers. The Role of Preprint Archives in High Energy Physics

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In high energy physics scholarly papers circulate primarily through online preprint archives based on a centralized repository, arXiv.org, that physicists simply refer to as ‘the archive.’ This is not a tool for preservation and memory, but rather a space of flows where written objects are detected and then disappear, and their authors made available for scrutiny.

In this work I analyse the reading and publishing practices of two subsets of particle physicists, theorists and experimentalists. In order to be recognized as legitimate and productive members of their community, physicists need to abide by the temporalities and authorial practices structured by the archive. Theorists live in a state of accelerated time that shapes their reading and publishing practices around a 24 hour cycle.

Experimentalists resolve to tactics that allow them to circumvent the slowed-down time and invisibility they experience as members of large collaborations. As digital archives for the exchange of preprint articles emerge in other scientific fields, physics could help shed light on general transformations of contemporary scholarly communication systems.

URL : Beams of Particles and Papers. The Role of Preprint Archives in High Energy Physics

Alternative location : http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.08539

How do scientists perceive the current publication culture? A qualitative focus group interview study among Dutch biomedical researchers

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Design

Qualitative focus group interview study.

Setting

Four university medical centres in the Netherlands.

Participants

Three randomly selected groups of biomedical scientists (PhD, postdoctoral staff members and full professors).

Main outcome measures

Main themes for discussion were selected by participants.

Results

Frequently perceived detrimental effects of contemporary publication culture were the strong focus on citation measures (like the Journal Impact Factor and the H-index), gift and ghost authorships and the order of authors, the peer review process, competition, the funding system and publication bias. These themes were generally associated with detrimental and undesirable effects on publication practices and on the validity of reported results.

Furthermore, senior scientists tended to display a more cynical perception of the publication culture than their junior colleagues. However, even among the PhD students and the postdoctoral fellows, the sentiment was quite negative. Positive perceptions of specific features of contemporary scientific and publication culture were rare.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that the current publication culture leads to negative sentiments, counterproductive stress levels and, most importantly, to questionable research practices among junior and senior biomedical scientists.

URL : How do scientists perceive the current publication culture? A qualitative focus group interview study among Dutch biomedical researchers

Alternative location : http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/2/e008681.full

Open Data in Global Environmental Research: The Belmont Forum’s Open Data Survey

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This paper presents the findings of the Belmont Forum’s survey on Open Data which targeted the global environmental research and data infrastructure community. It highlights users’ perceptions of the term “open data”, expectations of infrastructure functionalities, and barriers and enablers for the sharing of data. A wide range of good practice examples was pointed out by the respondents which demonstrates a substantial uptake of data sharing through e-infrastructures and a further need for enhancement and consolidation. Among all policy responses, funder policies seem to be the most important motivator. This supports the conclusion that stronger mandates will strengthen the case for data sharing.

URL : Open Data in Global Environmental Research: The Belmont Forum’s Open Data Survey

DOI :10.1371/journal.pone.0146695