Branding Scholarly Journals: Transmuting Symbolic Capital into Economic Capital

Auteurs/Authors : Mahdi Khelfaoui, Yves Gingras

In this paper, we analyze a relatively recent commercial strategy devised by large academic publishers, consisting in the branding of their most prestigious scientific journals. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s model of capital conversion, we show how publishers transfer the symbolic capital of an already prestigious journal to derivative journals that capture part of the prestige of the original brand and transform it into new economic capital.

As shown by their high impact factors, these new journals, bearing the mark of the original journal in their titles, are rapidly adopted by researchers. Through manuscript transfer mechanisms, publishers also use part of the papers rejected by their flagship and highly selective jour-nals to recycle and monetize them inlower impactor open access derivativejournals of their lists.

URL : https://cirst2.openum.ca/files/sites/179/2020/08/Note_2020-03-branding.pdf

Navigating Open Science as Early Career Feminist Researchers

Authors : Madeleine Pownall, Catherine Talbot, Anna Henschel, Alexandra Lautarescu, Kelly Lloyd, Helena Hartmann, Kohinoor Darda, Karen Tang, Parise Carmichael-Murphy, Jaclyn Siegel

Open Science aims to improve the rigour, robustness, and reproducibility of psychological research. Despite resistance from some academics, the Open Science movement has been championed by some Early Career Researchers (ECRs), who have proposed innovative new tools and methods to promote and employ open research principles.

Feminist ECRs have much to contribute to this emerging way of doing research. However, they face unique barriers, which may prohibit their full engagement with the Open Science movement.

We, ten feminist ECRs in psychology, from a diverse range of academic and personal backgrounds, explore Open Science through a feminist lens, to consider how voice and power may be negotiated in unique ways for ECRs. Taking a critical and intersectional approach, we discuss how feminist early career research may be complemented or challenged by shifts towards Open Science.

We also propose how ECRs can act as grassroots changemakers within the context of academic precarity. We identify ways in which Open Science can benefit from feminist epistemology and end with six practical recommendations for feminist ECRs who wish to engage with Open Science practices in their own research.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/f9m47

Entrepôts de données de recherche : mesurer l’impact de l’Open Science à l’aune de la consultation des jeux de données déposés

Auteur/Author  : Violaine Rebouillat

Les décennies 2000 et 2010 ont vu se développer un nombre croissant de e-infrastructures de recherche, rendant plus aisés le partage et l’accès aux données scientifiques. Cette tendance s’est vue renforcée par l’essor de politiques d’ouverture des données, lesquelles ont donné lieu à une multiplication de réservoirs de données – aussi appelés « entrepôts de données ». Quantifier et qualifier l’utilisation des données rendues publiques constitue un élément essentiel pour évaluer l’impact des politiques d’ouverture des données.

Dans cet article, nous questionnons l’utilisation des données déposées dans les entrepôts. Dans quelle mesure ces données sont-elles consultées et téléchargées ?

L’article présente les premiers résultats d’une enquête quantitative auprès de 20 entrepôts. Il esquisse deux tendances, qui restent à ce stade propres à l’échantillon étudié, à savoir : (1) l’augmentation globale du nombre de consultations, de téléchargements et de données disponibles dans les entrepôts sur la période étudiée (2015-2020), et (2) la concentration des téléchargements sur une proportion relativement faible des données de l’entrepôt (de l’ordre de 10% à 30%).

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02928817/

Data librarian et services aux chercheurs en bibliothèque universitaire : de nouvelles médiations en émergence

Auteur/Author : Florence Thiault

Les services à destination des chercheurs se développent dans les bibliothèques universitaires françaises. L’augmentation de la quantité de données de recherche produites et réutilisées par les chercheurs pose des défis importants aux bibliothèques universitaires.

De nouvelles compétences associées à un profil professionnel spécifique celui de datalibrarian sont nécessaires pour assurer ces missions d’accompagnement à la recherche. Ce spécialiste des données à vocation à accompagner les chercheurs dans le cycle de vie de la recherche en assurant une collaboration active avec une série d’acteurs internes et externes.

Cette communication présente trois cas d’études emblématiques dans le registre des médiations à destination des chercheurs : l’analyse de la production scientifique, l’accompagnement à la recherche et à la publication ainsi que la gestion des données de recherche.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02972705

‘I Updated the ‘: The Evolution of References in the English Wikipedia and the Implications for Altmetrics

Authors : Olga Zagovora, Roberto Ulloa, Katrin Weller, Fabian Flöck

With this work, we present a publicly available dataset of the history of all the references (more than 55 million) ever used in the English Wikipedia until June 2019. We have applied a new method for identifying and monitoring references in Wikipedia, so that for each reference we can provide data about associated actions: creation, modifications, deletions, and reinsertions.

The high accuracy of this method and the resulting dataset was confirmed via a comprehensive crowdworker labelling campaign. We use the dataset to study the temporal evolution of Wikipedia references as well as users’ editing behaviour.

We find evidence of a mostly productive and continuous effort to improve the quality of references: (1) there is a persistent increase of reference and document identifiers (DOI, PubMedID, PMC, ISBN, ISSN, ArXiv ID), and (2) most of the reference curation work is done by registered humans (not bots or anonymous editors).

We conclude that the evolution of Wikipedia references, including the dynamics of the community processes that tend to them should be leveraged in the design of relevance indexes for altmetrics, and our dataset can be pivotal for such effort.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.03083

The measurement of “interdisciplinarity” and “synergy” in scientific and extra‐scientific collaborations

Authors : Loet Leydesdorff, Inga Ivanova

Problem solving often requires crossing boundaries, such as those between disciplines. When policy‐makers call for “interdisciplinarity,” however, they often mean “synergy.” Synergy is generated when the whole offers more possibilities than the sum of its parts. An increase in the number of options above the sum of the options in subsets can be measured as redundancy; that is, the number of not‐yet‐realized options.

The number of options available to an innovation system for realization can be as decisive for the system’s survival as the historically already‐realized innovations. Unlike “interdisciplinarity,” “synergy” can also be generated in sectorial or geographical collaborations. The measurement of “synergy,” however, requires a methodology different from the measurement of “interdisciplinarity.”

In this study, we discuss recent advances in the operationalization and measurement of “interdisciplinarity,” and propose a methodology for measuring “synergy” based on information theory.

The sharing of meanings attributed to information from different perspectives can increase redundancy. Increasing redundancy reduces the relative uncertainty, for example, in niches.

The operationalization of the two concepts—“interdisciplinarity” and “synergy”—as different and partly overlapping indicators allows for distinguishing between the effects and the effectiveness of science‐policy interventions in research priorities.

URL : The measurement of “interdisciplinarity” and “synergy” in scientific and extra‐scientific collaborations

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24416

Do researchers use open research data? Exploring the relationships between usage trends and metadata quality across scientific disciplines from the Figshare case

Authors : Alfonso Quarati, Juliana E Raffaghelli

Open research data (ORD) have been considered a driver of scientific transparency. However, data friction, as the phenomenon of data underutilisation for several causes, has also been pointed out.

A factor often called into question for ORD low usage is the quality of the ORD and associated metadata. This work aims to illustrate the use of ORD, published by the Figshare scientific repository, concerning their scientific discipline, their type and compared with the quality of their metadata.

Considering all the Figshare resources and carrying out a programmatic quality assessment of their metadata, our analysis highlighted two aspects. First, irrespective of the scientific domain considered, most ORD are under-used, but with exceptional cases which concentrate most researchers’ attention.

Second, there was no evidence that the use of ORD is associated with good metadata publishing practices. These two findings opened to a reflection about the potential causes of such data friction.

URL : Do researchers use open research data? Exploring the relationships between usage trends and metadata quality across scientific disciplines from the Figshare case

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551520961048