Creating research ethics and integrity country report cards: Case study from Europe

Authors : Andrijana Perković Paloš, Rea Roje, Vicko Tomić, Ana Marušić

Structures for and practices of research integrity (RI) and research ethics (RE) differ among countries. This study analyzed the processes and structures for RI and RE in Europe, following the framework developed at the World Conferences on Research Integrity.

We present RI and RE Country Report Cards for 16 European countries, which included the information on RI and RE structures, processes and outcomes. While some of the countries are front-runners when it comes to RI and RE, with well-established and continually developing policies and structures, others are just starting their journey in RI and RE.

Although RI and RE contextual divergences must be taken into account, a level of harmonization among the countries is necessary so that researchers working in the European area can similarly handle RI and RE issues and have similar expectations regardless of the organization in which they work. RI and RE Country Report Cards can be a tool to monitor, compare, and strengthen RE and integrity across countries through empowerment and inspiration by examples of good practices and developed systems.

URL : Creating research ethics and integrity country report cards Case study from Europe

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2022.2163632

Do academic inventors have diverse interests?

Authors : Shuo Xu, Ling Li, Xin An

Academic inventors bridge science and technology, and have attracted increasing attention. However, little is known about whether they have more diverse research interests than researchers with a single role, and whether their important position for science–technology interactions correlates with their diverse interests.

For this purpose, we describe a rule-based approach for matching and identifying academic inventors, and an author interest discovery model with credit allocation schemes is utilized to measure the diversity of each researcher’s interests.

Finally, extensive empirical results on the DrugBank dataset provide several valuable insights. Contrary to our intuitive expectation, the research interests of academic inventors are the least diverse, while those of authors are the most.

In addition, the important position of the researchers has a certain relation with the diversity of research interests. More specifically, the degree of centrality has a significant positive correlation with the diversity of interests, and the constraint presents a significant negative correlation.

A significant weaker negative correlation can also be observed between the diversity of research interests of academic inventors and their closeness centrality. The normalized betweenness centrality seems be independent from interest diversity.

These conclusions help understand the mechanisms of the important position of academic inventors for science–technology interactions, from the perspective of research interests.

URL : Do academic inventors have diverse interests?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04587-0

Scholarly publishing and peer review in the Global South: the role of the reviewer

Author : Peter Lor

Peer review is an integral part of contemporary scholarly publishing, especially journal publishing. Work submitted by scholars from all parts of the world is subjected to it. This includes submissions by scholars from the Global South, who wish to publish in “international” journals or in local journals which follow the same model.

These authors may not be native English speakers and may be unfamiliar with the conventions of Western scholarship. Many of them conduct research and write their manuscripts under challenging circumstances.

They may find it difficult to comply with the requirements of the journals to which they submit their articles. Their manuscripts quite often pose challenges to the peer reviewers.

The purpose of this article is to provide some background on scholarly publishing in the Global South and the challenges those colleagues face, and to outline what this may mean for the role of the reviewer.

URL : Scholarly publishing and peer review in the Global South: the role of the reviewer

DOI : https://doi.org/10.36253/jlis.it-512

Global Trends in Knowledge Production and the Evolving Peer Review Process

Author : Steven Witt

This essay thus seeks to provide further critique and clarity to the peer review process and the ways in which management of peer review is evolving. These changes occur within a context of massive growth in the knowledge production process: global trends, information technologies, and policies that encourage more people globally to take part in the research process.

Associated with these global changes are stressors on the peer review process and particularly questions about who gets to be a peer reviewer and who has the right to produce knowledge under these processes.

Less a formal review and analysis of peer review across LIS, this essay takes the form of an autoethnographic narrative that that seeks to draw upon the researcher’s personal observations, experience, and reflections to critically examine changes to the peer review system that are taking place.

URL : Global Trends in Knowledge Production and the Evolving Peer Review Process

DOI : https://doi.org/10.36253/jlis.it-515

Neither Computer Science, nor Information Studies, nor Humanities Enough: What Is the Status of a Digital Humanities Conference Paper?

Authors : Laura Estill, Jennifer Guiliano

This paper explores the disciplinary and regional conventions that surround the status of conference papers throughout their lifecycle from submission/abstract, review, presentation, and in some cases, publication.

Focusing on national and international Digital Humanities conferences, while also acknowledging disciplinary conferences that inform Digital Humanities, this paper blends close readings of conference calls for papers with analysis of conference practices to reckon with what constitutes a conference submission and its status in relationship to disciplinary conventions, peer review, and publication outcomes.

Ultimately, we argue that the best practice for Digital Humanities conferences is to be clear on the review and publication process so that participants can gauge how to accurately reflect their contributions.

URL : Neither Computer Science, nor Information Studies, nor Humanities Enough: What Is the Status of a Digital Humanities Conference Paper?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.16995/dscn.8090

Le contexte et l’hypertexte. Tentative de transposition des pratiques documentaires contributives d’un tiers-lieu aux enjeux des sciences participatives

Auteur : Victor Ecrement

Ce mémoire rend compte d’une enquête réalisée auprès du tiers-lieu la Myne, à Lyon, où je me suis intéressé à la manière dont ses membres écrivent et mobilisent des documents numériques partagés.

J’y défends que certaines de ces pratiques peuvent soutenir la production de connaissances scientifiques en collectif, bien que peu des projets de cette association tiennent des sciences participatives. Je m’appuie sur les théories des technologies intellectuelles, des travaux en sciences de la documentation et en études des sciences, pour essayer d’identifier ce que le logiciel d’écriture en ligne utilisé à la Myne change aux formes documentaires et à la production de connaissances.

J’essaye de rendre compte de la complexité du rapport entre paroles, écrits, gestes et techniques, dans une posture de participation observante, en mobilisant des entretiens, des observations, des analyses de corpus et des visualisations de données numériques.

Je conclus en identifiant des usages dont pourraient bénéficier les initiatives de sciences participatives et en proposant des directions pour la conception de futurs outils d’écriture qui soutiendraient la production de connaissances en collectif.

URL : Le contexte et l’hypertexte. Tentative de transposition des pratiques documentaires contributives d’un tiers-lieu aux enjeux des sciences participatives

Original location : https://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/dumas-03878265

Close to open—Factors that hinder and promote open science in ecology research and education

Authors  : Christian B. Strømme, A. Kelly Lane, Aud H. Halbritter, Elizabeth Law, Chloe R. Nater, Erlend B. Nilsen, Grace D. Boutouli, Dagmar D. Egelkraut, Richard J. Telford, Vigdis Vandvik, Sehoya H. Cotne

The Open Science (OS) movement is rapidly gaining traction among policy-makers, research funders, scientific journals and individual scientists. Despite these tendencies, the pace of implementing OS throughout the scientific process and across the scientific community remains slow. Thus, a better understanding of the conditions that affect OS engagement, and in particular, of how practitioners learn, use, conduct and share research openly can guide those seeking to implement OS more broadly.

We surveyed participants at an OS workshop hosted by the Living Norway Ecological Data Network in 2020 to learn how they perceived OS and its importance in their research, supervision and teaching. Further, we wanted to know what OS practices they had encountered in their education and what they saw as hindering or helping their engagement with OS.

The survey contained scaled-response and open-ended questions, allowing for a mixed-methods approach. We obtained survey responses from 60 out of 128 workshop participants (47%). Responses indicated that usage and sharing of open data and code, as well as open access publication, were the most frequent OS practices.

Only a minority of respondents reported having encountered OS in their formal education. A majority also viewed OS as less important in their teaching than in their research and supervisory roles. The respondents’ suggestions for what would facilitate greater OS engagement in the future included knowledge, guidelines, and resources, but also social and structural support.

These are aspects that could be strengthened by promoting explicit implementation of OS practices in higher education and by nurturing a more inclusive and equitable OS culture. We argue that incorporating OS in teaching and learning of science can yield substantial benefits to the research community, student learning, and ultimately, to the wider societal objectives of science and higher education.

URL : Close to open—Factors that hinder and promote open science in ecology research and education

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278339