Archives des auteurs : Hans Dillaerts

Science communication objectives and actual practices of science news websites as a showcase for gaps between theory and practice

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Authors : Ifat Zimmerman, Ayelet Baram-Tsabari, Tali Tal

This study contributes to the growing body of science communication research showing gaps between theory and practice objectives, focusing on one particular understudied and emerging science communication innovation.The objectives and practices of four Israeli science news websites were analyzed considering three science communication models: “Dissemination”, “Dialogue”, and “Participation.”

Using concurrent parallel mixed methods, we examined the perspectives of website administrators (n=8) and readers (n=20) through interviews, a content analysis of news items (n=298), discussion threads (n=507), and reader questionnaires (n=89). Findings indicate limited adoption of two-way communication about how science is applied in society. The scant implementation of the dialogue model suggests its promises are not concretized in practice on these science news websites.

URL : Science communication objectives and actual practices of science news websites as a showcase for gaps between theory and practice

DOI : https://doi.org/10.22323/2.23010205

Group authorship, an excellent opportunity laced with ethical, legal and technical challenges

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Authors : Mohammad Hosseini, Alex O. Holcombe, Marton Kovacs, Hub Zwart, Daniel S. Katz, Kristi Holmes

Group authorship (also known as corporate authorship, team authorship, consortium authorship) refers to attribution practices that use the name of a collective (be it team, group, project, corporation, or consortium) in the authorship byline. Data shows that group authorships are on the rise but thus far, in scholarly discussions about authorship, they have not gained much specific attention.

Group authorship can minimize tensions within the group about authorship order and the criteria used for inclusion/exclusion of individual authors. However, current use of group authorships has drawbacks, such as ethical challenges associated with the attribution of credit and responsibilities, legal challenges regarding how copyrights are handled, and technical challenges related to the lack of persistent identifiers (PIDs), such as ORCID, for groups.

We offer two recommendations: 1) Journals should develop and share context-specific and unambiguous guidelines for group authorship, for which they can use the four baseline requirements offered in this paper; 2) Using persistent identifiers for groups and consistent reporting of members’ contributions should be facilitated through devising PIDs for groups and linking these to the ORCIDs of their individual contributors and the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the published item.

URL : Group authorship, an excellent opportunity laced with ethical, legal and technical challenges

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2024.2322557

The ‘Must Stock’ Challenge in Academic Publishing: Pricing Implications of Transformative Agreements

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Author : W. Benedikt Schmal

The high relevance of top-notch academic journals turns them into ‘must stock’ products that assign its often commercial owners with extraordinary market power. Intended to tackle this, university consortia around the globe negotiate so-called ‘transformative agreements’ with many publishing houses. It shall pave the way towards standard open-access publishing.

While several contract designs exist, the ‘publish-and-read’ (PAR) scheme is the one that comes closest to the ideal of an entirely open access environment: Publishers are paid a fixed case-by-case rate for each publication, which includes a fee for their extensive libraries. In turn, all subscription payments are waived.

I theoretically derive that this contract design benefits the included publishers regardless of whether the number of publications in these publishers’ journals grows or declines. Consequently, widespread PAR contracts are likely to raise entry barriers for new (open-access) competitors even further. Intending to lower costs for the universities, their libraries, and, ultimately, the taxpayers, this PAR fee contract design of transformative agreements might cause the opposite.

URL : The ‘Must Stock’ Challenge in Academic Publishing: Pricing Implications of Transformative Agreements

Arxiv : https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.03597

Mega-authorship implications: How many scientists can fit into one cell?

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Author : Daniel S. Dotson

The past 20 years has seen a significant increase in articles with 500 or more authors. This increase has presented problems in terms of determining true authorship versus other types of contribution, issues with database metadata and data output, and publication length. Using items with 500+ authors deemed as mega-author titles, a total of 5,533 mega-author items were identified using InCites. Metadata about the items was then gathered from Web of Science and Scopus.

Close examination of these items found that the vast majority of these covered physics topics, with medicine a far distant second place and only minor representation from other science fields. This mega-authorship saw significant events that appear to correspond to similar events in the Large Hadron Collider’s timeline, indicating that the projects for the collider are driving this heavy output. Some solutions are offered for the problems resulting from this phenomenon, partially driven by recommendations from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

URL : Mega-authorship implications: How many scientists can fit into one cell?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2024.2318790

Choice of Open Access in Elsevier Hybrid Journals

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Author : Sumiko Asai

Open access articles in hybrid journals have recently increased despite high article processing charges. This study investigated the impacts of grants and transformative agreements on authors’ choice of open and non-open access articles by comparing two article types. The samples were hybrid journals launched independently by Elsevier.

The results revealed that the authors who received more grants in countries with transformative agreements were more likely to choose open access articles. By contrast, authors in developing countries were likely to publish non-open access articles.

These findings imply that authors’ choices depend on the funding systems and open access policies in individual countries. Consequently, open access may become a barrier to the dissemination of work for researchers who have financial difficulty choosing open access, although it enables everyone to access articles free of charge.

URL : Choice of Open Access in Elsevier Hybrid Journals

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-024-09978-0

FAIRness of Research Data in the European Humanities Landscape

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Authors : Ljiljana Poljak Bilić, Kristina Posavec

This paper explores the landscape of research data in the humanities in the European context, delving into their diversity and the challenges of defining and sharing them. It investigates three aspects: the types of data in the humanities, their representation in repositories, and their alignment with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).

By reviewing datasets in repositories, this research determines the dominant data types, their openness, licensing, and compliance with the FAIR principles. This research provides important insight into the heterogeneous nature of humanities data, their representation in the repository, and their alignment with FAIR principles, highlighting the need for improved accessibility and reusability to improve the overall quality and utility of humanities research data.

URL : FAIRness of Research Data in the European Humanities Landscape

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications12010006

Notebooks et science ouverte : FAIR mieux

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Authors: Mariannig Le Béchec, Célya Gruson-Daniel, Clémence Lascombes, Émilien Schultz

Les notebooks sont aujourd’hui largement adoptés dans les pratiques numériques de recherche. Malgré leur omniprésence croissante, leurs caractéristiques, les rôles et usages associés aux notebooks ont pour le moment donné lieu à peu d’investigations dans une perspective d’études des sciences et des techniques (STS).

Dans cet article, nous proposons une synthèse de travaux empiriques menés sur les notebooks afin d’identifier les principaux résultats existants, que cela concerne la classification de types de notebooks, les pratiques installées, les limites et améliorations proposées.

Dans la continuité de cette synthèse qui souligne surtout l’existence de travaux dans le domaine de la science des données (data science) et non pas des pratiques de recherche en contextes académiques, nous discutons le rôle des notebooks comme vecteur et levier des principes FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) associés à la science ouverte.

HAL : https://hal.science/hal-04485968