Catégorie : EN

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Pubfair: a framework for sustainable, distributed, open science publishing services

Authors : Tony Ross-Hellauer, Benedikt Fecher, Kathleen Shearer, Eloy Rodrigues

Over the last thirty years, digitally-networked technologies have disrupted traditional media, turning business models on their head and changing the conditions for the creation, packaging and distribution of content.

Yet, scholarly communication still looks remarkably as it did in the pre-digital age. The primary unit of dissemination remains the research article (or book in some disciplines), and today’s articles still bear a remarkable resemblance to those that populated the pages of Oldenburg’s Philosophical Transactions 350 years ago.

In an age of such disruptive innovation, it is striking how little digital technologies have impacted scholarly publishing; and this is also somewhat ironic, since the Web was developed by scientists for research purposes.

Pubfair is a conceptual model for a modular open source publishing framework which builds upon a distributed network of repositories to enable the dissemination and quality-control of a range of research outputs including publications, data, and more.

Pubfair aims to introduce significant innovation into scholarly publishing. It enables different stakeholders (funders, institutions, scholarly societies, individuals scientists) to access a suite of functionalities to create their own dissemination channels, with built in open review and transparent processes.

The model minimizes publishing costs while maintaining academic standards by connecting communities with iterative publishing services linked to their preferred repository.

Such a publishing environment has the capacity to transform the scholarly communication system, making it more research-centric, dissemination-oriented and open to and supportive of innovation, while also collectively managed by the scholarly community.

URL : https://apo.org.au/node/257281

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Building Infrastructure for African Human Genomic Data Management

Authors: Ziyaad Parker, Suresh Maslamoney, Ayton Meintjes, Gerrit Botha, Sumir Panji, Scott Hazelhurst, Nicola Mulder

Human genomic data are large and complex, and require adequate infrastructure for secure storage and transfer. The NIH and The Wellcome Trust have funded multiple projects on genomic research, including the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) initiative, and data are required to be deposited into the public domain.

The European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA) is a repository for sequence and genotype data where the data access is controlled by access committees. Access is determined by a formal application procedure for the purpose of secure storage and distribution, and must be in line with the informed consent of the study participants.

H3Africa researchers based in Africa and generating their own data can benefit tremendously from the data sharing capabilities of the internet by using the appropriate technologies.

The H3Africa Data Archive is an effort between the H3Africa data generating projects, H3ABioNet and the EGA to store and submit genomic data to public repositories. H3ABioNet maintains the security of the H3Africa Data Archive, ensures ethical security compliance, supports users with data submission and facilitates the data transfer.

The goal is to ensure efficient data flow between researchers, the archive and the EGA or other public repositories.

To comply with the H3Africa data sharing and release policy, nine months after the data is in secure storage, H3ABioNet converts the data into an XML format ready for submission to EGA. This article describes the infrastructure that has been developed for African human genomic data management.

URL : Building Infrastructure for African Human Genomic Data Management

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2019-047

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Rebels with a Cause? Supporting Library and Academic-led Open Access Publishing

Authors: Joe Deville, Jeroen Sondervan, Graham Stone, Sofie Wennström

The authors, who all have experience with academic publishing, outline the landscape of new university and academic-led open access publishing, before discussing four interrelated sets of challenges which are often referred when questioning the viability of such publishing ventures.

They are: (1) professionalism, (2) scale, (3) quality, and (4) discoverability & dissemination. The authors provide examples of how, albeit differing in size, form and ambition, these new presses are not just adhering to conventional publishing norms but often innovating in order to surpass them.

URL : Rebels with a Cause? Supporting Library and Academic-led Open Access Publishing

DOI : http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10277

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Does Monetary Support Increase Citation Impact of Scholarly Papers?

Authors : Yasar Tonta, Muge Akbulut

One of the main indicators of scientific development of a given country is the number of papers published in high impact scholarly journals. Many countries introduced performance-based research funding systems (PRFSs) to create a more competitive environment where prolific researchers get rewarded with subsidies to increase both the quantity and quality of papers.

Yet, subsidies do not always function as a leverage to improve the citation impact of scholarly papers. This paper investigates the effect of the publication support system of Turkey (TR) on the citation impact of papers authored by Turkish researchers.

Based on a stratified probabilistic sample of 4,521 TR-addressed papers, it compares the number of citations to determine if supported papers were cited more often than those of not supported ones, and if they were published in journals with relatively higher citation impact in terms of journal impact factors, article influence scores and quartiles.

Both supported and not supported papers received comparable number of citations per paper, and were published in journals with similar citation impact values. Findings suggest that subsidies do not seem to be an effective incentive to improve the quality of scholarly papers. Such support programs should therefore be reconsidered.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.10068

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Bye Bye Peer-Reviewed Publishing

Authors : Miguel Abambres, Tony Salloom, Nejra Beganovic, Rafal Dojka, SergioRoncallo-Dow

This work is the continuation of a ‘revolution’ started with “Research Counts, Not the Journal”. Own and published opinions from worldwide scientists on critical issues of peer-reviewed publishing are presented.

In my opinion, peer-reviewed publishing is a quite flawed process (in many way) that has greatly harmed Science for a long time – it has been imposed by most academic and science funding institutions as the only way to assess scientific performance.

Unfortunately, most academics still follow that path, even though I believe most do it for the fear of losing their job or not being promoted. This paper aims to encourage (i) a full disruption of peer-reviewed publishing and (ii) the use of free eprint repositories for a sustainable academic/scientific publishing, i.e. healthier (no stress/distress associated to the peer review stage and the long waiting for publication) and more economic, effective and efficient (research is made immediately available and trackable/citable to anyone).

On the other hand, it should be pointed out that nothing exists against scientific publishers/journals – actually it´s perfectly normal that any company wants to implement its own quality criteria.

This paper is just the way chosen to promote the quick implementation of suitable policies for research evaluation.

URL : Bye Bye Peer-Reviewed Publishing

Alternative location : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02114531v4

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Competence-Based Management Research in the Web of Science and Scopus Databases: Scientific Production, Collaboration, and Impact

Authors : Vítor Vasata Macchi Silva, José Luis Duarte Ribeiro, Gonzalo Rubén Alvarez, Sonia Elisa Caregnato

This paper presents a bibliometric study, which seeks to characterize papers that address competence-based management and that are indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus databases in terms of scientific production, collaboration, and impact.

All the papers published in journals or in conference proceedings that contained the terms “competenc* management” or “compentenc* based management” in their titles, abstracts, or keywords were analyzed.

The results show that computational sciences, human resources management, strategic management, and industrial relations and labor correspond to the macro-categories that characterize competence-based management.

This paper also indicates that collaborations between authors do not establish strong co-authorship networks. It also shows that the most cited papers were published in journals of different areas.

It concludes that studies conducted in the area of competence-based management can be developed in a more assertive way if they take into consideration the context of the current state of research in this area.

URL : Competence-Based Management Research in the Web of Science and Scopus Databases: Scientific Production, Collaboration, and Impact

Alternative location : https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/7/4/60

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Hyperdocumentation: origin and evolution of a concept

Authors : Olivier Le Deuff, Arthur Perret

Purpose

The aim of this article is to provide context and raise interest for the term hyperdocumentation in the context of document theory.

Design/methodology/approach

The origin of the term is established through etymology and bibliographical research. The term is contextualized with conceptual research on the nature of documents and the construction of social reality through documentation. Prominent uses of the term outside of traditional research on documents are investigated.

Findings

We describe what hyperdocumentation translates to in terms of experience as of today (the different types of hyperdocumentation). Comparison to the initial definition underlines a key issue: the absence of a social contract that would define hyperdocumentality.

Originality/value

This paper presents novel research on the term hyperdocumentation, including its origin before hypertext, its use outside of traditional document science and its implications for document theory.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02294087