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Tackling complexity in an interdisciplinary scholarly network: Requirements for semantic publishing

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Scholarly communication is complex. The clarification of concepts like “academic publication”, “document”, “semantics” and “ontology” facilitates tracking the limitations and benefits of the media of the current publishing system, as well as of a possible alternative medium.

In this paper, requirements for such a new medium of scholarly communication, labeled Scholarly Network, have been collected and a basic model has been developed. An interdisciplinary network of concepts and assertions, created with the help of Semantic Web technologies by scholars and reviewed by peers and information professionals, can provide a quick overview of the state of research.

The model picks up the concept of Nanopublications, but maps information in a more granular way. For a better understanding of which problems have to be solved by developing such a publication medium, e.g., inconsistency, theories of Radical Constructivism are of great help.

URL : http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/6102/5510

Are Scientific Data Repositories Coping with Research Data Publishing?

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Research data publishing is intended as the release of research data to make it possible for practitioners to (re)use them according to “open science” dynamics. There are three main actors called to deal with research data publishing practices: researchers, publishers, and data repositories.

This study analyses the solutions offered by generalist scientific data repositories, i.e., repositories supporting the deposition of any type of research data. These repositories cannot make any assumption on the application domain.

They are actually called to face with the almost open ended typologies of data used in science. The current practices promoted by such repositories are analysed with respect to eight key aspects of data publishing, i.e., dataset formatting, documentation, licensing, publication costs, validation, availability, discovery and access, and citation.

From this analysis it emerges that these repositories implement well consolidated practices and pragmatic solutions for literature repositories.

These practices and solutions can not totally meet the needs of management and use of datasets resources, especially in a context where rapid technological changes continuously open new exploitation prospects.

URL : Are Scientific Data Repositories Coping with Research Data Publishing?

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2016-006

Stability and Longevity in the Publication Careers of U.S. Doctorate Recipients

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Since the 1950s, the number of doctorate recipients has risen dramatically in the United States. In this paper, we investigate whether the longevity of doctorate recipients’ publication careers has changed.

This is achieved by matching 1951–2010 doctorate recipients with rare names in astrophysics, chemistry, economics, genetics and psychology in the dissertation database ProQuest to their publications in the publication database Web of Science.

Our study shows that pre-PhD publication careers have changed: the median year of first publication has shifted from after the PhD to several years before PhD in most of the studied fields. In contrast, post-PhD publication career spans have not changed much in most fields.

The share of doctorate recipients who have published for more than twenty years has remained stable over time; the shares of doctorate recipients publishing for shorter periods also remained almost unchanged.

Thus, though there have been changes in pre-PhD publication careers, post-PhD career spans remained quite stable.

URL : Stability and Longevity in the Publication Careers of U.S. Doctorate Recipients

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0154741

Characterization, description, and considerations for the use of funding acknowledgement data in Web of Science

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Funding acknowledgements found in scientific publications have been used to study the impact of funding on research since the 1970s. However, no broad scale indexation of that paratextual element was done until 2008, when Thomson Reuters Web of Science started to add funding acknowledgement information to its bibliographic records.

As this new information provides a new dimension to bibliometric data that can be systematically exploited, it is important to understand the characteristics of these data and the underlying implications for their use.

This paper analyses the presence and distribution of funding acknowledgement data covered in Web of Science.

Our results show that prior to 2009 funding acknowledgements coverage is extremely low and therefore not reliable. Since 2008, funding information has been collected mainly for publications indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE); more recently (2015), inclusion of funding texts for publications indexed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) has been implemented.

Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) content is not indexed for funding acknowledgement data. Moreover, English-language publications are the most reliably covered.

Finally, not all types of documents are equally covered for funding information indexation and only articles and reviews show consistent coverage.

The characterization of the funding acknowledgement information collected by Thomson Reuters can therefore help understand the possibilities offered by the data but also their limitations.

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.04780

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

Making Student Research Data Discoverable: A Pilot Program Using Dataverse

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Introduction

The support and curation of research data underlying theses and dissertations are an opportunity for institutions to enhance their ETD collections.

This article describes a pilot data archiving service that leverages Emory University’s existing Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) program.

Description of program

This pilot service tested the appropriateness of Dataverse, a data repository, as a data archiving and access solution for Emory University using research data identified in Emory University’s ETD repository, developed the legal documents necessary for a full implementation of Dataverse on campus, and expanded outreach efforts to meet the research data needs of graduate students.

This article also situates the pilot service within the context of Emory Libraries and explains how it relates to other library efforts currently underway.

Next steps

The pilot project team plans to seek permission from alumni whose data were included in the pilot to make them available publicly in Dataverse, and the team will revise the ETD license agreement to allow this type of use.

The team will also automate the ingest of supplemental ETD research data into the data repository where possible and create a workshop series for students who are creating research data as part of their theses or dissertations.

URL : Making Student Research Data Discoverable: A Pilot Program Using Dataverse

URL : https://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/q4f1g

Disciplinary differences in opening research data

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The management and widespread sharing of publicly funded research data has gained significant momentum among governments, funders, institutions, journals and data service providers around the world.

However, there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to open research data across academic disciplines. Different disciplines produce different types of data and have various procedures for analysing, archiving and publishing it.

This briefing paper presents the current state of open research data across academic disciplines. It describes disciplinary characteristics inhibiting a larger take-up of open research data mandates.

Additionally it presents the current strategies and policies established by funders, institutions, journals and data service providers alongside general data policies.

URL : Disciplinary differences in opening research data

Alternative location : http://www.pasteur4oa.eu/resources/209