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Preplication, Replication: A Proposal to Efficiently Upgrade Journal Replication Standards

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Despite 20 years of progress in promoting replication standards in International Relations (IR), significant problems remain in both the provision of data and the incentives to replicate published research. While replicable research is a public good, there appear to be private incentives for researchers to follow socially suboptimal research strategies.

The current situation has led to a growing concern in IR, as well as across the social sciences, that published research findings may not represent accurate appraisals of the evidence on particular research questions. In this article, I discuss the role of private information in the publication process and review the incentives for producing replicable and nonreplicable research.

A small, but potentially important, change in a journal’s workflow could both deter the publication of nonreplicable work and lower the costs for researchers to build and expand upon existing published research. The suggestion, termed Preplication, is for journals to run the replication data and code for conditionally accepted articles before publication, just as journals routinely check for compliance with style guides.

This change could be implemented alongside other revisions to journal policies around the discipline. In fact, Preplication is already in use at several journals, and I provide an update as to how the process has worked at International Interactions.

URL : http://isp.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/02/10/isp.ekv016

Open educational resources and college textbook choices: a review of research on efficacy and perceptions

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Textbooks are a vital component in many higher education contexts. Increasing textbook prices, coupled with general rising costs of higher education have led some instructors to experiment with substituting open educational resources (OER) for commercial textbooks as their primary class curriculum. This article synthesizes the results of 16 studies that examine either (1) the influence of OER on student learning outcomes in higher education settings or (2) the perceptions of college students and instructors of OER.

Results across multiple studies indicate that students generally achieve the same learning outcomes when OER are utilized and simultaneously save significant amounts of money. Studies across a variety of settings indicate that both students and faculty are generally positive regarding OER.

URL : Open educational resources and college textbook choices: a review of research on efficacy and perceptions

Alternative location : http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11423-016-9434-9

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Data trajectories: tracking reuse of published data for transitive credit attribution

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The ability to measure the use and impact of published data sets is key to the success of the open data / open science paradigm. A direct measure of impact would require tracking data (re)use in the wild, which however is difficult to achieve. This is therefore commonly replaced by simpler metrics based on data download and citation counts.

In this paper we describe a scenario where it is possible to track the trajectory of a dataset after its publication, and we show how this enables the design of accurate models for ascribing credit to data originators. A Data Trajectory (DT) is a graph that encodes knowledge of how, by whom, and in which context data has been re-used, possibly after several generations.

We provide a theoretical model of DTs that is grounded in the W3C PROV data model for provenance, and we show how DTs can be used to automatically propagate a fraction of the credit associated with transitively derived datasets, back to original data contributors. We also show this model of transitive credit in action by means of a Data Reuse Simulator.

Ultimately, our hope is that, in the longer term, credit models based on direct measures of data reuse will provide further incentives to data publication. We conclude by outlining a research agenda to address the hard questions of creating, collecting, and using DTs systematically across a large number of data reuse instances, in the wild.

URL : Data trajectories: tracking reuse of published data for transitive credit attribution

Alternative location : http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/paolo.missier/doc/DT.pdf

Access to and Preservation of Scientific Information in Europe

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Executive summary

An important aspect of open science is a move towards open access to publicly funded research results, including scientific publications as well as research data. Based on the structure of Commission Recommendation C(2012) 4890 final and its assorted reporting mechanism (the National Points of Reference for scientific information) this report provides an overview on access to and preservation of scientific information in the EU Member States as well as Norway and Turkey. It is based on self-reporting by the participating states as well as cross-referencing with other relevant documents and further desk research.

Concerning open access to scientific peer-reviewed publications, most EU Member States reported a national preference for one of the two types of open access, either the Green (self-archiving) or the Gold (open access publishing) model. Preference for the Green model is found in Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain. Those expressing a preference for the Gold model are Hungary, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Other Member States support both models equally, such as Germany, France, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland and Finland. However, the expressed preferences for one of the two models are not pure models in which only one route is followed. Instead, there is generally a system of predominance of one model with the possibility of using the other model, so a mixture of both routes results.

While few Member States have a national law requiring open access to publications, a mandate put in place by law is not necessarily stronger or more effective than a mandate put in place by a single institution or funder. For example, an open access mandate is strong as it ties open access to possible withdrawal of funds in the case of non-compliance, or to the evaluation of researchers’ careers.

Overall, policies on open access to research data are less developed across EU countries than policies and strategies on open access to research publications. However, individual Member State feedback shows a general acknowledgement of the importance of open research data and of policies, strategies and actions addressed at fostering the collection, curation, preservation and re-use of research data. Based on the self-reporting of the EU Member States and participating associated countries, the following classification is proposed.

  • Very little or no open access to research data policies in place and no plan for a more developed policy in the near future: Cyprus, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland.
  • Very little or no open access to research data policies in place, but some plans in place or under development: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, Turkey.
  • Open access policies/institutional strategies or subject-based initiatives for research data already in place: Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, the United Kingdom.

Concerning the curation and preservation of scientific information (another issue covered by the 2012 Recommendation), institutional repositories are very well developed in most Member States although some NPR reports stress that, in many cases, institutional repositories are not certified to properly guarantee the long-term preservation of scientific information.

NPR reports also show that many Member States have made a clear effort to become more efficient and transparent regarding scientific information and research activities in general. This being said, some Member States underline research information purposes rather than the objective of open access to research results, with most CRIS systems containing meta-data and not necessarily full results.

Nevertheless, a tendency can be observed among the latest wave of EU enlargement countries that they are focusing efforts on developing centralised national repositories for preservation to be connected to the existing national CRIS systems and to be inter-operable across the EU with, for example, OpenAIRE protocols.

Many Member States have devised global policies and strategies for developing e-infrastructures in a comprehensive way. Such strategies often contain specific chapters or sections addressing scientific information, research and innovation, covering storage and high-performance computing capabilities as well as the appropriate dissemination, access and visibility of research results. As is the case in other areas, the stage of e-infrastructure development varies greatly among Member States, and it is worth noting differences in funding capabilities in this area. The support provided by EU-funded projects and initiatives is of significant importance here.

Concerning participation in multi-stakeholder dialogues and activities, several countries have set up national coordination bodies or networks (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Austria, Poland, Portugal). Other countries rely on a university or a university library (or an association of libraries) to coordinate national stakeholders (Czech Republic, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta) or on their research promotion agency/research councils (Cyprus, Sweden, the United Kingdom) or their academy of science (Slovakia).

Specific events, such as open-access workshops or activities during the annual open-access week, have also been identified as a way to galvanise stakeholder interaction at the national level (Czech Republic, Croatia, Italy, Romania). Additionally to EU fora (such as ERA, ERAC, the NPR, the Digital ERA Forum and the E-IRG), EU funded projects such as OpenAIRE FOSTER and PASTEUR4OA as well as PEER, Dariah and Serscida were mentioned as important support mechanisms. Furthermore, Belgium and the Netherlands have established bilateral cooperation and among the Nordic states (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) part of the dialogue on open science is conducted within the framework of the NordForsk organisation.

URL : Access to and Preservation of Scientific Information in Europe

Alternative location : http://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/pdf/openaccess/npr_report.pdf

Content analysis of Journal articles on Wiki in Science Direct Database

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The study aims for analyzing the contents of articles on wiki that were published in the journals of science direct database, to find out the methods of research used, type of data analysis techniques used for wiki articles, most productive country contributing highest number of articles, highest contributing author, year wise publication, authors subject background etc.

Out of total 142 hits, from Science Direct database, the articles without having abstract and full text were excluded from the study and a total of 89 numbers of articles were analyzed. The study reveals that Majority of the articles on wiki are research articles and used Survey method. Again descriptive data analysis seemed to be the favored method used in majority of articles.

Germany and USA are the most productive country contributing majority of articles on wiki and majority of the authors contributing the articles on wiki are from Computer science background.

URL : http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/1331/

How do scientists perceive the current publication culture? A qualitative focus group interview study among Dutch biomedical researchers

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Design

Qualitative focus group interview study.

Setting

Four university medical centres in the Netherlands.

Participants

Three randomly selected groups of biomedical scientists (PhD, postdoctoral staff members and full professors).

Main outcome measures

Main themes for discussion were selected by participants.

Results

Frequently perceived detrimental effects of contemporary publication culture were the strong focus on citation measures (like the Journal Impact Factor and the H-index), gift and ghost authorships and the order of authors, the peer review process, competition, the funding system and publication bias. These themes were generally associated with detrimental and undesirable effects on publication practices and on the validity of reported results.

Furthermore, senior scientists tended to display a more cynical perception of the publication culture than their junior colleagues. However, even among the PhD students and the postdoctoral fellows, the sentiment was quite negative. Positive perceptions of specific features of contemporary scientific and publication culture were rare.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that the current publication culture leads to negative sentiments, counterproductive stress levels and, most importantly, to questionable research practices among junior and senior biomedical scientists.

URL : How do scientists perceive the current publication culture? A qualitative focus group interview study among Dutch biomedical researchers

Alternative location : http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/2/e008681.full

Communicating the Open Access Message: A Case Study from Ireland

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Since 2009, Open Access (OA) Week has been celebrated worldwide in October each year. It is an opportunity for librarians to engage with the research community, and demonstrate the value that they bring to their organisations in the area of disseminating scholarly output. Although thousands of events have been held since the inception of OA Week, little research has been carried out into the impact of these events.

The article presents a review of the literature on OA Week and evaluates the effectiveness of three events held during OA Week 2015 in Ireland through the use of statistics and a survey. The three events held during OA Week 2015 in Ireland that were evaluated include: a seminar run by Repository Network Ireland (RNI), a D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything And Read) campaign using OA materials organised by Dr. Steevens’ Library and a collaborative OA seminar between Dr. Steevens’ Library and Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) libraries.

The author concludes that a collaborative approach to planning and managing OA week between librarians from academic and other sectors can have tangible benefits both in terms of promoting OA and also promoting the role of the Librarian in the OA movement.

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/10147/596552