Looking Back to the Future: A Glimpse at Twenty Years of Data Science

Author : Lili Zhang

This paper carries out a lightweight review to explore the potentials of data science in the last two decades and especially focuses on the four essential components: data resources, technologies, data infrastructures, and data education.

Considering the barriers of data science, the analysis has been mapped into four essential components, highlighting priorities and challenges in social and cultural, epistemological, scientific and technical, economic, legal, and ethical aspects.

As a result, the future development of data science tends to shift toward datafication, data technicity, infrastructuralism, and data literacy empowerment. The data ecosystem, at the macro level, has also been analyzed under the open science umbrella, providing a snapshot for the future development of data science.

URL : Looking Back to the Future: A Glimpse at Twenty Years of Data Science

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2023-007

Rhetorical Features and Functions of Data References in Academic Articles

Authors : Sara Lafia, Andrea Thomer, Elizabeth Moss, David Bleckley, Libby Hemphill

Data reuse is a common practice in the social sciences. While published data play an essential role in the production of social science research, they are not consistently cited, which makes it difficult to assess their full scholarly impact and give credit to the original data producers.

Furthermore, it can be challenging to understand researchers’ motivations for referencing data. Like references to academic literature, data references perform various rhetorical functions, such as paying homage, signaling disagreement, or drawing comparisons. This paper studies how and why researchers reference social science data in their academic writing.

We develop a typology to model relationships between the entities that anchor data references, along with their features (access, actions, locations, styles, types) and functions (critique, describe, illustrate, interact, legitimize). We illustrate the use of the typology by coding multidisciplinary research articles (n = 30) referencing social science data archived at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).

We show how our typology captures researchers’ interactions with data and purposes for referencing data. Our typology provides a systematic way to document and analyze researchers’ narratives about data use, extending our ability to give credit to data that support research.

URL : Rhetorical Features and Functions of Data References in Academic Articles

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2023-010

To Preprint or Not to Preprint: Experience and Attitudes of Researchers Worldwide

Authors : Rong Ni, Ludo Waltman

The pandemic has underlined the significance of open science and spurred further growth of preprinting. Nevertheless, preprinting has been adopted at varying rates across different countries/regions.

To investigate researchers’ experience with and attitudes toward preprinting, we conducted a survey of authors of research papers published in 2021 or 2022. We find that respondents in the US and Europe had a higher level of familiarity with and adoption of preprinting than those in China and the rest of the world. Respondents in China were most worried about the lack of recognition for preprinting and the risk of getting scooped.

US respondents were very concerned about premature media coverage of preprints, the reliability and credibility of preprints, and public sharing of information before peer review. Respondents identified integration of preprinting in journal submission processes as the most important way to promote preprinting.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.55835/6442f782b2b5580ba561406b

NSF Fellows’ perceptions about incentives, research misconduct, and scientific integrity in STEM academia

Authors : Siddhartha Roy, Marc A. Edwards

There is increased concern about perverse incentives, quantitative performance metrics, and hyper-competition for funding and faculty positions in US academia.

Recipients of the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships (n = 244) from Civil and Environmental Engineering (45.5%) and Computer Science and Engineering (54.5%) were anonymously surveyed to create a baseline snapshot of their perceptions, behaviors and experiences. NSF Fellows ranked scientific advancement as the top metric for evaluating academics followed by publishing in high-impact journals, social impact of research, and publication/citation counts.

The self-reported rate of academic cheating was 16.7% and of research misconduct was 3.7%. Thirty-one percent of fellows reported direct knowledge of graduate peers cheating, and 11.9% had knowledge of research misconduct by colleagues. Only 30.7% said they would report suspected misconduct.

A majority of fellows (55.3%) felt that mandatory ethics trainings left them unprepared for dealing with ethical issues. Fellows stated academic freedom, flexible schedules and opportunity to mentor students were the most positive aspects of academia, whereas pressures for funding, publication, and tenure were cited as the most negative aspects.

These data may be useful in considering how to better prepare STEM graduate trainees for academic careers.

URL : NSF Fellows’ perceptions about incentives, research misconduct, and scientific integrity in STEM academia

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-32445-3

Missing a golden opportunity? An analysis of publication trends by income level in the Directory of Open Access Journals 1987–2020

Authors : David DruelingerLai Ma

The growing prevalence of the gold open access model can exacerbate the monoculture of research and inequality in knowledge production. This study examines publication trends in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) journals by countries’ income level from 1987 to 2020.

By combining article metadata from journals listed in the DOAJ with World Bank country income data, this analysis examines the trends visible in plots of historical open access publication data. In 2020, the number of articles published in DOAJ journals by authors affiliated with high-income countries exceeds the sum of the other income categories. Article processing charge waivers seem to have more impact on high- and low-income countries than middle-income countries.

The results show that the gold open access model has not been able to improve the extremely low number of open access articles from low-income regions. In addition, authors in middle-income countries publish in gold open access DOAJ journals at lower rates than authors based in other economic regions.

The gold open access model is disadvantageous to researchers outside of high-income countries, highlighting the importance of supporting the diamond open access model as a potential means of improving global equity and epistemic diversity in knowledge production.

URL : Missing a golden opportunity? An analysis of publication trends by income level in the Directory of Open Access Journals 1987–2020

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1543

Philosophy of Open Science

Author : Sabina Leonelli

In response to broad transformations brought about by the digitalization, globalization, and commodification of research processes, the Open Science [OS] movement aims to foster the wide dissemination, scrutiny and re-use of research components for the good of science and society.

This Element examines the role played by OS principles and practices within contemporary research and how this relates to the epistemology of science. After reviewing some of the concerns that have prompted calls for more openness, I highlight how the interpretation of openness as the sharing of resources, so often encountered in OS initiatives and policies, may have the unwanted effect of constraining epistemic diversity and worsening epistemic injustice, resulting in unreliable and unethical scientific knowledge.

By contrast, I propose to frame openness as the effort to establish judicious connections among systems of practice, predicated on a process-oriented view of research as a tool for effective and responsible agency.

URL : http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/21986

The Many Publics of Science: Using Altmetrics to Identify Common Communication Channels by Scientific field

Authors : Daniel Torres-Salinas, Domingo Docampo, Wenceslao Arroyo-Machado, Nicolas Robinson-Garcia

Altmetrics have led to new quantitative studies of science through social media interactions. However, there are no models of science communication that respond to the multiplicity of non-academic channels.

Using the 3653 authors with the highest volume of altmetrics mentions from the main channels (Twitter, News, Facebook, Wikipedia, Blog, Policy documents, and Peer reviews) to their publications (2016-2020), it has been analyzed where the audiences of each discipline are located.

The results evidence the generalities and specificities of these new communication models and the differences between areas. These findings are useful for the development of science communication policies and strategies.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.05157