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A framework for improving the accessibility of research papers on arXiv.org

Authors : Shamsi Brinn, Christopher Cameron, David Fielding, Charles Frankston, Alison Fromme, Peter Huang, Mark Nazzaro, Stephanie Orphan, Steinn Sigurdsson, Ryan Tay, Miranda Yang, Qianyu Zhou

The research content hosted by arXiv is not fully accessible to everyone due to disabilities and other barriers. This matters because a significant proportion of people have reading and visual disabilities, it is important to our community that arXiv is as open as possible, and if science is to advance, we need wide and diverse participation.

In addition, we have mandates to become accessible, and accessible content benefits everyone. In this paper, we will describe the accessibility problems with research, review current mitigations (and explain why they aren’t sufficient), and share the results of our user research with scientists and accessibility experts.

Finally, we will present arXiv’s proposed next step towards more open science: offering HTML alongside existing PDF and TeX formats. An accessible HTML version of this paper is also available at https://info.arxiv.org/about/accessibility_research_report.html

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.07286

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EN

Agile Research Data Management with Open Source: LinkAhead

Authors : Daniel Hornung, Florian Spreckelsen, Thomas Weiß

Research data management (RDM) in academic scientific environments increasingly enters the focus as an important part of good scientific practice and as a topic with big potentials for saving time and money. Nevertheless, there is a shortage of appropriate tools, which fulfill the specific requirements in scientific research.

We identified where the requirements in science deviate from other fields and proposed a list of requirements which RDM software should answer to become a viable option. We analyzed a number of currently available technologies and tool categories for matching these requirements and identified areas where no tools can satisfy researchers’ needs.

Finally we assessed the open-source RDMS (research data management system) LinkAhead for compatibility with the proposed features and found that it fulfills the requirements in the area of semantic, flexible data handling in which other tools show weaknesses.

URL : Agile Research Data Management with Open Source: LinkAhead

DOI : https://doi.org/10.48694/inggrid.3866

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EN

“On the ruins of seriality”: The scientific journal and the nature of the scientific life

Author : Dorien Daling

Twenty-first-century discourse on science has been marked by narratives of crisis. Science is said to be experiencing crises of public trust, of peer review and publishing, of reproducibility and replicability, and of recognition and reward.

The dominant response has been to “repair” the scientific literature and the system of scientific publishing through open science. This paper places the current predicament of scholarly communication in historical perspective by exploring the evolution of the scientific journal in the second half of the twentieth century.

I focus on a new genre of scientific journal invented by Dutch commercial publishers shortly after World War II, and on its effects on the nature of the scientific life. I show that profit-oriented publishers and discipline-building scientists worked together to make postwar science more open, while also arguing that formats of scientific publication have their own agency.

URL : “On the ruins of seriality”: The scientific journal and the nature of the scientific life

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.endeavour.2023.100885

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EN

Evaluation and impact of descriptive metadata on academic event management in Ukraine: A quantitative study

Author : Sabina Auhunas

Objective

The study aims to understand the impact of descriptive metadata in academic events. It focuses on the need for analytical frameworks that take into account the characteristics of the events and the interests of the participants.

Design/Methodology/Approach

The article focuses on academic event management and metadata quality based on user
preferences and feedback. It conducted a survey among Ukrainian organizers and scholars between August and October 2022, analyzing the responses of 1,270 participants using descriptive statistics and qualitative analysis in RStudio.

Results/Discussion

The survey showed that most (over 84%) of organizers and academics are dissatisfied with the quality of metadata, with a third rating it as very bad. Frequent errors in metadata emphasized the need for better management, including a preference for using identifiers like ORCID and DOI and a preference for open access to information about academic events.

Conclusions

The results highlight the importance of developing specialized tools for metadata management and standardization of metadata elements in Ukraine to facilitate organization and participation in academic events at national and international levels.

Originality/Value

The study makes an important contribution to the understanding of descriptive metadata management in academic events in Ukraine, suggesting ways to improve efficiency in this area.

URL : Evaluation and impact of descriptive metadata on academic event management in Ukraine: A quantitative study

DOI : https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/fxb74

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EN

Associations between women’s retention in STEM or STEM-related fields and their spouses’ occupations and majors

Author : Ao Shen

There is a growing awareness of the impact of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) or STEM-related fields and the influence of marriage on women’s retention in those fields.

This study examines the relationship between the continued employment of married women with STEM or STEM-related majors in relevant occupations and their spouses having the same field of occupation/major, as well as the difference in this association when considering the presence of children.

This study analyzed a sample comprising 147,467 married college-educated women aged 25–55 years. The analysis was restricted to women with a STEM or STEM-related major and a spouse who was college-educated and employed.

All the data were drawn from the 2015–2019 waves of data released by the American Community Survey (ACS). The results reveal that spousal occupational similarity is positively associated with married women’s retention in STEM and STEM-related (healthcare) occupations.

Moreover, the presence of children is a moderator variable in the relationship between women’s employment in STEM or STEM-related occupations and their spouses’ having STEM or STEM-related occupations. This study aims to provide information for research on spousal homogamy, women’s career development, and women with STEM or STEM-related majors and their families.

URL : Associations between women’s retention in STEM or STEM-related fields and their spouses’ occupations and majors

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02692-4

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EN

How many authors are (too) many? A retrospective, descriptive analysis of authorship in biomedical publications

Authors : Martin Jakab, Eva Kittl, Tobias Kiesslich

Publishing in academic journals is primary to disseminate research findings, with authorship reflecting a scientist’s contribution, yielding academic recognition, and carrying significant financial implications. Author numbers per article have consistently risen in recent decades, as demonstrated in various journals and fields.

This study is a comprehensive analysis of authorship trends in biomedical papers from the NCBI PubMed database between 2000 and 2020, utilizing the Entrez Direct (EDirect) E-utilities to retrieve bibliometric data from a dataset of 17,015,001 articles. For all publication types, the mean author number per publication significantly increased over the last two decades from 3.99 to 6.25 (+ 57%, p < 0.0001) following a linear trend (r2 = 0.99) with an average relative increase of 2.28% per year.

This increase was highest for clinical trials (+ 5.67 authors per publication, + 97%), the smallest for case reports (+ 1.01 authors, + 24%). The proportion of single/solo authorships dropped by a factor of about 3 from 17.03% in 2000 to 5.69% in 2020. The percentage of eleven or more authors per publication increased ~ sevenfold, ~ 11-fold and ~ 12-fold for reviews, editorials, and systematic reviews, respectively. Confirming prior findings, this study highlights the escalating authorship in biomedical publications.

Given potential unethical practices, preserving authorship as a trustable indicator of scientific performance is critical. Understanding and curbing questionable authorship practices and inflation are imperative, as discussed through relevant literature to tackle this issue.

URL : How many authors are (too) many? A retrospective, descriptive analysis of authorship in biomedical publications

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04928-1

Catégories
EN

Data Science at the Singularity

Author : David Donoho

Something fundamental to computation-based research has really changed in the last ten years. In certain fields, progress is simply dramatically more rapid than previously. Researchers in affected fields are living through a period of profound transformation, as the fields undergo a transition to frictionless reproducibility (FR).

This transition markedly changes the rate of spread of ideas and practices, affects scientific mindsets and the goals of science, and erases memories of much that came before. The emergence of FR flows from 3 data science principles that matured together after decades of work by many technologists and numerous research communities.

The mature principles involve data sharing, code sharing, and competitive challenges, however implemented in the particularly strong form of frictionless open services. Empirical Machine Learning is today’s leading adherent field; its hidden superpower is adherence to frictionless reproducibility practices; these practices are responsible for the striking and surprising progress in AI that we see everywhere; they can be learned and adhered to by researchers in whatever research field, automatically increasing the rate of progress in each adherent field.

URL : Data Science at the Singularity

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.b91339ef