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Organized Scientific Diaspora and Its Contributions to Science Diplomacy in Emerging Economies: The Case of Latin America and the Caribbean

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Authors : Luisa F. Echeverría-King, Reina Camacho Toro, Pedro Figueroa, Laura A. Galvis, Alejandra González, Verónica Rossana Suárez, Ivonne Torres Atencio, Claudia Natalie Widmaier Müller

The current knowledge society has driven an unprecedented mobility of people, especially scientists, from emerging economies to developed countries. This mobility can allow the development of human talent and the access to first class infrastructure and resources, but it can also mean a loss for emerging economies due to the phenomenon of brain drain.

To counteract this situation, some countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have developed models for the articulation of their scientific diaspora in projects and programs, with the aim of exchanging knowledge and capitalizing on human and technical resources to advance science, technology and innovation systems.

Likewise, science diplomacy has become a tool for interlinking the work of various actors in order to advance the solution of national, transnational or global problems through scientific advice. Scientific diasporas are vital in new structures of cooperation, enabling them to innovate and solve problems jointly, advising their countries of origin and articulating policies and programs.

This research seeks to analyze the interactions and initiatives identified between the organized scientific diaspora from Latin America and the Caribbean and their countries of origin in relation to science diplomacy processes, providing recommendations and proposals for public policy to improve the interaction between the diaspora and the governments of their countries of origin.

Results show that diaspora organizations from Latin America and the Caribbean engage with governmental and non-state actors and are active science diplomacy stakeholders promoting the scientific developments of their country or their researchers, as well as enabling access to research resources creating alliances for scientific, institutional and academic collaborations.

In the cases studied, these efforts are planned and executed by the diaspora without responding to any science diplomacy strategy of the country. Policies and programs are needed to effectively link the scientific diaspora organizations to the interests of the countries.

URL : Organized Scientific Diaspora and Its Contributions to Science Diplomacy in Emerging Economies: The Case of Latin America and the Caribbean

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2022.893593

Institutional repositories and copyright in Greek academic libraries

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Authors : Konstantinos Kyprianos, Ekaterini Lygnou

Institutional repositories were created to collect, preserve, and make available the academic institution’s scientific output. The purpose of this study is to investigate and illustrate how Greek academic libraries with institutional repositories deal with copyright challenges.

The study aims to identify and describe if institutional repository managers apply a certain copyright clearance protocol, the problems they encounter, and how they deal with them. For this study, a quantitative research method based on questionnaires was employed.

The questionnaire consisted of twenty-nine (29) questions separated into three (3) sections and was sent to thirty-one (31) academic libraries.

According to the survey results, the majority of academic libraries have an institutional repository and provide open access to its content. It was found that academic institutional repositories face intellectual property difficulties.

The biggest issue highlighted was a lack of knowledge of the notion of copyright. Finally, communication amongst libraries seems to be the foundation for developing a common policy and addressing the difficulties that have arisen in institutional repositories as a result of Greek copyright legislation limits.

URL : Institutional repositories and copyright in Greek academic libraries

DOI : https://doi.org/10.36253/jlis.it-449

Characteristics of ‘mega’ peer-reviewers

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Authors : Danielle B. Rice, Ba’ Pham, Justin Presseau, Andrea C. Tricco, David Moher

Background

The demand for peer reviewers is often perceived as disproportionate to the supply and availability of reviewers. Considering characteristics associated with peer review behaviour can allow for the development of solutions to manage the growing demand for peer reviewers.

The objective of this research was to compare characteristics among two groups of reviewers registered in Publons.

Methods

A descriptive cross-sectional study design was used to compare characteristics between (1) individuals completing at least 100 peer reviews (‘mega peer reviewers’) from January 2018 to December 2018 as and (2) a control group of peer reviewers completing between 1 and 18 peer reviews over the same time period.

Data was provided by Publons, which offers a repository of peer reviewer activities in addition to tracking peer reviewer publications and research metrics. Mann Whitney tests and chi-square tests were conducted comparing characteristics (e.g., number of publications, number of citations, word count of peer review) of mega peer reviewers to the control group of reviewers.

Results

A total of 1596 peer reviewers had data provided by Publons. A total of 396 M peer reviewers and a random sample of 1200 control group reviewers were included. A greater proportion of mega peer reviews were male (92%) as compared to the control reviewers (70% male).

Mega peer reviewers demonstrated a significantly greater average number of total publications, citations, receipt of Publons awards, and a higher average h index as compared to the control group of reviewers (all p < .001). We found no statistically significant differences in the number of words between the groups (p > .428).

Conclusions

Mega peer reviewers registered in the Publons database also had a higher number of publications and citations as compared to a control group of reviewers. Additional research that considers motivations associated with peer review behaviour should be conducted to help inform peer reviewing activity.

URL : Characteristics of ‘mega’ peer-reviewers

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-022-00121-1

The Academic, Societal and Animal Welfare Benefits of Open Science for Animal Science

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Authors : Christian Nawroth, E. Tobias Krause

Animal science researchers have the obligation to reduce, refine, and replace the usage of animals in research (3R principles). Adherence to these principles can be improved by transparently publishing research findings, data and protocols.

Open Science (OS) can help to increase the transparency of many parts of the research process, and its implementation should thus be considered by animal science researchers as a valuable opportunity that can contribute to the adherence to these 3R-principles.

With this article, we want to encourage animal science researchers to implement a diverse set of OS practices, such as Open Access publishing, preprinting, and the pre-registration of test protocols, in their workflows.

URL : The Academic, Societal and Animal Welfare Benefits of Open Science for Animal Science

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2022.810989

From library budget to information budget: fostering transparency in the transformation towards open access

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Author: Heinz Pampel

The discussion on the transformation of scholarly journals to open access (OA) increasingly concerns financial aspects. Considering the variety of funding strategies for article processing charge (APCs), the array of cost types for scientific information and the need for data monitoring to promote cost transparency, an integrated view of the financial dimension of the OA transition is needed.

This commentary describes the need for implementing an information budget that looks beyond just the library budget and comprehensively targets all financial flows from universities and other research performing organizations to publishers.

An information budget promotes an integrated perspective on the distributed costs at a given institution. This centralized approach of assessing financial flows can be used to strengthen the position of research institutions when negotiating with publishers.

URL : From library budget to information budget: fostering transparency in the transformation towards open access

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.576

Attitudes, willingness, and resources to cover article publishing charges: The influence of age, position, income level country, discipline and open access habits

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Authors : Francisco Segado-Boj, Juan-Jose Prieto-Gutiérrez, Juan Martín-Quevedo

The rise of open access (OA) publishing has been followed by the expansion of the Article Publishing Charges (APC) that moves the financial burden of scholarly journal publishing from libraries and readers to authors.

We introduce the results of an international randomly selected sampled survey (N = 3,422) that explores attitudes towards this pay-to-publish or Gold OA model among scholars. We test the predictor role of age, professional position, discipline, and income-level country in this regard.

We found that APCs are perceived more as a global threat to Science than a deterrent to personal professional careers. Academics in low and lower-middle income level countries hold the most unfavourable opinions about the APC system.

The less experimental disciplines held more negative perceptions of APC compared to STEM and the Life Sciences. Age and access to external funding stood as negative predictors of refusal to pay to publish. Commitment to OA self-archiving predicted the negative global perception of the APC.

We conclude that access to external research funds influences the acceptance and the particular perception of the pay to publish model, remarking the economic dimension of the problem and warning about issues in the inequality between centre and periphery.

URL : Attitudes, willingness, and resources to cover article publishing charges: The influence of age, position, income level country, discipline and open access habits

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1455

The need for accelerated change in diversity, equity and inclusion in publishing and learned societies

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Author : Jonathan Roscoe

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) is a key priority for many organizations and institutions, including learned societies. With diversity at universities, both in the UK and around the world, being reported as low, it was decided to make DE&I one of the main areas of enquiry for the seventh Wiley Society Member Survey, conducted in May 2021.

We found that satisfaction with levels of representation for gender, race and ethnicity was falling and that the impact of the coronavirus pandemic had disproportionately affected those already most disadvantaged within the academic hierarchy.

In order to fully understand the current status of DE&I in academia, and within societies in particular, this paper also draws on other research undertaken or supported by Wiley, including a survey of journal editors and the Brave New World study, as well as further research in which Wiley was not involved.

What it shows is that academic research, learned societies and publishing all have their own DE&I issues that need to be addressed, but that through improved DE&I can come better research.

URL : The need for accelerated change in diversity, equity and inclusion in publishing and learned societies

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1457