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Publishing of COVID-19 preprints in peer-reviewed journals, preprinting trends, public discussion and quality issues

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Authors : Ivan Kodvanj, Jan Homolak, Vladimir Trkulja

COVID-19-related (vs. non-related) articles appear to be more expeditiously processed and published in peer-reviewed journals.

We aimed to evaluate: (i) whether COVID-19-related preprints were favored for publication, (ii) preprinting trends and public discussion of the preprints, and (iii) the relationship between the publication topic (COVID-19-related or not) and quality issues.

Manuscripts deposited at bioRxiv and medRxiv between January 1 and September 27 2020 were assessed for the probability of publishing in peer-reviewed journals, and those published were evaluated for submission-to-acceptance time. The extent of public discussion was assessed based on Altmetric and Disqus data.

The Retraction Watch Database and PubMed were used to explore the retraction of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 articles and preprints. With adjustment for the preprinting server and number of deposited versions, COVID-19-related preprints were more likely to be published within 120 days since the deposition of the first version (OR = 1.96, 95% CI: 1.80–2.14) as well as over the entire observed period (OR = 1.39, 95% CI: 1.31–1.48). Submission-to-acceptance was by 35.85 days (95% CI: 32.25–39.45) shorter for COVID-19 articles.

Public discussion of preprints was modest and COVID-19 articles were overrepresented in the pool of retracted articles in 2020. Current data suggest a preference for publication of COVID-19-related preprints over the observed period.

URL : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04249-7

Bringing All the Stakeholders to the Table: A Collaborative Approach to Data Sharing

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Authors : Megan N. O’Donnell, Curtis Brundy

Objective

This paper examines a unique data set disclosure process at a medium sized, land grant, research university and the campus collaboration that led to its creation.

Methods

The authors utilized a single case study methodology, reviewing relevant documents and workflows. As first-hand participants in the collaboration and disclosure process development, their own accounts and experiences also were utilized.

Results

A collaborative approach to enhancing research data sharing is essential, considering the wide array of stakeholders involved across the life cycle of research data. A transparent, inclusive data set disclosure process is a viable route to ensuring research data can be appropriately shared.

Conclusions

Successful sharing of research data impacts a range of university units and individuals. The establishment of productive working relationships and trust between these stakeholders is critical to expanding the sharing of research data and to establishing shared workflows.

URL : Bringing All the Stakeholders to the Table: A Collaborative Approach to Data Sharing

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.2022.1224

The influence of funding on the Open Access citation advantage

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Authors : Pablo Dorta-González, María Isabel Dorta-González

Some of the citation advantage in open access is likely due to more access allows more people to read and hence cite articles they otherwise would not. However, causation is difficult to establish and there are many possible bias. Several factors can affect the observed differences in citation rates.

Funder mandates can be one of them. Funders are likely to have OA requirement, and well-funded studies are more likely to receive more citations than poorly funded studies. In this paper this hypothesis is tested. Thus, we studied the effect of funding on the publication modality and the citations received in more than 128 thousand research articles, of which 31% were funded.

These research articles come from 40 randomly selected subject categories in the year 2016, and the citations received from the period 2016-2020 in the Scopus database. We found open articles published in hybrid journals were considerably more cited than those in open access journals.

Thus, articles under the hybrid gold modality are cite on average twice as those in the gold modality. This is the case regardless of funding, so this evidence is strong. Moreover, within the same publication modality, we found that funded articles generally obtain 50% more citations than unfunded ones.

The most cited modality is the hybrid gold and the least cited is the gold, well below even the paywalled. Furthermore, the use of open access repositories considerably increases the citations received, especially for those articles without funding. Thus, the articles in open access repositories (green) are 50% more cited than the paywalled ones.

This evidence is remarkable and does not depend on funding. Excluding the gold modality, there is a citation advantage in more than 75% of the cases and it is considerably greater among unfunded articles. This result is strong both across fields and over time

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.02082v1

Exploring open access coverage of Wikipedia-cited research across the White Rose Universities

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Authors : Andy Tattersall, Nick Sheppard, Thom Blake, Kate O’Neill, Christopher Carroll

The popular online encyclopaedia Wikipedia is an important and influential platform that assists with the communication of science to a global audience. Using data obtained from Altmetric.com and Unpaywall, we looked at research from the White Rose Universities (Sheffield, Leeds and York) that is cited on Wikipedia.

Of that research, we explored what percentage of citations were available open access (OA) and the location of those citations to ascertain whether they were hosted by publishers or within OA repositories.

This article explores the importance of access to OA research within such an important and leading platform as Wikipedia and how well it supports effective scientific communication across society.

URL : Exploring open access coverage of Wikipedia-cited research across the White Rose Universities

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.559

Getting it right: implementing data protection in citizen science research

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Authors : Robin Pierce, Mariana Evram

As citizen science projects increase in number, scope and relevance to policy, the conduct of the underlying research is likely to come under greater scrutiny, particularly if any resulting research findings are to be regarded as legitimate. Among the most important aspects of research ethics scrutiny is the handling of data.

The ever-increasing attention to the data protection rights of citizens can be seen across research domains, from health to environmental impacts. Careful attention to data protection is essential to the sustainability of citizen science for practical reasons as well. Complying with data protection laws is not optional.

It is a legal requirement. Failure to meet the requirements can result in substantial fines, which most citizen science projects can ill afford. Moreover, the scientific, political and legal viability of citizen science hinges on getting data protection right. This article sets out some of the key data protection considerations that commonly arise in conducting a citizen science project.

URL : Getting it right: implementing data protection in citizen science research

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.538

Identify scientific publications country-wide and measure their open access: The case of the French Open Science Barometer (BSO)

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Authors : Lauranne Chaignon, Daniel Egret

We use several sources to collect and evaluate academic scientific publication on a country scale, and we apply it to the case of France for the years 2015–2020, while presenting a more detailed analysis focused on the reference year 2019.

These sources are diverse: databases available by subscription (Scopus, Web of Science) or open to the scientific community (Microsoft Academic Graph), the national open archive HAL, and databases serving thematic communities (ADS and PUBMED).

We show the contribution of the different sources to the final corpus. These results are then compared to those obtained with another approach, that of the French Open Science Barometer (Jeangirard, 2019) for monitoring open access at the national level.

We show that both approaches provide a convergent estimate of the open access rate. We also present and discuss the definitions of the concepts used, and list the main difficulties encountered in processing the data.

The results of this study contribute to a better understanding of the respective contributions of the main databases and their complementarity in the broad framework of a country-wide corpus.

They also shed light on the calculation of open access rates and thus contribute to a better understanding of current developments in the field of open science.

URL : Identify scientific publications country-wide and measure their open access: The case of the French Open Science Barometer (BSO)

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00179

Contribution of the Open Access modality to the impact of hybrid journals controlling by field and time effects

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Authors : Pablo Dorta-González, María Isabel Dorta-González

Purpose

Researchers are more likely to read and cite papers to which they have access than those that they cannot obtain. Thus, the objective of this work is to analyze the contribution of the Open Access (OA) modality to the impact of hybrid journals.

Design / methodology /approach

The “research articles” in the year 2017 from 200 hybrid journals in four subject areas, and the citations received by such articles in the period 2017-2020 in the Scopus database, were analyzed. The hybrid OA papers were compared with the paywalled ones.

The journals were randomly selected from those with share of OA papers higher than some minimal value. More than 60 thousand research articles were analyzed in the sample, of which 24% under the OA modality.

Findings

We obtain at journal level that cites per article in both hybrid modalities (OA and paywalled) strongly correlate. However, there is no correlation between the OA prevalence and cites per article.

There is OA citation advantage in 80% of hybrid journals. Moreover, the OA citation advantage is consistent across fields and held in time. We obtain an OA citation advantage of 50% in average, and higher than 37% in half of the hybrid journals. Finally, the OA citation advantage is higher in Humanities than in Science and Social Science.

Research limitations

Some of the citation advantage is likely due to more access allows more people to read and hence cite articles they otherwise would not. However, causation is difficult to establish and there are many possible bias.

Several factors can affect the observed differences in citation rates. Funder mandates can be one of them. Funders are likely to have OA requirement, and well-funded studies are more likely to receive more citations than poorly funded studies.

Another discussed factor is the selection bias postulate, which suggests that authors choose only their most impactful studies to be open access.

Practical implications

For hybrid journals, the open access modality is positive, in the sense that it provides a  greater number of potential readers. This in turn translates into a greater number of citations and an improvement in the position of the journal in the rankings by impact factor.

For researchers it is also positive because it increases the potential number of readers and citationsreceived.

Originality /value

Our study refines previous results by comparing documents more similar to each other. Although it does not examine the cause of the observed citation advantage, we find that it exists in a very large sample.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.09284