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Identifying and characterizing social media communities: a socio-semantic network approach to altmetrics

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

Altmetric indicators allow exploring and profiling individuals who discuss and share scientific literature in social media. But it is still a challenge to identify and characterize communities based on the research topics in which they are interested as social and geographic proximity also influence interactions.

This paper proposes a new method which profiles social media users based on their interest on research topics using altmetric data. Social media users are clustered based on the topics related to the research publications they share in social media.

This allows removing linkages which respond to social or personal proximity and identifying disconnected users who may have similar research interests. We test this method for users tweeting publications from the fields of Information Science & Library Science, and Microbiology.

We conclude by discussing the potential application of this method and how it can assist information professionals, policy managers and academics to understand and identify the main actors discussing research literature in social media.

URL : Identifying and characterizing social media communities: a socio-semantic network approach to altmetrics

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04167-8

Science rules! A qualitative study of scientists’ approaches to grant lottery

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Author : Axel Philipps

Using peer review to assess the validity of research proposals has always had its fair share of critics, including a more-than-fair-share of scholars. The debate about this method of assessing these proposals now seems trivial when compared with assessing the validity for granting funding by lottery.

Some of the same scholars have suggested that the way grant lottery was being assessed has made random allocation seem even-handed, less biased and more supportive of innovative research.

But we know little of what researchers actually think about grant lottery and even less about the thoughts of those scientists who rely on funding. This paper examines scientists’ perspectives on selecting grants by ‘lots’ and how they justify their support or opposition.

How do they approach something scientifically that is, in itself, not scientific? These approaches were investigated with problem-centered interviews conducted with natural scientists in Germany.

The qualitative interviews for this paper reveal that scientists in dominated and dominating field positions are, more or less, open to the idea of giving a selection process by lots a try. Nonetheless, they are against pure randomization because from their point of view it is incompatible with scientific principles.

They rather favor a combination of grant lottery and peer review processes, assuming that only under these conditions could randomly allocated funding be an integral and legitimate part of science.

URL : Science rules! A qualitative study of scientists’ approaches to grant lottery

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvaa027

The role of metrics in peer assessments

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Authors :  Liv Langfeldt, Ingvild Reymert, Dag W Aksnes

Metrics on scientific publications and their citations are easily accessible and are often referred to in assessments of research and researchers. This paper addresses whether metrics are considered a legitimate and integral part of such assessments. Based on an extensive questionnaire survey in three countries, the opinions of researchers are analysed.

We provide comparisons across academic fields (cardiology, economics, and physics) and contexts for assessing research (identifying the best research in their field, assessing grant proposals and assessing candidates for positions).

A minority of the researchers responding to the survey reported that metrics were reasons for considering something to be the best research. Still, a large majority in all the studied fields indicated that metrics were important or partly important in their review of grant proposals and assessments of candidates for academic positions.

In these contexts, the citation impact of the publications and, particularly, the number of publications were emphasized. These findings hold across all fields analysed, still the economists relied more on productivity measures than the cardiologists and the physicists. Moreover, reviewers with high scores on bibliometric indicators seemed more frequently (than other reviewers) to adhere to metrics in their assessments.

Hence, when planning and using peer review, one should be aware that reviewers—in particular reviewers who score high on metrics—find metrics to be a good proxy for the future success of projects and candidates, and rely on metrics in their evaluation procedures despite the concerns in scientific communities on the use and misuse of publication metrics.

URL : The role of metrics in peer assessments

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvaa032

Impact and visibility of Norwegian, Finnish and Spanish journals in the fields of humanities

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Authors : Elías Sanz-Casado, Daniela De Filippo, Rafael Aleixandre Benavent, Vidar Røeggen, Janne Pölönen

This article analyses the impact and visibility of scholarly journals in the humanities that are publishing in the national languages in Finland, Norway and Spain. Three types of publishers are considered: commercial publishers, scholarly society as publisher, and research organizations as publishers.

Indicators of visibility and impact were obtained from Web of Science, SCOPUS, Google Metrics, Scimago Journal Rank and Journal Citation Report.

The findings compiled show that in Spain the categories “History and Archaeology” and “Language and Literature” account for almost 70% of the journals analysed, while the other countries offer a more homogeneous distribution.

In Finland, the scholarly society publisher is predominant, in Spain, research organization as publishers, mostly universities, have a greater weighting, while in Norway, the commercial publishers take centre stage.

The results show that journals from Finland and Norway will have reduced possibilities in terms of impact and visibility, since the vernacular language appeals to a smaller readership. Conversely, the Spanish journals are more attractive for indexing in commercial databases. Distribution in open access ranges from 64 to 70% in Norwegian and Finish journals, and to 91% in Spanish journals.

The existence of DOI range from 31 to 41% in Nordic journals to 60% in Spanish journals and has a more widespread bearing on the citations received in all three countries (journals with DOI and open access are cited more frequently).

URL : Impact and visibility of Norwegian, Finnish and Spanish journals in the fields of humanities

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04169-6

FAIR Forever? Accountabilities and Responsibilities in the Preservation of Research Data

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Author : Amy Currie, William Kilbride

Digital preservation is a fast-moving and growing community of practice of ubiquitous relevance, but in which capability is unevenly distributed. Within the open science and research data communities, digital preservation has a close alignment to the FAIR principles and is delivered through a complex specialist infrastructure comprising technology, staff and policy.

However, capacity erodes quickly, establishing a need for ongoing examination and review to ensure that skills, technology, and policy remain fit for changing purpose. To address this challenge, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) conducted the FAIR Forever study, commissioned by the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Sustainability Working Group and funded by the EOSC Secretariat Project in 2020, to assess the current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the preservation of research data across EOSC, and the feasibility of establishing shared approaches, workflows and services that would benefit EOSC stakeholders.

This paper draws from the FAIR Forever study to document and explore its key findings on the identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to the preservation of FAIR data in EOSC, and to the preservation of research data more broadly.

It begins with background of the study and an overview of the methodology employed, which involved a desk-based assessment of the emerging EOSC vision, interviews with representatives of EOSC stakeholders, and focus groups with digital preservation specialists and data managers in research organizations.

It summarizes key findings on the need for clarity on digital preservation in the EOSC vision and for elucidation of roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities to mitigate risks of data loss, reputation, and sustainability. It then outlines the recommendations provided in the final report presented to the EOSC Sustainability Working Group.

To better ensure that research data can be FAIRer for longer, the recommendations of the study are presented with discussion on how they can be extended and applied to various research data stakeholders in and outside of EOSC, and suggest ways to bring together research data curation, management, and preservation communities to better ensure FAIRness now and in the long term.

URL : FAIR Forever? Accountabilities and Responsibilities in the Preservation of Research Data

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v16i1.768

The renewal of the digital humanities. An overview of the transformation of professions in the humanities and social sciences

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Authors : Marie-Laure Massot, Agnès Tricoche

This article presents a study of the French-speaking digital humanities. It is based on the experience of two research engineers from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) who have been studying these issues for the last ten years.

They conducted a survey at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS-Paris) which enabled them to draw up an overview of the transformation of the profession of humanities and social sciences research engineers in the context of the digital humanities.

The Digit_Hum initiative, which they run in parallel with their respective activities at the ENS, also provided information for this overview thanks to its role as a space for discussion about the digital humanities along with training and structuring of this field at the ENS and the Université Paris Sciences & Lettres (PSL).

URL : The renewal of the digital humanities. An overview of the transformation of professions in the humanities and social sciences

DOI : https://doi.org/10.46298/jdmdh.7552

Do I-PASS for FAIR? Measuring the FAIR-ness of Research Organizations

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Authors : Jacquelijn Ringersma, Margriet Miedema

Given the increased use of the FAIR acronym as adjective for other contexts than data or data sets, the Dutch National Coordination Point for Research Data Management initiated a Task Group to work out the concept of a FAIR research organization.

The results of this Task Groups are a definition of a FAIR enabling organization and a method to measure the FAIR-ness of a research organization (The Do-I-PASS for FAIR method). The method can also aid in developing FAIR-enabling Road Maps for individual research institutions and at a national level.

This practice paper describes the development of the method and provides a couple of use cases for the application of the method in daily research data management practices in research organizations.

URL : Do I-PASS for FAIR? Measuring the FAIR-ness of Research Organizations

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2021-030