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Community curation in PomBase: enabling fission yeast experts to provide detailed, standardized, sharable annotation from research publications

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Authors : Antonia Lock, Midori A Harris, Kim Rutherford, Jacqueline Hayles, Valerie Wood

Maximizing the impact and value of scientific research requires efficient knowledge distribution, which increasingly depends on the integration of standardized published data into online databases.

To make data integration more comprehensive and efficient for fission yeast research, PomBase has pioneered a community curation effort that engages publication authors directly in FAIR-sharing of data representing detailed biological knowledge from hypothesis-driven experiments.

Canto, an intuitive online curation tool that enables biologists to describe their detailed functional data using shared ontologies, forms the core of PomBase’s system.

With 8 years’ experience, and as the author response rate reaches 50%, we review community curation progress and the insights we have gained from the project.

We highlight incentives and nudges we deploy to maximize participation, and summarize project outcomes, which include increased knowledge integration and dissemination as well as the unanticipated added value arising from co-curation by publication authors and professional curators.

URL : Community curation in PomBase: enabling fission yeast experts to provide detailed, standardized, sharable annotation from research publications

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1093/database/baaa028

Data Sharing in the Context of Health-Related Citizen Science

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Authors : Mary A. Majumder, Amy L. McGuire

As citizen science expands, questions arise regarding the applicability of norms and policies created in the context of conventional science. This article focuses on data sharing in the conduct of health-related citizen science, asking whether citizen scientists have obligations to share data and publish findings on par with the obligations of professional scientists.

We conclude that there are good reasons for supporting citizen scientists in sharing data and publishing findings, and we applaud recent efforts to facilitate data sharing.

At the same time, we believe it is problematic to treat data sharing and publication as ethical requirements for citizen scientists, especially where there is the potential for burden and harm without compensating benefit.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/1073110520917044

Availability of research articles for the public during pandemic – a case study

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Author : Augustine Joshua Devasahayam

The coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) disease has affected millions of lives, forcing most of us to stay at home and work. However, there is an immediate need to conduct research on potential drugs against COVID-19.

In this article, the extent to which major publishers have provided access for the public to read research articles relevant to potential drug candidates for the COVID-19 disease are presented.

A systematic search of five electronic databases (Elsevier’s ScienceDirect, Taylor & Francis, SpringerLink, Wiley, and New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)) was conducted on April 12-17, 2020. The total number of research articles containing terms ‘Ribavirin’, ‘Remdesivir’, ‘Hydroxychloroquine OR Chloroquine’, ‘Favipiravir’, ‘Lopinavir OR Ritonavir’, ‘Sarilumab’, and ‘Tocilizumab’, available for the public to read for free were determined.

In this study, there was a lack of full access to research articles related to potential drugs of COVID-19 in commercial academic databases, except for ‘Remdesivir’ and ‘Favipiravir’ from NEJM.

URL : Availability of research articles for the public during pandemic – a case study

DOI : http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10340

Towards inclusive scholarly publishing: developments in the university press community

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Authors: Niccole Leilanionapae‘aina Coggins, Gisela Concepción Fosado, Christie Henry, Gita Manaktala

This article provides an overview of the ways in which the members of the Association of University Presses are working towards more inclusive practices in scholarly publishing.

The authors consider the Mellon University Press Diversity Fellowship Program (now in its fourth year), the work of the Association’s Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, the Gender, Equity and Cultures of Respect Task Force and the new Equity, Justice and Inclusion Committee.

They also look at press-based working groups and several ‘Toolkits for Equity’ that are currently in development.

The volunteers engaged in these and other efforts are working to document how bias has shaped universities and university presses, to propose actions to disrupt this powerful force and to share what they have learned with their colleagues as well as with the larger scholarly publishing and academic communities.

URL : Towards inclusive scholarly publishing: developments in the university press community

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.506

How common are explicit research questions in journal articles?

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Authors : Mike Thelwall, Amalia Mas-Bleda

Although explicitly labeled research questions seem to be central to some fields, others do not need them.

This may confuse authors, editors, readers, and reviewers of multidisciplinary research. This article assesses the extent to which research questions are explicitly mentioned in 17 out of 22 areas of scholarship from 2000 to 2018 by searching over a million full-text open access journal articles. Research questions were almost never explicitly mentioned (under 2%) by articles in engineering and physical, life, and medical sciences, and were the exception (always under 20%) for the broad fields in which they were least rare: computing, philosophy, theology, and social sciences. Nevertheless, research questions were increasingly mentioned explicitly in all fields investigated, despite a rate of 1.8% overall (1.1% after correcting for irrelevant matches).

Other terminology for an article’s purpose may be more widely used instead, including aims, objectives, goals, hypotheses, and purposes, although no terminology occurs in a majority of articles in any broad field tested. Authors, editors, readers, and reviewers should therefore be aware that the use of explicitly labeled research questions or other explicit research purpose terminology is non-standard in most or all broad fields, although it is becoming less rare.

URL : How common are explicit research questions in journal articles?

Original location : https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/qss_a_00041?af=R&

Analysis of an Open Textbook Adoption in an American History Course: Impact on Student Academic Outcomes and Behaviors

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Authors : Penny Beile, Aimee deNoyelles, John Raible

Textbook costs can have a significant impact on the purchasing behaviors and academic success of higher education students. Open textbooks promise significant cost savings, yet perceptions about quality and efficacy still linger. This study explored the impact of an open textbook adoption in an American history course on student academic outcomes and behaviors.

Using a mixed-methods design, significant savings were realized with no decrease in student academic outcomes. Further, students reported having a positive experience using the open textbook, perceived the textbook as being of high quality, and expressed gratitude about the free cost.

The authors describe the respective roles of the librarian/instructional designer team and note the importance of working collaboratively with instructors to ensure successful implementation of open textbook adoptions.

URL : Analysis of an Open Textbook Adoption in an American History Course: Impact on Student Academic Outcomes and Behaviors

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.81.4.721

Open access and research dissemination in Africa

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Authors : Katie Wilson, Anthony Kiuna, Richard Lamptey, Susan Veldsman, Lucy Montgomery, Cameron Neylon, Richard Hosking, Karl Huang, Alkim Ozaygen

This paper discusses research undertaken by the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) and participants during and following an Open Knowledge international workshop held in Mauritius in September 2019.

The workshop brought together key experts to explore the role of open knowledge in the creation of equitable and inclusive global knowledge landscapes.

This paper explores the role of open access and institutional repositories in knowledge sharing and the dissemination of research output from higher education and research institutions within the African continent.

The paper reviews the landscape of research output from the African continent; analyses open access research output, overviews of institutional knowledge sharing positions and the dissemination of research output from Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02544891