EN

The evolving role of preprints in the dissemination of COVID-19 research and their impact on the science communication landscape

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Nicholas Fraser, Liam Brierley, Gautam Dey, Jessica K. Polka, Máté Pálfy, Federico Nann, Jonathon Alexis Coates

The world continues to face a life-threatening viral pandemic. The virus underlying the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has caused over 98 million confirmed cases and 2.2 million deaths since January 2020.

Although the most recent respiratory viral pandemic swept the globe only a decade ago, the way science operates and responds to current events has experienced a cultural shift in the interim.

The scientific community has responded rapidly to the COVID-19 pandemic, releasing over 125,000 COVID-19–related scientific articles within 10 months of the first confirmed case, of which more than 30,000 were hosted by preprint servers.

We focused our analysis on bioRxiv and medRxiv, 2 growing preprint servers for biomedical research, investigating the attributes of COVID-19 preprints, their access and usage rates, as well as characteristics of their propagation on online platforms.

Our data provide evidence for increased scientific and public engagement with preprints related to COVID-19 (COVID-19 preprints are accessed more, cited more, and shared more on various online platforms than non-COVID-19 preprints), as well as changes in the use of preprints by journalists and policymakers.

We also find evidence for changes in preprinting and publishing behaviour: COVID-19 preprints are shorter and reviewed faster.

Our results highlight the unprecedented role of preprints and preprint servers in the dissemination of COVID-19 science and the impact of the pandemic on the scientific communication landscape.

URL : The evolving role of preprints in the dissemination of COVID-19 research and their impact on the science communication landscape

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000959

EN

For how long and with what relevance do genetics articles retracted due to research misconduct remain active in the scientific literature

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Rafael Dal-Ré, Carmen Ayuso

We aimed to quantify the number of pre- and post-retraction citations obtained by genetics articles retracted due to research misconduct. All retraction notices available in the Retraction Watch database for genetics articles published in 1970–2016 were assessed.

The reasons for retraction were fabrication/falsification and plagiarism. The endpoints were the number of citations of retracted articles and when and how journals reported on retractions and whether this was published on PubMed.

Four hundred and sixty retracted genetics articles were cited 34,487 times; 7,945 (23%) were post-retraction citations. Median time to retraction and time to last citation were 3.2 and 3 years, respectively. Most (96%) had a PubMed retraction notice, One percent of these were totally removed from journal websites altogether, and 4% had no information available on either the online or PDF versions.

Ninety percent of citations were from articles retracted due to falsification/fabrication. The percentage of post-retraction citations was significantly higher in the case of plagiarism (42%) than in the case of fabrication/falsification (21.5%) (p<0.001). Median time to retraction was shorter (1.3 years) in the case of plagiarism than for fabrication/falsification (4.8 years, p<0.001).

The retraction was more frequently reported in the PDFs (70%) for the fabrication/falsification cases than for the plagiarism cases (43%, p<0.001). The highest rate of retracted papers due to falsification/fabrication was among authors in the USA, and the highest rate for plagiarism was in China.

Although most retractions were appropriately handled by journals, the gravest issue was that median time to retraction for articles retracted for falsification/fabrication was nearly 5 years, earning close to 6800 post-retraction citations. Journals should implement processes to speed-up the retraction process that will help to minimize post-retraction citations.

URL : For how long and with what relevance do genetics articles retracted due to research misconduct remain active in the scientific literature

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2020.1835479

EN

Requiem for impact factors and high publication charges

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Chris R Triggle, Ross MacDonald, David J. Triggle, Donald Grierson

Journal impact factors, publication charges and assessment of quality and accuracy of scientific research are critical for researchers, managers, funders, policy makers, and society. Editors and publishers compete for impact factor rankings, to demonstrate how important their journals are, and researchers strive to publish in perceived top journals, despite high publication and access charges.

This raises questions of how top journals are identified, whether assessments of impacts are accurate and whether high publication charges borne by the research community are justified, bearing in mind that they also collectively provide free peer-review to the publishers.

Although traditional journals accelerated peer review and publication during the COVID-19 pandemic, preprint servers made a greater impact with over 30,000 open access articles becoming available and accelerating a trend already seen in other fields of research.

We review and comment on the advantages and disadvantages of a range of assessment methods and the way in which they are used by researchers, managers, employers and publishers.

We argue that new approaches to assessment are required to provide a realistic and comprehensive measure of the value of research and journals and we support open access publishing at a modest, affordable price to benefit research producers and consumers.

URL : Requiem for impact factors and high publication charges

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2021.1909481

EN

Open Research Data and Open Peer Review: Perceptions of a Medical and Health Sciences Community in Greece

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Eirini Delikoura, Dimitrios Kouis

Recently significant initiatives have been launched for the dissemination of Open Access as part of the Open Science movement. Nevertheless, two other major pillars of Open Science such as Open Research Data (ORD) and Open Peer Review (OPR) are still in an early stage of development among the communities of researchers and stakeholders.

The present study sought to unveil the perceptions of a medical and health sciences community about these issues. Through the investigation of researchers‘ attitudes, valuable conclusions can be drawn, especially in the field of medicine and health sciences, where an explosive growth of scientific publishing exists.

A quantitative survey was conducted based on a structured questionnaire, with 179 valid responses. The participants in the survey agreed with the Open Peer Review principles. However, they ignored basic terms like FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and appeared incentivized to permit the exploitation of their data.

Regarding Open Peer Review (OPR), participants expressed their agreement, implying their support for a trustworthy evaluation system.

Conclusively, researchers need to receive proper training for both Open Research Data principles and Open Peer Review processes which combined with a reformed evaluation system will enable them to take full advantage of the opportunities that arise from the new scholarly publishing and communication landscape.

URL : Open Research Data and Open Peer Review: Perceptions of a Medical and Health Sciences Community in Greece

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9020014

EN

Adaptable Methods for Training in Research Data Management

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors: Katarzyna Biernacka, Kerstin Helbig, Petra Buchholz

The management of research data has become an essential aspect of good scientific practice. Education in research data management is, however, scarce. The low number of trainers can be attributed on the one hand to a lack of educational paths. On the other hand, qualification opportunities for academics who have already completed their studies and are in employment are missing.

Within the research project FDMentor a Train-the-Trainer programme was therefore developed to teach potential multipliers of research data management, and at the same time impart basic didactic knowledge.

The resulting concept was created, in addition to freely re-usable materials, to support researchers and research support staff in passing on this knowledge. In addition, the generic development and free licensing of the concept enables transferability to other thematic contexts, such as Open Access or Open Science.

URL : Adaptable Methods for Training in Research Data Management

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2021-014

FR

Le libre accès au service de la communication sur le changement climatique en Afrique

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Auteur/Author : Marième Pollèle Ndiaye

Cette contribution est issue d’un projet de recherche consacré aux défis de la science ouverte pour stimuler la communication sur le changement climatique en Afrique. Nous tentons de comprendre d’abord, ce qui explique l’invisibilité des recherches dans ce domaine avant de questionner ce qui définit le décloisonnement scientifique.

En nous servant des sciences de l’information et de la communication (SIC) comme guide, deux hypothèses serviront de fils conducteurs à la réflexion. La première consistera à envisager les temporalités organisationnelles comme facteurs pouvant influencer l’engagement des chercheurs en faveur d’une science ouverte.

Dans le même ordre d’idée, la seconde hypothèse considérera l’aspect rhizomique (au sens de Gilles Deuleuze et Felix Guattari, 1976) des SIC tel un écueil pour identifier les recherches africaines autour de la communication sur le changement climatique.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ctd.4008

EN

Preprint Abstracts in Times of Crisis: a Comparative Study with the Pre-pandemic Period

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Frédérique Bordignon, Liana Ermakova, Marianne Noel

The urgency to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak has driven an unprecedented surge in preprints that aim to speed up knowledge dissemination as they are available much sooner than peer-reviewed publications.

In this study we consider abstracts of research articles and preprints as main entry points that draw attention to the most important information of the document and that try to entice us to read the whole article. In this paper, we try to capture and examine shifts in scientific abstract writing produced at the very beginning of the pandemic.

We made a comparative study of abstracts in terms of their informativeness associated with preprints issued in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and those produced in 2019, the closest pre-pandemic period. Our results clearly differ from one preprint server to another and show that there are community-centered habits as regards writing and reporting results.

The preprints issued from the arXiv, ChemRxiv and Research Square servers tend to have more informative (generous) abstracts than the ones submitted to the other servers. In four servers, the ratio of structured abstracts decreases with the pandemic.

URL : Preprint Abstracts in Times of Crisis: a Comparative Study with the Pre-pandemic Period

Original location : https://hal-enpc.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03187900