Evaluating the scientific impact of research infrastructures: The role of current research information systems

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Authors : Renaud Fabre, Daniel Egret, Joachim Schöpfel, Otmane Azeroual

Research infrastructures (RI) offer researchers a multitude of research opportunities and services and play a key role in the performance, innovative strength, and international competitiveness of science. As an important part of the generation and use of new knowledge and technologies, they are essential for research policies.

Because of their strategic importance and their need for significant funding, there is a growing demand for the assessment of their scientific output and impact. Current research information systems (CRIS) have contributed for many years now to the evaluation of universities and research organizations.

Based on studies on the application of CRIS to infrastructures and on a recent French report on the scientometric assessment of RI, this paper analyzes the potential of CRIS and their data models and standards (in particular the international CERIF format and the German RDC model) for the monitoring and evaluation of RI.

The interaction between functional specificities of RI and standards for their assessment is outlined, with reference to their own potential to stimulate and share innovation in the networks located inside and outside RI.

This societal challenge, more than an academic issue, is on the way to further harmonization and consolidation of shared and common RI metrics.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00111

Openness and Licensing

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Author : Melanie Dulong de Rosnay

This chapter traces the evolution of legal conditions meant to support the production and flourishing of “commons-based peer production” in a diversity of fields covered by copyright, mostly in the digital realm.

From software to creative works, including scientific articles, cultural heritage, public sector information, and open data, a wealth of digital, knowledge, intellectual or information commons can be peer produced.

The rules which guarantee that they can remain in the commons, under open conditions, have been the subject of heated debates about the politics of technology and heavy legal fine-tuning along the years, opposing different definitions and nuances in openness reflecting underlying philosophies within the peer production political economy, such as liberal and commons-based approaches.

URL : https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02986892v1

‘Nepotistic journals’: a survey of biomedical journals

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Authors : Alexandre Scanff, Florian Naudet, Ioana Cristea, David Moher, Dorothy V M Bishop, Clara Locher

Context

Convergent analyses in different disciplines support the use of the Percentage of Papers by the Most Prolific author (PPMP) as a red flag to identify journals that can be suspected of questionable editorial practices. We examined whether this index, complemented by the Gini index, could be useful for identifying cases of potential editorial bias, using a large sample of biomedical journals.

Methods

We extracted metadata for all biomedical journals referenced in the National Library of Medicine, with any attributed Broad Subject Terms, and at least 50 authored (i.e. by at least one author) articles between 2015 and 2019, identifying the most prolific author (i.e. the person who signed the most papers in each particular journal).

We calculated the PPMP and the 2015-2019 Gini index for the distribution of articles across authors. When the relevant information was reported, we also computed the median publication lag (time between submission and acceptance) for articles authored by any of the most prolific authors and that for articles not authored by prolific authors.

For outlier journals, defined as a PPMP or Gini index above the 95th percentile of their respective distributions, a random sample of 100 journals was selected and described in relation to status on the editorial board for the most prolific author.

Results

5 468 journals that published 4 986 335 papers between 2015 and 2019 were analysed. The PPMP 95th percentile was 10.6% (median 2.9%). The Gini index 95th percentile was 0.355 (median 0.183). Correlation between the two indices was 0.35 (95CI 0.33 to 0.37). Information on publication lag was available for 2 743 journals.

We found that 277 journals (10.2%) had a median time lag to publication for articles by the most prolific author(s) that was shorter than 3 weeks, versus 51 (1.9%) journals with articles not authored by prolific author(s).

Among the random sample of outlier journals, 98 provided information about their editorial board. Among these 98, the most prolific author was part of the editorial board in 60 cases (61%), among whom 25 (26% of the 98) were editors-in-chief.

Discussion

In most journals publications are distributed across a large number of authors. Our results reveal a subset of journals where a few authors, often members of the editorial board, were responsible for a disproportionate number of publications.

The papers by these authors were more likely to be accepted for publication within 3 weeks of their submission. To enhance trust in their practices, journals need to be transparent about their editorial and peer review practices.

URL : ‘Nepotistic journals’: a survey of biomedical journals

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.03.429520

Large-scale comparison of bibliographic data sources: Scopus, Web of Science, Dimensions, Crossref, and Microsoft Academic

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Authors : Martijn Visser, Nees Jan van Eck, Ludo Waltman

We present a large-scale comparison of five multidisciplinary bibliographic data sources: Scopus, Web of Science, Dimensions, Crossref, and Microsoft Academic. The comparison considers scientific documents from the period 2008-2017 covered by these data sources. Scopus is compared in a pairwise manner with each of the other data sources.

We first analyze differences between the data sources in the coverage of documents, focusing for instance on differences over time, differences per document type, and differences per discipline.

We then study differences in the completeness and accuracy of citation links. Based on our analysis, we discuss strengths and weaknesses of the different data sources. We emphasize the importance of combining a comprehensive coverage of the scientific literature with a flexible set of filters for making selections of the literature.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.10732

Large coverage fluctuations in Google Scholar: a case study

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Authors : Alberto Martín-Martín, Emilio Delgado López-Cózar

Unlike other academic bibliographic databases, Google Scholar intentionally operates in a way that does not maintain coverage stability: documents that stop being available to Google Scholar’s crawlers are removed from the system.

This can also affect Google Scholar’s citation graph (citation counts can decrease). Furthermore, because Google Scholar is not transparent about its coverage, the only way to directly observe coverage loss is through regular monitorization of Google Scholar data.

Because of this, few studies have empirically documented this phenomenon. This study analyses a large decrease in coverage of documents in the field of Astronomy and Astrophysics that took place in 2019 and its subsequent recovery, using longitudinal data from previous analyses and a new dataset extracted in 2020.

Documents from most of the larger publishers in the field disappeared from Google Scholar despite continuing to be available on the Web, which suggests an error on Google Scholar’s side. Disappeared documents did not reappear until the following index-wide update, many months after the problem was discovered.

The slowness with which Google Scholar is currently able to resolve indexing errors is a clear limitation of the platform both for literature search and bibliometric use cases.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.07571

Research data management and data sharing behaviour of university researchers

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Authors : Yurdagül Ünal, Gobinda Chowdhury, Serap Kurbanoğlu, Joumana Boustany, Geoff Walton

Introduction

The aim of this study is to understand how university researchers behave in the context of using and sharing research data in OA mode.

Method

An online questionnaire survey was conducted amongst academics and researchers in three countries – UK, France and Turkey. There were 26 questions to collect data on: researcher information, e.g. discipline, gender and experience; data sharing practices, concerns; familiarity with data management practices; and policies/challenges including knowledge of metadata and training.

Analysis

SPSS was used to analyse the dataset, and Chi-Square tests, at 0.05 significance level, were conducted to find out association between researchers’ behaviour in data sharing and different areas of research data management (RDM).

Findings

Findings show that OA is still not common amongst researchers. Data ethics and legal issues appear to be the most significant concerns for researchers. Most researchers have not received any training in RDM such as data management planning metadata, or file naming. However, most researchers would welcome formal training in different aspects of RDM.

Conclusion

This study indicates directions for further research to understand the disciplinary differences in researchers’ data access and management behaviour so that appropriate training and advocacy programmes can be developed to promote OA to research data.

URL : http://www.informationr.net/ir/24-1/isic2018/isic1818.html

Open Access Initiatives in Western Asia

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Authors : Vrushali Sainath Dandawate, M. Dhanmjaya

This paper highlights open access activities and resources from Western Asia. The development of open access journals from this region is analyzed through regional listings in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and information about the development and implementation of open access repositories is taken from the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) platform.

Additional information about OA resources and development projects was found through UNESCO’s Global Open Access Portal. The study’s findings show that, even with support from international groups like EIFL and OpenAIRE, the region’s open access market lags behind that of more developed countries.

Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) stand out among Western Asian states, and Cyprus took the important step of instituting a national public open access policy. Awareness projects and workshops will be a vital step in helping the countries of Western Asia to see the value of open access and to build a stronger OA infrastructure.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1080/15228886.2021.1874349