InfoDoc MicroVeille – Page 135 – Veille dédiée aux Sciences de l'Information et des Bibliothèques // Collecting and Sharing research papers in Library and Information science ISSN 2429-3938

Swedish researchers’ responses to the cancellation of the big deal with Elsevier

Posted on 28 novembre 2020 by Hans Dillaerts

Authors: Lisa Olsson, Camilla Lindelöw, Lovisa Österlund, Frida Jakobsson

In 2018, the Swedish library consortium, Bibsam, decided to cancel big deal subscriptions with Elsevier. Many researchers (n = 4,221) let their voices be heard in a survey on the consequences of the cancellation.

Almost a third of them (n = 1,241) chose to leave free-text responses to the survey question ‘Is there anything you would like to add?’. A content analysis on these responses resulted in six themes and from these, three main conclusions are drawn.

First, there is no consensus among researchers on whether the cancellation was for good or evil. The most common argument in favour of the cancellation was the principle. The most common argument against cancellation was that it harms researchers and research.

A third of the free-text responses expressed ambivalence towards the cancellation, typically as a conflict between wanting to change the current publishing system and simultaneously suffering from the consequences of the cancellation.

The general support for open access in principle reveals a flawed publishing system, as most feel the pressure to publish in prestigious journals behind paywalls in practice. Second, it was difficult for researchers to take a position for or against cancellation due to their limited knowledge of the ongoing work of higher education institutions and library consortia.

Finally, there are indications that the cancellation made researchers reflect on open access and to some extent alter their publication pattern through their choice of copyright licence and publication channel.

URL : Swedish researchers’ responses to the cancellation of the big deal with Elsevier

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.521

Open Science for private Interests? How the Logic of Open Science Contributes to the Commercialization of Research

Posted on 28 novembre 2020 by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Manuela Fernández Pinto

Financial conflicts of interest, several cases of scientific fraud, and research limitations from strong intellectual property laws have all led to questioning the epistemic and social justice appropriateness of industry-funded research.

At first sight, the ideal of Open Science, which promotes transparency, sharing, collaboration, and accountability, seems to target precisely the type of limitations uncovered in commercially-driven research.

The Open Science movement, however, has primarily focused on publicly funded research, has actively encouraged liaisons with the private sector, and has also created new strategies for commercializing science.

As a consequence, I argue that Open Science ends up contributing to the commercialization of science, instead of overcoming its limitations. I use the examples of research publications and citizen science to illustrate this point.

Accordingly, the asymmetry between private and public science, present in the current plea to open science, ends up compromising the values of transparency, democracy, and accountability.

URL : Open Science for private Interests? How the Logic of Open Science Contributes to the Commercialization of Research

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2020.588331

Metascience as a scientific social movement

Posted on 27 novembre 2020 by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : David Peterson, Aaron Panofsky

Emerging out of the “reproducibility crisis” in science, metascientists have become central players in debates about research integrity, scholarly communication, and science policy. The goal of this article is to introduce metascience to STS scholars, detail the scientific ideology that is apparent in its articles, strategy statements, and research projects, and discuss its institutional and intellectual future.

Put simply, metascience is a scientific social movement that seeks to use the tools of science- especially, quantification and experimentation- to diagnose problems in research practice and improve efficiency.

It draws together data scientists, experimental and statistical methodologists, and open science activists into a project with both intellectual and policy dimensions. Metascientists have been remarkably successful at winning grants, motivating news coverage, and changing policies at science agencies, journals, and universities.

Moreover, metascience represents the apotheosis of several trends in research practice, scientific communication, and science governance including increased attention to methodological and statistical criticism of scientific practice, the promotion of “open science” by science funders and journals, the growing importance of both preprint and data repositories for scientific communication, and the new prominence of data scientists as research makes a turn toward Big Science.

URL : Metascience as a scientific social movement

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/4dsqa

Préservation des données de recherche : proposer des services de soutien aux chercheurs du site Uni Arve de l’université de Genève

Posted on 27 novembre 2020 by Hans Dillaerts

Auteur/Author : Manuela Bezzi

Ce travail porte sur les pratiques des chercheurs du site Uni Arve (faculté des sciences) de l’université de Genève concernant la préservation et la réutilisation des données de recherche, et son objectif est d’évaluer les besoins des chercheurs afin de leur proposer des services de soutien appropriés.

La préservation des données de recherche s’inscrit dans le mouvement de l’Open Data dont l’objectif est de rendre les données de recherche publiquement accessibles, intelligibles et réutilisables, en particulier lorsque ces données ont été produites grâce à des recherches financées par des fonds publics.

Pour ce faire, le FNS demande aux chercheurs de déposer leurs données dans des archives publiques répondant aux principes FAIR. Or, depuis juin 2019, l’université de Genève met à disposition de ses chercheurs une archive institutionnelle, Yareta, répondant aux critères du FNS.

Afin de répondre aux mieux aux besoins des chercheurs, une approche en deux temps a été adoptée : (1) une analyse des jeux de données déposés sur Yareta a permis d’identifier les problématiques faisant obstacle à la réutilisation des données. (2) Puis, des entretiens menés avec des chercheurs ont permis d’analyser leurs pratiques de préservation et leurs besoins.

Les informations récoltées par ces deux approches ont permis de faire les propositions suivantes: un guide d’archivage portant sur quatre activités permettant de garantir une bonne préservation : format, contexte, métadonnées, licence, la mise en place de ressources additionnelles (page web ou formation) couvrant des notions peu comprises par les chercheurs, la modification de pages web existantes pour des raisons de cohérence, l’ajout d’information dans l’outil Yareta.

Ces propositions sont des solutions concrètes, basées sur les ressources existantes de l’université de Genève afin de pouvoir être complémentaires aux services de soutien et aux ressources déjà proposés par l’université de Genève.

De plus, ces propositions pourront bénéficier à toute la communauté de l’université de Genève et pas uniquement aux chercheurs du site Uni Arve.

DOI : https://doc.rero.ch/record/329678

Quand le discours de savoir se fait technodiscours. Hypertextualité, commentaires et unité textuelle du billet scientifique

Posted on 26 novembre 2020 by Hans Dillaerts

Auteur/Author : Ingrid Mayeur

Le présent article propose des pistes pour déterminer par quels moyens le discours scientifique sur blog fait texte. Nous nous intéressons plus spécifiquement à l’enrichissement hypertextuel des énoncés et aux commentaires qui interrogent les contours du billet scientifique comme forme textuelle cohérente.

À partir de l’analyse d’un corpus de 87 billets extraits de la Une d’Hypothèses, plateforme de carnets de recherche en sciences humaines et sociales, nous identifions les fonctions cognitives assurées par ces deux composantes des écrits de blogs scientifiques ainsi que leur incidence sur le jugement de textualité (Adam 2011) susceptible d’être porté sur les billets.

Nous proposons enfin une lecture de l’enrichissement hypertextuel et des commentaires comme gestes discursifs du savoir (Lttr13 2016) jouant un rôle dans les opérations de textualisation des billets scientifiques.

URL : Quand le discours de savoir se fait technodiscours. Hypertextualité, commentaires et unité textuelle du billet scientifique

DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/corela.11876

How is open access accused of being predatory? The impact of Beall’s lists of predatory journals on academic publishing

Posted on 24 novembre 2020 by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Franciszek Krawczyk, Emanuel Kulczycki

The aim of this paper is to investigate how predatory journals are characterized by authors who write about such journals. We emphasize the ways in which predatory journals have been conflated with—or distinguished from—open access journals.

We created a list of relevant publications on predatory publishing using four databases: Web of Science, Scopus, Dimensions, and Microsoft Academic.

We included 280 English-language publications in the review according to their contributions to the discussions on predatory publishing. Then, we coded and qualitatively analyzed these publications.

The findings show the profound influence of Jeffrey Beall, who composed and maintained himself lists of predatory publishers and journals, on the whole discussion on predatory publishing.

The major themes by which Beall has characterized predatory journals are widely present in non-Beall publications. Moreover, 122 papers we reviewed combined predatory publishing with open access using similar strategies as Beall.

The overgeneralization of the flaws of some open access journals to the entire open access movement has led to unjustified prejudices among the academic community toward open access.

This is the first large-scale study that systematically examines how predatory publishing is defined in the literature.

URL : How is open access accused of being predatory? The impact of Beall’s lists of predatory journals on academic publishing

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2020.102271