The strain on scientific publishing

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Authors : Mark A. Hanson, Pablo Gómez Barreiro, Paolo Crosetto, Dan Brockington

Scientists are increasingly overwhelmed by the volume of articles being published. Total articles indexed in Scopus and Web of Science have grown exponentially in recent years; in 2022 the article total was 47% higher than in 2016, which has outpaced the limited growth, if any, in the number of practising scientists.

Thus, publication workload per scientist (writing, reviewing, editing) has increased dramatically. We define this problem as the strain on scientific publishing. To analyse this strain, we present five data-driven metrics showing publisher growth, processing times, and citation behaviours.

We draw these data from web scrapes, requests for data from publishers, and material that is freely available through publisher websites. Our findings are based on millions of papers produced by leading academic publishers.

We find specific groups have disproportionately grown in their articles published per year, contributing to this strain. Some publishers enabled this growth by adopting a strategy of hosting special issues, which publish articles with reduced turnaround times. Given pressures on researchers to publish or perish to be competitive for funding applications, this strain was likely amplified by these offers to publish more articles.

We also observed widespread year-over-year inflation of journal impact factors coinciding with this strain, which risks confusing quality signals. Such exponential growth cannot be sustained. The metrics we define here should enable this evolving conversation to reach actionable solutions to address the strain on scientific publishing.

URL : The strain on scientific publishing

Alternative location : https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.15884

Establishing an early indicator for data sharing and reuse

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Authors : Agata Piękniewska, Laurel L. Haak, Darla Henderson, Katherine McNeill, Anita Bandrowski, Yvette Seger

Funders, publishers, scholarly societies, universities, and other stakeholders need to be able to track the impact of programs and policies designed to advance data sharing and reuse. With the launch of the NIH data management and sharing policy in 2023, establishing a pre-policy baseline of sharing and reuse activity is critical for the biological and biomedical community.

Toward this goal, we tested the utility of mentions of research resources, databases, and repositories (RDRs) as a proxy measurement of data sharing and reuse. We captured and processed text from Methods sections of open access biological and biomedical research articles published in 2020 and 2021 and made available in PubMed Central.

We used natural language processing to identify text strings to measure RDR mentions. In this article, we demonstrate our methodology, provide normalized baseline data sharing and reuse activity in this community, and highlight actions authors and publishers can take to encourage data sharing and reuse practices.

URL : Establishing an early indicator for data sharing and reuse

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1586

Enjeux, pratiques et stratégies d’ouverture de l’information scientifique en bioéconomie

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Auteur.ice : Marianne Duquenne

La bioéconomie est une opportunité en réponse aux problématiques écologiques actuelles que nous traversons. Ce nouveau paradigme contribue à une transition globale vers des modèles plus durables et respectueux de l’environnement. La mise en œuvre d’une telle stratégie sur un territoire implique nécessairement une forte interaction entre le secteur privé et le secteur public pour répondre aux défis d’innovation posés par la bioéconomie.

La région Hauts-de-France témoigne de cet écosystème composé d’acteurs de l’industrie, de la recherche, du transfert ou encore du monde de l’exploitation agricole. L’enjeu de cet article est double : d’abord, de comprendre comment ces catégories d’acteurs s’organisent pour produire des connaissances scientifiques et techniques en bioéconomie et, aussi, d’analyser le partage des résultats de la recherche entre ces acteurs.

Cette dernière question se pose de plus en plus depuis que l’État français mène une politique en faveur d’une science plus ouverte, transparente et accessible à tous. Depuis 2019, une étude de terrain est menée pour analyser l’application des principes de la science ouverte en bioéconomie.

Des entretiens menés auprès de porteurs de projets révèlent un domaine de recherche émergent, large et complexe. Tandis que les parties prenantes ont recours à des stratégies plus ou moins ouvertes pour partager les résultats de leurs travaux en recherche et développement, les résultats montrent que la mise en œuvre des principes de la science ouverte peut être impactée.

La discussion porte sur la nécessité d’être nuancé dans l’ouverture de l’information scientifique pour garantir les intérêts des partenaires industriels, et par ailleurs pour assurer le bon développement de la bioéconomie sur le territoire des Hauts-de-France.

URL : Enjeux, pratiques et stratégies d’ouverture de l’information scientifique en bioéconomie

Original location : https://revue-cossi.numerev.com/articles/revue-12/3101-enjeux-pratiques-et-strategies-d-ouverture-de-l-information-scientifique-en-bioeconomie

What’s trust got to do with research: why not accountability?

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Authors : Morẹ́nikẹ́ Oluwátóyìn Foláyan, Bridget Haire

This paper explores the intricate dynamics of trust, power, and vulnerability in the relationship between researchers and study participants/communities in the field of bioethics.

The power and knowledge imbalances between researchers and participants create a structural vulnerability for the latter. While trust-building is important between researchers and study participants/communities, the consenting process can be challenging, often burdening participants with power abrogation.

Trust can be breached. The paper highlights the contractual nature of the research relationship and argues that trust alone cannot prevent exploitation as power imbalances and vulnerabilities persist. To protect participants, bioethics guidance documents promote accountability and ethical compliance.

These documents uphold fairness in the researcher-participant relationship and safeguard the interests of socially vulnerable participants. The paper also highlights the role of shared decision-making and inclusive deliberation with diverse stakeholders and recommends that efforts should be made by researchers to clarify roles and responsibilities, while research regulatory agents should transform the research-participant relationship into a legal-based contract governed by accountability principles.

While trust remains important, alternative mechanisms may be needed to ensure ethical research practices and protect the interests of participants and communities. Striking a balance between trust and accountability is crucial in this regard.

URL : What’s trust got to do with research: why not accountability?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2023.1237742

Reading Differently : Expanding Open Access Definitions Towards Greater Knowledge Equity

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Author : Hanna Rebekka Kiesewetter

This practice-based thesis is situated in the globalised sphere of digital knowledge production in the context of Open Access (OA) publishing. It is reading different accounts of the history of knowledgeproduction and a broad variety of approaches to OA publishing – emerging in English and non-Englishspeaking research cultures, in diverse economic, socio-political, and disciplinary contexts – together.

As part of this reading, this thesis emphasises the dominant humanist tendencies in this discourse aswell as the attempts to critique them. By doing so, it problematises persisting inequities in the field –what can be called a Eurocentric or neo-imperialist bias – and presents ways to create more diverseand equitable conditions for OA publishing today.

This thesis puts forward that increasing participation in the processes and practices of scholarlyknowledge creation (such as research, writing, and editing) and sharing (such as reading and publishing) – and seeing this as an inherent part of OA publishing – is key to facilitating fairerconditions for OA publishing.

The focus of many prominent approaches to OA publishing has instead been on extending access to research outputs (such as papers and books), thereby restricting OApublishing to the consumption of knowledge.

To substantiate this claim, this thesis conceptualisescritical OA publishing as a distinct OA tradition – reflective of a variety of strands within OA publishing – positioned within a longer history of “antagonist” theoretical and practical engagementswith dominant (humanist) epistemologies.

This genealogical positioning emphasises that critical OAadvocates have always stressed that OA publishing should not only be about how readers consumetexts, but also about who has access to, and controls the governance of, the means of knowledge production; it elucidates why this includes an attentiveness to the processes and practices ofknowledge production as sites of struggle for knowledge equity and diversity; and it helps me todevise a novel interventionist (reading) methodology.

This methodology is one of the main outcomes of this thesis. It exemplifies and enacts howminimising the socio-cultural, behavioural, and linguistic barriers to participation in the processes and practices of knowledge production can advance knowledge equity and diversity. This methodology adds to critical experiments with writing, editing, and publishing conducted by critical OA advocates to facilitate fairer conditions for scholarship.

It can be applied in various contexts ofcollaborative academic knowledge production (for example, research or writing). It has been devised based on the main insights from this thesis, it has been tested within two experimental onlinereading groups, The Re-Reading Room, and it is discussed in an experimental piece of writing.

URL : https://pureportal.coventry.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/reading-differently

Will Moralization of Science Lead to “Better” Science?

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Author : Yves Gingras

In the fall of 2018, The US National Science Foundation (NSF) implemented a new policy on sexual harassment. A few months later, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), took a further step in the fight against harassment by announcing that researchers accused of harassment, but not yet found guilty, could nonetheless be excluded from the lists of potential reviewers of submitted projects.

We also observe a recent tendency to call for the retraction of published peer-reviewed results on the basis that their conclusions are considered to go against the moral convictions of some social groups, though the lack of validity of the results has not been proven.

It is certainly a legitimate question to ask whether these kinds of policies and moral critiques, which directly link the practice of science to the moral behavior of the scientists in the larger society, do not initiate a profound transformation in the relations between science and society by adding to the usually implicit norms governing the scientific community a new form of moralization of the scientists themselves.

We analyze these recent events in terms of a new process of moralization of science and ask whether these new rules of conduct may lead to doing better or more robust science.

URL : Will Moralization of Science Lead to “Better” Science?

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.35995/jci02020004

Reproducible research practices and transparency across linguistics

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Authors : Agata Bochynska, Liam Keeble, Caitlin Halfacre, Joseph V. Casillas, Irys-Amélie Champagne, Kaidi Chen, Melanie Röthlisberger, Erin M. Buchanan, Timo B. Roettger

Scientific studies of language span across many disciplines and provide evidence for social,  cultural, cognitive, technological, and biomedical studies of human nature and behavior. As it becomes increasingly empirical and quantitative, linguistics has been facing challenges and limitations of the scientific practices that pose barriers to reproducibility and replicability.

One of the  proposed solutions to the widely acknowledged reproducibility and replicability crisis has been the implementation of transparency practices,  e.g., open access publishing, preregistrations, sharing study materials, data, and analyses, performing study replications, and declaring conflicts of interest.

Here, we have assessed the prevalence of these practices in 600 randomly sampled journal articles from linguistics across two time points. In line with similar studies in other disciplines, we found that 35% of the articles were published open access and the rates of sharing materials, data, and protocols were below 10%. None of the articles reported preregistrations, 1% reported replications, and 10% had conflict of interest statements.

These rates have not increased noticeably between 2008/2009 and 2018/2019, pointing to remaining barriers and the slow adoption of open and reproducible research practices in linguistics.

To facilitate adoption of these practices, we provide a range of recommendations and solutions for implementing transparency and improving reproducibility of research in linguistics.

URL : Reproducible research practices and transparency across linguistics

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5070/G6011239