EN

The Sci-hub Effect: Sci-hub downloads lead to more article citations

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Juan C. Correa, Henry Laverde-Rojas, Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos, Julian Tejada, Štepán Bahník

Citations are often used as a metric of the impact of scientific publications. Here, we examine how the number of downloads from Sci-hub as well as various characteristics of publications and their authors predicts future citations.

Using data from 12 leading journals in economics, consumer research, neuroscience, and multidisciplinary research, we found that articles downloaded from Sci-hub were cited 1.72 times more than papers not downloaded from Sci-hub and that the number of downloads from Sci-hub was a robust predictor of future citations.

Among other characteristics of publications, the number of figures in a manuscript consistently predicts its future citations. The results suggest that limited access to publications may limit some scientific research from achieving its full impact.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.14979

EN

Academic criteria for promotion and tenure in biomedical sciences faculties: cross sectional analysis of international sample of universities

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Danielle B Rice, Hana Raffoul, John P A Ioannidis, David Moher

Objective

To determine the presence of a set of pre-specified traditional and non-traditional criteria used to assess scientists for promotion and tenure in faculties of biomedical sciences among universities worldwide.

Design

Cross sectional study.

Setting

International sample of universities.

Participants

170 randomly selected universities from the Leiden ranking of world universities list.

Main outcome measure

Presence of five traditional (for example, number of publications) and seven non-traditional (for example, data sharing) criteria in guidelines for assessing assistant professors, associate professors, and professors and the granting of tenure in institutions with biomedical faculties.

Results

A total of 146 institutions had faculties of biomedical sciences, and 92 had eligible guidelines available for review. Traditional criteria of peer reviewed publications, authorship order, journal impact factor, grant funding, and national or international reputation were mentioned in 95% (n=87), 37% (34), 28% (26), 67% (62), and 48% (44) of the guidelines, respectively. Conversely, among non-traditional criteria, only citations (any mention in 26%; n=24) and accommodations for employment leave (37%; 34) were relatively commonly mentioned.

Mention of alternative metrics for sharing research (3%; n=3) and data sharing (1%; 1) was rare, and three criteria (publishing in open access mediums, registering research, and adhering to reporting guidelines) were not found in any guidelines reviewed.

Among guidelines for assessing promotion to full professor, traditional criteria were more commonly reported than non-traditional criteria (traditional criteria 54.2%, non-traditional items 9.5%; mean difference 44.8%, 95% confidence interval 39.6% to 50.0%; P=0.001).

Notable differences were observed across continents in whether guidelines were accessible (Australia 100% (6/6), North America 97% (28/29), Europe 50% (27/54), Asia 58% (29/50), South America 17% (1/6)), with more subtle differences in the use of specific criteria.

Conclusions

This study shows that the evaluation of scientists emphasises traditional criteria as opposed to non-traditional criteria. This may reinforce research practices that are known to be problematic while insufficiently supporting the conduct of better quality research and open science. Institutions should consider incentivising non-traditional criteria.

URL : Academic criteria for promotion and tenure in biomedical sciences faculties: cross sectional analysis of international sample of universities

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m2081

 

EN

Open Education Librarianship: A Position Description Analysis of the Newly Emerging Role in Academic Libraries

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Amanda C. Larson

According to the latest Babson Survey, Freeing the Textbook: Educational Resources in US Higher Education, “faculty awareness of OER has increased every year, with 46 percent of faculty now aware of open educational resources, up from 34 percent three years ago” (Seaman and Seaman 2018).

While open educational resources (OER) gain traction with faculty who are looking to lower costs for their students and re-engage with their pedagogy, academic libraries are creating a variety of open or affordable textbook programs to help increase the use of OER or low-cost materials as replacements for high-cost traditional materials. Some libraries are creating specific positions to support these initiatives that aim to help faculty who want to adopt, adapt, or author OER.

As more of these roles emerge, it raises questions about what the field perceives as the role of an Open Education or OER librarian, and the support that libraries provide OER initiatives.

To explore these concerns, I collected position descriptions for librarians whose role it is to support OER initiatives into a corpus. I applied deductive thematic analysis to code it while investigating four main questions: 1) What inspires academic libraries to hire OER-related support? 2) What skills do they anticipate applicants to possess? 3) Where do these positions fit within the organization chart of the library? 4) Is there a standard scope of work that emerges from the corpus?

In addition to these four questions, this research also explored the expectations for librarians in these roles to change faculty’s perception of OER through outreach and if they are expected to run burgeoning grant initiatives to launch adoption, adaptation, or authoring efforts at their institution.

URL : https://www.ijoer.org/open-education-librarianship-a-position-description-analysis-of-the-newly-emerging-role-in-academic-libraries/

EN

‘At-risk articles’: the imperative to recover lost science

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author: Jeanette Hatherill

Deceptive publishers have been discussed and written about from a multitude of perspectives and in a variety of disciplines, but scant attention has been devoted to a particular aspect of the issue: How we as scholarly communities are dealing with the research that appears in these outlets.

It is problematic that the question is not being addressed, as this research is at risk of being lost. It is at risk because articles that appear in deceptive publications are not indexed, so they are less visible, discoverable and citable. Additionally, they are not preserved and therefore likely to disappear should the publisher cease its activities or neglect to carry out basic maintenance on their archives and servers.

Furthermore, it is particularly problematic because this lost science is potentially valuable. In this article, it is argued that, rather than continuing to risk the loss of this potentially important research by ignoring its existence, research disciplines should look at developments in open peer review and the increasing use of preprint servers for their potential to recover and reintegrate these at-risk articles into the scholarly record.

URL : ‘At-risk articles’: the imperative to recover lost science

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.514

Non classé

Data journals: incentivizing data access and documentation within the scholarly communication system

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : William H. Walters

Data journals provide strong incentives for data creators to verify, document and disseminate their data. They also bring data access and documentation into the mainstream of scholarly communication, rewarding data creators through existing mechanisms of peer-reviewed publication and citation tracking.

These same advantages are not generally associated with data repositories, or with conventional journals’ data-sharing mandates. This article describes the unique advantages of data journals.

It also examines the data journal landscape, presenting the characteristics of 13 data journals in the fields of biology, environmental science, chemistry, medicine and health sciences.

These journals vary considerably in size, scope, publisher characteristics, length of data reports, data hosting policies, time from submission to first decision, article processing charges, bibliographic index coverage and citation impact.

They are similar, however, in their peer review criteria, their open access license terms and the characteristics of their editorial boards.

URL : Data journals: incentivizing data access and documentation within the scholarly communication system

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.510

EN

University journals. Consolidating institutional repositories in a digital, free, open access publication platform for all scholarly output

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Saskia Woutersen-Windhouwer, Eva Méndez Rodríguez, Jeroen Sondervan, Frans J. Oort

Funders increasingly mandate researchers to publish their scientific articles in open access and to retain their copyright. Universities all over the world have set up institutional repositories and use repositories for the preservation and dissemination of academic production of their institutions, including scientific articles, reports, datasets, and other research outputs.

However, in general, authors do not find institutional repositories very attractive and accessible as an open access publication platform since repositories and open access are not part of the rewarding system.

We expect that researchers are more likely to publish and deposit their scientific papers in a repository, once they have the appearance, recognition and dissemination of a scientific journal.

That is why we took the initiative to set up a repository based journal ‘University Journals’ in which universities collaborate. The paper will explain the University Journals project and how the involved universities want to facilitate a valuable alternative publication platform that complies with Plan S principles and enables publication and dissemination of all research outcomes.

By establishing University Journals as a publication platform, university libraries are instrumental (and crucial) in achieving the ambitions of Open Science, and universities gain control over the publication process.

URL : University journals. Consolidating institutional repositories in a digital, free, open access publication platform for all scholarly output

DOI : http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10323

Non classé

Playing the Bullshit Game: How Empty and Misleading Communication Takes Over Organizations

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : André Spicer

Why is bullshit so common in some organizations? Existing explanations focus on the characteristics of bullshitters, the nature of the audience, and social structural factors which encourage bullshitting.

In this paper, I offer an alternative explanation: bullshitting is a social practice that organizational members engage with to become part of a speech community, to get things done in that community, and to reinforce their identity.

When the practice of bullshitting works, it can gradually expand from a small group to take over an entire organization and industry. When bullshitting backfires, previously sacred concepts can become seen as empty and misleading talk.

URL : Playing the Bullshit Game: How Empty and Misleading Communication Takes Over Organizations

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/2631787720929704