Handling Open Research Data within the Max Planck Society — Looking Closer at the Year 2020

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Authors : Martin Boosen, Michael Franke, Yves Vincent Grossmann, Sy Dat Ho, Larissa Leiminger, Jan Matthiesen

This paper analyses the practice of publishing research data within the Max Planck Society in the year 2020. The central finding of the study is that up to 40\% of the empirical text publications had research data available. The aggregation of the available data is predominantly analysed.

There are differences between the sections of the Max Planck Society but they are not as great as one might expect. In the case of the journals, it is also apparent that a data policy can increase the availability of data related to textual publications.

Finally, we found that the statement on data availability “upon (reasonable) request” does not work.

URL : Handling Open Research Data within the Max Planck Society — Looking Closer at the Year 2020

Arxiv : https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.18182

Gender differences in Dutch research funding over time: A statistical investigation of the innovation scheme 2012–2021

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Authors : Casper Albers, Sense Jan van der Molen, Thijs Bol

Background

In 2015, the Dutch research council, NWO, took measures to combat gender bias disadvantaging female applicants in a popular three-tiered funding scheme called the Talent Programme. The innovation scheme consists of three grants for different career stages, called Veni, Vidi and Vici.

Objectives

This paper studies the question whether or not NWO has been successful in removing gender differences in their funding procedure.

Methods

Using all available data from 2012 onwards of grant applications in the Talent Programme (16,249 applications of which 2,449 received funding), we study whether these measures had an effect using binomial generalized linear models.

Results

We find strong statistical evidence of a shift in gender effects in favour of female applicants in the first tier, the Veni (p < .001). Significant gender differences are not found in the two other tiers, the Vidi and Vici schemes.

Conclusions

In recent years, female applicants are more likely to be awarded with a Veni grant than male applicants and this gender gap has increased over time. This suggests that gender differences still exist in the assessment of Talent Programme submissions, albeit in a different direction than a decade ago.

URL : Gender differences in Dutch research funding over time: A statistical investigation of the innovation scheme 2012–2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297311

Effects of transdisciplinary research on scientific knowledge and reflexivity

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Authors : Oskar Marg, Lena Theiler

Transdisciplinary research (TDR) is conceptualized as not only providing societal effects but also benefiting academia. However, recent literature on the evaluation of TDR has focused almost entirely on the societal effects of TDR. A discussion of the scientific effects of TDR is needed to do justice to the potential of this research mode.

To date, little empirical research has focused on the effects of TDR on science. Our explorative study addresses this gap. The empirical basis are qualitative interviews with scientists engaged in transdisciplinary research and anchored in three sub-disciplines: environmental sociology, sustainable chemistry, and participatory health research.

We identify as main effects of the transdisciplinary research mode: changes in the understanding of scientific problems, changes in the quality of scientific insights, and the promotion of a reflexive turn in science.

URL : Effects of transdisciplinary research on scientific knowledge and reflexivity

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvad033

Peer review’s irremediable flaws: Scientists’ perspectives on grant evaluation in Germany

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Authors : Eva Barlösius, Laura Paruschke, Axel Philipps

Peer review has developed over time to become the established procedure for assessing and assuring the scientific quality of research. Nevertheless, the procedure has also been variously criticized as conservative, biased, and unfair, among other things. Do scientists regard all these flaws as equally problematic?

Do they have the same opinions on which problems are so serious that other selection procedures ought to be considered? The answers to these questions hints at what should be modified in peer review processes as a priority objective. The authors of this paper use survey data to examine how members of the scientific community weight different shortcomings of peer review processes.

Which of those processes’ problems do they consider less relevant? Which problems, on the other hand, do they judge to be beyond remedy? Our investigation shows that certain defects of peer review processes are indeed deemed irreparable: (1) legitimate quandaries in the process of fine-tuning the choice between equally eligible research proposals and in the selection of daring ideas; and (2) illegitimate problems due to networks. Science-policy measures to improve peer review processes should therefore clarify the distinction between field-specific remediable and irremediable flaws than is currently the case.

URL : Peer review’s irremediable flaws: Scientists’ perspectives on grant evaluation in Germany

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvad032

Platformisation of Science. Conceptual Foundations and Critical Perspectives for the Science System

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Authors : Benedikt Fecher, Raffaela Kunz, Nataliia Sokolovska, Marcel Wrzesinski

The digital platforms we are dealing with in this article are auxiliary tools that do not produce anything themselves but provide an infrastructure for service providers and users to meet. They have potentially unlimited scaling potential and have become the central places of exchange.

In academia we can also observe that research and its communication becomes more digital and that digital services are aiming to become platforms. In this article we explore the concept of digital platforms and their potential impact on academic research, firstly addressing the question: To what extent can digital platforms be understood as a specific type of research infrastructure?

We draw from recent literature on platforms and platformisation from different streams of scholarship and relate them to the science studies concept of research infrastructures, to eventually arrive at a framework for science platforms. Secondly, we aim to assess how science platforms may affect scholarly practice. To this end, we relate common platform practices to scientific practice. Thirdly, we aim to assess to what extent science is platformized and how this interferes with scientific understandings of quality and autonomy.

In the end of this article, we argue that the potential benefits of platform infrastructure for academic pursuits cannot be ignored, but the commercialization of the infrastructure for scholarly communication is a cause for concern. Ultimately, a nuanced and well-informed perspective on the impact of platformisation on academia is necessary to ensure that the academic community can maximize the benefits of digital infrastructures while mitigating negative consequences.

URL : Platformisation of Science. Conceptual Foundations and Critical Perspectives for the Science System

DOI : https://doi.org/10.53377/lq.16693

How transformative are transformative agreements? Evidence from Germany across disciplines

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Author : W. Benedikt Schmal

Research institutions across the globe attempt to change the academic publishing system as digitization opens up new opportunities, and subscriptions to the large journal bundles of the leading publishers put library budgets under pressure. One approach is the negotiation of so-called transformative agreements.

I study the ‘DEAL’ contracts between nearly all German research institutions and Springer Nature and Wiley. I investigate 6.1 million publications in 5,862 journals covering eight fields in the years 2016–2022 and apply a causal difference-in-differences design to identify whether the likelihood of a paper appearing in an eligible journal increases. The effect strongly depends on the discipline.

While material science, chemistry, and economics s tend to hift towards these journals, all other disciplines in my sample do not react. Suggestive evidence hints at the market position of the encompassed publishers before the ‘DEAL’ was established: Springer Nature and Wiley appear to benefit more from the contracts in disciplines in which they possessed a higher market share ex ante.

The transformative vigor of these agreements in terms of publication behavior seems to be limited. It and highlights that the developments in this intertwined market require further examination.

URL : How transformative are transformative agreements? Evidence from Germany across disciplines

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04955-y

Scholar Metrics Scraper (SMS): automated retrieval of citation and author data

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Authors : Yutong Cao, Nicole A. Cheung, Dean Giustini, Jeffrey LeDue, Timothy H. Murphy

Academic departments, research clusters and evaluators analyze author and citation data to measure research impact and to support strategic planning. We created Scholar Metrics Scraper (SMS) to automate the retrieval of bibliometric data for a group of researchers.

The project contains Jupyter notebooks that take a list of researchers as an input and exports a CSV file of citation metrics from Google Scholar (GS) to visualize the group’s impact and collaboration. A series of graph outputs are also available. SMS is an open solution for automating the retrieval and visualization of citation data.

URL : Scholar Metrics Scraper (SMS): automated retrieval of citation and author data

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2024.1335454