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Exploring PubMed as a reliable resource for scholarly communications services

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Peace Ossom Williamson, Christian I. J. Minter

Objective

PubMed’s provision of MEDLINE and other National Library of Medicine (NLM) resources has made it one of the most widely accessible biomedical resources globally. The growth of PubMed Central (PMC) and public access mandates have affected PubMed’s composition.

The authors tested recent claims that content in PMC is of low quality and affects PubMed’s reliability, while exploring PubMed’s role in the current scholarly communications landscape.

Methods

The percentage of MEDLINE-indexed records was assessed in PubMed and various subsets of records from PMC. Data were retrieved via the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) interface, and follow-up interviews with a PMC external reviewer and staff at NLM were conducted.

Results

Almost all PubMed content (91%) is indexed in MEDLINE; however, since the launch of PMC, the percentage of PubMed records indexed in MEDLINE has slowly decreased.

This trend is the result of an increase in PMC content from journals that are not indexed in MEDLINE and not a result of author manuscripts submitted to PMC in compliance with public access policies. Author manuscripts in PMC continue to be published in MEDLINE-indexed journals at a high rate (85%).

The interviewees clarified the difference between the sources, with MEDLINE serving as a highly selective index of journals in biomedical literature and PMC serving as an open archive of quality biomedical and life sciences literature and a repository of funded research.

Conclusion

The differing scopes of PMC and MEDLINE will likely continue to affect their overlap; however, quality control exists in the maintenance and facilitation of both resources, and funding from major grantors is a major component of quality assurance in PMC.

URL : Exploring PubMed as a reliable resource for scholarly communications services

DOI : dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2019.433

EN

Does bibliometric research confer legitimacy to research assessment practice? A sociological study of reputational control, 1972-2016

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Arlette Jappe, David Pithan, Thomas Heinze

The use of bibliometric measures in the evaluation of research has increased considerably based on expertise from the growing research field of evaluative citation analysis (ECA).

However, mounting criticism of such metrics suggests that the professionalization of bibliometric expertise remains contested. This paper investigates why impact metrics, such as the journal impact factor and the h-index, proliferate even though their legitimacy as a means of professional research assessment is questioned.

Our analysis is informed by two relevant sociological theories: Andrew Abbott’s theory of professions and Richard Whitley’s theory of scientific work. These complementary concepts are connected in order to demonstrate that ECA has failed so far to provide scientific authority for professional research assessment.

This argument is based on an empirical investigation of the extent of reputational control in the relevant research area. Using three measures of reputational control that are computed from longitudinal inter-organizational networks in ECA (1972–2016), we show that peripheral and isolated actors contribute the same number of novel bibliometric indicators as central actors. In addition, the share of newcomers to the academic sector has remained high.

These findings demonstrate that recent methodological debates in ECA have not been accompanied by the formation of an intellectual field in the sociological sense of a reputational organization.

Therefore, we conclude that a growing gap exists between an academic sector with little capacity for collective action and increasing demand for routine performance assessment by research organizations and funding agencies.

This gap has been filled by database providers. By selecting and distributing research metrics, these commercial providers have gained a powerful role in defining de-facto standards of research excellence without being challenged by expert authority.

URL : Does bibliometric research confer legitimacy to research assessment practice? A sociological study of reputational control, 1972-2016

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0199031

EN

Disciplinary data publication guides

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Zosia Beckles, Stephen Gray, Debra Hiom, Kirsty Merrett, Kellie Snow, Damian Steer

Many academic disciplines have very comprehensive standard for data publication and clear guidance from funding bodies and academic publishers. In other cases, whilst much good-quality general guidance exists, there is a lack of information available to researchers to help them decide which specific data elements should be shared.

This is a particular issue for disciplines with very varied data types, such as engineering, and presents an unnecessary barrier to researchers wishing to meet funder expectations on data sharing.

This article outlines a project to provide simple, visual, discipline-specific guidance on data publication, undertaken at the University of Bristol at the request of the Faculty of Engineering.

URL : Disciplinary data publication guides

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v13i1.603

EN

Incorporating Software Curation into Research Data Management Services

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Fernando Rios

Many large research universities provide research data management (RDM) support services for researchers. These may include support for data management planning, best practices (e.g., organization, support, and storage), archiving, sharing, and publication.

However, these data-focused services may under-emphasize the importance of the software that is created to analyse said data. This is problematic for several reasons.

First, because software is an integral part of research across all disciplines, it undermines the ability of said research to be understood, verified, and reused by others (and perhaps even the researcher themselves).

Second, it may result in less visibility and credit for those involved in creating the software.

A third reason is related to stewardship: if there is no clear process for how, when, and where the software associated with research can be accessed and who will be responsible for maintaining such access, important details of the research may be lost over time.

This article presents the process by which the RDM services unit of a large research university addressed the lack of emphasis on software and source code in their existing service offerings.

The greatest challenges were related to the need to incorporate software into existing data-oriented service workflows while minimizing additional resources required, and the nascent state of software curation and archiving in a data management context.

The problem was addressed from four directions: building an understanding of software curation and preservation from various viewpoints (e.g., video games, software engineering), building a conceptual model of software preservation to guide service decisions, implementing software-related services, and documenting and evaluating the work to build expertise and establish a standard service level.

URL : Incorporating Software Curation into Research Data Management Services

Alternative location : http://www.ijdc.net/article/view/608/529

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Someone has to pay: The global sustainability coalition for open science services (SCOSS)

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Martin Borchert, Vanessa Proudman

The Open Access (OA) and Open Science (OS) movement is gaining momentum with an increasing number of scholarly outputs openly and freely available to researchers and the community. OA and OS cannot however, be free for everyone.

Someone has to pay for the infrastructure and there has to be a supporting economy. While many commercial publishers are charging for OA, there are many OA and OS infrastructure providers baring the cost of providing infrastructure. Without funding, essential services that many are dependent upon to implement government and funder OA policies worldwide, are at risk of service degradation, reduced availability and even survival. Something had to be done.

In response, the Global Sustainable Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS) was formed in 2017 as a result of collaborations between key global stakeholders, with SPARC Europe as the co-ordinator.

It aims to develop and apply a rigorous proposal and assessment process to provide guidance to the OA and OS community on what to fund.

It uses a new financial crowdfunding contribution model seeking a three-year commitment for funding for the services it recommends. This will help improve the financial position, resilience and sustainability of these OA / OS infrastructure services and will help them on their way to find a mid to long-term sustainable solution for years to come.

The first open science services to receive assistance were Sherpa RoMEO which is operated by the Joint Information Steering Committee (Jisc, UK) and provides summary information of journal and publisher OA polices; and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) which provides a list of over 10,000 peer-reviewed open access journals.

Since launching in November 2017, a growing number of university libraries from across the globe are committing to fund Sherpa/Romeo and DOAJ for the next there years.

This paper will provide an introduction to SCOSS and its purpose, governance, processes, and challenges and will give an update on institutional financial commitments to date.

URL : https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2229&context=iatul

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Research data management in the French National Research Center (CNRS)

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Joachim Schöpfel, Coline Ferrant, Francis Andre, Renaud Fabre

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present empirical evidence on the opinion and behaviour of French scientists (senior management level) regarding research data management (RDM).

Design/methodology/approach

The results are part of a nationwide survey on scientific information and documentation with 432 directors of French public research laboratories conducted by the French Research Center CNRS in 2014.

Findings

The paper presents empirical results about data production (types), management (human resources, IT, funding, and standards), data sharing and related needs, and highlights significant disciplinary differences.

Also, it appears that RDM and data sharing is not directly correlated with the commitment to open access. Regarding the FAIR data principles, the paper reveals that 68 per cent of all laboratory directors affirm that their data production and management is compliant with at least one of the FAIR principles.

But only 26 per cent are compliant with at least three principles, and less than 7 per cent are compliant with all four FAIR criteria, with laboratories in nuclear physics, SSH and earth sciences and astronomy being in advance of other disciplines, especially concerning the findability and the availability of their data output.

The paper concludes with comments about research data service development and recommendations for an institutional RDM policy.

Originality/value

For the first time, a nationwide survey was conducted with the senior research management level from all scientific disciplines. Surveys on RDM usually assess individual data behaviours, skills and needs. This survey is different insofar as it addresses institutional and collective data practice.

The respondents did not report on their own data behaviours and attitudes but were asked to provide information about their laboratory. The response rate was high (>30 per cent), and the results provide good insight into the real support and uptake of RDM by senior research managers who provide both models (examples for good practice) and opinion leadership.

URL : https://hal.univ-lille3.fr/hal-01728541/

EN

Open science and codes of conduct on research integrity

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Heidi Laine

The purpose of this article is to examine the conceptual alignment between the ethical principles of research integrity and open science. Research integrity is represented in this study by four general codes of conduct on responsible conduct of research (RCR), three of them international in scope, and one national.

A representative list of ethical principles associated with open science is compiled in order to create categories for assessing the content of the codes. According to the analysis, the current understanding of RCR is too focused on traditional publications and the so called FFP definition of research misconduct to fully support open science.

The main gaps include recognising citizen science and societal outreach and supporting open collaboration both among the research community and beyond its traditional borders.

Updates for both the content of CoCs as well as the processes of creating such guidelines are suggested.

URL : Open science and codes of conduct on research integrity

DOI : https://doi.org/10.23978/inf.77414