EN

Wikipedia: an opportunity to rethink the links between sources’ credibility, trust and authority

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Gilles Sahut, André Tricot

The Web and its main tools (Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter) deeply raise and renew fundamental questions, that everyone asks almost every day: Is this information or content true? Can I trust this author or source?

These questions are not new, they have been the same with books, newspapers, broadcasting and television, and, more fundamentally, in every human interpersonal communication.

This paper is focused on two scientific problems on this issue. The first one is theoretical: to address this issue, many concepts have been used in library and information sciences, communication and psychology.

The links between these concepts are not clear: sometimes two concepts are considered as synonymous, sometimes as very different. The second one is historical: sources like Wikipedia deeply challenge the epistemic evaluation of information sources, compared to previous modes of information production.

This paper proposes an integrated and simple model considering the relation between a user, a document and an author as human communication. It reduces the problem to three concepts: credibility as a characteristic granted to information depending on its truth-value; trust as the ability to produce credible information; authority when the power to influence of an author is accepted, i.e., when readers accept that the source can modify their opinion, knowledge and decisions.

The model describes also two kinds of relationships between the three concepts: an upward link and a downward link. The model is confronted with findings of empirical research on Wikipedia in particular.

URL : https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/7108/6555

FR

L’accompagnement juridique des chercheurs en bibliothèque universitaire et de recherche : une évolution naturelle des services ?

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Auteur/Author : Aricia Bassinet

Au contact des services aux chercheurs, les bibliothèques ont développé, dans le cadre de leur mission de service public, de nouvelles compétences juridiques. La profession peine toutefois à valoriser des connaissances spécialisées qui s’éloignent de notre cœur de métier.

Dans la définition d’un service aux chercheurs d’accompagnement juridique, les bibliothèques universitaires peuvent espérer apporter une réponse aux besoins de conseil juridique des enseignants-chercheurs.

URL : L’accompagnement juridique des chercheurs en bibliothèque universitaire et de recherche : une évolution naturelle des services ?

Alternative location : https://www.enssib.fr/bibliotheque-numerique/notices/68357-l-accompagnement-juridique-des-chercheurs-en-bibliotheque-universitaire-et-de-recherche-une-evolution-naturelle-des-services

EN

Returning Individual Research Results to Participants

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Health and Medicine Division; Board on Health Sciences Policy; Committee on the Return of Individual-Specific Research Results Generated in Research Laboratories. Editors: Autumn S. Downey, Emily R. Busta, Michelle Mancher, and Jeffrey R. Botkin

When is it appropriate to return individual research results to participants? The immense interest in this question has been fostered by the growing movement toward greater transparency and participant engagement in the research enterprise.

Yet, the risks of returning individual research results—such as results with unknown validity—and the associated burdens on the research enterprise are competing considerations.

Returning Individual Research Results to Participants reviews the current evidence on the benefits, harms, and costs of returning individual research results, while also considering the ethical, social, operational, and regulatory aspects of the practice.

This report includes 12 recommendations directed to various stakeholders—investigators, sponsors, research institutions, institutional review boards (IRBs), regulators, and participants—and are designed to help (1) support decision making regarding the return of results on a study-by-study basis, (2) promote high-quality individual research results, (3) foster participant understanding of individual research results, and (4) revise and harmonize current regulations.

URL : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK513173/

EN

Reproducible research practices, transparency, and open access data in the biomedical literature, 2015–2017

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Joshua D. Wallach, Kevin W. Boyack, John P. A. Ioannidis

Currently, there is a growing interest in ensuring the transparency and reproducibility of the published scientific literature. According to a previous evaluation of 441 biomedical journals articles published in 2000–2014, the biomedical literature largely lacked transparency in important dimensions.

Here, we surveyed a random sample of 149 biomedical articles published between 2015 and 2017 and determined the proportion reporting sources of public and/or private funding and conflicts of interests, sharing protocols and raw data, and undergoing rigorous independent replication and reproducibility checks.

We also investigated what can be learned about reproducibility and transparency indicators from open access data provided on PubMed. The majority of the 149 studies disclosed some information regarding funding (103, 69.1% [95% confidence interval, 61.0% to 76.3%]) or conflicts of interest (97, 65.1% [56.8% to 72.6%]).

Among the 104 articles with empirical data in which protocols or data sharing would be pertinent, 19 (18.3% [11.6% to 27.3%]) discussed publicly available data; only one (1.0% [0.1% to 6.0%]) included a link to a full study protocol. Among the 97 articles in which replication in studies with different data would be pertinent, there were five replication efforts (5.2% [1.9% to 12.2%]).

Although clinical trial identification numbers and funding details were often provided on PubMed, only two of the articles without a full text article in PubMed Central that discussed publicly available data at the full text level also contained information related to data sharing on PubMed; none had a conflicts of interest statement on PubMed.

Our evaluation suggests that although there have been improvements over the last few years in certain key indicators of reproducibility and transparency, opportunities exist to improve reproducible research practices across the biomedical literature and to make features related to reproducibility more readily visible in PubMed.

URL : Reproducible research practices, transparency, and open access data in the biomedical literature, 2015–2017

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006930

EN

“No comment”?: A study of commenting on PLOS articles

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Simon Wakeling, Peter Willett, Claire Creaser, Jenny Fry, Stephen Pinfield, Valerie Spezi, Marc Bonne, Christina Founti, Itzelle Medina Perea

Article commenting functionality allows users to add publically visible comments to an article on a publisher’s website. As well as facilitating forms of post-publication peer review, for publishers of open-access mega-journals (large, broad scope, OA journals that seek to publish all technically or scientifically sound research) comments are also thought to serve as a means for the community to discuss and communicate the significance and novelty of the research, factors which are not assessed during peer review.

In this paper we present the results of an analysis of commenting on articles published by the Public Library of Science (PLOS), publisher of the first and best-known mega-journal PLOS ONE, between 2003 and 2016.

We find that while overall commenting rates are low, and have declined since 2010, there is substantial variation across different PLOS titles. Using a typology of comments developed for this research we also find that only around half of comments engage in an academic discussion of the article, and that these discussions are most likely to focus on the paper’s technical soundness.

Our results suggest that publishers have yet to encourage significant numbers of readers to leave comments, with implications for the effectiveness of commenting as a means of collecting and communicating community perceptions of an article’s importance.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0165551518819965

FR

Les enjeux éthiques et juridiques du dépôts des travaux scientifiques dans une archive ouverte

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Auteur/Author : Isabelle Gras

Cette contribution vise à analyser comment la structuration du marché numérique de l’édition scientifique a induit de nouveaux enjeux éthiques et juridiques en matière de diffusion du savoir. Le secteur de l’édition numérique des publications scientifiques se caractérise par une concurrence imparfaite qui menace la circulation des connaissances scientifiques.

Si ce phénomène s’observe tout particulièrement dans le champ des sciences et techniques, il ne faut pas en négliger les conséquences dans le domaine des sciences humaines et sociales.

Le transfert des droits d’auteur en faveur des éditeurs tout comme le diktat du « publish or perish » pèsent sur l’ensemble de la communauté scientifique. Face à cette situation, les chercheurs se tournent vers la voie verte de l’Open Access afin de diffuser leurs travaux scientifiques dans une archive ouverte.

Ils se trouvent alors confrontés à des questions juridiques et éthiques que nous nous proposerons d’analyser afin de dégager des bonnes pratiques. Dans cette optique, cette contribution propose de préciser les nouvelles opportunités offertes par l’article 30 de la loi pour une République numérique.

Enfin, dans la mesure où ils constituent des dispositifs opérants pour repenser les logiques traditionnelles du droit d’auteur, les spécificités des licences creative commons et des epi-revues, étroitement liées aux archives ouvertes, seront soulignées.

URL : Les enjeux éthiques et juridiques du dépôts des travaux scientifiques dans une archive ouverte

Alternative location : https://hal-amu.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01929557

FR

Évolution de la diversité consommée sur le marché du livre, 2007-2016

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Auteur/Author : Olivier Donnat

Comment les consommations culturelles évoluent-elles sous l’angle de la diversité à l’ère de l’abondance de l’offre ? Dans quelle mesure les données de marché confirment-elles les promesses qui ont accompagné l’essor des technologies numériques ?

Valident-elles notamment l’hypothèse de la longue traîne formulée par Chris Anderson au début des années 2000 selon laquelle les marchés de niche sont appelés à se développer et à réduire le niveau global de concentration des ventes ?

Ces questions, qui étaient au cœur des travaux publiés par le DEPS au tournant des années 2010, demeurent plus que jamais d’actualité car les consommations en ligne de contenus dématérialisés mais aussi de biens physiques ont considérablement progressé au cours de la dernière décennie, et la proportion d’acheteurs en ligne dans la population française est passée de 33 % à 60 % entre 2007 et 2016.

Aussi a-t-il paru nécessaire de réexaminer la question de l’évolution de la diversité des consommations culturelles en ayant recours à la même source de données (le panel de la société GfK qui recense l’ensemble des achats des consommateurs à partir d’un échantillon représentatif des points de vente) et en mobilisant à nouveau l’approche tridimensionnelle de la diversité développée dans le modèle de Stirling autour des notions de variété, d’équilibre et de disparité.

Les principaux résultats du travail mené pour la période 2007-2016 sont réunis dans la présente publication pour le marché du livre, et dans un autre numéro de la collection « Culture études » pour celui de la musique enregistrée.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3917/cule.183.0001