Exploration et progrès scientifique : les positionnements communicationnels des institutions publiques de la recherche française (2014-2021)

Auteur/Author : Robin Gaillard

Au cœur de la Stratégie nationale de recherche (SNR) lancée en 2014, les discours sur l’exploration apparaissent comme une ressource symbolique importante pour la légitimation des politiques publiques de la recherche.

L’objectif de cette contribution est d’analyser les stratégies de communication des institutions au regard des enjeux idéologiques entourant la notion d’exploration. En analysant dans un premier temps quatre communications produites au moment de la mise en place de la SNR et du quatrième Programme d’investissements d’avenir, nous cherchons à dégager ce qui, dans la communication publique, se rapporte à un référentiel de l’exploration.

Puis, il s’agira de dresser une cartographie des acteurs institutionnels en fonction de leur positionnement communicationnel vis-à-vis de l’exploration, en mettant en évidence que ceux-ci s’appuient sur une réactualisation de l’idéologie du progrès.

URL : Exploration et progrès scientifique : les positionnements communicationnels des institutions publiques de la recherche française (2014-2021)

DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/questionsdecommunication.29636

Evolution of research data management in academic libraries: A review of the literature

Authors : Arslan Sheikh, Amara Malik, Rubina Adnan

This study provides insights into the evolution and conceptual framework of research data management (RDM). It also investigates the role of libraries and librarians in offering data management services and the challenges they face in this regard.

The study is qualitative in nature and based on an extensive literature review survey. The analysis of the reviewed literature reveals that the idea of RDM has emerged as a new addition to library research support services.

The more recent literature clearly established the pivotal role of libraries and librarians in developing and managing RDM services. However, data sharing practices and the development of RDM services in libraries are more prevalent in developed countries.

While these trends are still lacking among researchers and libraries in developing countries. Creating awareness among researchers about the benefits of data sharing is a challenging task for libraries.

Furthermore, institutional commitment, collaboration, academic engagement, technological infrastructure development, lack of policies, funding, and storage, skills, and competencies required for librarians to offer RDM-based services are some of the other significant challenges highlighted in the literature.

Certainly, RDM services are difficult and complicated; therefore, librarians need to master the skills of research data to offer library-based RDM services.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/02666669231157405

PreprintMatch: A tool for preprint to publication detection shows global inequities in scientific publication

Authors : Peter Eckmann, Anita Bandrowski

Preprints, versions of scientific manuscripts that precede peer review, are growing in popularity. They offer an opportunity to democratize and accelerate research, as they have no publication costs or a lengthy peer review process. Preprints are often later published in peer-reviewed venues, but these publications and the original preprints are frequently not linked in any way.

To this end, we developed a tool, PreprintMatch, to find matches between preprints and their corresponding published papers, if they exist. This tool outperforms existing techniques to match preprints and papers, both on matching performance and speed. PreprintMatch was applied to search for matches between preprints (from bioRxiv and medRxiv), and PubMed.

The preliminary nature of preprints offers a unique perspective into scientific projects at a relatively early stage, and with better matching between preprint and paper, we explored questions related to research inequity.

We found that preprints from low income countries are published as peer-reviewed papers at a lower rate than high income countries (39.6% and 61.1%, respectively), and our data is consistent with previous work that cite a lack of resources, lack of stability, and policy choices to explain this discrepancy.

Preprints from low income countries were also found to be published quicker (178 vs 203 days) and with less title, abstract, and author similarity to the published version compared to high income countries. Low income countries add more authors from the preprint to the published version than high income countries (0.42 authors vs 0.32, respectively), a practice that is significantly more frequent in China compared to similar countries.

Finally, we find that some publishers publish work with authors from lower income countries more frequently than others.

URL : PreprintMatch: A tool for preprint to publication detection shows global inequities in scientific publication

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281659

Création d’un prototype de jeu sérieux sur la gestion des données de la recherche

Autrices/Authors : Myriam Jouha, Pauline Mell, Alexia Tromber

Les professionnel-le-s de l’information travaillant en bibliothèque académique sont désormais régulièrement amené-e-s à accompagner des chercheurs et chercheuses dans la gestion de leurs données de recherche.

Dans le but d’offrir à ces professionnel-le-s une formation introductive sur cette thématique, nous avons conçu et testé un prototype de jeu sérieux. Ce projet a été réalisé dans le cadre du Master en Sciences de l’information à la Haute école de gestion de Genève.

Méthode : Notre méthodologie s’inspire de deux modèles de conception de jeux sérieux. Elle s’articule en trois étapes : (1) la phase de définition, qui présente les résultats de l’analyse des besoins, l’exploration de l’existant et le dispositif de formation ; (2) la production du prototype et les tests effectués ; (3) l’accompagnement et l’évaluation.

Résultats : Le jeu proposé, « Mission GDR : ultime quête avant les fêtes » est inspiré de la série de jeux d’évasion en boîte « Unlock ». Il s’agit d’un jeu collaboratif pour 1 à 4 participant-e-s dont l’objectif est de compléter une feuille de route représentant le cycle de vie des données et les tâches qui s’y rapportent. Cette feuille, accompagnée d’un guide complémentaire rappelant la théorie abordée dans le jeu, peut ensuite être réutilisée comme ressource dans la pratique professionnelle des joueuses et joueurs.

Discussion : Les tests effectués auprès de personnes aux profils divers démontrent que le jeu est apprécié pour ses aspects ludiques tout en offrant un apport théorique introductif. Initialement prévu pour les professionnel-le-s de l’informations, il pourrait également être proposé à d’autres personnes concernées par la gestion des données, notamment des équipes de recherche. Conçu pour être indépendant d’une session de formation, il est cependant tout à fait envisageable de l’intégrer dans un tel programme.

URL : Création d’un prototype de jeu sérieux sur la gestion des données de la recherche

DOI : https://doi.org/10.55790/journals/ressi.2023.e1093

Data Management Librarians Role in a Large Interdisciplinary Scientific Grant for PFAS Remediation: Considerations and Recommendations

Authors : Jennifer Chaput, Renee Walsh

This article explores the conflicts, disparities, and inequalities experienced by two librarians when collaborating on a federal grant proposal. The authors discuss concerns related to time and salary expectations and the inequities that can occur during faculty and staff collaborations on research grants.

The bureaucratic structure and the job classifications of staff at academic institutions in addition to the contract limitations of non-faculty status librarian positions can hinder successful collaborations. The authors also describe data management needs that may occur when working with interdisciplinary research teams and detail the type of work that is included in writing a data management grant.

This article concludes with considerations and recommendations for other data librarians who may undertake similar projects with a focus on ways to create parity between faculty and staff collaborators.

URL : Data Management Librarians Role in a Large Interdisciplinary Scientific Grant for PFAS Remediation: Considerations and Recommendations

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.616

An open automation system for predatory journal detection

Authors : Li‑Xian Chen, Shih‑Wen Su, Chia‑Hung Liao, Kai‑Sin Wong, Shyan‑Ming Yuan

The growing number of online open-access journals promotes academic exchanges, but the prevalence of predatory journals is undermining the scholarly reporting process. Data collection, feature extraction, and model prediction are common steps in tools designed to distinguish between legitimate and predatory academic journals and publisher websites.

The authors include them in their proposed academic journal predatory checking (AJPC) system based on machine learning methods. The AJPC data collection process extracts 833 blacklists and 1213 whitelists information from websites to be used for identifying words and phrases that might indicate the presence of predatory journals.

Feature extraction is used to identify words and terms that help detect predatory websites, and the system’s prediction stage uses eight classification algorithms to distinguish between potentially predatory and legitimate journals.

We found that enhancing the classification efficiency of the bag of words model and TF-IDF algorithm with diff scores (a measure of differences in specific word frequencies between journals) can assist in identifying predatory journal feature words.

Results from performance tests suggest that our system works as well as or better than those currently being used to identify suspect publishers and publications.

The open system only provides reference results rather than absolute opinions and accepts user inquiries and feedback to update the system and optimize performance.

URL : An open automation system for predatory journal detection

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-30176-z

Policy seduction and governance resistance? Examining public funding agencies and academic institutions on decarbonisation research

Author : Abbas AbdulRafiu

Public research funding is a critical instrument in technology and social innovation. This paper explores the emerging themes and topical trends that commonly influence interdisciplinary research within a sample of global research projects, including reviewing a recent study of 1,000 projects used in the selection of expert interview participants (n = 15).

It examines the extent to which research funding agencies and academic institutions are shifting research priorities in the energy and climate change domain. It asks: What challenges does interdisciplinary research raise?

The study reveals how cross-disciplinary research funding focuses on or fails to address the themes of sustainable development goals. In addition, it emphasises policy seduction and difficulty (resistance) in understanding cross-disciplinary methods in research and how research collaborations promote (or fail to promote) global South institutions and topics.

Finally, the paper recommends that research funding needs involve a broader array of stakeholders in industrial decarbonisation research, including policymakers, industries, and citizens.

URL : Policy seduction and governance resistance? Examining public funding agencies and academic institutions on decarbonisation research

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scac051