NSF Fellows’ perceptions about incentives, research misconduct, and scientific integrity in STEM academia

Posté le par

Authors : Siddhartha Roy, Marc A. Edwards

There is increased concern about perverse incentives, quantitative performance metrics, and hyper-competition for funding and faculty positions in US academia.

Recipients of the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships (n = 244) from Civil and Environmental Engineering (45.5%) and Computer Science and Engineering (54.5%) were anonymously surveyed to create a baseline snapshot of their perceptions, behaviors and experiences. NSF Fellows ranked scientific advancement as the top metric for evaluating academics followed by publishing in high-impact journals, social impact of research, and publication/citation counts.

The self-reported rate of academic cheating was 16.7% and of research misconduct was 3.7%. Thirty-one percent of fellows reported direct knowledge of graduate peers cheating, and 11.9% had knowledge of research misconduct by colleagues. Only 30.7% said they would report suspected misconduct.

A majority of fellows (55.3%) felt that mandatory ethics trainings left them unprepared for dealing with ethical issues. Fellows stated academic freedom, flexible schedules and opportunity to mentor students were the most positive aspects of academia, whereas pressures for funding, publication, and tenure were cited as the most negative aspects.

These data may be useful in considering how to better prepare STEM graduate trainees for academic careers.

URL : NSF Fellows’ perceptions about incentives, research misconduct, and scientific integrity in STEM academia

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-32445-3

Missing a golden opportunity? An analysis of publication trends by income level in the Directory of Open Access Journals 1987–2020

Posté le par

Authors : David Druelinger, Lai Ma

The growing prevalence of the gold open access model can exacerbate the monoculture of research and inequality in knowledge production. This study examines publication trends in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) journals by countries’ income level from 1987 to 2020.

By combining article metadata from journals listed in the DOAJ with World Bank country income data, this analysis examines the trends visible in plots of historical open access publication data. In 2020, the number of articles published in DOAJ journals by authors affiliated with high-income countries exceeds the sum of the other income categories. Article processing charge waivers seem to have more impact on high- and low-income countries than middle-income countries.

The results show that the gold open access model has not been able to improve the extremely low number of open access articles from low-income regions. In addition, authors in middle-income countries publish in gold open access DOAJ journals at lower rates than authors based in other economic regions.

The gold open access model is disadvantageous to researchers outside of high-income countries, highlighting the importance of supporting the diamond open access model as a potential means of improving global equity and epistemic diversity in knowledge production.

URL : Missing a golden opportunity? An analysis of publication trends by income level in the Directory of Open Access Journals 1987–2020

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1543

Philosophy of Open Science

Posté le par

Author : Sabina Leonelli

In response to broad transformations brought about by the digitalization, globalization, and commodification of research processes, the Open Science [OS] movement aims to foster the wide dissemination, scrutiny and re-use of research components for the good of science and society.

This Element examines the role played by OS principles and practices within contemporary research and how this relates to the epistemology of science. After reviewing some of the concerns that have prompted calls for more openness, I highlight how the interpretation of openness as the sharing of resources, so often encountered in OS initiatives and policies, may have the unwanted effect of constraining epistemic diversity and worsening epistemic injustice, resulting in unreliable and unethical scientific knowledge.

By contrast, I propose to frame openness as the effort to establish judicious connections among systems of practice, predicated on a process-oriented view of research as a tool for effective and responsible agency.

URL : http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/21986

The Many Publics of Science: Using Altmetrics to Identify Common Communication Channels by Scientific field

Posté le par

Authors : Daniel Torres-Salinas, Domingo Docampo, Wenceslao Arroyo-Machado, Nicolas Robinson-Garcia

Altmetrics have led to new quantitative studies of science through social media interactions. However, there are no models of science communication that respond to the multiplicity of non-academic channels.

Using the 3653 authors with the highest volume of altmetrics mentions from the main channels (Twitter, News, Facebook, Wikipedia, Blog, Policy documents, and Peer reviews) to their publications (2016-2020), it has been analyzed where the audiences of each discipline are located.

The results evidence the generalities and specificities of these new communication models and the differences between areas. These findings are useful for the development of science communication policies and strategies.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.05157

Attitudes Toward Providing Open Access for Use of Biospecimens and Health Records: A Cross-Sectional Study from Jordan

Posté le par

Authors : Kamal M Al-Shami, Wesam S Ahmed, Karem H Alzoubi

Purpose

Biospecimen repositories and big data generated from clinical research are critically important in advancing patient-centered healthcare. However, ethical considerations arising from reusing clinical samples and health records for subsequent research pose a hurdle for big-data health research. This study aims to assess the public’s opinions in Jordan toward providing blanket consent for using biospecimens and health records in research.

Participants and Methods

A cross-sectional study utilizing a self-reported questionnaire was carried out in different cities in Jordan, targeting adult participants. Outcome variables included awareness of clinical research, participation in clinical research, and opinions toward providing open access to clinical samples and records for research purposes.

Descriptive analysis was utilized for reporting the outcome as frequency (percentages) out of the total responses. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression were used to investigate the association between independent variables and the outcome of interest.

Results

A total of 1033 eligible participants completed the questionnaire. Although the majority (90%) were aware of clinical research, only 24% have ever participated in this type of research. About half (51%) agreed on providing blanket consent for the use of clinical samples, while a lower percentage (43%) agreed on providing open access to their health records.

Privacy concerns and lack of trust in the researcher were cited as major barriers to providing blanket consent. Participation in clinical research and having health insurance were predictors for providing open access to clinical samples and records.

Conclusion

The lack of public trust in Jordan toward data privacy is evident from this study. Therefore, a governance framework is needed to raise and maintain the public’s trust in big-data research that warrants the future reuse of clinical samples and records. As such, the current study provides valuable insights that will inform the design of effective consent protocols required in data-intensive health research.

URL : Attitudes Toward Providing Open Access for Use of Biospecimens and Health Records: A Cross-Sectional Study from Jordan

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2147/PPA.S402769

Alive Publication

Posté le par

Author : Mikhail Gorbunov-Posadov

An alive publication is a new genre for presenting the results of scientific research, where the scientific work is published online, and then is constantly being developed and improved by its author. Serious errors and typos are no longer fatal, nor do they haunt the author for the rest of his or her life. The reader of an alive publication knows that the author is constantly monitoring changes occurring in this branch of science.

Alive publication faces the inertia of scientific publishing traditions and, in particular, traditional bibliometrics. Unfortunately, at present, the author who supports an alive publication is dramatically losing out on many generally accepted bibliometric indicators.

The alive publication encourages the development of the bibliography apparatus. Each bibliographic reference will soon have to contain on-the-fly attributes such as attendance, number of external links, date of the last revision, etc.

In the opinion of the writer of these lines, as the alive publication spreads over to the scientific world, the author’s concern for the publication’s evolution will become like a parent’s care for the development of a child. The Internet will be filled with scientific publications that do not lose their relevance with time.

URL : Alive Publication

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications11020024

Do Open Access Mandates Work? A Systematized Review of the Literature on Open Access Publishing Rates

Posté le par

Authors : Elena Azadbakht, Tara Radniecki, Teresa Schultz, Amy W. Shannon

To encourage the sharing of research, various entities—including public and private funders, universities, and academic journals—have enacted open access (OA) mandates or data sharing policies.

It is unclear, however, whether these OA mandates and policies increase the rate of OA publishing and data sharing within the research communities impacted by them. A team of librarians conducted a systematized review of the literature to answer this question. A comprehensive search of several scholarly databases and grey literature sources resulted in 4,689 unique citations.

However, only five articles met the inclusion criteria and were deemed as having an acceptable risk of bias. This sample showed that although the majority of the mandates described in the literature were correlated with a subsequent increase in OA publishing or data sharing, the presence of various confounders and the differing methods of collecting and analyzing the data used by the studies’ authors made it impossible to establish a causative relationship.

URL : Do Open Access Mandates Work? A Systematized Review of the Literature on Open Access Publishing Rates

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.15444