Student publishing in peer reviewed journals: Evidence from the International Political Science Review

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Authors : Daniel Stockemer, Theresa Reidy, Antonia Teodoro, Guy Gerba

Publishing in peer-reviewed journals has become an essential requirement for PhD students wishing to pursue a career in academia. Yet, there are few studies of student publishing and little discussion of norms around attribution of authorship for student research collaborators. (1) How often do students feature as submitters and authors in political science journals? (2) In what format (i.e., solo author, co-author, multiple authors) do students normally submit and publish? (3)

Are there gender differences in student submission and publication rates between male and female students? This article uses 2 years of data from the International Political Science Review (IPSR; i.e., 2019 and 2020) to answer these questions.

Mainly using cross-tabulations, we found that just one in eight submitting authors was a student (i.e., undergraduate and postgraduate). In terms of acceptance rates, students had generally lower acceptance rates than faculty.

Yet, there were also important differences within the student body. As expected PhD students were more successful than undergraduate and masters’ students, and in line with general disciplinary publishing patterns, female PhD students had a higher publication success rate than their male colleagues.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1468

“Who Is the FAIRest of Them All?” Authors, Entities, and Journals Regarding FAIR Data Principles

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Author : Luis Corujo

The perceived need to improve the infrastructure supporting the re-use of scholarly data since the second decade of the 21st century led to the design of a concise number of principles and metrics, named FAIR Data Principles. This paper, part of an extended study, intends to identify the main authors, entities, and scientific journals linked to research conducted within the FAIR Data Principles.

The research was developed by means of a qualitative approach, using documentary research and a constant comparison method for codification and categorization of the sampled data.

The sample studied showed that most authors were located in the Netherlands, with Europe accounting for more than 70% of the number of authors considered. Most of these are researchers and work in higher education institutions. T

hese entities can be found in most of the territorial-administrative areas under consideration, with the USA being the country with more entities and Europe being the world region where they are more numerous.

The journal with more texts in the used sample was Insights, with 2020 being the year when more texts were published. Two of the most prominent authors present in the sample texts were located in the Netherlands, while the other two were in France and Australia.

URL : “Who Is the FAIRest of Them All?” Authors, Entities, and Journals Regarding FAIR Data Principles

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications10030031

Seeing oneself as a data reuser: How subjectification activates the drivers of data reuse in science

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Authors : Marcel LaFlamme, Marion Poetz, Daniel Spichtinger

Considerable resources are being invested in strategies to facilitate the sharing of data across domains, with the aim of addressing inefficiencies and biases in scientific research and unlocking potential for science-based innovation.

Still, we know too little about what determines whether scientific researchers actually make use of the unprecedented volume of data being shared. This study characterizes the factors influencing researcher data reuse in terms of their relationship to a specific research project, and introduces subjectification as the mechanism by which these influencing factors are activated.

Based on our analysis of semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 24 data reusers and intermediaries, we find that while both project-independent and project-dependent factors may have a direct effect on a single instance of data reuse, they have an indirect effect on recurring data reuse as mediated by subjectification.

We integrate our findings into a model of recurring data reuse behavior that presents subjectification as the mechanism by which influencing factors are activated in a propensity to engage in data reuse.

Our findings hold scientific implications for the theorization of researcher data reuse, as well as practical implications around the role of settings for subjectification in bringing about and sustaining changes in researcher behavior.

URL : Seeing oneself as a data reuser: How subjectification activates the drivers of data reuse in science

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272153

Authors publishing repeatedly in predatory journals: An analysis of Scopus articles

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Author : Tove Faber Frandsen

Scholars engage with so-called predatory or questionable journals for many different reasons. Among the contributing factors are monetary payoffs and the possibility of fast track faculty positions or promotion.

It has been claimed that fast tracking promotion by using predatory publication outlets is an increasing problem. This study analyses the authors publishing in predatory journals with a focus on authors repeatedly publishing in predatory journals. In this study, a set of so-called predatory journals indexed in Scopus was used.

The data included 243,396 authorships of articles and reviews published from 2004 to 2021 by 169,742 unique authors. This study finds that 55% of the authors publish in one of these journals only once, 34.5% publish 2–5 times in these journals, 6.3% publish in them 6–10 times, and 4.2% publish more than 10 times.

Furthermore, this study finds that the mean and median number of articles and reviews is correlated with the number of articles and reviews in predatory journals. Finally, authors publishing in predatory journals do not confine themselves to these journals and also publish in validated journals as well.

URL : Authors publishing repeatedly in predatory journals: An analysis of Scopus articles

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1489

The COVID-19 Pandemic, Academia, Gender, and Beyond: A Review

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Author : Pınar E. Dönmez

This article aims to engage critically with the scholarly narratives and the emerging literature on the gender impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in academia. It outlines the key contours and themes in these scholarly discourses and conceptions, acknowledging their richness, depth and strengths especially given the short timespan within which they have developed since 2020.

The article then suggests broadening and historicising the critique advanced by the literature further. In doing so, the hierarchies and vulnerabilities exposed in the academic domain by the pandemic are positioned within a holistic understanding of crisis-ridden characteristics of social relations under capitalism.

URL : The COVID-19 Pandemic, Academia, Gender, and Beyond: A Review

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications10030030

Choosing the ‘right’ journal for publication: Perceptions and practices of pandemic-era early career researchers

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Authors : David Nicholas, Eti Herman, David Clark, Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri, Blanca Rodríguez-Bravo, Abdullah Abrizah, Anthony Watkinson, Jie Xu, David Sims, Galina Serbina, Marzena Świgoń, Hamid R. Jamali, Carol Tenopir, Suzie Allard

Presents early data from an investigation of the work lives and scholarly communication practices of 177 early career researchers (ECRs) from eight countries. Utilizing mainly coded and textual data from interviews, the paper reports on the findings that pertain to publishing papers in peer reviewed journals.

We examine which factors are taken into account when choosing the journal to publish their research in, identifying similarities/differences by country, age, academic status and discipline. Also, explored is whether the pandemic has changed decision-making. Main findings are that the aim for ECRs is to publish in the ‘best’ journals, variably measured by prestige, impact factor, standards of peer review and indexation.

Appropriateness of audience is the only factor unrelated to the quality of the journal that figures highly among the factors that guide ECRs in the process of selecting a journal.

The pandemic has made little difference to the majority of ECRs when they decide on a journal for publishing their research. However, there is a greater awareness of the need for a faster turnover rate, brought on by the importance accorded to speedy publication during the pandemic.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1488

 

Negotiating the ethical-political dimensions of research methods: a key competency in mixed methods, inter- and transdisciplinary, and co-production research

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Authors : Simon West, Caroline Schill

Methods are often thought of as neutral tools that researchers can pick up and use to learn about a reality ‘out there.’ Motivated by growing recognition of complexity, there have been widespread calls to mix methods, both within and across disciplines, to generate richer scientific understandings and more effective policy interventions.

However, bringing methods together often reveals their tacit, inherently contestable, and sometimes directly opposing assumptions about reality and how it can and should be known.

There are consequently growing efforts to identify the competencies necessary to work with multiple methods effectively. We identify the ability to recognise and negotiate the ethical-political dimensions of research methods as a key competency in mixed methods, inter- and transdisciplinary, and co-production research, particularly for researchers addressing societal challenges in fields like environment, health and education.

We describe these ethical-political dimensions by drawing on our experiences developing an ethics application for a transdisciplinary sustainability science project that brings together the photovoice method and controlled behavioural experiments.

The first dimension is that different methods and methodological approaches generate their own ethical standards guiding interactions between researchers and participants that may contradict each other.

The second is that these differing ethical standards are directly linked to the variable effects that methods have in wider society (both in terms of their enactment in the moment and the knowledge generated), raising more political questions about the kinds of realities that researchers are contributing to through their chosen methods.

We identify the practices that helped us—as two researchers using different methodological approaches—to productively explore these dimensions and enrich our collaborative work.

We conclude with pointers for evaluating the ethical-political rigour of mixed methods, inter- and transdisciplinary, and co-production research, and discuss how such rigour might be supported in research projects, graduate training programmes and research organisations.

URL : Negotiating the ethical-political dimensions of research methods: a key competency in mixed methods, inter- and transdisciplinary, and co-production research

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01297-z