Épistémologie des sciences de l’information : histoire intellectuelle des concepts, théories et paradigmes

Auteur : Carlos Alberto Ávila Araújo

Cet article présente tout d’abord une histoire intellectuelle des sciences de l’information en trois temps : la période fondatrice (1960 et 1970), la période d’expansion des problématiques (1980 et 1990) et le moment contemporain (XXIe siècle), en mettant en évidence, dans chacun d’eux, les concepts, théories et paradigmes présents.

Il présente ensuite les six dimensions du concept d’information à partir desquelles les plus grandes avancées ont pu être menées en Sciences de l’information au cours de ces décennies. Finalement, ces éléments sont mis en relation avec certains apports des travaux menés dans le cadre des Sciences de l’information et de la communication.

La diversité des théories apparaît alors comme un facteur d’enrichissement du domaine tout en nécessitant des travaux de systématisation et de cartographie.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/rfsic.12443

Corpus d’enquêtes sur les pratiques d’information scientifique des chercheurs. Constitution et exploitation des données

Autrices : Florence Thiault, Marie-Laure Malingre

Ce projet a pour ambition de recenser les principales enquêtes menées en France et à l’étranger sur les pratiques des chercheurs relatives à l’Information Scientifique et Technique (IST) dans une perspective méthodologique.

Ce data paper a pour objectif principal de présenter la constitution de notre corpus d’étude. Nous rappelons les différents choix de l’équipe projet quant à la collecte et au traitement des données.

Nous indiquons les possibilités de réutilisation et d’exploitation des fichiers qui sont associés au corpus initial. Nous exposons également les questionnements apparus lors de l’étude du corpus, ainsi que les perspectives d’analyse finale et méthodologique pour l’observation des pratiques d’information scientifique des chercheurs.

URL : http://journals.openedition.org/rfsic/12228

Opening Up of Editorials Activities at Chemistry Journals. What Does Editorship Mean and What Does It Involve?

Author : Marianne Noel

The article unpacks the publishing practices and focuses on the curating work carried out by the editors of chemistry journals. Based on a qualitative analysis of multiple sources in two publishing houses (the American Chemical Society, ACS and Nature Research), it first shows that the role of editor-in-chief covers a wide range of realities and is far from being limited to that of a gatekeeper (the most common metaphor in the literature).

In journals that are part of the Nature Research portfolio, in-house editors, who are no longer active scientists, work full time for the journals. The article describes the professional trajectories and skills required to join the publishing house.

Interviews highlight collective identity-based actions, attention to the growth and the flow of manuscripts, but also specific epistemic properties of outputs in chemistry. Besides tasks that editors outline “as really the same as they were 100 years ago,” as they spend most of their time handling manuscripts and providing quality assurance, they also travel to conferences to support journals and encourage submissions, visit labs where researchers pitch their work or ask questions about journals, and “educate the actors themselves” about new fields.

In both cases studied, the publishing houses partner with institutions to offer events (ACS on Campus programme, Nature masterclass) that a university or department can freely host or buy, where editors organize workshops on all aspects of manuscript preparation. Second, publishing houses, whether non-for-profit or commercial, have embraced a catalog logic, where the journals are not necessarily in competition and have an assumed place and hierarchy.

At Nature Research, editors-in-chief head business units inscribed in the company’s organization. Despite standardized processes imposed by the procedural chain, there is still room to maneuver in these relatively autonomous structures that are ultimately evaluated on their results (the annual production of a certain number of high-quality papers).

On the other hand, ACS is seen as a vessel whose course cannot easily be deviated. The conclusion calls for extending this type of investigation to other contexts or types of journals.

URL : Opening Up of Editorials Activities at Chemistry Journals. What Does Editorship Mean and What Does It Involve?

Original location : https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frma.2022.747846/full

Diamond Open Access in Norway 2017–2020

Author : Jan Erik Frantsvåg

We see from information published elsewhere that Gold OA is on the increase globally. The OA Diamond study indicates that Diamond OA is an important component of scholarly communications, with an estimated 8–9% of the total global scholarly output.

These numbers, however, are on a global scale and are not necessarily representative of any given country; country case studies are needed to find this information. Norway is a country where the government has declared a 100% OA goal and most research has public funding. Norway has good financing structures for various models of OA, and it has a national CRIS system.

This study tries to find and present numbers for articles in scholarly journals to describe both recent developments and relative numbers for Norway as a whole, and for scholarly fields in Norway, with regards to Diamond OA. Numbers for and development of Gold OA will also be given and commented upon to some extent.

URL : Diamond Open Access in Norway 2017–2020

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications10010013

The research data life cycle, legacy data, and dilemmas in research data management

Authors : Jenny Bossaller, Anthony J. Million

This paper presents findings from an interview study of research data managers in academic data archives. Our study examined policies and professional autonomy with a focus on dilemmas encountered in everyday work by data managers.

We found that dilemmas arose at every stage of the research data lifecycle, and legacy data presents particularly vexing challenges. The iFields’ emphasis on knowledge organization and representation provides insight into how data, used by scientists, are used to create knowledge.

The iFields’ disciplinary emphasis also encompasses the sociotechnical complexity of dilemmas that we found arise in research data management. Therefore, we posit that iSchools are positioned to contribute to data science education by teaching about ethics and infrastructure used to collect, organize, and disseminate data through problem-based learning.

URL : The research data life cycle, legacy data, and dilemmas in research data management

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24645

Open access through Subscribe to Open: a society publisher’s implementation

Authors: Sara Bosshart, Rod Cookson, Philipp Hess

As pressures mount from global funding mandates and initiatives like Plan S, publishers are seeking sustainable solutions to transition their subscription portfolios to open access.

For self-publishing societies with niche portfolios and low publication volumes, traditional transition options such as article processing charge models or transformative agreements are limited or out of reach and often involve significant financial risk.

In this article, we focus on one society publisher’s implementation of Subscribe to Open (S2O): an emerging open access model that moves away from article-level charges, instead leveraging existing subscription revenues and infrastructure to achieve seamless and sustainable open access.

We outline the advantages of this model for society publishers, the parameters to consider when implementing the model, the initial community response to a successful implementation and some early data highlighting the effect of the S2O model on our journals.

URL : Open access through Subscribe to Open: a society publisher’s implementation

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.567

Assessing Open Science Practices in Phytolith Research

Author : Emma Karoune

Open science is an integral part of all scientific research, but the extent of open science practices in phytolith research is unknown. Phytolith analysis examines silica bodies that are initially formed within and between plant cells during the life of the plant but become deposited in sediments once the plant dies.

The use of phytoliths in archaeobotanical and palaeoecological studies has been increasing in recent years resulting in an upsurge in publications. The aims of this article are to assess open science practices in phytolith research by reviewing data and metadata sharing, and open access, in a sample of journal articles containing primary phytolith data from 16 prominent archaeological and palaeoecological journals (341 articles).

This study builds on similar studies conducted for zooarchaeology (Kansa et al. 2020) and macro-botanical remains (Lodwick 2019). This study shows that 53% of papers shared data in any format but only 4% of papers contained reusable data, 74% included some pictures of phytolith morphotypes for identification purposes, 69% had a fully described method, 47% used the International code for phytolith nomenclature (ICPN 1.0) and only 13% of articles were open access.

Steps forward are then proposed, including planning for open projects, making more articles openly accessible and implementing the FAIR data principles, to use as a starting point for discussions in the wider phytolith and archaeological communities to develop guidelines for greater integration of open science practices.

URL : Assessing Open Science Practices in Phytolith Research

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/oq.88