InfoDoc MicroVeille – Page 70 – Veille dédiée aux Sciences de l'Information et des Bibliothèques // Collecting and Sharing research papers in Library and Information science ISSN 2429-3938

Les podcasts de sciences en SHS et STS. Formes expressives, objectifs et acteurs

Posté le 1 mai 2022 par Hans Dillaerts

Auteure/Author : Clara Perissat

Ce mémoire traite des podcasts comme un genre à part entière. En effet, le podcast est un média en vogue ces dernières années. L’accessibilité des nouvelles technologies et des plateformes de diffusion ainsi que la forme intimiste du podcast font que de plus en plus de monde, professionnels ou non, s’approprie ce nouvel outil. Il est ainsi possible de trouver des podcasts sur des sujets très divers allant de la science à la politique en passant par l’érotisme ou le militantisme.

Ce mémoire s’intéresse aux podcasts de vulgarisation scientifique en sciences humaines et sociales (SHS) et en sciences et technologie santé (STS). L’intérêt a été porté sur les différences existantes entre les podcasts de SHS et les podcasts de STS à travers la problématique suivante : Les podcasts de sciences en SHS et STS ont-ils les mêmes formes expressives, les mêmes objectifs et les mêmes acteurs ?

Le développement de ce mémoire, s’est basé sur un corpus de huit podcasts, quatre podcasts de vulgarisation en Histoire et quatre podcasts de vulgarisation en santé. De nombreux podcasts étrangers traitent d’une discipline des STS alors qu’en France les podcasts ne sont pas spécialisés, un véritable manque de podcasts de STS français spécialisés dans une discipline a ainsi été observé.

Au contraire, les podcasts d’histoire sont très nombreux et révèlent l’engouement de cette discipline pour les français. Cela amené l’étude à s’intéresser à des podcasts de santé traitant parfois de sujets peu scientifiques comme le développement personnel. La question des créateurs et de la légitimité sont ainsi évoquées dans cette étude.

L’analyse des deux types de podcasts de science révèle qu’ils ont un enjeu similaire de prime abord : vulgariser leur discipline et diffuser des connaissances de manière informelle. En revanche, leur deuxième enjeu diffère. Les créateurs de podcasts d’histoire ont tendance a vouloir montrer la recherche en train de se faire, les nouvelles réflexions des chercheurs et de mettre ces derniers en valeur.

Les créateurs de podcasts de santé ont, quant à eux, tendance à vouloir faire agir leurs auditeurs grâce à des podcasts de conseils. La deuxième partie de l’analyse portent sur les méthodes différentes pour diffuser des connaissances. Les podcasts d’histoire se servent d’avantage des codes du roman pour transmettre du savoir.

Le récit, l’emploi d’un personnage principal, d’un narrateur, ou d’atmosphères travaillées servent à donner à l’auditeur l’impression qu’une histoire lui est racontée. De plus les outils de vulgarisation sont le plus souvent implicites, ce qui permet une diffusion non formelle des connaissances.

Au contraire, les podcasts de santé s’appuient sur de nombreux outils de vulgarisation explicites comme les synthèses, définitions, résumés et références scientifiques. Ils ne suivent pas les codes du roman et ont tendance à utiliser une écriture assez scolaire.

URL : https://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/dumas-03472403

Social justice driving open access publishing: an African perspective

Posté le 29 avril 2022 par Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Reggie Raju, Auliya Badrudeen

The OA movement is generally considered to have been founded for the truly philanthropic purpose of promoting equity and inclusivity in access to scholarship. For Africans, this meant the opening of the research ecosystem to marginalized research communities who could then freely make use of shared research to aid in the socio-economic development and emancipation of the continent.

However, this philanthropic purpose has been deviated from, leading instead to the disenfranchisement of the African research community. Through systemic inequalities embedded in the scholarly ecosystem, the publishing landscape has been northernised, with research from the global north sitting at the very top of the knowledge hierarchy to the exclusion of Africa and other parts of the global south.

For this reason, progressive open access practices and policies need to be adopted, with an emphasis on social justice as an impetus, to enhance the sharing and recognition of African scholarship, while also bridging the ‘research-exchange’ divide that exists between the global south and north.

Furthermore, advocates of open access must collaborate to create equal opportunities for African voices to participate in the scholarly landscape through the creation and dissemination of global south research. Thusly, the continental platform was developed by the University of Cape Town.

This platform was developed around the concept of a tenant model to act as a contributor to social justice-driven open access advocacy, and as a disruptor of the unjust knowledge hierarchies that exist.

URL : Social justice driving open access publishing: an African perspective

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.1910

Caching and Reproducibility: Making Data Science Experiments Faster and FAIRer

Posté le 23 avril 2022 par Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Moritz Schubotz, Ankit Satpute, André Greiner-Petter, Akiko Aizawa, Bela Gipp

Small to medium-scale data science experiments often rely on research software developed ad-hoc by individual scientists or small teams. Often there is no time to make the research software fast, reusable, and open access.

The consequence is twofold. First, subsequent researchers must spend significant work hours building upon the proposed hypotheses or experimental framework. In the worst case, others cannot reproduce the experiment and reuse the findings for subsequent research. Second, suppose the ad-hoc research software fails during often long-running computational expensive experiments.

In that case, the overall effort to iteratively improve the software and rerun the experiments creates significant time pressure on the researchers. We suggest making caching an integral part of the research software development process, even before the first line of code is written.

This article outlines caching recommendations for developing research software in data science projects. Our recommendations provide a perspective to circumvent common problems such as propriety dependence, speed, etc. At the same time, caching contributes to the reproducibility of experiments in the open science workflow.

Concerning the four guiding principles, i.e., Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability (FAIR), we foresee that including the proposed recommendation in a research software development will make the data related to that software FAIRer for both machines and humans.

We exhibit the usefulness of some of the proposed recommendations on our recently completed research software project in mathematical information retrieval.

URL : Caching and Reproducibility: Making Data Science Experiments Faster and FAIRer

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2022.861944

Academic vs. biological age in research on academic careers: a large-scale study with implications for scientifically developing systems

Posté le 20 avril 2022 par Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Marek Kwiek, Wojciech Roszka

Biological age is an important sociodemographic factor in studies on academic careers (research productivity, scholarly impact, and collaboration patterns). It is assumed that the academic age, or the time elapsed from the first publication, is a good proxy for biological age.

In this study, we analyze the limitations of the proxy in academic career studies, using as an example the entire population of Polish academic scientists and scholars visible in the last decade in global science and holding at least a PhD (N = 20,569). The proxy works well for science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) disciplines; however, for non-STEMM disciplines (particularly for humanities and social sciences), it has a dramatically worse performance.

This negative conclusion is particularly important for systems that have only recently visible in global academic journals. The micro-level data suggest a delayed participation of social scientists and humanists in global science networks, with practical implications for predicting biological age from academic age.

We calculate correlation coefficients, present contingency analysis of academic career stages with academic positions and age groups, and create a linear multivariate regression model.

Our research suggests that in scientifically developing countries, academic age as a proxy for biological age should be used more cautiously than in advanced countries: ideally, it should be used only for STEMM disciplines.

URL : Academic vs. biological age in research on academic careers: a large-scale study with implications for scientifically developing systems

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04363-0

Institutionalizing Open Science in Africa: Limitations and Prospects

Posté le 17 avril 2022 par Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Izuchukwu Azuka Okafor, Smart Ikechukwu Mbagwu, Terkuma Chia, Zuwati Hasim, Echezona Ejike Udokanma, Karthik Chandran

The advancement of scientific research and raising the next-generation scientists in Africa depend largely on science access. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused discussions around open science (OS) to reemerge globally, especially in resource-poor settings like Africa, where the practice of OS is low.

The authors highlighted the elements, benefits, and existing initiatives of OS in Africa. More importantly, the article critically appraised the challenges, opportunities, and future considerations of OS in Africa. Addressing challenges of funding and leadership at different levels of educational, research, and government parastatals may be pivotal in charting a new course for OS in Africa.

This review serves as an advocacy strategy and an informative guide to policymaking and institutionalization of OS in Africa.

URL : Institutionalizing Open Science in Africa: Limitations and Prospects

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2022.855198

Advancing Self-Evaluative and Self-Regulatory Mechanisms of Scholarly Journals: Editors’ Perspectives on What Needs to Be Improved in the Editorial Process

Posté le 15 avril 2022 par Hans Dillaerts

Author : Katarina Krapež

Meticulous self-evaluative practices in the offices of academic periodicals can be helpful in reducing widespread uncertainty about the quality of scholarly journals. This paper summarizes the results of the second part of a qualitative worldwide study among 258 senior editors of scholarly journals across disciplines.

By means of a qualitative questionnaire, the survey investigated respondents’ perceptions of needed changes in their own editorial workflow that could, according to their beliefs, positively affect the quality of their journals.

The results show that the most relevant past improvements indicated by respondents were achieved by: (a) raising the required quality criteria for manuscripts, by defining standards for desk rejection and/or shaping the desired qualities of the published material, and (b) guaranteeing a rigorous peer review process.

Respondents believed that, currently, three areas have the most pressing need for amendment: ensuring higher overall quality of published articles (26% of respondents qualified this need as very high or high), increasing the overall quality of peer-review reports (23%), and raising reviewers’ awareness of the required quality standards (20%).

Bivariate analysis shows that respondents who work with non-commercial publishers reported an overall greater need to improve implemented quality assessment processes. Work overload, inadequate reward systems, and a lack of time for development activities were cited by respondents as the greatest obstacles to implementing necessary amendments.

URL : Advancing Self-Evaluative and Self-Regulatory Mechanisms of Scholarly Journals: Editors’ Perspectives on What Needs to Be Improved in the Editorial Process

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications10010012