L’impact de la crise de la COVID-19 sur les pratiques et usages des prépublications des chercheurs en sciences du vivant et de la médecine : questionner leur légitimité

Autrice/Author : Marie VialBonacci

La COVID-19, pandémie mondiale, apparue dans la ville de Wuhan en Chine en novembre 2019, a engendré un bouleversement sans précédent de la communication scientifique. Cette crise sanitaire a incité les chercheurs à utiliser les serveurs de prépublications afin de communiquer plus rapidement les résultats scientifiques dans l’objectif de faire avancer la science.

Le présent mémoire tentera d’analyser et de mettre en lumière ces changements majeurs à travers une étude des modifications des pratiques et usages des prépublications depuis le début de la pandémie, à l’échelle internationale.

Cette perspective sera également étudiée à l’échelle nationale, à travers une enquête de terrain. Ce travail de recherche sera centré sur le secteur des sciences du vivant et de la médecine, un secteur qui n’utilise que très peu les prépublications mais qui connait une explosion de cette pratique avec la crise sanitaire. Plus encore ce mémoire tentera d’étudier l’évolution de leur légitimité pendant la pandémie.

URL: L’impact de la crise de la COVID-19 sur les pratiques et usages des prépublications des chercheurs en sciences du vivant et de la médecine : questionner leur légitimité

Original location : https://www.enssib.fr/bibliotheque-numerique/notices/70354-l-impact-de-la-crise-de-la-covid-19-sur-les-pratiques-et-usages-des-prepublications-des-chercheurs-en-sciences-du-vivant-et-de-la-medecine-questionner-leur-legitimite

What Are the Characteristics of Canadian Independent, Scholarly Journals? Results from a Website Analysis

Authors : Jessica Lange, Sarah Severson

The dominance of commercial publishers (Larivière, Haustein, and Mongeon 2015) has led to a discussion in Canada focusing on alternative models for supporting independent, non-commercial, scholarly journals.

Although small in number, these journals represent an important contribution to Canadian and global scholarship. They also act as a counterbalance to the increasingly for-profit nature of scholarly publishing. Despite their importance, there exists no definitive list of journals of this nature in Canada, making analysis and understanding of their characteristics difficult.

In order to address this gap, the researchers undertook an analysis of the websites of 485 Canadian, independent, scholarly journals. Independent was defined as journals which are not affiliated with a commercial publisher.

The researchers gathered data for each journal on their access type (e.g., closed, open access), subject area, size and composition of the editorial team, and any affiliation(s). This data was then analyzed to create a portrait of these journals with these themes.

The researchers found that most of these journals were affiliated with at least one organization, with over half being associated with two or more. They also discovered that affiliations varied depending on the discipline and that the size of the editorial team was correlated to the access type.

Journals were predominantly in the humanities and social sciences, and the majority were open access (OA) without article processing charges (APCs).

While the focus of this study is on Canadian journals, this article provides a framework for other researchers to examine non-commercial, independent publishing in their own countries.

Its results also provide preliminary data which may inspire future avenues of research, particularly into models for non-APC, open access journals as well as the editorial board structure and size for independent journals.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.153

Reshaping How Universities Can Evaluate the Research Impact of Open Humanities for Societal Benefit

Authors : Paul Longley Arthur, Lydia Hearn

During the twenty-first century, for the first time, the volume of digital data has surpassed the amount of analog data. As academic practices increasingly become digital, opportunities arise to reshape the future of scholarly communication through more accessible, interactive, open, and transparent methods that engage a far broader and more diverse public.

Yet despite these advances, the research performance of universities and public research institutes remains largely evaluated through publication and citation analysis rather than by public engagement and societal impact.

This article reviews how changes to bibliometric evaluations toward greater use of altmetrics, including social media mentions, could enhance uptake of open scholarship in the humanities.

In addition, the article highlights current challenges faced by the open scholarship movement, given the complexity of the humanities in terms of its sources and outputs that include monographs, book chapters, and journals in languages other than English; the use of popular media not considered as scholarly papers; the lack of time and energy to develop digital skills among research staff; problems of authority and trust regarding the scholarly or non-academic nature of social media platforms; the prestige of large academic publishing houses; and limited awareness of and familiarity with advanced digital applications.

While peer review will continue to be a primary method for evaluating research in the humanities, a combination of altmetrics and other assessment of research impact through different data sources may provide a way forward to ensure the increased use, sustainability, and effectiveness of open scholarship in the humanities.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.788

Dialogicity in Individual and Institutional Scientific Blogs

Author : Marina Bondi

The paper focuses on variation across institutional and individual scientific blogs, i.e., blogs that are managed by journals, magazines or associations involved in the dissemination of scientific information and blogs that are managed by individual researchers.

Using comparable corpora of posts from different scientific disciplines, look in particular at markers of dialogicity, i.e., the representation of participants (markers of self-reference, reader-reference, as well as representation of the scientific community and markers of attribution), markers of communicative action (organizational units and metastatements), and evaluative dialogue (evaluative lexis and dialogic contraction or expansion).

Concordance analysis of keywords and key-phrases (as calculated by Wordsmith Tools 8.0) shows that blogs managed by individual scientists emphasize personal voice and interpersonal elements, while institutional blogs are comparatively more informational.

Dialogicity markers are shown to contribute to defining how bloggers manage subjective and intersubjective positioning and construct their credibility, thus defining the nature of their relation to the audience and ultimately the functions of blogging.

URL : Dialogicity in Individual and Institutional Scientific Blogs

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications10010009

 

To protect and to serve: developing a road map for research data management services

Authors: Andrea Chiarelli, Neil Beagrie, Lotte Boon, Ruth Mallalieu, Rob Johnson, Amy Warner May, Rowan Wilso

Research Data Management (RDM) has become a major issue for universities over the last decade. This case study outlines the review of RDM services carried out at the University of Oxford in partnership with external consultants between November 2019 and November 2020.

It aims to describe and discuss the processes in undertaking a university-wide review of services supporting RDM and developing a future road map for them, with a strong emphasis on the design processes, methodological approaches and infographics used. The future road map developed is a live document, which the consulting team handed over to the University at the end of the consultation process.

It provides a suggested RDM action plan for the University that will continue to evolve and be iterated in the light of additional internal costings, available resources and reprioritization in the budget cycle for each academic year.

It is hoped that the contents of this case study will be useful to other research-intensive universities with an interest in developing and planning RDM services to support their researchers.

URL : To protect and to serve: developing a road map for research data management services

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.566

Why do journals discontinue? A study of Australian ceased journals

Authors : Hamid R. Jamali, Simon Wakeling, Alireza Abbasi

Little is known about why journals discontinue despite its significant implications. We present an analysis of 140 Australian journals that ceased from 2011 to mid-2021 and present the results of a survey of editors of 53 of them. The death age of journals was 19.7 (median = 16) with 57% being 10 years or older.

About 54% of them belonged to educational institutions and 34% to non-profit organizations. In terms of subject, 75% of the journals belonged to social sciences, humanities and arts. The survey showed that funding was an important reason for discontinuation, and lack of quality submission and lack of support from the owners of the journal also played a role.

Too much reliance on voluntary works appeared to be an issue for editorial processes. The dominant metric culture in the research environment and pressure for journals to perform well in journal rankings negatively affect local journals in attracting quality submissions.

A fifth of journals indicated that they did not have a plan for the preservation of articles at the time of publication and the current availability of the content of ceased journals appeared to be sub-optimal in many cases with reliance on the website of ceased journals or web-archive platforms.

URL : Why do journals discontinue? A study of Australian ceased journals

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1448

Innovations in peer review in scholarly publishing: a meta-summary

Authors : Helen Buckley Woods, Johanna Brumberg, Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner, Stephen Pinfield, Ludo Waltman

Background

There are currently numerous innovations in peer review and quality assurance in scholarly publishing. The Research on Research Institute conducted a programme of co-produced projects investigating these innovations.

This literature review was part of one such project ‘Experiments in peer review’ (Kaltenbrunner et al, 2022), which created an inventory and framework of peer review innovations. The aim of this literature review was to aid the development of the inventory by identifying innovations in peer review reported in the scholarly literature and by providing a summary of the different approaches.

Methods

This meta-summary is based on data identified from Web of Science and Scopus limited from 2010 to 2021. A total of 247 papers were screened, with 6 review articles chosen for the focus of the literature review. Items were selected that described approaches to innovating peer review or illustrated examples.

Results

The summary of innovations are drawn from 6 review articles: Bruce et al (2016); Tennant et al (2017); Burley (2017); Horbach and Halffman (2018); Tennant (2018); Barroga (2020). The innovations are divided into three high-level categories: approaches to peer review, reviewer focussed initiatives and technology to support peer review with sub-categories of results presented in tabular form and summarised. A summary of all innovations found is also presented.

Conclusions

From a simple synthesis of the review authors’ conclusions, three key messages are presented: observations on current practice; authors’ views on the implications of innovations in peer review; and calls for action in peer review research and practice.

URL : https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/qaksd/