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Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal: The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)

Author : M. Ángeles Oviedo-García

The extent to which predatory journals can harm scientific practice increases as the numbers of such journals expand, in so far as they undermine scientific integrity, quality, and credibility, especially if those journals leak into prestigious databases.

Journal Citation Reports (JCRs), a reference for the assessment of researchers and for grant-making decisions, is used as a standard whitelist, in so far as the selectivity of a JCR-indexed journal adds a legitimacy of sorts to the articles that the journal publishes.

The Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) once included on Beall’s list of potential, possible or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers, had 53 journals ranked in the 2018 JCRs annual report.

These journals are analysed, not only to contrast the formal criteria for the identification of predatory journals, but taking a step further, their background is also analysed with regard to self-citations and the source of those self-citations in 2018 and 2019.

The results showed that the self-citation rates increased and was very much higher than those of the leading journals in the JCR category. Besides, an increasingly high rate of citations from other MDPI-journals was observed.

The formal criteria together with the analysis of the citation patterns of the 53 journals under analysis all singled them out as predatory journals. Hence, specific recommendations are given to researchers, educational institutions and prestigious databases advising them to review their working relations with those sorts of journals.

URL : Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal: The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvab020

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Dawning of a new age? Economics journals’ data policies on the test bench

Author : Sven Vlaeminck

In the field of social sciences and particularly in economics, studies have frequently reported a lack of reproducibility of published research. Most often, this is due to the unavailability of data reproducing the findings of a study.

However, over the past years, debates on open science practices and reproducible research have become stronger and louder among research funders, learned societies, and research organisations.

Many of these have started to implement data policies to overcome these shortcomings. Against this background, the article asks if there have been changes in the way economics journals handle data and other materials that are crucial to reproduce the findings of empirical articles.

For this purpose, all journals listed in the Clarivate Analytics Journal Citation Reports edition for economics have been evaluated for policies on the disclosure of research data.

The article describes the characteristics of these data policies and explicates their requirements. Moreover, it compares the current findings with the situation some years ago.

The results show significant changes in the way journals handle data in the publication process. Research libraries can use the findings of this study for their advisory activities to best support researchers in submitting and providing data as required by journals.

URL : Dawning of a new age? Economics journals’ data policies on the test bench

DOI : https://doi.org/10.53377/lq.10940

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The state of social science research on COVID-19

Authors : Yan-Li Liu, Wen-Juan Yuan, Shao-Hong Zhu

Research on COVID-19 has proliferated rapidly since the outbreak of the pandemic at the end of 2019. Many articles have aimed to provide insight into this fast-growing theme. The social sciences have also put effort into research on problems related to COVID-19, with numerous documents having been published.

Some studies have evaluated the growth of scientific literature on COVID-19 based on scientometric analysis, but most of these analyses focused on medical research while ignoring social science research on COVID-19.

This is the first scientometric study of the performance of social science research on COVID-19. It provides insight into the landscape, the research fields, and international collaboration in this domain. Data obtained from SSCI on the Web of Science platform was analyzed using VOSviewer.

The overall performance of the documents was described, and then keyword co-occurrence and co-authorship networks were visualized. The six main research fields with highly active topics were confirmed by analysis and visualization. Mental health and psychology were clearly shown to be the focus of most social science research related to COVID-19.

The USA made the most contributions, with the most extensive collaborations globally, with Harvard University as the leading institution. Collaborations throughout the world were strongly related to geographical location.

Considering the social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, this scientometric study is significant for identifying the growth of literature in the social sciences and can help researchers within this field gain quantitative insights into the development of research on COVID-19.

The results are useful for finding potential collaborators and for identifying the frontier and gaps in social science research on COVID-19 to shape future studies.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04206-4

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The impact of geographical bias when judging scientific studies

Authors : Marta Kowal, Piotr Sorokowski, Emanuel Kulczycki, Agnieszka Żelaźniewicz

The beauty of science lies within its core assumption that it seeks to identify the truth, and as such, the truth stands alone and does not depend on the person who proclaims it. However, people’s proclivity to succumb to various stereotypes is well known, and the scientific world may not be exceptionally immune to the tendency to judge a book by its cover.

An interesting example is geographical bias, which includes distorted judgments based on the geographical origin of, inter alia, the given work and not its actual quality or value. Here, we tested whether both laypersons (N = 1532) and scientists (N = 480) are prone to geographical bias when rating scientific projects in one of three scientific fields (i.e., biology, philosophy, or psychology).

We found that all participants favored more biological projects from the USA than China; in particular, expert biologists were more willing to grant further funding to Americans. In philosophy, however, laypersons rated Chinese projects as better than projects from the USA. Our findings indicate that geographical biases affect public perception of research and influence the results of grant competitions.

URL : The impact of geographical bias when judging scientific studies

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04176-7

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Are Conference Posters Being Cited?

Authors : Nick Haupka, Cäcilia Schröer, Christian Hauschke

We present a small case study on citations of conference posters using poster collections from both Figshare and Zenodo. The study takes into account the years 2016–2020 according to the dates of publication on the platforms.

Citation data was taken from DataCite, Crossref and Dimensions. Primarily, we want to know to what extent scientific posters are being cited and thereby which impact posters potentially have on the scholarly landscape and especially on academic publications.

Our data-driven analysis reveals that posters are rarely cited. Citations could only be found for 1% of the posters in our dataset. A limitation in this study however is that the impact of academic posters was not measured empirical but rather descriptive.

URL : Are Conference Posters Being Cited?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2021.766552

 

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Les revues SIC et les données de recherche : Une étude empirique

Auteurs/Authors : Joachim Schöpfel, Eric Kergosien

Dans le cadre de la politique de la science ouverte, les revues scientifiques jouent un rôle central pour l’ouverture et le partage des données de recherche. Notre étude porte sur 95 revues en sciences de l’information et de la communication (liste de la section Conseil national des universités [CNU] 71).

Nous avons analysé leur politique éditoriale en matière d’intégrité et de transparence en appliquant les 10 critères du TOP Factor du Center for Open Science aux recommandations et instructions aux auteurs. Plus de la moitié des revues n’affichent aucune politique dans ce domaine.

Les autres encouragent les auteurs à partager leurs données et/ou d’autres matériels, avec parfois des consignes pour la citation des données. Très peu de revues vont plus loin et exigent une telle transparence.

Les résultats sont discutés par rapport aux divergences d’interprétation et d’évaluation, par rapport à la représentativité de l’échantillon et par rapport aux choix des rédactions et éditeurs. Plusieurs pistes pour aller plus loin sont indiquées.

URL : Les revues SIC et les données de recherche : Une étude empirique

DOI : https://dx.doi.org/10.35562/balisages.641

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Les nouvelles compétences des bibliothécaires dans l’élaboration de services innovants numériques à destination des chercheurs en bibliothèque universitaire. Enjeux et pratiques

Auteur/Author : Camille Sérange

Les services numériques à destination des chercheurs connaissent un accroissement considérable depuis ces cinq dernières années en bibliothèques universitaires. Leur caractère innovant soulève des enjeux d’acquisition de compétences pour les professionnels des bibliothèques.

Que cela soit pour la mise oeuvre de services numériques mais également leur suivi et leur maintenance. Le présent mémoire a pour objectif de mettre en lumière les enjeux de l’acquisition des nouvell es conséquences nécessaire à l’élaboration des services numériques.

Il s’agit également de penser la question des compétences autour de la notion de complémentarité et de s’interroger sur les solutions pour pérenniser des services qualifiés d’innovants.

URL : Les nouvelles compétences des bibliothécaires dans l’élaboration de services innovants numériques à destination des chercheurs en bibliothèque universitaire. Enjeux et pratiques

Original location : https://www.enssib.fr/bibliotheque-numerique/notices/70178-les-nouvelles-competences-des-bibliothecaires-dans-l-elaboration-de-services-innovants-numeriques-a-destination-des-chercheurs-en-bibliotheque-universitaire-enjeux-et-pratiques