Open Research Data and Open Peer Review: Perceptions of a Medical and Health Sciences Community in Greece

Authors : Eirini Delikoura, Dimitrios Kouis

Recently significant initiatives have been launched for the dissemination of Open Access as part of the Open Science movement. Nevertheless, two other major pillars of Open Science such as Open Research Data (ORD) and Open Peer Review (OPR) are still in an early stage of development among the communities of researchers and stakeholders.

The present study sought to unveil the perceptions of a medical and health sciences community about these issues. Through the investigation of researchers‘ attitudes, valuable conclusions can be drawn, especially in the field of medicine and health sciences, where an explosive growth of scientific publishing exists.

A quantitative survey was conducted based on a structured questionnaire, with 179 valid responses. The participants in the survey agreed with the Open Peer Review principles. However, they ignored basic terms like FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and appeared incentivized to permit the exploitation of their data.

Regarding Open Peer Review (OPR), participants expressed their agreement, implying their support for a trustworthy evaluation system.

Conclusively, researchers need to receive proper training for both Open Research Data principles and Open Peer Review processes which combined with a reformed evaluation system will enable them to take full advantage of the opportunities that arise from the new scholarly publishing and communication landscape.

URL : Open Research Data and Open Peer Review: Perceptions of a Medical and Health Sciences Community in Greece

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9020014

Preprint Abstracts in Times of Crisis: a Comparative Study with the Pre-pandemic Period

Authors : Frédérique Bordignon, Liana Ermakova, Marianne Noel

The urgency to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak has driven an unprecedented surge in preprints that aim to speed up knowledge dissemination as they are available much sooner than peer-reviewed publications.

In this study we consider abstracts of research articles and preprints as main entry points that draw attention to the most important information of the document and that try to entice us to read the whole article. In this paper, we try to capture and examine shifts in scientific abstract writing produced at the very beginning of the pandemic.

We made a comparative study of abstracts in terms of their informativeness associated with preprints issued in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and those produced in 2019, the closest pre-pandemic period. Our results clearly differ from one preprint server to another and show that there are community-centered habits as regards writing and reporting results.

The preprints issued from the arXiv, ChemRxiv and Research Square servers tend to have more informative (generous) abstracts than the ones submitted to the other servers. In four servers, the ratio of structured abstracts decreases with the pandemic.

URL : Preprint Abstracts in Times of Crisis: a Comparative Study with the Pre-pandemic Period

Original location : https://hal-enpc.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03187900

Wiki Trans : une communauté de savoir sur la transidentité

Auteur/Author : Bérengère Stassin

Cet article porte sur Wiki Trans, un site collaboratif créé par une femme transgenre pour permettre la mise en commun d’expériences et le partage d’informations liées aux aspects sociaux et médicaux de la transidentité et répondre aux besoins informationnels qu’elle suscite.

Le site vise à centraliser des informations dispersées au sein du web, à traduire en français des ressources anglophones et à vulgariser de l’information médicale et scientifique. Ce projet favorise l’émergence d’une communauté de savoir en ligne composée de personnes transgenres et cisgenres, de bénévoles et de médecins.

Une hybridation entre savoirs expérientiels et savoirs experts est alors observée.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ctd.3723

Fear of the academic fake? Journal editorials and the amplification of the ‘predatory publishing’ discourse

Authors : Kelsey Inouye, David Mills

This analysis of 229 editorials and opinion pieces published in science and medical journals explores the affective discourses used to characterise so‐called predatory publishing. Most (84%, n = 193) deploy one or more of three related categories of metaphorical and figurative language (fear, fakery and exploitation) to strengthen their rhetorical case.

This paper examines the deployment, co‐occurrence and amplification of this language across the science publishing system, focusing particularly on the role of major science journals in adopting and normalising this emotive discourse.

The analysis shows how few editorials offer alternative perspectives on these developments (n = 9), and their relative invisibility in scholarly debates.

URL : Fear of the academic fake? Journal editorials and the amplification of the ‘predatory publishing’ discourse

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1377

Accuracy of PubMed-based author lists of publications and use of author identifiers to address author name ambiguity: a cross-sectional study

Authors : Paul Sebo, Sylvain de Lucia, Nathalie Vernaz

Objective

To assess the accuracy of PubMed-based author lists of publications and use of author identifiers to address author name ambiguity.

Methods

In this Swiss study conducted in 2019, 300 hospital-based senior physicians were asked to generate a list of their publications in PubMed and complete a questionnaire (type of query used, number of errors in their list of publications, knowledge and use of ORCID and ResearcherID).

Results

156 physicians (52%) agreed to participate, 145 of whom published at least one article (mean number of publications: 60 (SD 73)). Only 17% used the advanced search option. On average, there were 5 articles in the lists that were not co-authored by participants (advanced search: 1.0 (SD 2.6) vs. 5.9 (SD 13.9), p value 0.02) and 3 articles co-authored by participants that did not appear in the lists (advanced search: 1.5 (SD 2.0) vs. 3.6 (SD 8.4), p-value 0.05). Although 82% were aware of ORCID, only 16% added all their articles (39% and 6% respectively for ResearcherID).

Conclusions

When used by senior physicians, the advanced search in PubMed is accurate for retrieving authors’ publications. Author identifiers are only used by a minority of physicians and are therefore not recommended in this context, as they would lead to inaccurate results.

URL : Accuracy of PubMed-based author lists of publications and use of author identifiers to address author name ambiguity: a cross-sectional study

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03845-3

Openness in Big Data and Data Repositories. The Application of an Ethics Framework for Big Data in Healthand Research

Authors : Vicki Xafis, Markus K. Labude

There is a growing expectation, or even requirement, for researchers to deposit a variety of research data in data repositories as a condition of funding or publication. This expectation recognizes the enormous benefits of data collected and created for research purposes being made available for secondary uses, as open science gains increasing support.

This is particularly so in the context of big data, especially where health data is involved. There are, however, also challenges relating to the collection, storage, and re-use of research data.

This paper gives a brief overview of the landscape of data sharing via data repositories and discusses some of the key ethical issues raised by the sharing of health-related research data, including expectations of privacy and confidentiality, the transparency of repository governance structures, access restrictions, as well as data ownership and the fair attribution of credit.

To consider these issues and the values that are pertinent, the paper applies the deliberative balancing approach articulated in the Ethics Framework for Big Data in Health and Research (Xafis et al. 2019) to the domain of Openness in Big Data and Data Repositories.

Please refer to that article for more information on how this framework is to be used, including a full explanation of the key values involved and the balancing approach used in the case study at the end.

URL : Openness in Big Data and Data Repositories. The Application of an Ethics Framework for Big Data in Healthand Research

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s41649-019-00097-z

The Most Widely Disseminated COVID-19-Related Scientific Publications in Online Media: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Top 100 Articles with the Highest Altmetric Attention Scores

Authors : Ji Yoon Moon, Dae Young Yoon, Ji Hyun Hong, Kyoung Ja Lim, Sora Baek, Young Lan Seo, Eun Joo Yun

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global pandemic. This study’s aim was to identify and characterize the top 100 COVID-19-related scientific publications, which had received the highest Altmetric Attention Scores (AASs).

Hence, we searched Altmetric Explorer using search terms such as “COVID” or “COVID-19” or “Coronavirus” or “SARS-CoV-2” or “nCoV” and then selected the top 100 articles with the highest AASs. For each article identified, we extracted the following information: the overall AAS, publishing journal, journal impact factor (IF), date of publication, language, country of origin, document type, main topic, and accessibility.

The top 100 articles most frequently were published in journals with high (>10.0) IF (n = 67), were published between March and July 2020 (n = 67), were written in English (n = 100), originated in the United States (n = 45), were original articles (n = 59), dealt with treatment and clinical manifestations (n = 33), and had open access (n = 98).

Our study provides important information pertaining to the dissemination of scientific knowledge about COVID-19 in online media.

URL : The Most Widely Disseminated COVID-19-Related Scientific Publications in Online Media: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Top 100 Articles with the Highest Altmetric Attention Scores

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9020239