Open science-based framework to reveal open data publishing: an experience from using Common Crawl

Authors : Andreiwid Correa, Israel Fernandes

The publishing of open data is considered a key element for civic participation paving the way to the ‘public value’, a term which underpins the social contribution. A result of that can be seen through the popularity of data portals published all around the world by governments, public and private organizations.

However, the diffusion of data portals raises concerns about discoverability and validity of these data sources, especially to what extent they contribute to open data and open science.

The purpose of this work is to develop a framework to reveal open data publishing with the use of a freely available open science project called Common Crawl. The idea is to identify open data-related initiatives and to gather information about their availability, having in the framework’s essence an iterative and differential process.

The main outcome is shown through a proposed model for the historical data repository which involves both use and creation of open science to branch new sort of research possibilities based on publishing of derived data.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02544245

Did awarding badges increase data sharing in BMJ Open? A randomized controlled trial

Authors : Anisa Rowhani-Farid, Adrian Aldcroft, Adrian G. Barnett

Sharing data and code are important components of reproducible research. Data sharing in research is widely discussed in the literature; however, there are no well-established evidence-based incentives that reward data sharing, nor randomized studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of data sharing policies at increasing data sharing.

A simple incentive, such as an Open Data Badge, might provide the change needed to increase data sharing in health and medical research. This study was a parallel group randomized controlled trial (protocol registration: doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/PXWZQ) with two groups, control and intervention, with 80 research articles published in BMJ Open per group, with a total of 160 research articles.

The intervention group received an email offer for an Open Data Badge if they shared their data along with their final publication and the control group received an email with no offer of a badge if they shared their data with their final publication.

The primary outcome was the data sharing rate. Badges did not noticeably motivate researchers who published in BMJ Open to share their data; the odds of awarding badges were nearly equal in the intervention and control groups (odds ratio = 0.9, 95% CI [0.1, 9.0]). Data sharing rates were low in both groups, with just two datasets shared in each of the intervention and control groups.

The global movement towards open science has made significant gains with the development of numerous data sharing policies and tools.

What remains to be established is an effective incentive that motivates researchers to take up such tools to share their data.

URL : Did awarding badges increase data sharing in BMJ Open? A randomized controlled trial

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.191818

Faculty knowledge and attitudes regarding predatory open access journals: a needs assessment study

Authors : Stephanie M. Swanberg, Joanna Thielen, Nancy Bulgarelli

Objective

The purpose of predatory open access (OA) journals is primarily to make a profit rather than to disseminate quality, peer-reviewed research.

Publishing in these journals could negatively impact faculty reputation, promotion, and tenure, yet many still choose to do so. Therefore, the authors investigated faculty knowledge and attitudes regarding predatory OA journals.

Methods

A twenty-item questionnaire containing both quantitative and qualitative items was developed and piloted. All university and medical school faculty were invited to participate.

The survey included knowledge questions that assessed respondents’ ability to identify predatory OA journals and attitudinal questions about such journals. Chi-square tests were used to detect differences between university and medical faculty.

Results

A total of 183 faculty completed the survey: 63% were university and 37% were medical faculty. Nearly one-quarter (23%) had not previously heard of the term “predatory OA journal.”

Most (87%) reported feeling very confident or confident in their ability to assess journal quality, but only 60% correctly identified a journal as predatory, when given a journal in their field to assess.

Chi-square tests revealed that university faculty were more likely to correctly identify a predatory OA journal (p=0.0006) and have higher self-reported confidence in assessing journal quality, compared with medical faculty (p=0.0391).

Conclusions

Survey results show that faculty recognize predatory OA journals as a problem. These attitudes plus the knowledge gaps identified in this study will be used to develop targeted educational interventions for faculty in all disciplines at our university.

URL : Faculty knowledge and attitudes regarding predatory open access journals: a needs assessment study

Original location : http://jmla.pitt.edu/ojs/jmla/article/view/849

Collaborating for public access to scholarly publications: A case study of the partnership between the US Department of Energy and CHORUS

Authors : H. Frederick Dylla, Jeffrey Salmon

Key points

  • The success of the CHORUS and DOE relationship is the result of nearly two decades of interactions between the DOE and a group of scientific publishers.
  • The relationship between CHORUS and the US federal agencies required understanding of different motivations, operations, and philosophies.
  • Although achieving public access was simple in principle, it required considerable effort to develop systems that satisfied all parties.
  • Publishers had been working with federal agencies to achieve open access before the 2013 White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, but this helped to create a path for a more fruitful relationship.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1298

GitHub Repositories with Links to Academic Papers: Open Access, Traceability, and Evolution

Authors : Supatsara Wattanakriengkrai, Bodin Chinthanet, Hideaki Hata, Raula Gaikovina Kula, Christoph Treude, Jin Guo, Kenichi Matsumoto

Traceability between published scientific breakthroughs and their implementation is essential, especially in the case of Open Source Software implements bleeding edge science into its code. However, aligning the link between GitHub repositories and academic papers can prove difficult, and the link impact remains unknown.

This paper investigates the role of academic paper references contained in these repositories. We conducted a large-scale study of 20 thousand GitHub repositories to establish prevalence of references to academic papers. We use a mixed-methods approach to identify Open Access (OA), traceability and evolutionary aspects of the links.

Although referencing a paper is not typical, we find that a vast majority of referenced academic papers are OA. In terms of traceability, our analysis revealed that machine learning is the most prevalent topic of repositories. These repositories tend to be affiliated with academic communities. More than half of the papers do not link back to any repository.

A case study of referenced arXiv paper shows that most of these papers are high-impact and influential and do align with academia, referenced by repositories written in different programming languages. From the evolutionary aspect, we find very few changes of papers being referenced and links to them.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.00199

Social engagement and institutional repositories: a case study

Author : Susan Boulton

This article explores the community reach and societal impact of institutional repositories, in particular Griffith Research Online (GRO), Griffith University’s institutional repository.

To promote research on GRO, and to encourage people to click through to the repository content, a pilot social media campaign and some subsequent smaller social media activities were undertaken in 2018.

After briefly touching on these campaigns, this article provides some reflections from these activities and proposes options for the future direction of social engagement and GRO in particular, and for institutional repositories in general.

This undertaking necessitates a shift in focus from repositories as a resource for the scholarly community to a resource for the community at large. The campaign also highlighted the need to look beyond performance metrics to social media metrics as a measure of the social and community impact of a repository.

Whilst the article is written from one Australian university’s perspective, the drivers and challenges behind researchers and universities translating their research into economic, social, environmental and cultural impacts are national and international.

The primary takeaway message is for libraries to take more of a proactive stance and to kick-start conversations within their institutions and with their clients to actively partner in creating opportunities to share research.

URL : Social engagement and institutional repositories: a case study

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.504