Reproducible research practices and transparency across linguistics

Authors : Agata Bochynska, Liam Keeble, Caitlin Halfacre, Joseph V. Casillas, Irys-Amélie Champagne, Kaidi Chen, Melanie Röthlisberger, Erin M. Buchanan, Timo B. Roettger

Scientific studies of language span across many disciplines and provide evidence for social,  cultural, cognitive, technological, and biomedical studies of human nature and behavior. As it becomes increasingly empirical and quantitative, linguistics has been facing challenges and limitations of the scientific practices that pose barriers to reproducibility and replicability.

One of the  proposed solutions to the widely acknowledged reproducibility and replicability crisis has been the implementation of transparency practices,  e.g., open access publishing, preregistrations, sharing study materials, data, and analyses, performing study replications, and declaring conflicts of interest.

Here, we have assessed the prevalence of these practices in 600 randomly sampled journal articles from linguistics across two time points. In line with similar studies in other disciplines, we found that 35% of the articles were published open access and the rates of sharing materials, data, and protocols were below 10%. None of the articles reported preregistrations, 1% reported replications, and 10% had conflict of interest statements.

These rates have not increased noticeably between 2008/2009 and 2018/2019, pointing to remaining barriers and the slow adoption of open and reproducible research practices in linguistics.

To facilitate adoption of these practices, we provide a range of recommendations and solutions for implementing transparency and improving reproducibility of research in linguistics.

URL : Reproducible research practices and transparency across linguistics

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5070/G6011239

Presence of women on the editorial boards of the language and linguistics journals in Spain

Authors : Cristina Rodríguez-Faneca, Alexander Maz-Machado, David Gutiérrez-Rubio, Cristina Pedrosa-Jesús

Many international studies have pointed out the under-representation of women on Editorial Boards of both Science and Social Science journals. Their presence as Editorial Board members is relevant as they influence and reflect the policies of the journal itself.

This study analyses the participation of women on the Editorial Boards of the Spanish Language and Linguistics journals in SCOPUS. To this end, 54 journals indexed in SCOPUS were analysed, thus discriminating the gender of all members and the role that each member plays on the Editorial Board.

The results show no significant differences in the participation of men and women in these Editorial Boards. It was not found any evidence of gender bias in these journals.

URL : Presence of women on the editorial boards of the language and linguistics journals in Spain

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04412-8

Building a Disciplinary, World‐Wide Data Infrastructure

Authors: Françoise Genova, Christophe Arviset, Bridget M. Almas, Laura Bartolo, Daan Broeder, Emily Law, Brian McMahon

Sharing scientific data with the objective of making it discoverable, accessible, reusable, and interoperable requires work and presents challenges being faced at the disciplinary level to define in particular how the data should be formatted and described.

This paper represents the Proceedings of a session held at SciDataCon 2016 (Denver, 12–13 September 2016). It explores the way a range of disciplines, namely materials science, crystallography, astronomy, earth sciences, humanities and linguistics, get organized at the international level to address those challenges. T

he disciplinary culture with respect to data sharing, science drivers, organization, lessons learnt and the elements of the data infrastructure which are or could be shared with others are briefly described. Commonalities and differences are assessed.

Common key elements for success are identified: data sharing should be science driven; defining the disciplinary part of the interdisciplinary standards is mandatory but challenging; sharing of applications should accompany data sharing. Incentives such as journal and funding agency requirements are also similar.

For all, social aspects are more challenging than technological ones. Governance is more diverse, often specific to the discipline organization. Being problem‐driven is also a key factor of success for building bridges to enable interdisciplinary research.

Several international data organizations such as CODATA, RDA and WDS can facilitate the establishment of disciplinary interoperability frameworks. As a spin‐off of the session, a RDA Disciplinary Interoperability Interest Group is proposed to bring together representatives across disciplines to better organize and drive the discussion for prioritizing, harmonizing and efficiently articulating disciplinary needs.

URL : Building a Disciplinary, World‐Wide Data Infrastructure

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2017-016