Is Open Access to Research Data a Strategic Priority of Czech Universities?

Author : Jakub Novotný

Open access to research data is one of the key themes of current science development concepts and relevant R & D strategies at least in Europe. A systemic change in the modus operandi of science and research should lead to so-called Open Science.

The presented paper questions the extent to which the Open Science concept is reflected in the strategies of Czech universities. The paper first describes basic idea of Open Access to Research Data including principles of „FAIR data” as one of the key assumption of it.

After a brief characterization of the Czech university sector, the results of the empirical analysis of the inclusion of the Open Access to Research Data concept in the current strategic plans of the Czech universities are presented.

The conclusion of the paper is then an evaluation of the results, which reveal an underestimation of the Open Science concept in the current strategic plans of the Czech universities.

URL : Is Open Access to Research Data a Strategic Priority of Czech Universities?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2478/ijicte-2018-0008

Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing

Authors : Jonathan P. Tennant, Harry Crane, Tom Crick, Jacinto Davila, Asura Enkhbayar, Johanna Havemann, Bianca Kramer, Ryan Martin, Paola Masuzzo,  Andy Nobes, Curt Rice, Bárbara Rivera-López, Tony Ross-Hellauer, Susanne Sattler, Paul D. Thacker, Marc Vanholsbeeck

The changing world of scholarly communication and the emerging new wave of ‘Open Science’ or ‘Open Research’ has brought to light a number of controversial and hotly debated topics.

Evidence-based rational debate is regularly drowned out by misinformed or exaggerated rhetoric, which does not benefit the evolving system of scholarly communication.

This article aims to provide a baseline evidence framework for ten of the most contested topics, in order to help frame and move forward discussions, practices, and policies.

We address issues around preprints and scooping, the practice of copyright transfer, the function of peer review, predatory publishers, and the legitimacy of ‘global’ databases.

These arguments and data will be a powerful tool against misinformation across wider academic research, policy and practice, and will inform changes within the rapidly evolving scholarly publishing system.

URL : Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7020034

The Time Efficiency Gain in Sharing and Reuse of Research Data

Author: Tessa E. Pronk

Among the frequently stated benefits of sharing research data are time efficiency or increased productivity. The assumption is that reuse or secondary use of research data saves researchers time in not having to produce data for a publication themselves.

This can make science more efficient and productive. However, if there is no reuse, time costs in making data available for reuse will have been made with no return on this investment.

In this paper a mathematical model is used to calculate the break-even point for time spent sharing in a scientific community, versus time gain by reuse. This is done for several scenarios; from simple to complex datasets to share and reuse, and at different sharing rates.

The results indicate that sharing research data can indeed cause an efficiency revenue for the scientific community. However, this is not a given in all modeled scenarios.

The scientific community with the lowest reuse needed to reach a break-even point is one that has few sharing researchers and low time investments for sharing and reuse.

This suggests it would be beneficial to have a critical selection of datasets that are worth the effort to prepare for reuse in other scientific studies. In addition, stimulating reuse of datasets in itself would be beneficial to increase efficiency in scientific communities.

URL : The Time Efficiency Gain in Sharing and Reuse of Research Data

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2019-010

Ten myths around open scholarly publishing

Authors : Jonathan P Tennant​​​, Harry Crane​​, Tom Crick​​, Jacinto Davila​, Asura Enkhbayar​​, Johanna Havemann​​, Bianca Kramer​​, Ryan Martin​​, Paola Masuzzo​​, Andy Nobes​​, Curt Rice​​, Bárbara R López​​, Tony Ross-Hellauer​​, Susanne Sattler​​, Paul Thacker​​, MarcVanholsbeeck

The changing world of scholarly communication and the emergence of ‘Open Science’ or ‘Open Research’ has brought to light a number of controversial and hotly-debated topics.

Yet, evidence-based rational debate is regularly drowned out by misinformed or exaggerated rhetoric, which does not benefit the evolving system of scholarly communication.

The aim of this article is to provide a baseline evidence framework for ten of the most contested topics, in order to help frame and move forward discussions, practices and policies. We address preprints and scooping, the practice of copyright transfer, the function of peer review, and the legitimacy of ‘global’ databases.

The presented facts and data will be a powerful tool against misinformation across wider academic research, policy and practice, and may be used to inform changes within the rapidly evolving scholarly publishing system.

URL : Ten myths around open scholarly publishing

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27580v1

Scholarly Communication and Open Access in Psychology: Current Considerations for Researchers

Author : Laura Bowering Mullen

Scholarly communication and open access practices in psychological science are rapidly evolving. However, most published works that focus on scholarly communication issues do not target the specific discipline, and instead take a more “one size fits all” approach.

When it comes to scholarly communication, practices and traditions vary greatly across the disciplines. It is important to look at issues such as open access (of all types), reproducibility, research data management, citation metrics, the emergence of preprint options, the evolution of new peer review models, coauthorship conventions, and use of scholarly networking sites such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu from a disciplinary perspective.

Important issues in scholarly publishing for psychology include uptake of authors’ use of open access megajournals, how open science is represented in psychology journals, challenges of interdisciplinarity, and how authors avail themselves of green and gold open access strategies.

This overview presents a discipline-focused treatment of selected scholarly communication topics that will allow psychology researchers and others to get up to speed on this expansive topic.

Further study into researcher behavior in terms of scholarly communication in psychology would create more understanding of existing culture as well as provide early career researchers with a more effective roadmap to the current landscape.

As no other single work provides a study of scholarly communication and open access in psychology, this work aims to partially fill that niche.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/2d7um

Early career researchers: observing how the new wave of researchers is changing the scholarly communications market

Authors : David Nicholas, Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri, Blanca Rodríguez-Bravo, Anthony Watkinson, Marzena Świgon, Jie Xu, Abdullah Abrizah, Eti Herman

The paper presents the early findings from the first two years of the Harbingers research project, a 3-year-long study of early career researchers (ECRs), the new wave of researchers, which sought to ascertain their current and changing habits with regard to scholarly communications.

The study recruited a convenience sample of 116 researchers from seven countries (China, France, Malaysia, Poland, Spain, UK and US) who were subject to repeat, in-depth interviews. Interviews were conducted face-to-face or remotely (via Skype).

A major focus of the study was to determine whether ECRs are taking the myriad opportunities proffered by digital innovations, developing within the context Open Science, Open Access and social media to disseminate their research.

The paper provides the highlights of the first-year benchmarking exercise and then investigates the strategic changes one year on.

URL : https://journals.openedition.org/rfsic/4635

Open laboratory notebooks: good for science, good for society, good for scientists

Authors : Matthieu Schapira, The Open Lab Notebook Consortium, Rachel J. Harding

The fundamental goal of the growing open science movement is to increase the efficiency of the global scientific community and accelerate progress and discoveries for the common good. Central to this principle is the rapid disclosure of research outputs in open-access peer-reviewed journals and on pre-print servers.

The next bold step in this direction is open laboratory notebooks, where research scientists share their research — including detailed protocols, negative and positive results — online and in near-real-time to synergize with their peers. Here, we highlight the benefits of open lab notebooks to science, society and scientists, and discuss the challenges that this nascent movement is facing.

We also present the implementation and progress of our own initiative at openlabnotebooks.org, with more than 20 active contributors after one year of operation.

URL : Open laboratory notebooks: good for science, good for society, good for scientists

DOI : https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.17710.1