The impact of COVID-19 on the debate on open science: An analysis of expert opinion

Auteurs/Authors : Melanie Benson Marshall,  Stephen Pinfield, Pamela Abbott, Andrew Cox, Juan Pablo Alperin,  Natascha Chtena, Isabelle Dorsch, Alice Fleerackers, Monique Oliveira,
Isabella Peters

This study is an analysis of the international debate on open science that took place during the pandemic. It addresses the question, how did the COVID-19 pandemic impact the debate on open science?

The study takes the form of a qualitative analysis of a large corpus of key articles, editorials, blogs and thought pieces about the impact of COVID on open science, published during the pandemic in English, German, Portuguese, and Spanish.

The findings show that many authors believed that it was clear that the experience of the pandemic had illustrated or strengthened the case for open science, with language such as a “stress test”, “catalyst”, “revolution” or “tipping point” frequently used. It was commonly believed that open science had played a positive role in the response to the pandemic, creating a clear ‘line of sight’ between open science and societal benefits.

Whilst the arguments about open science deployed in the debate were not substantially new, the focuses of debate changed in some key respects. There was much less attention given to business models for open access and critical perspectives on open science, but open data sharing, preprinting, information quality and misinformation became most prominent in debates. There were also moves to reframe open science conceptually, particularly in connecting science with society and addressing broader questions of equity.

The impact of COVID-19 on the debate on open science: An analysis of expert opinion

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/xy874

Emerging roles and responsibilities of libraries in support of reproducible research

Authors : Birgit Schmidt, Andrea Chiarelli, Lucia Loffreda, Jeroen Sondervan

Ensuring the reproducibility of research is a multi-stakeholder effort that comes with challenges and opportunities for individual researchers and research communities, librarians, publishers, funders and service providers. These emerge at various steps of the research process, and, in particular, at the publication stage.

Previous work by Knowledge Exchange highlighted that, while there is growing awareness among researchers, reproducible publication practices have been slow to change. Importantly, research reproducibility has not yet reached institutional agendas: this work seeks to highlight the rationale for libraries to initiate and/or step up their engagement with this topic, which we argue is well aligned with their core values and strategic priorities.

We draw on secondary analysis of data gathered by Knowledge Exchange, focusing on the literature identified as well as interviews held with librarians. We extend this through further investigation of the literature and by integrating the findings of discussions held at the 2022 LIBER conference, to provide an updated picture of how libraries engage with research reproducibility.

Libraries have a significant role in promoting responsible research practices, including transparency and reproducibility, by leveraging their connections to academic communities and collaborating with stakeholders like research funders and publishers. Our recommendations for libraries include: i) partnering with researchers to promote a research culture that values transparency and reproducibility, ii) enhancing existing research infrastructure and support; and iii) investing in raising awareness and developing skills and capacities related to these principles.

URL : Emerging roles and responsibilities of libraries in support of reproducible research

DOI : https://doi.org/10.53377/lq.14947

Scientific collaboration on open science in the field of Information Science

Authors : Lígia Parreira Muniz Gäal, César Antonio Pereira

Introduction

Open Science is a movement largely based on knowledge sharing and its discussion has been carried out by several areas, including Information Science. Scientific collaboration has potential to benefit science in several ways, however, little is known about country collaboration in this area.

Objective

Therefore, the objective of this work is to analyze scientific cooperation between countries on the subject of Open Science in the field of Information Science.

Methodology

The network analysis method (co-authorship between countries) and the frequency of keywords were used to identify the most discussed subjects.

Results

The results showed that England has a central position in the scientific collaboration network. However, it is necessary to improve communication to avoid loss of quality in the information transmission.

Conclusion

The Open Access theme is still the most evident, however, topics such as research data management have gained notoriety in discussions on Open Science in the field of Information Science.

URL : Scientific collaboration on open science in the field of Information Science

DOI : https://doi.org/10.20396/rdbci.v21i00.8673825

Enjeux, pratiques et stratégies d’ouverture de l’information scientifique en bioéconomie

Auteur.ice : Marianne Duquenne

La bioéconomie est une opportunité en réponse aux problématiques écologiques actuelles que nous traversons. Ce nouveau paradigme contribue à une transition globale vers des modèles plus durables et respectueux de l’environnement. La mise en œuvre d’une telle stratégie sur un territoire implique nécessairement une forte interaction entre le secteur privé et le secteur public pour répondre aux défis d’innovation posés par la bioéconomie.

La région Hauts-de-France témoigne de cet écosystème composé d’acteurs de l’industrie, de la recherche, du transfert ou encore du monde de l’exploitation agricole. L’enjeu de cet article est double : d’abord, de comprendre comment ces catégories d’acteurs s’organisent pour produire des connaissances scientifiques et techniques en bioéconomie et, aussi, d’analyser le partage des résultats de la recherche entre ces acteurs.

Cette dernière question se pose de plus en plus depuis que l’État français mène une politique en faveur d’une science plus ouverte, transparente et accessible à tous. Depuis 2019, une étude de terrain est menée pour analyser l’application des principes de la science ouverte en bioéconomie.

Des entretiens menés auprès de porteurs de projets révèlent un domaine de recherche émergent, large et complexe. Tandis que les parties prenantes ont recours à des stratégies plus ou moins ouvertes pour partager les résultats de leurs travaux en recherche et développement, les résultats montrent que la mise en œuvre des principes de la science ouverte peut être impactée.

La discussion porte sur la nécessité d’être nuancé dans l’ouverture de l’information scientifique pour garantir les intérêts des partenaires industriels, et par ailleurs pour assurer le bon développement de la bioéconomie sur le territoire des Hauts-de-France.

URL : Enjeux, pratiques et stratégies d’ouverture de l’information scientifique en bioéconomie

Original location : https://revue-cossi.numerev.com/articles/revue-12/3101-enjeux-pratiques-et-strategies-d-ouverture-de-l-information-scientifique-en-bioeconomie

Promoting Open Access in Research-Performing Organizations: Spheres of Activity, Challenges, and Future Action Areas

Author : Heinz Pampel

Open access (OA) has become a critical issue in science policy and affects a wide range of activities in universities and research labs. Research-performing organizations (RPOs), defined as publicly funded universities and research institutions, face significant challenges in shaping the OA transformation.

This article examines the spheres of activity available to RPOs for shaping the OA transformation, using a categorization of 22 spheres of activity related to OA. These spheres of activity include strategy and communication, services and infrastructures, business relationships with publishers, and collaborations.

Current challenges and future action areas in promoting OA are also described, providing support for RPOs in handling OA and highlighting key issues. The categorization can serve as a tool for systematically assessing OA activities at RPOs and shows that OA is a cross-cutting issue in these organizations.

Collaboration on OA activities, both within and beyond organizations, presents a challenge. To effectively promote OA, it is crucial to strengthen the interaction between funding agencies and RPOs. Libraries are critical stakeholders, playing a vital role in advancing OA at the local, national, and international levels in partnership with RPO management and other partners in faculty, administration, and information technology.

URL : Promoting Open Access in Research-Performing Organizations: Spheres of Activity, Challenges, and Future Action Areas

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications11030044

Development and preliminary validation of an open access, open data and open outreach indicator

Authors : Evgenios Vlachos, Regine Ejstrup, Thea Marie Drachen, Bertil Fabricius Dorch

We present the development and preliminary validation of a new person-centered indicator that we propose is named “OADO” after its target concepts: Open Access (OA), Open Data (OD) and Open Outreach (OO).

The indicator is comprised of two factors: the research factor indicating the degree of OA articles and OD in research; and the communication factor indicating the degree of OO in communication activities in which a researcher has participated. We stipulate that the weighted version of this new indicator, the Weighted-OADO, can be used to assess the openness of researchers in relation to their peers from their own discipline, department, or even group/center.

The OADO is developed and customized to the needs of Elsevier’s Research Information Management System (RIMS) environment, Pure. This offers the advantage of more accurate interpretations and recommendations for action, as well as the possibility to be implemented (and further validated) by multiple institutions, allowing disciplinary comparisons of the open practices across multiple institutes.

Therefore, the OADO provides recommendations for action, and enables institutes to make informed decisions based on the indicator’s outcome. To test the validity of the OADO, we retrieved the Pure publication records from two departments for each of the five faculties of the University of Southern Denmark and calculated the OADO of 995 researchers in total.

We checked for definition validity, actionability, transferability, possibility of unexpected discontinuities of the indicator, factor independence, normality of the indicator’s distributions across the departments, and indicator reliability.

Our findings reveal that the OADO is a reliable indicator for departments with normally distributed values with regards to their Weighted-OADO. Unfortunately, only two departments displayed normal distributions, one from the health sciences and one from engineering.

For departments where the normality assumption is not satisfied, the OADO can still be useful as it can indicate the need for making a greater effort toward openness, and/or act as an incentive for detailed registration of research outputs and datasets.

URL : Development and preliminary validation of an open access, open data and open outreach indicator

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2023.1218213