Framing Power: Tracing Key Discourses in Open Science Policies

Authors : Denisse Albornoz, Maggie Huang, Issra Martin, Maria Mateus, Aicha Touré, Leslie Chan

Given that “Open Science” is becoming a popular policy object around the world, this study sought to identify key narratives about Open Science in policy, and critically examine the extent to which they are sustaining or strengthening multi-layered domination and inequality schemes that pre-exist in scientific knowledge production.

To do so, we conducted a content analysis of Open Science policies stemming from Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia and Africa to understand which narratives about Open Science policies are produced, reproduced and by whom; and in turn, whose interests may be neglected in this process.

We found that Open Science policies, mostly stemming from Europe, frame “openness” as a vehicle to promote technological change as part of an inevitable and necessary cultural shift to modernity in scientific production.

The global reach of these narratives, and the technologies, standards and models these narratives sustain, are dictating modes of working and collaborating among those who can access them, and creating new categories of exclusion that invalidate knowledge that cannot meet this criteria, putting historically marginalized researchers and publics at further disadvantage.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01816725

Open and transparent research practices and public perceptions of the trustworthiness of agricultural biotechnology organizations

Authors : Asheley R. Landrum, Joseph Hilgard, Robert B. Lull, Heather Akin, Kathleen Hall Jamieson

Public trust in agricultural biotechnology organizations that produce so-called ‘genetically-modified organisms’ (GMOs) is affected by misinformed attacks on GM technology and worry that producers’ concern for profits overrides concern for the public good.

In an experiment, we found that reporting that the industry engages in open and transparent research practices increased the perceived trustworthiness of university and corporate organizations involved with GMOs.

Universities were considered more trustworthy than corporations overall, supporting prior findings in other technology domains.

The results suggest that commitment to, and communication of, open and transparent research practices should be part of the process of implementing agricultural biotechnologies.

URL : Open and transparent research practices and public perceptions of the trustworthiness of agricultural biotechnology organizations

DOI : https://doi.org/10.22323/2.17020204

Open and inclusive collaboration in science: A framework

Authors : Qian Dai, Eunjung Shin, Carthage Smith

Open science can be variously defined.  In some communities it is related principally to open access to scientific publications, for others it includes open access to research data and for others still it includes  opening  up  the  processes  of  academic  research  to  engage  all  interested  civil  society  stakeholders.

The  absence  of  a  common  understanding  of  what  is,  and  isn’t,  included  in  open  science  creates  confusion  in discussions  across  these  different  communities.  It  is  potentially  holding  back  efforts  to  develop  effective  policies for promoting open science at the international level.

This paper builds on the limited conceptual work that has been published to date and proposes a broad framework for open science. The framework is not  meant  to  be  prescriptive  but  should  help  different  communities  and  policy  makers  to  decide  on  their  own  priorities  within  the  open  science  space  and  to  better  visualise  how  these  priorities  link  to  different  stage of the scientific process and to different actors.

Such a framework can be useful also in considering how  best  to  incentivise  and  measure  various  aspects  of  open  science.  Digitalisation  is  fundamentally  changing  science  and  the  paper  lays  out  some  of  the  opportunities,  risks  and  major  policy  challenges  associated with these changes.

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/2dbff737-en

Opening the Heart of Science: A Review of the Changing Roles of Research Libraries

Author : Jorge Revez

In a world of information overload and data deluge, is opening science a research library’s duty? Or is the openness of science deeply changing libraries, ultimately converting them into something else?

The purpose of the review is to highlight the challenging issues stemming from the relationship between research and libraries. A broad literature analysis was performed focused on the intersection of three different perspectives: (1) the future of research libraries, (2) the emerging new roles, and (3) the ongoing openness of science.

Libraries are still at the heart of science but challenged by several stakeholders within the complexity of present science production and communication. Research support services, research data management, or research information management are emerging roles, among others, sustaining an open path where libraries thrive to be more collaborative while looking forward to establishing new partnerships.

URL : Opening the Heart of Science: A Review of the Changing Roles of Research Libraries

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/publications6010009

Content is King: An Analysis of How the Twitter Discourse Surrounding Open Education Unfolded From 2009 to 2016

Authors : Michael Paskevicius, George Veletsianos, Royce Kimmons

Inspired by open educational resources, open pedagogy, and open source software, the openness movement in education has different meanings for different people. In this study, we use Twitter data to examine the discourses surrounding openness as well as the people who participate in discourse around openness.

By targeting hashtags related to open education, we gathered the most extensive dataset of historical open education tweets to date (n = 178,304 tweets and 23,061 users) and conducted a mixed methods analysis of openness from 2009 to 2016.

Findings show that the diversity of participants has varied somewhat over time and that the discourse has predominantly revolved around open resources, although there are signs that an increase in interest around pedagogy, teaching, and learning is emerging.

URL : Content is King: An Analysis of How the Twitter Discourse Surrounding Open Education Unfolded From 2009 to 2016

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i1.3267

Opening Academic Publishing – Development and application of systematic evaluation criteria

Authors : Anna Björk, Juho-Matti Paavola, Teemu Ropponen, Mikael Laakso, Leo Lahti

This report summarizes the development of a standardized scorecard for evaluating the openness of academic publishers. The assessment was completed in January 2018 as part of the Open Science and Research Initiative of the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture.

The project complements the previous reports published by the Open Science and Research Initiative and the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, which have covered (i) the openness of universities and polytechnics, (ii) the overall situation of OA publishing costs in Finland, and (iii) research organization and research funding organizations, including selected European research funders.

The project mapped and evaluated the openness of selected major academic publishers: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), American Chemical Society (ACS), Elsevier, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (IEEE), Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins (LWW), Sage, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley-Blackwell. The dimensions of publisher openness were summarized in a scorecard of seven key factors, providing a new tool for systematic and standardized evaluation.

We used data from the publisher websites to compare the key factors of openness, and the publishers were given a chance to provide comments on the collected information. As complementary sources, we utilized data from commonly acknowledged, open databases: Directory of OA Journals (DOAJ), Gold OA Journals 2011-2016 (GOAJ2), Scopus (title list + Scimago), and Sherpa / Romeo.

The main results include the scorecard and the evaluation of openness of the selected major academic publishers. These are based on seven key factors: (i) Fraction of open access (OA) journals and their articles of the total publication output, (ii) costs of OA publishing (article processing charges, APC), (iii) use of Creative Commons (CC) licensing, (iv) self-archiving policies, (v) access to text and data mining (TDM), (vi) openness of citation data, and (vii) accessibility of information relating to OA practices.

To take a look beyond the publisher level into journal level practices we also sampled individual journals. We use the samples to discuss the distribution of journals according to APCs, their licensing and three impact metrics (CiteScore 2016, Scimago Journal & Country Ranks (SJR) 2016, and Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 2016).

The evaluation of the selected publishers with the scorecard indicates, for example, that the fraction of OA journals and their articles of the total publication output runs low within this group. In our sample of journals, the most expensive OA journals also seem to bear the highest impact metrics.

A definite view on the matter, however, would require more extensive data and further research. We
conclude by discussing key aspects and complexities in quantitative evaluation and in the design of a standardized assessment of publisher openness, and note also further factors that could be included in future versions of the scorecard.

URL : Opening Academic Publishing – Development and application of systematic evaluation criteria

Alternative location : https://avointiede.fi/documents/10864/12232/OPENING+ACADEMIC+PUBLISHING+.pdf/a4358f81-88cf-4915-92db-88335092c992

Open scientific journals: Emerging practices and approaches

Authors : Andre Luiz Appel, Sarita Albagli, Maria Lucia Maciel

This study aims to show how the concept of openness has been manifested and amplified in the universe of open access scholarly journals, pointing out emerging characteristics and practices linked to processes of submission, evaluation, revision, editing, publishing, editing, distribution, access and use of texts for publication.

We proceeded to an overview and discussion of the pertinent literature and the identification and analysis of open access journals which have addressed the issue, and to the identification and analysis of cases of open access journals which have been adopting innovative practices, based on information on editorial policies available on their websites.

Among the results, we have pointed out aspects of the publications examined, such as the types of licenses used, policies regarding access to research data, publishing formats, charges and alternative metrics of evaluation.

URL : Open scientific journals: Emerging practices and approaches

Alternative location : https://content.iospress.com/articles/information-services-and-use/isu862