Archives des mots-clés : research funding

Research Data Management in the Humanities: Challenges and Opportunities in the Canadian Context

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Authors : Stefan Higgins, Lisa Goddard, Shahira Khair

In recent years, research funders across the world have implemented mandates for research data management (RDM) that introduce new obligations for researchers seeking funding. Although data work is not new in the humanities, digital research infrastructures, best practices, and the development of highly qualified personnel to support humanist researchers are all still nascent.

Responding to these changes, this article offers four contributions to how humanists can consider the role of “data” in their research and succeed in its management. First, we define RDM and data management plans (DMP) and raise some exigent questions regarding their development and maintenance.

Second, acknowledging the unsettled status of “data” in the humanities, we offer some conceptual explanations of what data are, and gesture to some ways in which humanists are already (and have always been) engaged in data work.

Third, we argue that data work requires conscious design—attention to how data are produced—and that thinking of data work as involving design (e.g., experimental and interpretive work) can help humanists engage more fruitfully in RDM.

Fourth, we argue that RDM (and data work, generally) is labour that requires compensation in the form of funding, support, and tools, as well as accreditation and recognition that incentivizes researchers to make RDM an integral part of their research.

Finally, we offer a set of concrete recommendations to support humanist RDM in the Canadian context.

URL : Research Data Management in the Humanities: Challenges and Opportunities in the Canadian Context

DOI : https://doi.org/10.16995/dscn.9956

Gender differences in Dutch research funding over time: A statistical investigation of the innovation scheme 2012–2021

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Authors : Casper Albers, Sense Jan van der Molen, Thijs Bol

Background

In 2015, the Dutch research council, NWO, took measures to combat gender bias disadvantaging female applicants in a popular three-tiered funding scheme called the Talent Programme. The innovation scheme consists of three grants for different career stages, called Veni, Vidi and Vici.

Objectives

This paper studies the question whether or not NWO has been successful in removing gender differences in their funding procedure.

Methods

Using all available data from 2012 onwards of grant applications in the Talent Programme (16,249 applications of which 2,449 received funding), we study whether these measures had an effect using binomial generalized linear models.

Results

We find strong statistical evidence of a shift in gender effects in favour of female applicants in the first tier, the Veni (p < .001). Significant gender differences are not found in the two other tiers, the Vidi and Vici schemes.

Conclusions

In recent years, female applicants are more likely to be awarded with a Veni grant than male applicants and this gender gap has increased over time. This suggests that gender differences still exist in the assessment of Talent Programme submissions, albeit in a different direction than a decade ago.

URL : Gender differences in Dutch research funding over time: A statistical investigation of the innovation scheme 2012–2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297311

Exploring National Infrastructures to Support Impact Analyses of Publicly Accessible Research: A Need for Trust, Transparency and Collaboration at Scale

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Authors : Jennifer Kemp, Charles Watkinson, Christina Drummond

Usage data on research outputs such as books and journals is well established in the scholarly community. However, as research impact is derived from a broader set of scholarly outputs, such as data, code and multimedia, more holistic usage and impact metrics could inform national innovation and research policy.

Usage data reporting standards, such as Project COUNTER, provide the basis for shared statistics reporting practice; however, as mandated access to publicly funded research has increased the demand for impact metrics and analytics, stakeholders are exploring how to scaffold and strengthen shared infrastructure to better support the trusted, multi-stakeholder exchange of usage data across a variety of outputs.

In April 2023, a workshop on Exploring National Infrastructure for Public Access and Impact Reporting supported by the United States (US) National Science Foundation (NSF), explored these issues. This paper contextualizes the resources shared and recommendations generated in the workshop.

DOI : https://dx.doi.org/10.7302/22166

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

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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

Improving our understanding of open access: how it relates to funding, internationality of research and scientific leadership

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Authors : María Bordons, Borja González‑Albo, Luz Moreno‑Solano

As open publication has become a goal in scholarly communication, interest in how it relates to other features of the research process has grown. This paper focuses on the relationship between funding and open access (OA) in the Spanish National Research Council’s Web of Science publications in three scientific fields with different research practices, namely, Biology & Biomedicine (BIOL), Humanities & Social Sciences (HSS) and Materials Science (MATE).

Firstly, the three fields are characterised in relation to OA practices (OA status and OA routes) and acknowledged funding (funding status and funding origin). Secondly, the relationship between OA and funding is explored, and the role of additional influential factors, such as the internationality of research and national/foreign leadership of papers, is unravelled through logistic regression. BIOL shows a higher OA share (66%) than do the other two fields (around 33%).

Funded research shows higher OA rates than unfunded research in the experimental fields, but not in HSS, where it is related to a shift towards more publications with article-processing charges.

The internationality of research, measured through international collaboration or foreign funding, increases OA, albeit with differences across fields. Foreign-funded papers are more likely to be led by foreign researchers in all three fields, but a foreign first author increases the chances of OA publication in HSS only, perhaps because Spanish leaders in this field have not internalised the importance of OA. The research’s policy implications are reviewed.

URL : Improving our understanding of open access: how it relates to funding, internationality of research and scientific leadership

DOI : Improving our understanding of open access: how it relates to funding, internationality of research and scientific leadership

URL : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04726-1

Citation differences across research funding and access modalities

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Authors : Pablo Dorta-González, María Isabel Dorta-González

This research provides insight into the complex relationship between open access, funding, and citation advantage. It presents an analysis of research articles and their citations in the Scopus database across 40 subject categories.

The sample includes 12 categories from Health Sciences, 7 from Life Sciences, 10 from Physical Sciences & Engineering, and 11 from Social Sciences & Humanities. Specifically, the analysis focuses on articles published in 2016 and the citations they received from 2016 to 2020.

Our findings show that open access articles published in hybrid journals receive considerably more citations than those published in gold open access journals. Articles under the hybrid gold modality are cited on average twice as much as those in the gold modality, regardless of funding.

Furthermore, we found that funded articles generally obtain 50 % more citations than unfunded ones within the same publication modality. Open access repositories significantly increase citations, particularly for articles without funding. Thus, articles in open access repositories receive 50 % more citations than paywalled ones.

URL : Citation differences across research funding and access modalities

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2023.102734

Supporting diamond open access journals. Interest and feasibility of direct funding mechanisms

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Authors : Quentin Dufour, David Pontille, Didier Torny

More and more academics and governements consider that the open access model based on Article Processing Charges (APC) is problematic, not only due to the inequalities it generates and reinforces, but also because it has become unsustainable and even opposed to open access values.

They consider that scientific publishing based on a model where both authors and readers do not pay, the so-called Diamond, or non-APC model, should be developed and supported. However, beyond the display of such a support on an international scale, the landscape of Diamond journals is rather in the form of loosely connected archipelagos, and not systematically funded.

This article explores the practical conditions to implement a direct funding mechanism to such journals, that is reccurent money provided by a funder to support the publication process.

Following several recommendations from institutional actors in the open access world, we consider the hypothesis that such a funding would be fostered by research funding organizations (RFOs), which have been essential to the expansion of the APC model, and now show interest in supporting other models.

Based on a questionnaire survey sent to more thant 1000 Diamond Open Access journals, this article analyzes their financial needs, as well as their capacity to interact with funders. It is structured around four issues regarding the implementation of a direct funding model: do Diamond journals really make use of money, and to what end? Do they need additional money?

Are they able to engage monetary transactions? Are they able to meet RFOs visibility requirements? We show that a majority of OA Diamond journals could make use of a direct funding mechanism with certain adjustments. We conclude on the challenges that such a financial stream would spur.

URL : Supporting diamond open access journals. Interest and feasibility of direct funding mechanisms

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.05.03.539231