Replicable Services for Reproducible Research: A Model for Academic Libraries

Authors : Franklin Sayre, Amy Riegelman

Over the past decade, evidence from disciplines ranging from biology to economics has suggested that many scientific studies may not be reproducible. This has led to declarations in both the scientific and lay press that science is experiencing a “reproducibility crisis” and that this crisis has consequences for the extent to which students, faculty, and the public at large can trust research.

Faculty build on these results with their own research, and students and the public use these results for everything from patient care to public policy. To build a model for how academic libraries can support reproducible research, the authors conducted a review of major guidelines from funders, publishers, and professional societies. Specific recommendations were extracted from guidelines and compared with existing academic library services and librarian expertise.

The authors believe this review shows that many of the recommendations for improving reproducibility are core areas of academic librarianship, including data management, scholarly communication, and methodological support for systematic reviews and data-intensive research.

By increasing our knowledge of disciplinary, journal, funder, and society perspectives on reproducibility, and reframing existing librarian expertise and services, academic librarians will be well positioned to be leaders in supporting reproducible research.

URL : Replicable Services for Reproducible Research: A Model for Academic Libraries

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.80.2.260

Historicizing the Knowledge Commons: Open Access, Technical Knowledge, and the Industrial Application of Science

Author: Shawn Martin

How does open access relate to scholarly communication? Though there are many modern definitions stressing the accessibility of knowledge to everyone, sharing scientific knowledge has a much longer history.

What might the concept of ‘open access’ have meant to scientists and knowledge practitioners over the past several hundred years? This paper poses some relevant questions and calls for better historicization of the idea of the knowledge commons at different periods of time, particularly the era of the ‘Republic of Letters’ and the ‘Modern System of Science.’

The concept of open access as it relates to academic publishing has been very nuanced, and hopefully, understanding the history of ‘open access’ in relation to scholarly communication can help us to have more informed debates about where open access needs to go in the future.

URL : Historicizing the Knowledge Commons: Open Access, Technical Knowledge, and the Industrial Application of Science

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/kula.16

When a Repository Is Not Enough: Redesigning a Digital Ecosystem to Serve Scholarly Communication

Authors : Robin R. Sewell, Sarah Potvin, Pauline Melgoza, James Silas Creel, Jeremy T. Huff, Gregory T. Bailey, John Bondurant, Sean Buckner, Anton R. duPlessis, Lisa Furubotten, Julie A. Mosbo Ballestro, Ian W. Muise, Brian J. Wright

INTRODUCTION

Our library’s digital asset management system (DAMS) was no longer meeting digital asset management requirements or expanding scholarly communication needs.

We formed a multiunit task force (TF) to (1) survey and identify existing and emerging institutional needs; (2) research available DAMS (open source and proprietary) and assess their potential fit; and (3) deploy software locally for in-depth testing and evaluation.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

We winnowed a field of 25 potential DAMS down to 5 for deployment and evaluation. The process included selection and identification of test collections and the creation of a multipart task based rubric based on library and campus needs assessments.

Time constraints and DAMS deployment limitations prompted a move toward a new evaluation iteration: a shorter criteria-based rubric.

LESSONS LEARNED

We discovered that no single DAMS was “just right,” nor was any single DAMS a static product. Changing and expanding scholarly communication and digital needs could only be met by the more flexible approach offered by a multicomponent digital asset management ecosystem (DAME), described in this study.

We encountered obstacles related to testing complex, rapidly evolving software available in a range of configurations and flavors (including tiers of vendor-hosted functionality) and time and capacity constraints curtailed in-depth testing.

While we anticipate long-term benefits from “going further together” by including university-wide representation in the task force, there were trade-offs in distributing responsibilities and diffusing priorities.

NEXT STEPS

Shifts in scholarly communication at multiple levels—institutional, regional, consortial, national, and international—have already necessitated continual review and adjustment of our digital systems.

URL : When a Repository Is Not Enough: Redesigning a Digital Ecosystem to Serve Scholarly Communication

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2225

Networking Social Scholarship…Again

Author : Shawn Martin

This paper proposes to answer several questions that arise from the actions of American scientists between 1840 and 1890. How did the broader organization of science in the late nineteenth century create a system of professional disciplines?

Why did the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) form, and why did specialized societies like the American Chemical Society (ACS) later found an organization separate from the AAAS?

Why did these professional societies create journals, and how did these journals help to communicate science? This paper combines both quantitative textual analysis and qualitative historical and sociological methods within the context of nineteenth-century American science.

It is hoped that by broadening the methods used, and by better understanding the early deliberations of scientists before there was a formal scholarly communication system, it may be possible to contextualize current debates about the need for changes in the scholarly communication system.

URL : Networking Social Scholarship…Again

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/kula.47

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

Market research report: What has become of new entrants in research workflows and scholarly communication?

Author : Yvonne Campfens

Over the years, many names of new entrants in research workflows and scholarly communication have appeared. These players aim to provide improvements on solutions for existing needs, or address new requirements or unarticulated needs in all areas of the research cycle.

What has become of these hopeful new entrants and their products, services, and tools? This Fall, market research was conducted to investigate various questions in this respect:

1. Did they still exist (independently) in 2018?

2. If so, how were they funded and how were they doing?

3. If acquired by 2018, by whom and when were they taken over?

This white paper describes the approach and results of the market research. The underlying data are available from Zenodo.

URL : Market research report: What has become of new entrants in research workflows and scholarly communication?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/a78zj