Étiquette : Scholarly Publishing

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Le numérique facilite-t-il l’accès ouvert aux communs scientifiques ?

Auteur/Author : Nicolas Jullien

L’économie de la science et des revues scientifiques est complexe. Pour mieux comprendre les trajectoires de basculement vers les publications ouvertes, cet article propose de décrire leur « modèle économique » et ce qu’Internet a changé.

Après un rapide rappel des questions soulevées par l’accès ouvert, nous proposons d’étudier la revue scientifique comme un « commun de connaissance ». Cela nous fournit un cadre afin de structurer les enjeux pour chaque acteur de la revue, et ainsi de décrire les différents types de revues scientifiques existantes, autour de l’adéquation format-lectorat d’une part et système de validation scientifique d’autre part.

Selon les modèles, le format d’accès ouvert peut varier, mais l’enjeu global est plus au niveau de l’accès aux bases de données d’articles (comme données ouvertes), que sur l’évolution du fonctionnement des revues scientifiques.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/terminal.8058

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Ensuring Quality and Status: Peer Review Practices in Kriterium, A Portal for Quality-Marked Monographs and Edited Volumes in Swedish SSH

Authors : Björn Hammarfelt, Isak Hammar, Helena Francke

Although established forms of peer review are often criticized for being slow, secretive, and even unfair, they are repeatedly mentioned by academics as the most important indicator of quality in scholarly publishing.

In many countries, the peer review of books is a less codified practice than that of journal articles or conference papers, and the processes and actors involved are far from uniform. In Sweden, the review process of books has seldom been formalized.

However, more formal peer review of books has been identified as a response to the increasing importance placed on streamlined peer-reviewed publishing of journal articles in English, which has been described as a direct challenge to more pluralistic publication patterns found particularly in the humanities.

In this study, we focus on a novel approach to book review, Kriterium, where an independent portal maintained by academic institutions oversees the reviewing of academic books. The portal administers peer reviews, providing a mark of quality through a process which involves reviewers, an academic coordinator, and an editorial board.

The paper studies how this process functions in practice by exploring materials concerning 24 scholarly books reviewed within Kriterium. Our analysis specifically targets tensions identified in the process of reviewing books with a focus on three main themes, namely the intended audience, the edited volume, and the novel role of the academic coordinator.

Moreover, we find that the two main aims of the portal–quality enhancement (making research better) and certification (displaying that research is of high quality)–are recurrent in deliberations made in the peer review process.

Consequently, we argue that reviewing procedures and criteria of quality are negotiated within a broader discussion where more traditional forms of publishing are challenged by new standards and evaluation practices.

URL : Ensuring Quality and Status: Peer Review Practices in Kriterium, A Portal for Quality-Marked Monographs and Edited Volumes in Swedish SSH

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2021.740297

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Representation of Women Among Editors in Chief of Leading Medical Journals

Authors : Ana-Catarina Pinho-Gomes, Amy Vassallo, Kelly Thompson, Kate Womersley, Robyn Norton, Mark Woodward

Importance

Women remain underrepresented among editors of scientific journals, particularly in senior positions. However, to what extent this applies to medical journals of different specialties remains unclear.

Objective

To investigate the gender distribution of the editors in chief at leading medical journals.

Design, Setting, and Participants

Cross-sectional study of the editors in chief at the top 10 international medical journals of 41 categories related to the medical specialties of the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science Journal Citation Reports in 2019.

Main Outcomes and Measures

Proportion of women as editors in chief.

Results

This study found that, overall, women represented 21% (94 of 44) of the editors in chief, with wide variation across medical specialties from 0% to 82%. There were 5 categories for which none of the editors in chief were women (dentistry, oral surgery and medicine; allergy; psychiatry; anesthesiology; and ophthalmology) and only 3 categories for which women outnumbered men as editors in chief (primary health care, microbiology, and genetics and heredity).

In 27 of the 41 categories, women represented less than a third of the editors in chief (eg, 1 of 10 for critical care medicine, 2 of 10 for gastroenterology and hepatology, and 3 of 10 for endocrinology and metabolism).

Conclusions and Relevance

This study found that women are underrepresented among editors in chief of leading medical journals. For the benefit of medical research, a joint effort from editorial boards, publishers, authors, and academic institutions is required to address this gender gap.

URL : Representation of Women Among Editors in Chief of Leading Medical Journals

DOI :10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.23026

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Open Access Publishing Probabilities Based on Gender and Authorship Structures in Vietnam

Authors : Huyen Thanh T. Nguyen, Minh-Hoang Nguyen, Tam-Tri Le, Manh-Toan Ho, Quan-Hoang Vuong

Open access (OA) publishing is beneficial for researchers to improve recognition, representation, and visibility in academia. However, few studies have been conducted for studying the association between gender and OA publishing likelihood.

Therefore, the current study explores the impacts of gender-based authorship structures on OA publishing in Vietnamese social sciences and humanities. Bayesian analysis was performed on a dataset of 3122 publications in social sciences and humanities.

We found that publications with mixed-gender authorship were most likely to be published under Gold Access terms (26.31–31.65%). In contrast, the likelihood of publications with the solely male or female author(s) was lower.

It is also notable that if female researcher(s) held the first-author position in an article of mixed-gender authorship, the publication would be less likely to be published under Gold Access terms (26.31% compared to 31.65% of male-first-author structure).

In addition, publications written by a solo female author (14.19%) or a group of female authors (10.72%) had lower OA publishing probabilities than those written by a solely male author(s) (17.14%).

These findings hint at the possible advantage of gender diversity and the disadvantage of gender homophily (especially female-only authorship) on OA publishing likelihood. Moreover, they show there might be some negative impacts of gender inequality on OA publishing.

As a result, the notion of gender diversity, financial and policy supports are recommended to promote the open science movement.

URL : Open Access Publishing Probabilities Based on Gender and Authorship Structures in Vietnam

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9040045

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The UGC-CARE initiative: Indian academia’s quest for research and publishing integrity

Authors : Bhushan Patwardhan, Shubhada Nagarkar

This paper discusses the reasons for emergence of predatory publications in India, engendered by mandates of higher educational institutions: that require stipulated number of research publications for employment and promotions.

Predatory journals have eclipsed the merits of open access publishing, compromised ethical practices, and left the research community groping for benchmarks of research integrity and publication ethics. To fight back the menace of predatory publications, University Grants Commission, India has established “Consortium for Academic Research and Ethics” (UGC-CARE) in 2018 to promote and benchmark research integrity and publication ethics among the Indian academia.

The present paper discusses the UGC-CARE initiative, its structure, objectives and specifically, “UGC-CARE Reference List of Quality Journals” (UGC-CARE list) and finally, the challenges it faces.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v26i10.10349

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Association between the Rankings of Top Bioinformatics and Medical Informatics Journals and the Scholarly Reputations of Chief Editors

Author : Salim Sazzed

The scientometric indices, such as the journal Impact Factor (IF) or SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), often play a determining role while choosing a journal for possible publication. The Editor-in-Chief (EiC), also known as a lead editor or chief editor, usually decides the outcomes (e.g., accept, reject) of the submitted manuscripts taking the reviewer’s feedback into account.

This study investigates the associations between the EiC’s scholarly reputation (i.e., citation-level metrics) and the rankings of top Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (BCB) and Medical Informatics (MI) journals. I consider three scholarly indices (i.e., citation, h-index, and i-10 index) of the EiC and four scientometric indices (i.e., h5-index, h5-median, impact factor, and SJR) of various journals.

To study the correlation between scientometric indices of the EiC and journal, I apply Spearman (ρ) and Kendall (τ) correlation coefficients. Moreover, I employ machine learning (ML) models for the journal’s SJR and IF predictions leveraging the EiC’s scholarly reputation indices.

The analysis reveals no correlation between the EiC’s scholarly achievement and the journal’s quantitative metrics. ML models yield high prediction errors for SJR and IF estimations, which suggests that the EiC’s scholarly indices are not good representations of the journal rankings.

URL : Association between the Rankings of Top Bioinformatics and Medical Informatics Journals and the Scholarly Reputations of Chief Editors

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9030042

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Investigating the Blind Spot of a Monitoring System for Article Processing Charges

Authors : Andre Bruns, Niels Taubert

The Open Access (OA) publishing model that is based on article processing charges (APC) is often associated with the potential for more transparency regarding the expenditures for publications.

However, the extent to which transparency can be achieved depends not least on the completeness of data in APC monitoring systems. This article investigates two blind spots of the largest collection of APC payment information, OpenAPC. It aims to identify likely APC-liable publications for German universities that contribute to this system and for those that do not provide data to it.

The calculation combines data from Web of Science, the ISSN-Gold-OA-list and OpenAPC. The results show that for the group of universities contributing to the monitoring system, more than half of the APC payments are not covered by it and the average payments for non-covered APCs is higher than for APCs covered by the system.

In addition, the group of universities that do not contribute to OpenAPC accounts for two thirds of the number of APC-liable publications recorded for contributing universities. Regarding the size of these blind spots, the value of the monitoring system is limited at present.

URL : Investigating the Blind Spot of a Monitoring System for Article Processing Charges

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9030041