Archives des mots-clés : scientific communication

From academic to media capital: To what extent does the scientific reputation of universities translate into Wikipedia attention?

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Authors : Wenceslao Arroyo-Machado, Adrián A. Díaz-Faes, Enrique Herrera-Viedma, Rodrigo Costas

Universities face increasing demands to improve their visibility, public outreach, and online presence. There is a broad consensus that scientific reputation significantly increases the attention universities receive.

However, in most cases estimates of scientific reputation are based on composite or weighted indicators and absolute positions in university rankings. In this study, we adopt a more granular approach to assessment of universities’ scientific performance using a multidimensional set of indicators from the Leiden Ranking and testing their individual effects on university Wikipedia page views.

We distinguish between international and local attention and find a positive association between research performance and Wikipedia attention which holds for regions and linguistic areas. Additional analysis shows that productivity, scientific impact, and international collaboration have a curvilinear effect on universities’ Wikipedia attention.

This finding suggests that there may be other factors than scientific reputation driving the general public’s interest in universities. Our study adds to a growing stream of work which views altmetrics as tools to deepen science–society interactions rather than direct measures of impact and recognition of scientific outputs.

URL : From academic to media capital: To what extent does the scientific reputation of universities translate into Wikipedia attention?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24856

Communication Scholarship and the Quest for Open Access

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Authors : Preston Carmack, Michael R. Kearney, Abbey N. McCann

The advent of black, green, and gold open access publication models poses unique questions for scholars of communication. Plato’s (1956) classic critique of writing in the legend of Theuth and Thamus warned that the printed word “rolls about all over the place, falling into the hands of those who have no concern with it” (pp. 69–70).

More than two 2 millennia later, scholars and administrators at all levels of the discipline face just such a phenomenon. As scholars of cyberspace debate whether “information wants to be free” (Levy, 2014), a communication perspective involves consideration of the importance of authorship and attribution amid an ever-shifting array of digital publishing options and subversions.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the ongoing transformation of academic publishing by examining black, green, and gold open access models, the responses of the communication discipline, and ongoing questions surrounding the nature and extent of accessibility.

As access options for research and publication continue to evolve, this study hopes to provide coordinates for administrators seeking to navigate questions concerning the what, how, and why of communication scholarship in a digital age.

URL : Communication Scholarship and the Quest for Open Access

Original location : https://stars.library.ucf.edu/jaca/vol40/iss1/1/

Open access movement in the scholarly world: Pathways for libraries in developing countries

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Authors : Arslan Sheikh, Joanna Richardson

Open access is a scholarly publishing model that has emerged as an alternative to traditional subscription-based journal publishing. This study explores the adoption of the open access movement worldwide and the role that libraries can play in addressing those factors which are slowing its progress within developing countries.

The study has drawn upon both qualitative data from a focused literature review and quantitative data from major open access platforms. The results indicate that while the open access movement is steadily gaining acceptance worldwide, the progress in developing countries within geographical areas such as Africa, Asia and Oceania is quite a bit slower.

Two significant factors are the cost of publishing fees and the lack of institutional open access mandates and policies to encourage uptake. The study provides suggested strategies for academic libraries to help overcome current challenges.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/01655515231202758

The strain on scientific publishing

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Authors : Mark A. Hanson, Pablo Gómez Barreiro, Paolo Crosetto, Dan Brockington

Scientists are increasingly overwhelmed by the volume of articles being published. Total articles indexed in Scopus and Web of Science have grown exponentially in recent years; in 2022 the article total was 47% higher than in 2016, which has outpaced the limited growth, if any, in the number of practising scientists.

Thus, publication workload per scientist (writing, reviewing, editing) has increased dramatically. We define this problem as the strain on scientific publishing. To analyse this strain, we present five data-driven metrics showing publisher growth, processing times, and citation behaviours.

We draw these data from web scrapes, requests for data from publishers, and material that is freely available through publisher websites. Our findings are based on millions of papers produced by leading academic publishers.

We find specific groups have disproportionately grown in their articles published per year, contributing to this strain. Some publishers enabled this growth by adopting a strategy of hosting special issues, which publish articles with reduced turnaround times. Given pressures on researchers to publish or perish to be competitive for funding applications, this strain was likely amplified by these offers to publish more articles.

We also observed widespread year-over-year inflation of journal impact factors coinciding with this strain, which risks confusing quality signals. Such exponential growth cannot be sustained. The metrics we define here should enable this evolving conversation to reach actionable solutions to address the strain on scientific publishing.

URL : The strain on scientific publishing

Alternative location : https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.15884

Establishing an early indicator for data sharing and reuse

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Authors : Agata Piękniewska, Laurel L. Haak, Darla Henderson, Katherine McNeill, Anita Bandrowski, Yvette Seger

Funders, publishers, scholarly societies, universities, and other stakeholders need to be able to track the impact of programs and policies designed to advance data sharing and reuse. With the launch of the NIH data management and sharing policy in 2023, establishing a pre-policy baseline of sharing and reuse activity is critical for the biological and biomedical community.

Toward this goal, we tested the utility of mentions of research resources, databases, and repositories (RDRs) as a proxy measurement of data sharing and reuse. We captured and processed text from Methods sections of open access biological and biomedical research articles published in 2020 and 2021 and made available in PubMed Central.

We used natural language processing to identify text strings to measure RDR mentions. In this article, we demonstrate our methodology, provide normalized baseline data sharing and reuse activity in this community, and highlight actions authors and publishers can take to encourage data sharing and reuse practices.

URL : Establishing an early indicator for data sharing and reuse

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1586

The Oligopoly’s Shift to Open Access. How the Big Five Academic Publishers Profit from Article Processing Charges

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Authors : Leigh-Ann Butler, Lisa Matthias, Marc-André Simard, Philippe Mongeon, Stefanie Haustein

This study aims to estimate the total amount of article processing charges (APCs) paid to publish open access (OA) in journals controlled by the five large commercial publishers Elsevier, Sage, Springer-Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wiley between 2015 and 2018.

Using publication data from WoS, OA status from Unpaywall and annual APC prices from open datasets and historical fees retrieved via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, we estimate that globally authors paid $1.06 billion in publication fees to these publishers from 2015–2018.

Revenue from gold OA amounted to $612.5 million, while $448.3 million was obtained for publishing OA in hybrid journals. Among the five publishers, Springer-Nature made the most revenue from OA ($589.7 million), followed by Elsevier ($221.4 million), Wiley ($114.3 million), Taylor & Francis ($76.8 million) and Sage ($31.6 million).

With Elsevier and Wiley making most of APC revenue from hybrid fees and others focusing on gold, different OA strategies could be observed between publishers.

URL : The Oligopoly’s Shift to Open Access. How the Big Five Academic Publishers Profit from Article Processing Charges

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00272

Varieties of diffusion in academic publishing: How status and legitimacy influence growth trajectories of new innovation

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Authors : Kyle Siler, Vincent Larivière

Open Access (OA) publishing has progressed from an initial fringe idea to a still-growing, major component of modern academic communication. The proliferation of OA publishing presents a context to examine how new innovations and institutions develop.

Based on analyses of 1,296,304 articles published in 83 OA journals, we analyze changes in the institutional status, gender, age, citedness, and geographical locations of authors over time. Generally, OA journals tended towards core-to-periphery diffusion patterns.

Specifically, journal authors tended to decrease in high-status institutional affiliations, male and highly cited authors over time. Despite these general tendencies, there was substantial variation in the diffusion patterns of OA journals. Some journals exhibited no significant demographic changes, and a few exhibited periphery-to-core diffusion patterns.

We find that although both highly and less-legitimate journals generally exhibit core-to-periphery diffusion patterns, there are still demographic differences between such journals. Institutional and cultural legitimacy—or lack thereof—affects the social and intellectual diffusion of new OA journals.

URL : Varieties of diffusion in academic publishing: How status and legitimacy influence growth trajectories of new innovation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24844