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EN

Data papers as a new form of knowledge organization in the field of research data

Authors : Joachim Schöpfel, Dominic Farace, Hélène Prost, Antonella Zane

Data papers have been defined as scholarly journal publications whose primary purpose is to describe research data. Our survey provides more insights about the environment of data papers, i.e. disciplines, publishers and business models, and about their structure, length, formats, metadata and licensing.

Data papers are a product of the emerging ecosystem of data-driven open science. They contribute to the FAIR principles for research data management. However, the boundaries with other categories of academic publishing are partly blurred. Data papers are (can be) generated automatically and are potentially machine-readable.

Data papers are essentially information, i.e. description of data, but also partly contribute to the generation of knowledge and data on its own. Part of the new ecosystem of open and data-driven science, data papers and data journals are an interesting and relevant object for the assessment and understanding of the transition of the former system of academic publishing.

URL : https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/ISKOFRANCE2019/halshs-02284548

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Editors’ and authors’ individual conflicts of interest disclosure and journal transparency. A cross-sectional study of high-impact medical specialty journals

Authors : Rafael Dal-Ré, Arthur L Caplan, Ana Marusic

Objective

To assess the fulfilment of authors’ and editors’ individual disclosure of potential conflicts of interest in a group of highly influential medicine journals across a variety of specialties.

Design

Cross-sectional analysis.

Setting and participants

Top-ranked five journals as per 2017 Journal Citation Report impact factor of 26 medical, surgery and imaging specialties.

Interventions

Observational analysis.

Primary and secondary outcome measures

Percentage of journals requiring disclosure of authors’ and editors’ individual potential conflicts of interest (CoI). Journals that were listed as followers of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations, members of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and linked to a third party (ie, college, professional association/society, public institution).

Results

Although 99% (129/130) of journals required author’s CoI disclosure, only 12% (16/130) reported individual editors’ potential CoIs. Forty−five per cent (58/130) of journals were followers of the ICMJE Recommendations, and 73% (95/130) were COPE members. Most (69%; 90/130) were linked to a college, professional society/association or public institution. Only one journal did not have policies on individual authors’ and editors’ CoI disclosure.

Conclusion

Very few high-impact medical journals disclosed their editorial teams’ individual potential CoIs—conversely, almost all required disclosure of authors’ individual CoIs. Journal followers of the ICMJE Recommendations should regularly disclose the editors’ individual CoIs, as this is the only legitimate way to ask the same transparency of authors.

URL : Editors’ and authors’ individual conflicts of interest disclosure and journal transparency. A cross-sectional study of high-impact medical specialty journals

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-029796

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Which Are the Tools Available for Scholars? A Review of Assisting Software for Authors during Peer Reviewing Process

Authors : J. Israel Martínez-López, Samantha Barrón-González, Alejandro Martínez López

There is a large amount of Information Technology and Communication (ITC) tools that surround scholar activity. The prominent place of the peer-review process upon publication has promoted a crowded market of technological tools in several formats.

Despite this abundance, many tools are unexploited or underused because they are not known by the academic community. In this study, we explored the availability and characteristics of the assisting tools for the peer-reviewing process.

The aim was to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the tools available at this time, and to hint at new trends for further developments. The result of an examination of literature assisted the creation of a novel taxonomy of types of software available in the market.

This new classification is divided into nine categories as follows: (I) Identification and social media, (II) Academic search engines, (III) Journal-abstract matchmakers, (IV) Collaborative text editors, (V) Data visualization and analysis tools, (VI) Reference management, (VII) Proofreading and plagiarism detection, (VIII) Data archiving, and (IX) Scientometrics and Altmetrics.

Considering these categories and their defining traits, a curated list of 220 software tools was completed using a crowdfunded database (AlternativeTo) to identify relevant programs and ongoing trends and perspectives of tools developed and used by scholars.

URL : Which Are the Tools Available for Scholars? A Review of Assisting Software for Authors during Peer Reviewing Process

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7030059

 

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Pubfair: a framework for sustainable, distributed, open science publishing services

Authors : Tony Ross-Hellauer, Benedikt Fecher, Kathleen Shearer, Eloy Rodrigues

Over the last thirty years, digitally-networked technologies have disrupted traditional media, turning business models on their head and changing the conditions for the creation, packaging and distribution of content.

Yet, scholarly communication still looks remarkably as it did in the pre-digital age. The primary unit of dissemination remains the research article (or book in some disciplines), and today’s articles still bear a remarkable resemblance to those that populated the pages of Oldenburg’s Philosophical Transactions 350 years ago.

In an age of such disruptive innovation, it is striking how little digital technologies have impacted scholarly publishing; and this is also somewhat ironic, since the Web was developed by scientists for research purposes.

Pubfair is a conceptual model for a modular open source publishing framework which builds upon a distributed network of repositories to enable the dissemination and quality-control of a range of research outputs including publications, data, and more.

Pubfair aims to introduce significant innovation into scholarly publishing. It enables different stakeholders (funders, institutions, scholarly societies, individuals scientists) to access a suite of functionalities to create their own dissemination channels, with built in open review and transparent processes.

The model minimizes publishing costs while maintaining academic standards by connecting communities with iterative publishing services linked to their preferred repository.

Such a publishing environment has the capacity to transform the scholarly communication system, making it more research-centric, dissemination-oriented and open to and supportive of innovation, while also collectively managed by the scholarly community.

URL : https://apo.org.au/node/257281

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Rebels with a Cause? Supporting Library and Academic-led Open Access Publishing

Authors: Joe Deville, Jeroen Sondervan, Graham Stone, Sofie Wennström

The authors, who all have experience with academic publishing, outline the landscape of new university and academic-led open access publishing, before discussing four interrelated sets of challenges which are often referred when questioning the viability of such publishing ventures.

They are: (1) professionalism, (2) scale, (3) quality, and (4) discoverability & dissemination. The authors provide examples of how, albeit differing in size, form and ambition, these new presses are not just adhering to conventional publishing norms but often innovating in order to surpass them.

URL : Rebels with a Cause? Supporting Library and Academic-led Open Access Publishing

DOI : http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10277

Catégories
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Does Monetary Support Increase Citation Impact of Scholarly Papers?

Authors : Yasar Tonta, Muge Akbulut

One of the main indicators of scientific development of a given country is the number of papers published in high impact scholarly journals. Many countries introduced performance-based research funding systems (PRFSs) to create a more competitive environment where prolific researchers get rewarded with subsidies to increase both the quantity and quality of papers.

Yet, subsidies do not always function as a leverage to improve the citation impact of scholarly papers. This paper investigates the effect of the publication support system of Turkey (TR) on the citation impact of papers authored by Turkish researchers.

Based on a stratified probabilistic sample of 4,521 TR-addressed papers, it compares the number of citations to determine if supported papers were cited more often than those of not supported ones, and if they were published in journals with relatively higher citation impact in terms of journal impact factors, article influence scores and quartiles.

Both supported and not supported papers received comparable number of citations per paper, and were published in journals with similar citation impact values. Findings suggest that subsidies do not seem to be an effective incentive to improve the quality of scholarly papers. Such support programs should therefore be reconsidered.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.10068

Catégories
EN

Competence-Based Management Research in the Web of Science and Scopus Databases: Scientific Production, Collaboration, and Impact

Authors : Vítor Vasata Macchi Silva, José Luis Duarte Ribeiro, Gonzalo Rubén Alvarez, Sonia Elisa Caregnato

This paper presents a bibliometric study, which seeks to characterize papers that address competence-based management and that are indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus databases in terms of scientific production, collaboration, and impact.

All the papers published in journals or in conference proceedings that contained the terms “competenc* management” or “compentenc* based management” in their titles, abstracts, or keywords were analyzed.

The results show that computational sciences, human resources management, strategic management, and industrial relations and labor correspond to the macro-categories that characterize competence-based management.

This paper also indicates that collaborations between authors do not establish strong co-authorship networks. It also shows that the most cited papers were published in journals of different areas.

It concludes that studies conducted in the area of competence-based management can be developed in a more assertive way if they take into consideration the context of the current state of research in this area.

URL : Competence-Based Management Research in the Web of Science and Scopus Databases: Scientific Production, Collaboration, and Impact

Alternative location : https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/7/4/60