Archives des mots-clés : scientific communication

Digital Scholarly Journals Are Poorly Preserved: A Study of 7 Million Articles

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Author : Martin Paul Eve

Introduction

Digital preservation underpins the persistence of scholarly links and citations through the digital object identifier (DOI) system. We do not currently know, at scale, the extent to which articles assigned a DOI are adequately preserved.

Methods

We construct a database of preservation information from original archival sources and then examine the preservation statuses of 7,438,037 DOIs in a random sample.

Results

Of the 7,438,037 works examined, there were 5.9 million copies spread over the archives used in this work. Furthermore, a total of 4,342,368 of the works that we studied (58.38%) were present in at least one archive. However, this left 2,056,492 works in our sample (27.64%) that are seemingly unpreserved.

The remaining 13.98% of works in the sample were excluded either for being too recent (published in the current year), not being journal articles, or having insufficient date metadata for us to identify the source.

Discussion

Our study is limited by design in several ways. Among these are the facts that it uses only a subset of archives, it only tracks articles with DOIs, and it does not account for institutional repository coverage. Nonetheless, as an initial attempt to gauge the landscape, our results will still be of interest to libraries, publishers, and researchers.

Conclusion

This work reveals an alarming preservation deficit. Only 0.96% of Crossref members (n = 204) can be confirmed to digitally preserve over 75% of their content in three or more of the archives that we studied. (Note that when, in this article, we write “preserved,” we mean “that we were able to confirm as preserved,” as per the specified limitations of this study.) A slightly larger proportion, i.e., 8.5% (n = 1,797), preserved over 50% of their content in two or more archives.

However, many members, i.e., 57.7% (n = 12,257), only met the threshold of having 25% of their material in a single archive. Most worryingly, 32.9% (n = 6,982) of Crossref members seem not to have any adequate digital preservation in place, which is against the recommendations of the Digital Preservation Coalition.

URL : Digital Scholarly Journals Are Poorly Preserved: A Study of 7 Million Articles

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.16288

Comparison of effect estimates between preprints and peer-reviewed journal articles of COVID-19 trials

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Authors : Mauricia Davidson, Theodoros Evrenoglou, Carolina Graña, Anna Chaimani, Isabelle Boutron

Background

Preprints are increasingly used to disseminate research results, providing multiple sources of information for the same study. We assessed the consistency in effect estimates between preprint and subsequent journal article of COVID-19 randomized controlled trials.

Methods

The study utilized data from the COVID-NMA living systematic review of pharmacological treatments for COVID-19 (covid-nma.com) up to July 20, 2022. We identified randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating pharmacological treatments vs. standard of care/placebo for patients with COVID-19 that were originally posted as preprints and subsequently published as journal articles.

Trials that did not report the same analysis in both documents were excluded. Data were extracted independently by pairs of researchers with consensus to resolve disagreements. Effect estimates extracted from the first preprint were compared to effect estimates from the journal article.

Results

The search identified 135 RCTs originally posted as a preprint and subsequently published as a journal article. We excluded 26 RCTs that did not meet the eligibility criteria, of which 13 RCTs reported an interim analysis in the preprint and a final analysis in the journal article. Overall, 109 preprint–article RCTs were included in the analysis.

The median (interquartile range) delay between preprint and journal article was 121 (73–187) days, the median sample size was 150 (71–464) participants, 76% of RCTs had been prospectively registered, 60% received industry or mixed funding, 72% were multicentric trials. The overall risk of bias was rated as ‘some concern’ for 80% of RCTs.

We found that 81 preprint–article pairs of RCTs were consistent for all outcomes reported. There were nine RCTs with at least one outcome with a discrepancy in the number of participants with outcome events or the number of participants analyzed, which yielded a minor change in the estimate of the effect. Furthermore, six RCTs had at least one outcome missing in the journal article and 14 RCTs had at least one outcome added in the journal article compared to the preprint. There was a change in the direction of effect in one RCT. No changes in statistical significance or conclusions were found.

Conclusions

Effect estimates were generally consistent between COVID-19 preprints and subsequent journal articles. The main results and interpretation did not change in any trial. Nevertheless, some outcomes were added and deleted in some journal articles.

URL : Comparison of effect estimates between preprints and peer-reviewed journal articles of COVID-19 trials

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-023-02136-8

The impact of COVID-19 on the debate on open science: An analysis of expert opinion

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Auteurs/Authors : Melanie Benson Marshall,  Stephen Pinfield, Pamela Abbott, Andrew Cox, Juan Pablo Alperin,  Natascha Chtena, Isabelle Dorsch, Alice Fleerackers, Monique Oliveira,
Isabella Peters

This study is an analysis of the international debate on open science that took place during the pandemic. It addresses the question, how did the COVID-19 pandemic impact the debate on open science?

The study takes the form of a qualitative analysis of a large corpus of key articles, editorials, blogs and thought pieces about the impact of COVID on open science, published during the pandemic in English, German, Portuguese, and Spanish.

The findings show that many authors believed that it was clear that the experience of the pandemic had illustrated or strengthened the case for open science, with language such as a “stress test”, “catalyst”, “revolution” or “tipping point” frequently used. It was commonly believed that open science had played a positive role in the response to the pandemic, creating a clear ‘line of sight’ between open science and societal benefits.

Whilst the arguments about open science deployed in the debate were not substantially new, the focuses of debate changed in some key respects. There was much less attention given to business models for open access and critical perspectives on open science, but open data sharing, preprinting, information quality and misinformation became most prominent in debates. There were also moves to reframe open science conceptually, particularly in connecting science with society and addressing broader questions of equity.

The impact of COVID-19 on the debate on open science: An analysis of expert opinion

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/xy874

Determinants of manuscript submissions to fully open access journals: elasticity to article processing charges

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Author : Sumiko Asai

Article processing charges that authors and research institutions pay to make articles open access are increasing. If manuscript submission is price elastic, then rising charges will cause a significant reduction in submissions, leading to decreased revenues under constant acceptance rates.

Therefore, the elasticity of manuscript submission to article processing charge is one of the determinants of publishers’ charges. However, several studies that investigated the determinants of article processing charges did not consider this elasticity.

This study investigated the determinants of submissions, including the elasticity to article processing charge, by formulating the number of manuscript submissions to fully open access journals published by Hindawi and Elsevier in 2022. Moreover, this study formulated manuscript submissions using both list prices and charges paid to Elsevier that OpenAPC collected to compare the results.

The estimation results reveal that the two publishers increase their revenues by raising the article processing charges due to the inelasticity. Moreover, these conclusions do not depend on the data set used, although the number of observations sourced from OpenAPC is small.

URL : Determinants of manuscript submissions to fully open access journals: elasticity to article processing charges

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04934-3

New academic journals: an international overview of indexing and access models

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Authors : Rosangela Rodrigues, Cristóbal Urbano, Patrícia Neubert, José Miguel Rodríguez-Gairín, Marta Somoza-Fernández

Introduction

An international analysis of academic journals newly created in the period from 2011 to 2020 according to type of publisher, place of publication, their relationship with open access, and their indexing in databases.

Studies of the issues of concentration of journal publisher ownership, uses of metrics, and access to titles reveal a changing landscape that is nevertheless still dominated by large commercial oligopolies. One notable trend is the creation of new titles in various configurations.

Method

To assess the global scenario, we analyse titles created from 2011 to 2020, focusing on indexing and access models. The methodology is multidimensional, predominantly bibliometric and quantitative. The data were collected from Crossref and other databases and processed with the resources of the Information Matrix for the Analysis of Journals.

Results

The findings confirm the expansion of the periodical publishing market, of which the academic journal market represents a small fraction (7.29%). Of thdatabases may be considered academic based on indexing in some database, most are open access, indicated by their presence in the Directory of Open Access Journals (55.21%).

The analysis of publisher type confirmed the predominance of commercial publishers (44.57%), followed by universities (30.08%). The largest proportion of the titles are in the health field, compatible with the existing distribution of fields, followed by journals in the multidisciplinary and education fields.

Conclusion

In the expansion of the publishing market, academic journals represent a small fraction of the total. The main sources of new titles in open access with no processing charges for authors are universities in countries that are not home to large commercial publishers (Indonesia, Brazil, and Spain), all with government subsidies.

URL : New academic journals: an international overview of indexing and access models

Original URL : https://informationr.net/infres/article/view/466

DOI : https://doi.org/10.47989/ir284466

How can revivals of scientific publications be explained using bibliometric methods? A case study discovering booster papers for the 1985 Physics Nobel Prize paper

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Authors : Robin Haunschild, Werner Marx, Jürgen Weis

The unusual citation profile of the 1985 Physics Nobel Prize paper has been analyzed. The number of citing papers per year exhibits a maximum of 123 citations in the mid-1980s and increases to more than 200 citations about two decades later.

The publication set of the citing papers was analyzed in terms of co-authorships and research topics. The USA and (more recently) the People’s Republic of China appear prominently among the countries of the citing authors. A keyword analysis of the citing papers revealed research dealing with topological insulators as one of the major newly evolving research topics. An analysis of the co-cited papers has been performed via reference publication year spectroscopy (RPYS).

The most-frequently co-cited papers (the peak papers of the RPYS spectrogram) were identified and discussed. As a result, we found two primary booster papers and three secondary booster papers that renewed the interest in the 1985 Physics Nobel Prize paper.

URL : How can revivals of scientific publications be explained using bibliometric methods? A case study discovering booster papers for the 1985 Physics Nobel Prize paper

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04906-z

Going Open Access: The Attitudes and Actions of Scientific Journal Editors in China

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Authors : Wenqi Fu, Jie Xu, Qing Fang, Jingjia Ding, Hanqing Ma

This study aims to investigate the attitudes and actions of scientific journal editors in China towards open access. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 Chinese editors from various scientific journals during September and October of 2022.

The results indicate that the editors generally possess knowledge of open access and have implemented an appropriate open access model for their respective journals. However, the Chinese-language journal editors expressed a lack of motivation to adopt open access, unless there is a reform in the mechanism of academic publishing or a policy is imposed.

On the other hand, the English-language journal editors acknowledged that they have no other choice but to adopt open access. This study helps us learn about Chinese editors’ understanding and attitudes towards open access, the current status of open access in China’s scientific journals, and the mechanisms of academic publishing in China.

URL : Going Open Access: The Attitudes and Actions of Scientific Journal Editors in China

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications12010001