Étiquette : scientific communication

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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

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EN

Open laboratory notebooks: good for science, good for society, good for scientists

Authors : Matthieu Schapira, The Open Lab Notebook Consortium, Rachel J. Harding

The fundamental goal of the growing open science movement is to increase the efficiency of the global scientific community and accelerate progress and discoveries for the common good. Central to this principle is the rapid disclosure of research outputs in open-access peer-reviewed journals and on pre-print servers.

The next bold step in this direction is open laboratory notebooks, where research scientists share their research — including detailed protocols, negative and positive results — online and in near-real-time to synergize with their peers. Here, we highlight the benefits of open lab notebooks to science, society and scientists, and discuss the challenges that this nascent movement is facing.

We also present the implementation and progress of our own initiative at openlabnotebooks.org, with more than 20 active contributors after one year of operation.

URL : Open laboratory notebooks: good for science, good for society, good for scientists

DOI : https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.17710.1

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Do we need to move from communication technology to user community? A new economic model of the journal as a club

Authors : John Hartley, Jason Potts, Lucy Montgomery, Ellie Rennie, Cameron Neylon

Much of the argument around reforming, remaking, or preserving the traditions of scholarly publishing is built on economic principles, explicit or implicit. Can we afford open access (OA)?

How do we pay for high‐quality services? Why does it cost so much? In this article, we argue that the sterility of much of this debate is a result of failure to tackle the question of what a journal is in economic terms.

We offer a way through by demonstrating that a journal is a club and discuss the implications for the scholarly publishing industry.

We use examples, ranging from OA to prestige journals, to explain why congestion is a problem for club‐based publications, and to discuss the importance of creative destruction for the maintenance of knowledge‐generating communities in publishing.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1228

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Open access mythbusting: Testing two prevailing assumptions about the effects of open access adoption

Authors : Dan Pollock, Ann Michael

This article looks at whether there is evidence to support two prevailing assumptions about open access (OA). These assumptions are: (1) fully OA journals are inherently of poorer quality than journals supported by other business models and (2) the OA business model, that is, paying for publication, is more ‘competitive’ than the subscription journal access business model.

The assumptions have been discussed in contemporary industry venues, and we have encountered them in the course of their work advising scholarly communications organizations.

Our objective was to apply data analytics techniques to see if these assumptions bore scrutiny. By combining citation‐based impact scores with data from publishers’ price lists, we were able to look for relationships between business model, price, and ‘quality’ across several thousands of journals.

We found no evidence suggesting that OA journals suffer significant quality issues compared with non‐OA journals. Furthermore, authors do not appear to ‘shop around’ based on OA price.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1209

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EN

Predatory publications in evidence syntheses

Authors : Amanda Ross-White, Christina M. Godfrey, Kimberley A. Sears, Rosemary Wilson

Objectives

The number of predatory journals is increasing in the scholarly communication realm. These journals use questionable business practices, minimal or no peer review, or limited editorial oversight and, thus, publish articles below a minimally accepted standard of quality.

These publications have the potential to alter the results of knowledge syntheses. The objective of this study was to determine the degree to which articles published by a major predatory publisher in the health and biomedical sciences are cited in systematic reviews.

Methods

The authors downloaded citations of articles published by a known predatory publisher. Using forward reference searching in Google Scholar, we examined whether these publications were cited in systematic reviews.

Results

The selected predatory publisher published 459 journals in the health and biomedical sciences. Sixty-two of these journal titles had published a total of 120 articles that were cited by at least 1 systematic review, with a total of 157 systematic reviews citing an article from 1 of these predatory journals.

Discussion

Systematic review authors should be vigilant for predatory journals that can appear to be legitimate. To reduce the risk of including articles from predatory journals in knowledge syntheses, systematic reviewers should use a checklist to ensure a measure of quality control for included papers and be aware that Google Scholar and PubMed do not provide the same level of quality control as other bibliographic databases.

 

URL : Predatory publications in evidence syntheses

 

Alternative location  : http://jmla.mlanet.org/ojs/jmla/article/view/491
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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

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EN

Access to Scholarly Publications through Consortium in Sri Lanka A Case Study

Author : Pradeepa Wijetunge

This paper illustrates the complicated process of formulating a library consortium in Sri Lanka, and the process of preliminary activities, selection of databases, awareness raising and training and the later developments are presented as a case study, using appropriate Tables, Figures and textual discussions.

Insights are provided to the factors that contributed to the slow but steady establishment and development including the support of the top management of the University Grants Commission, participation of as many academics as possible and the collaborative nature of the implementation process.

This is the first ever paper written on the formulation of the Sri Lankan consortium and the publishing will help many researchers to gain firsthand information about its beginnings.

Also, the library leaders from other countries where the socio-economic and attitudinal conditions are similar can use the lessons learnt from this initiative for their benefit.

URL : Access to Scholarly Publications through Consortium in Sri Lanka A Case Study

Alternative location : http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/article/view/13718