Étiquette : scientific communication

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The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS): Bringing Open-Source Software Practices to the Scholarly Publishing Community for Authors, Reviewers, Editors, and Publishers

Authors : Patrick Diehl, Charlotte Soneson, Rachel C. Kurchin, Ross Mounce, Daniel S. Katz

Introduction

Open-source software (OSS) is a critical component of open science, but contributions to the OSS ecosystem are systematically undervalued in the current academic system. The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) contributes to addressing this by providing a venue (that is itself free, diamond open access, and all open-source, built in a layered structure using widely available elements/services of the scholarly publishing ecosystem) for publishing OSS, run in the style of OSS itself.

A particularly distinctive element of JOSS is that it uses open peer review in a collaborative, iterative format, unlike most publishers. Additionally, all the components of the process—from the reviews to the papers to the software that is the subject of the papers to the software that the journal runs—are open.

Background

We describe JOSS’s history and its peer review process using an editorial bot, and we present statistics gathered from JOSS’s public review history on GitHub showing an increasing number of peer reviewed papers each year. We discuss the new JOSSCast and use it as a data source to understand reasons why interviewed authors decided to publish in JOSS.

Discussion and Outlook

JOSS’s process differs significantly from traditional journals, which has impeded JOSS’s inclusion in indexing services such as Web of Science. In turn, this discourages researchers within certain academic systems, such as Italy’s, which emphasize the importance of Web of Science and/or Scopus indexing for grant applications and promotions. JOSS is a fully diamond open-access journal with a cost of around US$5 per paper for the 401 papers published in 2023. The scalability of running JOSS with volunteers and financing JOSS with grants and donations is discussed.

URL : The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS): Bringing Open-Source Software Practices to the Scholarly Publishing Community for Authors, Reviewers, Editors, and Publishers

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18285

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Humanities scholars’ needs for open social scholarship platforms as online scholarly information sharing infrastructure

Authors : Daniel Tracy, Graham Jensen

The contemporary scholarly communication environment is characterized by the growth in mandates and infrastructure for open access publication and open approaches to the research lifecycle, with a consequent explosion in the number of online platforms seeking to provide infrastructure for open scholarship. These include corporate academic social networks and scholar-governed infrastructure created as a reaction against those networks, as well as the recent major transformation of the social media landscape in the wake of changes at Twitter (now X), previously a major outlet for scholarly engagement with the public.

Analysts of this environment have pointed out that most platform initiatives focus on narrow use cases rather than building up solutions through a holistic understanding of scholar workflows. This exploratory study uses focus group interviews to draw out responses to one academically governed platform, the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Commons, in the context of humanities scholars’ existing work.

It explores humanities scholars’ needs and behaviors related to sharing scholarly information with each other and broader audiences, particularly on the Internet. Feedback from participants sheds light on opportunities and challenges for academy-governed infrastructure for “open social scholarship.” Themes identified include technical fatigue and burnout in the current multi-platform environment, sustainability, and desires to reach and engage the right academic and non-academic audiences when appropriate.

URL : Humanities scholars’ needs for open social scholarship platforms as online scholarly information sharing infrastructure

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v30i2.13742

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Regional profile of questionable publishing

Authors : Taekho You, Jinseo Park, June Young Lee, Jinhyuk Yun

Countries and authors in the academic periphery occasionally have been criticized for contributing to the expansion of questionable publishing because they share a major fraction of papers in questionable journals. On the other side, topics preferred by mainstream journals sometimes necessitate large-scale investigation, which is impossible for developing countries.

Thus, local journals, commonly low-impacted, are essential to sustain the regional academia for such countries. In this study, we perform an in-depth analysis of the distribution of questionable publications and journals with their interplay with countries quantifying the influence of questionable publications regarding academia’s inequality.

We find that low-impact journals play a vital role in the regional academic environment, whereas questionable journals with equivalent impact publish papers from all over the world, both geographically and academically. The business model of questionable journals differs from that of regional journals, and may thus be detrimental to the broader academic community.

Arxiv : https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.07844

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Research Data in Scientific Publications: A Cross-Field Analysis

Authors : Puyu Yang, Giovanni Colavizza

Data sharing is fundamental to scientific progress, enhancing transparency, reproducibility, and innovation across disciplines. Despite its growing significance, the variability of data-sharing practices across research fields remains insufficiently understood, limiting the development of effective policies and infrastructure.

This study investigates the evolving landscape of data-sharing practices, specifically focusing on the intentions behind data release, reuse, and referencing. Leveraging the PubMed open dataset, we developed a model to identify mentions of datasets in the full-text of publications. Our analysis reveals that data release is the most prevalent sharing mode, particularly in fields such as Commerce, Management, and the Creative Arts.

In contrast, STEM fields, especially the Biological and Agricultural Sciences, show significantly higher rates of data reuse. However, the humanities and social sciences are slower to adopt these practices. Notably, dataset referencing remains low across most disciplines, suggesting that datasets are not yet fully recognized as research outputs.

A temporal analysis highlights an acceleration in data releases after 2012, yet obstacles such as data discoverability and compatibility for reuse persist. Our findings can inform institutional and policy-level efforts to improve data-sharing practices, enhance dataset accessibility, and promote broader adoption of open science principles across research domains.

Arxiv : https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.01407

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Disciplinary variation in scholarly impact from two article title elements

Author : James M Donovan

For understandable reasons, scholarly impact statistics have become a contentious issue for university faculty. They often look to their librarians to advise them on how best to monitor their performance, and what they could do to raise their profile. The present investigation seeks to equip those librarians with background and tools to provide useful perspective to their worried patrons. For over forty years the literature has been debating what characteristics of an article influence its later citation.

While many suppose that outcome is determined solely by the quality and originality of the piece, one of the consistent findings has been that arguably irrelevant features appear to play an important role. The present discussion focuses on two of the most prominent such features, whether the article title includes a colon, and how long that title is. Both of these variables have been widely researched, but the outcomes are not typically offered in a form that will be useful to faculty patrons.

Specifically, while both colons and shorter titles, for whatever reasons, reliably correlate with higher citations, these patterns vary by discipline and are not conveniently aggregated and reported. To fill this need, results have been extracted from seventy-four empirical investigations and presented by discipline. A wide range of disciplinary variance was found for these two variables which can be considered by an author.

This collection of findings also has permitted correction of prior hypotheses about why such apparently irrelevant elements influence citation, which can improve understanding of the drivers of scholarly impact statistics.

URL : Disciplinary variation in scholarly impact from two article title elements

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/09610006241311576

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New Frontiers of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Authors : Joachim Schöpfel, Michael Boock, Behrooz Rasuli, Brenda van Wyk

(1) Background: Since the 1990s, theses and dissertations—a key part of scientific communication—have evolved significantly with advances in information and communication technologies.

(2) Methods: This study reviews 99 publications examining these changes, drawing insights from international conferences and empirical studies in the field.

(3) Results: Historically, a major challenge in managing PhD theses has been the shift to electronic formats, resulting in the creation of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). This shift involves four main tasks: adopting new digital formats, updating institutional workflows between departments, graduate schools, and academic libraries, implementing updated bibliographic standards (such as metadata and identifiers), and utilizing new tools and channels for distribution. With open science becoming a widespread research policy across many countries and institutions, ensuring open access for ETDs is an added challenge—though a substantial portion of ETD content remains restricted to institutional or library networks. Today, ETD management is on the brink of a new era, with advancements in data-driven science and artificial intelligence.

(4) Conclusions: The development of ETDs varies significantly across different countries, regions, and institutions due to technological, organizational, and legal differences. It is essential for academic libraries and other stakeholders to address the challenges identified while considering these variations.

URL : New Frontiers of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

DOI : New Frontiers of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

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Social Media Analysis of High-Impact Information and Communication Journals: Adoption, Use, and Content Curation

Authors : Jesús Cascón-Katchadourian, Javier Guallar, Wileidys Artigas

The use of social media to disseminate academic content is increasing, particularly in scientific journals. This study has the following two main objectives: first, exploring the use of social media by high-impact academic journals in two different SJR categories (Library and Information Sciences and Communication), and second, analyzing content curation carried out by the world’s most influential journals in both areas. The research methodology is descriptive with a quantitative approach regarding the items studied.

The study finds that COM journals have a stronger social media presence than LIS journals, and X dominates in both categories and regions as the top social network, with significant influence as the only platform. On the other hand, content curation was found to a high degree in both areas, especially in the LIS area, with 93% vs. 80% in COM. The study highlights that both COM and LIS journals primarily focus on promoting recent articles, with COM diversifying content more than LIS. In terms of the content curation techniques used in both areas, the majority are abstracting and summarizing.

URL : Social Media Analysis of High-Impact Information and Communication Journals: Adoption, Use, and Content Curation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications13010005