The Role of Publons in the Context of Open Peer Review

Authors : Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva, Serhii Nazarovets

Publons was a peer reviewer rewards platform that aimed to recognize the contribution that academics made during peer review to a journal. For about 10 years of its existence, Publons became the most popular service among peer reviewers.

Having gained traction and popularity, Publons was purchased in 2017 by Clarivate Analytics (now Clarivate), and many academics, journals and publishers invested time and effort to participate in Publons. Using Publons, various peer review-related experiments or pilot programs were initiated by some academic publishers regarding the introduction of open peer review into their journals’ editorial processes.

In this paper, we examine pertinent literature related to Publons, and reflect on its benefits and flaws during its short-lived history. In mid-August 2022, Clarivate fused Publons into the Web of Science platform.

Publons, as a brand peer review service, has now ceased to exist but some of the functionality remains in Web of Science while other aspects that used to be open and free at Publons are now paid-for services.

We reflect on the effect of such experiments, which initially had bold and ambitious academic objectives to fortify peer review, on academics’ trust, especially when such projects become commercialized.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-022-09914-0

Journals preserved or how to turn Diamond into JASPER

Author : Gaelle Bequet

The increase in the number of digital journals has redefined the respective roles of libraries and publishers in the selection, provision and preservation of this content. A new player has emerged, i.e. the archiving agency specializing in long-term digital preservation.

Open access journals are poorly preserved, as shown by two recent studies based on an analysis of titles indexed by DOAJ. This worrying finding has motivated DOAJ, CLOCKSS, Keepers Registry, Internet Archive and Public Knowledge Project to join forces to propose an archiving solution for journals without article processing charges.

The JASPER project resulted in the creation of a tool and a workflow allowing the preservation of a dozen journals. The next step is to go to scale (more journals archived, more agencies involved), conditioned subject to the mobilization of external funding.

URL : Journals preserved or how to turn Diamond into JASPER

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.591

Analyse de coût de la production d’un numéro de la revue française de sciences de l’information Études de communication

Autrice : Marie Le Bivic

Revue française qualifiante en sciences de l’information au rayonnement international, Études de communication s’interroge sur le coût de production d’un numéro suivant différents aspects, notamment la structuration des tâches qui composent son processus de fabrication.

À partir d’une méthodologie d’enquête construite sur la conduite d’entretiens préalablement préparés par un questionnaire, l’objectif de ce stage, ainsi que de ce travail de recherche, sera de fournir un compte rendu analytique de segmentation des tâches au sein de la revue afin de réaliser une analyse de coût.

Cette analyse de coût sera méthodologiquement axée sur le facteur du temps, afin de déterminer le volume de travail et l’investissement nécessaire au fonctionnement de la revue.

URL : https://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/dumas-03779889

Student publishing in peer reviewed journals: Evidence from the International Political Science Review

Authors : Daniel Stockemer, Theresa Reidy, Antonia Teodoro, Guy Gerba

Publishing in peer-reviewed journals has become an essential requirement for PhD students wishing to pursue a career in academia. Yet, there are few studies of student publishing and little discussion of norms around attribution of authorship for student research collaborators. (1) How often do students feature as submitters and authors in political science journals? (2) In what format (i.e., solo author, co-author, multiple authors) do students normally submit and publish? (3)

Are there gender differences in student submission and publication rates between male and female students? This article uses 2 years of data from the International Political Science Review (IPSR; i.e., 2019 and 2020) to answer these questions.

Mainly using cross-tabulations, we found that just one in eight submitting authors was a student (i.e., undergraduate and postgraduate). In terms of acceptance rates, students had generally lower acceptance rates than faculty.

Yet, there were also important differences within the student body. As expected PhD students were more successful than undergraduate and masters’ students, and in line with general disciplinary publishing patterns, female PhD students had a higher publication success rate than their male colleagues.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1468

“Who Is the FAIRest of Them All?” Authors, Entities, and Journals Regarding FAIR Data Principles

Author : Luis Corujo

The perceived need to improve the infrastructure supporting the re-use of scholarly data since the second decade of the 21st century led to the design of a concise number of principles and metrics, named FAIR Data Principles. This paper, part of an extended study, intends to identify the main authors, entities, and scientific journals linked to research conducted within the FAIR Data Principles.

The research was developed by means of a qualitative approach, using documentary research and a constant comparison method for codification and categorization of the sampled data.

The sample studied showed that most authors were located in the Netherlands, with Europe accounting for more than 70% of the number of authors considered. Most of these are researchers and work in higher education institutions. T

hese entities can be found in most of the territorial-administrative areas under consideration, with the USA being the country with more entities and Europe being the world region where they are more numerous.

The journal with more texts in the used sample was Insights, with 2020 being the year when more texts were published. Two of the most prominent authors present in the sample texts were located in the Netherlands, while the other two were in France and Australia.

URL : “Who Is the FAIRest of Them All?” Authors, Entities, and Journals Regarding FAIR Data Principles

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications10030031

Choosing the ‘right’ journal for publication: Perceptions and practices of pandemic-era early career researchers

Authors : David Nicholas, Eti Herman, David Clark, Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri, Blanca Rodríguez-Bravo, Abdullah Abrizah, Anthony Watkinson, Jie Xu, David Sims, Galina Serbina, Marzena Świgoń, Hamid R. Jamali, Carol Tenopir, Suzie Allard

Presents early data from an investigation of the work lives and scholarly communication practices of 177 early career researchers (ECRs) from eight countries. Utilizing mainly coded and textual data from interviews, the paper reports on the findings that pertain to publishing papers in peer reviewed journals.

We examine which factors are taken into account when choosing the journal to publish their research in, identifying similarities/differences by country, age, academic status and discipline. Also, explored is whether the pandemic has changed decision-making. Main findings are that the aim for ECRs is to publish in the ‘best’ journals, variably measured by prestige, impact factor, standards of peer review and indexation.

Appropriateness of audience is the only factor unrelated to the quality of the journal that figures highly among the factors that guide ECRs in the process of selecting a journal.

The pandemic has made little difference to the majority of ECRs when they decide on a journal for publishing their research. However, there is a greater awareness of the need for a faster turnover rate, brought on by the importance accorded to speedy publication during the pandemic.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1488

 

Publication practices during the COVID-19 pandemic: Expedited publishing or simply an early bird effect?

Authors : Yulia V. Sevryugina, Andrew J. Dicks

This study explores the evolution of publication practices associated with the SARS-CoV-2 research papers, namely, peer-reviewed journal and review articles indexed in PubMed and their associated preprints posted on bioRxiv and medRxiv servers: a total of 4,031 journal article-preprint pairs.

Our assessment of various publication delays during the January 2020 to March 2021 period revealed the early bird effect that lies beyond the involvement of any publisher policy action and is directly linked to the emerging nature of new and ‘hot’ scientific topics.

We found that when the early bird effect and data incompleteness are taken into account, COVID-19 related research papers show only a moderately expedited speed of dissemination as compared with the pre-pandemic era.

Medians for peer-review and production stage delays were 66 and 15 days, respectively, and the entire conversion process from a preprint to its peer-reviewed journal article version took 109.5 days.

The early bird effect produced an ephemeral perception of a global rush in scientific publishing during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. We emphasize the importance of considering the early bird effect in interpreting publication data collected at the outset of a newly emerging event.

URL : Publication practices during the COVID-19 pandemic: Expedited publishing or simply an early bird effect?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1483