Archives des mots-clés : scientific communication

The Roles of Female Involvement and Risk Aversion in Open Access Publishing Patterns in Vietnamese Social Sciences and Humanities

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Authors : Minh-Hoang Nguyen, Huyen Thanh Thanh Nguyen, Manh-Toan Ho, Tam-Tri Le, Quan-Hoang Vuong

The open-access (OA) publishing model can help improve researchers’ outreach, thanks to its accessibility and visibility to the public. Therefore, the presentation of female researchers can benefit from the OA publishing model.

Despite that, little is known about how gender affects OA practices. Thus, the current study explores the effects of female involvement and risk aversion on OA publishing patterns among Vietnamese social sciences and humanities.

The study employed Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) on a dataset of 3,122 Vietnamese social sciences and humanities (SS&H) publications during 2008–2019. The Mindsponge mechanism was specifically used to construct theoretical models, while Bayesian inference was utilized for fitting models.

The result showed a positive association between female participation and OA publishing probability. However, the positive effect of female involvement on OA publishing probability was negated by the high ratio of female researchers in a publication. OA status was negatively associated with the JIF of the journal in which the publication was published, but the relationship was moderated by the involvement of a female researcher(s).

The findings suggested that Vietnamese female researchers might be more likely to publish under the OA model in journals with high JIF for avoiding the risk of public criticism.

The study could only provide evidence on the association between female involvement and OA publishing probability. However, whether to publish under OA terms is often determined by the first or corresponding authors, but not necessarily gender-based.

Systematically coordinated actions are suggested to better support women and promote the OA movement in Vietnam.

The findings show the OA publishing patterns of female researchers in Vietnamese SS&H.

URL : The Roles of Female Involvement and Risk Aversion in Open Access Publishing Patterns in Vietnamese Social Sciences and Humanities

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2022-0001

How to improve scientific peer review: Four schools of thought

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Authors : Ludo Waltman, Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner, Stephen Pinfield, Helen Buckley Woods

Peer review plays an essential role as one of the cornerstones of the scholarly publishing system. There are many initiatives that aim to improve the way in which peer review is organized, resulting in a highly complex landscape of innovation in peer review.

Different initiatives are based on different views on the most urgent challenges faced by the peer review system, leading to a diversity of perspectives on how the system can be improved.

To provide a more systematic understanding of the landscape of innovation in peer review, we suggest that the landscape is shaped by four schools of thought: The Quality & Reproducibility school, the Democracy & Transparency school, the Equity & Inclusion school, and the Efficiency & Incentives school.

Each school has a different view on the key problems of the peer review system and the innovations necessary to address these problems. The schools partly complement each other, but we argue that there are also important tensions between the schools.

We hope that the four schools of thought offer a useful framework to facilitate conversations about the future development of the peer review system.

URL : How to improve scientific peer review: Four schools of thought

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/v8ghj

Are female scientists less inclined to publish alone? The gender solo research gap

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Authors : Marek Kwiek, Wojciech Roszka

In solo research, scientists compete individually for prestige, sending clear signals about their research ability, avoiding problems in credit allocation, and reducing conflicts about authorship. We examine to what extent male and female scientists differ in their use of solo publishing across various dimensions.

This research is the first to comprehensively study the “gender solo research gap” among all internationally visible scientists within a whole national higher education system. We examine the gap through mean “individual solo publishing rates” found in “individual publication portfolios” constructed for each Polish university professor.

We use the practical significance/statistical significance difference (based on the effect-size r coefficient) and our analyses indicate that while some gender differences are statistically significant, they have no practical significance.

Using a partial effects of fractional logistic regression approach, we estimate the probability of conducting solo research. In none of the models does gender explain the variability of the individual solo publishing rate.

The strongest predictor of individual solo publishing rate is the average team size, publishing in STEM fields negatively affects the rate, publishing in male-dominated disciplines positively affects it, and the influence of international collaboration is negative.

The gender solo research gap in Poland is much weaker than expected: within a more general trend toward team research and international research, gender differences in solo research are much weaker and less relevant than initially assumed.

We use our unique biographical, administrative, publication, and citation database (“Polish Science Observatory”) with metadata on all Polish scientists present in Scopus (N = 25,463) and their 158,743 Scopus-indexed articles published in 2009–2018, including 18,900 solo articles.

URL : Are female scientists less inclined to publish alone? The gender solo research gap

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04308-7

Scientific research in news media: a case study of misrepresentation, sensationalism and harmful recommendations

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Authors : Georgia Dempster, Georgina Sutherland, Louise Keogh

Accurate news media reporting of scientific research is important as most people receive their health information from the media and inaccuracies in media reporting can have adverse health outcomes.

We completed a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a journal article, the corresponding press release and the online news reporting of a scientific study.

Four themes were identified in the press release that were directly translated to the news reports that contributed to inaccuracies: sensationalism, misrepresentation, clinical recommendations and subjectivity.

The pressures on journalists, scientists and their institutions has led to a mutually beneficial relationship between these actors that can prioritise newsworthiness ahead of scientific integrity to the detriment of public health.

URL : Scientific research in news media: a case study of misrepresentation, sensationalism and harmful recommendations

DOI : https://doi.org/10.22323/2.21010206

Editors publishing in their own journals: A systematic review of prevalence and a discussion of normative aspects

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Authors : Gert Helgesson, Igor Radun, Jenni Radun, Gustav Nilsonne

Journal editors are the main gatekeepers in scientific publishing. Yet there is a concern that they may receive preferential treatment when submitting manuscripts to their own journals. The prevalence of such self-publishing is not known, nor the consequences for reliability and trustworthiness of published research.

This study aimed to systematically review the literature on the prevalence of editors publishing in their own journals and to conduct a normative ethical analysis of this practice. A systematic review was performed using the following databases: Medline, PsycInfo, Scopus and Web of Science.

Articles that provided primary data about editors publishing in own journals were included. We identified 15 studies meeting inclusion criteria. There was large variability of self-publishing across fields, journals and editors, ranging from those who never published in their own journal to those publishing extensively in their own journal.

Many studies suffered from serious methodological limitations. Nevertheless, our results show that there are settings where levels of self-publication are very high. We recommend that editors-in-chief and associate editors who have considerable power in journals refrain from publishing research articles in their own journals. Journals should have clear processes in place about the treatment of articles submitted by editorial board members.

URL : Editors publishing in their own journals: A systematic review of prevalence and a discussion of normative aspects

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1449

Predatory journals and publishers: Characteristics and impact of academic spam to researchers in educational sciences

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Authors : Jaume Sureda-Negre, Aina Calvo-Sastre, Rubén Comas-Forgas

This study focuses on the phenomenon of presumed predatory scientific publications in the field of Educational Sciences, and the utilization of email by editors to request manuscripts. It examined, using content analysis methods, 210 emails received by three professors of the field of Education, at a Spanish university with different research profiles over a period of 3 months.

Through analysis of the unsolicited emails a total of 139 journals and 37 publishers were identified and examined using: (a) the two main predatory journal inventories (Beall’s list and Cabells’ Predatory Reports), and (b) six of the major scientific bibliographic databases. The publishers and their websites were also analyzed, as well as the basic aspects of the emails’ content.

The majority of the unsolicited emails were from predatory journals or publishers and half of the article requests did not match the field of the recipient. In addition, it is relevant to note that more than half of the domains of predatory publishers analysed have untrustworthy security levels.

The data provided relevant information on the phenomenon of predation in scientific publications in the field of Education and, most importantly, provided evidence for developing training and preventive strategies to tackle it.

URL : Predatory journals and publishers: Characteristics and impact of academic spam to researchers in educational sciences

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1450

Extraction and validation of scientific data for the identification of publications in open access journals

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Authors : Patrícia Mascarenhas Dias, Thiago Magela Rodrigues Dias, Gray Farias Moita, Adilson Luiz Pinto

This work aims to identify articles published in open access journals registered in the Lattes Platform curricula. Currently, the curricular data from the Lattes Platform has been the source of several studies that adopt bibliometric metrics to understand scientific evolution in Brazil. However, when registering a publication in a curriculum, only basic information from the magazine is informed.

Therefore, to quantify the publications made in open access journals, a strategy is proposed that uses data from the Directory of Open Access Journals, validating the publications and, thus, obtaining a process that allows identifying which publications were made in this communication format.

Therefore, using the proposed methodology, which has a low computational cost, it was possible to quantify in an unprecedented way the publications of Brazilians in open access journals registered in the curricula of the Lattes Platform.

In addition, having the authors’ data of the publications, it was possible to understand how these authors are geographically distributed in the country, what their areas of operation are and how they have published the results of their research in open access.

It is noteworthy that they are generally published in Portuguese and English. Over the last few years, the representativeness of publications in open access journals has increased.

URL : Extraction and validation of scientific data for the identification of publications in open access journals

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1590/2318-0889202234e210040