Social justice driving open access publishing: an African perspective

Authors : Reggie Raju, Auliya Badrudeen

The OA movement is generally considered to have been founded for the truly philanthropic purpose of promoting equity and inclusivity in access to scholarship. For Africans, this meant the opening of the research ecosystem to marginalized research communities who could then freely make use of shared research to aid in the socio-economic development and emancipation of the continent.

However, this philanthropic purpose has been deviated from, leading instead to the disenfranchisement of the African research community. Through systemic inequalities embedded in the scholarly ecosystem, the publishing landscape has been northernised, with research from the global north sitting at the very top of the knowledge hierarchy to the exclusion of Africa and other parts of the global south.

For this reason, progressive open access practices and policies need to be adopted, with an emphasis on social justice as an impetus, to enhance the sharing and recognition of African scholarship, while also bridging the ‘research-exchange’ divide that exists between the global south and north.

Furthermore, advocates of open access must collaborate to create equal opportunities for African voices to participate in the scholarly landscape through the creation and dissemination of global south research. Thusly, the continental platform was developed by the University of Cape Town.

This platform was developed around the concept of a tenant model to act as a contributor to social justice-driven open access advocacy, and as a disruptor of the unjust knowledge hierarchies that exist.

URL : Social justice driving open access publishing: an African perspective

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.1910

Academic vs. biological age in research on academic careers: a large-scale study with implications for scientifically developing systems

Authors : Marek Kwiek, Wojciech Roszka

Biological age is an important sociodemographic factor in studies on academic careers (research productivity, scholarly impact, and collaboration patterns). It is assumed that the academic age, or the time elapsed from the first publication, is a good proxy for biological age.

In this study, we analyze the limitations of the proxy in academic career studies, using as an example the entire population of Polish academic scientists and scholars visible in the last decade in global science and holding at least a PhD (N = 20,569). The proxy works well for science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) disciplines; however, for non-STEMM disciplines (particularly for humanities and social sciences), it has a dramatically worse performance.

This negative conclusion is particularly important for systems that have only recently visible in global academic journals. The micro-level data suggest a delayed participation of social scientists and humanists in global science networks, with practical implications for predicting biological age from academic age.

We calculate correlation coefficients, present contingency analysis of academic career stages with academic positions and age groups, and create a linear multivariate regression model.

Our research suggests that in scientifically developing countries, academic age as a proxy for biological age should be used more cautiously than in advanced countries: ideally, it should be used only for STEMM disciplines.

URL : Academic vs. biological age in research on academic careers: a large-scale study with implications for scientifically developing systems

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04363-0

Advancing Self-Evaluative and Self-Regulatory Mechanisms of Scholarly Journals: Editors’ Perspectives on What Needs to Be Improved in the Editorial Process

Author : Katarina Krapež

Meticulous self-evaluative practices in the offices of academic periodicals can be helpful in reducing widespread uncertainty about the quality of scholarly journals. This paper summarizes the results of the second part of a qualitative worldwide study among 258 senior editors of scholarly journals across disciplines.

By means of a qualitative questionnaire, the survey investigated respondents’ perceptions of needed changes in their own editorial workflow that could, according to their beliefs, positively affect the quality of their journals.

The results show that the most relevant past improvements indicated by respondents were achieved by: (a) raising the required quality criteria for manuscripts, by defining standards for desk rejection and/or shaping the desired qualities of the published material, and (b) guaranteeing a rigorous peer review process.

Respondents believed that, currently, three areas have the most pressing need for amendment: ensuring higher overall quality of published articles (26% of respondents qualified this need as very high or high), increasing the overall quality of peer-review reports (23%), and raising reviewers’ awareness of the required quality standards (20%).

Bivariate analysis shows that respondents who work with non-commercial publishers reported an overall greater need to improve implemented quality assessment processes. Work overload, inadequate reward systems, and a lack of time for development activities were cited by respondents as the greatest obstacles to implementing necessary amendments.

URL : Advancing Self-Evaluative and Self-Regulatory Mechanisms of Scholarly Journals: Editors’ Perspectives on What Needs to Be Improved in the Editorial Process

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications10010012

Peer reviewers equally critique theory, method, and writing, with limited effect on the final content of accepted manuscripts

Author : Dimity Stephen

The primary aims of peer review are to detect flaws and deficiencies in the design and interpretation of studies, and ensure the clarity and quality of their presentation. However, it has been questioned whether peer review fulfils this function.

Studies have highlighted a stronger focus of reviewers on critiquing methodological aspects of studies and the quality of writing in biomedical sciences, with less focus on theoretical grounding. In contrast, reviewers in the social sciences appear more concerned with theoretical underpinnings.

These studies also found the effect of peer review on manuscripts’ content to be variable, but generally modest and positive. I qualitatively analysed 1430 peer reviewers’ comments for a sample of 40 social science preprint-publication pairs to identify the key foci of reviewers’ comments.

I then quantified the effect of peer review on manuscripts by examining differences between the preprint and published versions using the normalised Levenshtein distance, cosine similarity, and word count ratios for titles, abstracts, document sections and full-texts.

I also examined changes in references used between versions and linked changes to reviewers’ comments. Reviewers’ comments were nearly equally split between issues of methodology (30.7%), theory (30.0%), and writing quality (29.2%).

Titles, abstracts, and the semantic content of documents remained similar, although publications were typically longer than preprints.

Two-thirds of citations were unchanged, 20.9% were added during review and 13.1% were removed. These findings indicate reviewers equally attended to the theoretical and methodological details and communication style of manuscripts, although the effect on quantitative measures of the manuscripts was limited.

URL : Peer reviewers equally critique theory, method, and writing, with limited effect on the final content of accepted manuscripts

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04357-y

Implementing the Declaration on Research Assessment: a publisher case study

Authors : Victoria Gardner, Mark Robinson, Elisabetta O’Connell

There has been much debate around the role of metrics in scholarly communication, with particular focus on the misapplication of journal metrics, such as the impact factor in the assessment of research and researchers.

Various initiatives have advocated for a change in this culture, including the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which invites stakeholders throughout the scholarly communication ecosystem to sign up and show their support for practices designed to address the misuse of metrics.

This case study provides an overview of the process undertaken by a large academic publisher (Taylor & Francis Group) in signing up to DORA and implementing some of its key practices in the hope that it will provide some guidance to others considering becoming a signatory.

Our experience suggests that research, consultation and flexibility are crucial components of the process. Additionally, approaching signing with a project mindset versus a ‘sign and forget’ mentality can help organizations to understand the practical implications of signing, to anticipate and mitigate potential obstacles and to support cultural change.

URL : Implementing the Declaration on Research Assessment: a publisher case study

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.573

Persistent Identification for Conferences

Authors : Julian Franken, Aliaksandr Birukou, Kai Eckert, Wolfgang Fahl, Christian Hauschke, Christoph Lange

Persistent identification of entities plays a major role in the progress of digitization of many fields. In the scholarly publishing realm there are already persistent identifiers (PID) for papers (DOI), people (ORCID), organisation (GRID, ROR), books (ISBN) but there is no generally accepted PID system for scholarly events such as conferences or workshops yet.

This article describes the relevant use cases that motivate the introduction of persistent identifiers for conferences. The use cases were mainly derived from interviews, discussions with experts and their previous work. As primary stakeholders who are involved in the typical conference event life cycle researchers, conference organizers, and data consumers were identified.

The resulting list of use cases illustrates how PIDs for conference events will improve the current situation for these stakeholders and help with problems they are facing today.

URL : Persistent Identification for Conferences

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2022-011

International disparities in open access practices in the Earth Sciences

Authors : Olivier Pourret, David William Hedding, Daniel Enrique Ibarra, Dasapta Erwin Irawan, Haiyan Liu, Jonathan Peter Tennant

Background

Open access (OA) implies free and unrestricted access to and re-use of research articles. Recently, OA publishing has seen a new wave of interest, debate, and practices surrounding that mode of publishing.

Objectives

To provide an overview of publication practices and to compare them among six countries across the world to stimulate further debate and to raise awareness about OA to facilitate decision-making on further development of OA practices in earth sciences.

Methods

The number of OA articles, their distribution among the six countries, and top ten journals publishing OA articles were identified using two databases, namely Scopus and the Web of Science, based mainly on the data for 2018.

Results

In 2018, only 24%–31% of the total number of articles indexed by either of the databases were OA articles. Six of the top ten earth sciences journals that publish OA articles were fully OA journals and four were hybrid journals. Fully OA journals were mostly published by emerging publishers and their article processing charges ranged from $1000 to $2200.

Conclusions

The rise in OA publishing has potential implications for researchers and tends to shift article-processing charges from organizations to individuals. Until the earth sciences community decides to move away from journal-based criteria to evaluate researchers, it is likely that such high costs will continue to maintain financial inequities within this research community, especially to the disadvantage of researchers from the least developed countries.

However, earth scientists, by opting for legal self- archiving of their publications, could help to promote equitable and sustainable access to, and wider dissemination of, their work.

URL : International disparities in open access practices in the Earth Sciences

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3897/ese.2021.e63663