Archives des mots-clés : scientific communication

Enforcing public data archiving policies in academic publishing: A study of ecology journals

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Authors : Dan Sholler, Karthik Ram, Carl Boettiger, Daniel S Katz

To improve the quality and efficiency of research, groups within the scientific community seek to exploit the value of data sharing. Funders, institutions, and specialist organizations are developing and implementing strategies to encourage or mandate data sharing within and across disciplines, with varying degrees of success.

Academic journals in ecology and evolution have adopted several types of public data archiving policies requiring authors to make data underlying scholarly manuscripts freely available. The effort to increase data sharing in the sciences is one part of a broader “data revolution” that has prompted discussion about a paradigm shift in scientific research.

Yet anecdotes from the community and studies evaluating data availability suggest that these policies have not obtained the desired effects, both in terms of quantity and quality of available datasets.

We conducted a qualitative, interview-based study with journal editorial staff and other stakeholders in the academic publishing process to examine how journals enforce data archiving policies.

We specifically sought to establish who editors and other stakeholders perceive as responsible for ensuring data completeness and quality in the peer review process. Our analysis revealed little consensus with regard to how data archiving policies should be enforced and who should hold authors accountable for dataset submissions.

Themes in interviewee responses included hopefulness that reviewers would take the initiative to review datasets and trust in authors to ensure the completeness and quality of their datasets.

We highlight problematic aspects of these thematic responses and offer potential starting points for improvement of the public data archiving process.

URL : Enforcing public data archiving policies in academic publishing: A study of ecology journals

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951719836258

“Participant” Perceptions of Twitter Research Ethics

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Authors : Casey Fiesler, Nicholas Proferes

Social computing systems such as Twitter present new research sites that have provided billions of data points to researchers. However, the availability of public social media data has also presented ethical challenges.

As the research community works to create ethical norms, we should be considering users’ concerns as well. With this in mind, we report on an exploratory survey of Twitter users’ perceptions of the use of tweets in research.

Within our survey sample, few users were previously aware that their public tweets could be used by researchers, and the majority felt that researchers should not be able to use tweets without consent.

However, we find that these attitudes are highly contextual, depending on factors such as how the research is conducted or disseminated, who is conducting it, and what the study is about. The findings of this study point to potential best practices for researchers conducting observation and analysis of public data.

URL : “Participant” Perceptions of Twitter Research Ethics

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118763366

Copyright and protection of scientific results: the experience of Russia, the United States and the countries of the Near East

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Authors : D V Ponomareva, P B Maggs, AG Barabashev

In this article, the authors analyze the legal regulation of the copyright protection of the results of scientific activity in Russia, the United States and the countries of the Near East.

Considerable attention is paid to the review of key regulatory acts of the states operating in the designated area, as well as international treaties affecting aspects of the copyright protection of intellectual rights in the field of science.

The authors consider the main ways of protecting the scientific results by means of copyright. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the judicial practice of the states, which plays a vital role in defining approaches to the legal regulation of the scientific results.

The authors emphasized the similarity and difference between the systems of copyright protection of the results of scientific activity, the role of the judiciary in the functioning of such systems.

In the end the conclusion is made about the prospects for harmonization of the approaches to the legal regulation of the results of scientific activity by means of copyright.

The article will be relevant to practicing lawyers, researchers, students and everyone who is interested in IP law.

URL : Copyright and protection of scientific results: the experience of Russia, the United States and the countries of the Near East

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1685/1/012018

How to achieve short-term green open access and long-term radical reform of scholarly communication. The BitViews Project as a test case

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Author : Manfredi La Manna

The Open Access movement has reached adulthood, but not maturity: fewer than one-third of newly-published peer-reviewed articles are available open access (OA) and progress widening OA has stalled.

Scores of uncoordinated initiatives try to achieve universal OA, but academic journal publishing is still dominated by a handful of powerful commercial publishers. Individual authors show little interest in OA and indeed have to be mandated (see the UK REF or Plan S) to release their research on OA.

The BitViews Project is a low-cost, no-risk, high-return initiative to turn all academic journals «green» through a combination of blockchain technology, provision of appropriate incentives to authors, and a new crowdfunding mechanism.

The project is predicated on the active participation of individual libraries taking direct action. The paper will provide an interim report on the progress of the project and an account of how libraries and their various associations (both in the global South and in the global North) have reacted to the project.

The concluding section of the paper sketches a possible direction for academic journal publishing in the near future. Huge savings and increased efficiency can flow to the academy from finally dissolving its current one-sided contract with publishers and from reclaiming control of the peer-review process.

Practical and incentive-based suggestions are proposed for the transition from publisher-owned to academy-owned peer review.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02544856

Publications and Evaluations: Conducting a Baseline Assessment of Open Access Adoption and Support at an R2 University

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Author: Susan Vandagriff

INTRODUCTION

This study reflects a mid-size university library’s first attempt to assess faculty research output to shape future scholarly communications efforts.

METHODOLOGY

The assessment combined a qualitative analysis of the university’s reappointment, promotion, and tenure (RPT) documents with a quantitative analysis of faculty publications recorded in Digital Measures from 2015-2019.

The RPT documents were coded to determine which indicators of scholarly value were emphasized, then compared with data on where and how faculty were publishing.

RESULTS

Within RPT documents, peer review was frequently emphasized, but open access and predatory publishing were not mentioned. The majority of publications occurred in hybrid journals, and publishing was concentrated among only a handful of publishers, with 11 publishers responsible for 62% of faculty’s research output.

OA journal publications have risen slightly in recent years but still accounted for only 20.7% of UCCS publications. However, predatory publishing was very low, accounting for less than 5% of UCCS publications.

DISCUSSION

More education is needed on the importance of open access and how to assess the quality of a journal. RPT criteria consistently mentioned certain indicators of scholarly quality, but these indicators were often vague and preferential to traditional publishing models.

Both open access and predatory publishing remain low, and additional education may help faculty feel more confident in exploring alternative publishing models.

CONCLUSION

Assessing the research output of faculty and how scholarship is being evaluated within each college can help libraries to tailor their efforts to promote open access publishing.

However, the lack of OA support in the RPT criteria suggests a larger cultural shift is needed to make faculty not only aware of OA, but also encouraged and supported in publishing OA.

URL : Publications and Evaluations: Conducting a Baseline Assessment of Open Access Adoption and Support at an R2 University

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2392

Scholarly publishing and journal targeting in the time of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic: a cross-sectional survey of rheumatologists and other specialists

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Authors : Latika Gupta, Armen Yuri Gasparyan, Olena Zimba, Durga Prasanna Misra

The evolving research landscape in the time of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic calls for greater understanding of the perceptions of scholars regarding the current state and future of publishing.

An anonymised and validated e-survey featuring 30 questions was circulated among rheumatologists and other specialists over social media to understand preferences while choosing target journals, publishing standards, commercial editing services, preprint archiving, social media and alternative publication activities.

Of 108 respondents, a significant proportion were clinicians (68%), researchers (60%) and educators (47%), with median 23 publications and 15 peer-review accomplishments. The respondents were mainly rheumatologists from India, Ukraine and Turkey.

While choosing target journals, relevance to their field (69%), PubMed Central archiving (61%) and free publishing (59%) were the major factors. Thirty-nine surveyees (36%) claimed that they often targeted local journals for publishing their research. However, only 18 (17%) perceived their local society journals as trustworthy.

Occasional publication in the so-called predatory journals (5, 5%) was reported and obtaining support from commercial editing agencies to improve English and data presentation was not uncommon (23, 21%).

The opinion on preprint archiving was disputed; only one-third believed preprints were useful. High-quality peer review (56%), full and immediate open access (46%) and post-publication social media promotion (32%) were identified as key anticipated features of scholarly publishing in the foreseeable future.

These perceptions of surveyed scholars call for greater access to free publishing, attention to proper usage of English and editing skills, and a larger role for engagement over social media.

URL : Scholarly publishing and journal targeting in the time of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic: a cross-sectional survey of rheumatologists and other specialists

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s00296-020-04718-x

Scrutinising what Open Access Journals Mean for Global Inequalities

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Authors : Márton Demeter, Ronina Istratii

In the current article, we tested our hypothesis by which high-impact journals tend to have higher Article Processing Charges (APCs) by comparing journal IF metrics with the OA publishing fees they charge.

Our study engaged with both journals in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields and the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) and included Hybrid, Diamond and No OA journals.

The overall findings demonstrate a positive relationship between APCs and journals with high IF for two of the subject areas we examined but not for the third, which could be mediated by the characteristics and market environment of the publishers.

We also found significant differences between the analysed research fields in terms of APC policies, as well as differences in the relationship between APCs and the IF across periodicals. The study and analysis conducted reinforces our concerns that Hybrid OA models are likely to perpetuate inequalities in knowledge production.

URL : Scrutinising what Open Access Journals Mean for Global Inequalities

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-020-09771-9