Étiquette : scientific communication

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Claiming Credibility in Online Comments: Popular Debate Surrounding the COVID-19 Vaccine

Author : Ruth Breeze

At times of crisis, access to information takes on special importance, and in the Internet age of constant connectedness, this is truer than ever. Over the course of the pandemic, the huge public demand for constantly updated health information has been met with a massive response from official and scientific sources, as well as from the mainstream media. However, it has also generated a vast stream of user-generated digital postings.

Such phenomena are often regarded as unhelpful or even dangerous since they unwittingly spread misinformation or make it easier for potentially harmful disinformation to circulate. However, little is known about the dynamics of such forums or how scientific issues are represented there.

To address this knowledge gap, this chapter uses a corpus-assisted discourse approach to examine how “expert” knowledge and other sources of authority are represented and contested in a corpus of 10,880 reader comments responding to Mail Online articles on the development of the COVID-19 vaccine in February–July 2020.

The results show how “expert” knowledge is increasingly problematized and politicized, while other strategies are used to claim authority. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of sociological theories, and some tentative solutions are proposed.

URL : Claiming Credibility in Online Comments: Popular Debate Surrounding the COVID-19 Vaccine

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9030034

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Reproducibility of COVID-19 pre-prints

Authors : Annie Collins, Rohan Alexander

To examine the reproducibility of COVID-19 research, we create a dataset of pre-prints posted to arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and SocArXiv between 28 January 2020 and 30 June 2021 that are related to COVID-19.

We extract the text from these pre-prints and parse them looking for keyword markers signalling the availability of the data and code underpinning the pre-print. For the pre-prints that are in our sample, we are unable to find markers of either open data or open code for 75 per cent of those on arXiv, 67 per cent of those on bioRxiv, 79 per cent of those on medRxiv, and 85 per cent of those on SocArXiv.

We conclude that there may be value in having authors categorize the degree of openness of their pre-print as part of the pre-print submissions process, and more broadly, there is a need to better integrate open science training into a wide range of fields.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.10724

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Awareness Mentality and Strategic Behavior in Science

Author : Rafael Ball

Acknowledgement of scientific achievements was and is essentially achieved through the citation of a publication. Increasingly, however, it is no longer just the publication itself that plays an important role, but also the degree of attention that a scientist achieves with this very publication.

Thus, the importance of strategic behavior in science is progressing and an awareness mentality is spreading. In this paper, the causes and backgrounds of this development are discussed, identifying the use of reductionist, quantitative systems in science management and research funding, the loss of critical judgment and technocratic dominance, quantitative assessments used for decision making, altmetrics and the like as alternative views, the use of perception scores in reference databases and universities as well as ambitions of journals as main drivers.

Besides, different forms of strategic behavior in science and the resulting consequences and impacts are being highlighted.

URL : Awareness Mentality and Strategic Behavior in Science

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2021.703159

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Open Data Policies among Library and Information Science Journals

Author : Brian Jackson

Journal publishers play an important role in the open research data ecosystem. Through open data policies that include public data archiving mandates and data availability statements, journal publishers help promote transparency in research and wider access to a growing scholarly record.

The library and information science (LIS) discipline has a unique relationship with both open data initiatives and academic publishing and may be well-positioned to adopt rigorous open data policies.

This study examines the information provided on public-facing websites of LIS journals in order to describe the extent, and nature, of open data guidance provided to prospective authors.

Open access journals in the discipline have disproportionately adopted detailed, strict open data policies. Commercial publishers, which account for the largest share of publishing in the discipline, have largely adopted weaker policies. Rigorous policies, adopted by a minority of journals, describe the rationale, application, and expectations for open research data, while most journals that provide guidance on the matter use hesitant and vague language. Recommendations are provided for strengthening journal open data policies.

URL : Open Data Policies among Library and Information Science Journals

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9020025

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EN

Communication Research, the Geopolitics of Knowledge and Publishing in High-Impact Journals: The Chronicle of a Commodification Process Foretold

Authors : Víctor Manuel Marí Sáez, Clara Martins do Nascimento

The reforms in higher education that have been introduced on a global scale in recent years have gone hand in glove with the progressive imposition of scientific journal impact factors, all of which points to the rise of academic capitalism and digital labour in universities that is increasingly subject to the logic of the market.

A diachronic analysis of this process allows for talking about, paraphrasing Gabriel García Márquez, the chronicle of a commodification process foretold. More than twenty years ago it was clear what was going to happen, but not how it was going to unfold.

Accordingly, this article reconstructs that process, comparing the Spanish case with global trends and highlighting the crucial role that governmental agencies like the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation and specific evaluation tools like the publication of scientific papers in high-impact journals have played in it.

In this analysis, Wallerstein’s core-periphery relations and the concept of commodity fetishism, as addressed by Walter Benjamin, prove to be especially useful. The main research question posed in this article is as follows: What does the process of the commodification of communication research look like in Spain?

URL : Communication Research, the Geopolitics of Knowledge and Publishing in High-Impact Journals: The Chronicle of a Commodification Process Foretold

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v19i2.1258

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EN

Overburdening of peer reviewers: A multi-stakeholder perspective on causes and effects

Authors : Anna Severin, Joanna Chataway

Peer review of manuscripts is labour-intensive and time-consuming. Individual reviewers might feel themselves overburdened with the amount of reviewing they are requested to do. Aiming to explore how stakeholder groups perceive reviewing burden and what they believe to be the causes of a potential overburdening of reviewers, we conducted focus groups with early-, mid-, and senior career scholars, editors, and publishers.

By means of a thematic analysis, we aimed to identify the causes of overburdening of reviewers. First, we show that, across disciplines and roles, stakeholders believed that the reviewing burden is distributed unequally across members of the academic community, resulting in the overburdening of small groups of reviewers. Second, stakeholders believed this to be caused by (i) an increase in manuscript submissions; (ii) inefficient manuscript handling; (iii) lack of institutionalization of peer review; (iv) lack of reviewing instructions and (v) inadequate reviewer recruiting strategies.

These themes were assumed to relate to an inadequate incentive structure in academia that favours publications over peer review. In order to alleviate reviewing burden, a holistic approach is required that addresses both the increased demand for and the insufficient supply of reviewing resources.

URL : Overburdening of peer reviewers: A multi-stakeholder perspective on causes and effects

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1392

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EN

Is rapid scientific publication also high quality? Bibliometric analysis of highly disseminated COVID-19 research papers

Authors : Amandeep Khatter, Michael Naughton, Hajira Dambha-Miller, Patrick Redmond

The impact of COVID-19 has underlined the need for reliable information to guide clinical practice and policy. This urgency has to be balanced against disruption to journal handling capacity and the continued need to ensure scientific rigour.

We examined the reporting quality of highly disseminated COVID-19 research papers using a bibliometric analysis examining reporting quality and risk of bias (RoB) amongst 250 top scoring Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) COVID-19 research papers between January and April 2020.

Method-specific RoB tools were used to assess quality. After exclusions, 84 studies from 44 journals were included. Forty-three (51%) were case series/studies, and only one was an randomized controlled trial.

Most authors were from institutions based in China (n = 44, 52%). The median AAS and impact factor was 2015 (interquartile range [IQR] 1,105–4,051.5) and 12.8 (IQR 5–44.2) respectively. Nine studies (11%) utilized a formal reporting framework, 62 (74%) included a funding statement, and 41 (49%) were at high RoB.

This review of the most widely disseminated COVID-19 studies highlights a preponderance of low-quality case series with few research papers adhering to good standards of reporting. It emphasizes the need for cautious interpretation of research and the increasingly vital responsibility that journals have in ensuring high-quality publications.

URL : Is rapid scientific publication also high quality? Bibliometric analysis of highly disseminated COVID-19 research papers

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1403