Archives des mots-clés : scientific communication

Open Access and Altmetrics in the pandemic age: Forescast analysis on COVID-19 literature

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Authors : Daniel Torres-Salinas, Nicolas Robinson-Garcia, Pedro A. Castillo-Valdivieso

We present an analysis on the uptake of open access on COVID-19 related literature as well as the social media attention they gather when compared with non OA papers.

We use a dataset of publications curated by Dimensions and analyze articles and preprints. Our sample includes 11,686 publications of which 67.5% are openly accessible.

OA publications tend to receive the largest share of social media attention as measured by the Altmetric Attention Score. 37.6% of OA publications are bronze, which means toll journals are providing free access.

MedRxiv contributes to 36.3% of documents in repositories but papers in BiorXiv exhibit on average higher AAS. We predict the growth of COVID-19 literature in the following 30 days estimating ARIMA models for the overall publications set, OA vs. non OA and by location of the document (repository vs. journal).

We estimate that COVID-19 publications will double in the next 20 days, but non OA publications will grow at a higher rate than OA publications. We conclude by discussing the implications of such findings on the dissemination and communication of research findings to mitigate the coronavirus outbreak.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.23.057307

Use of the journal impact factor for assessing individual articles need not be statistically wrong

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Authors : Ludo Waltman, Vincent A. Traag

Most scientometricians reject the use of the journal impact factor for assessing individual articles and their authors. The well-known San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment also strongly objects against this way of using the impact factor.

Arguments against the use of the impact factor at the level of individual articles are often based on statistical considerations. The skewness of journal citation distributions typically plays a central role in these arguments.

We present a theoretical analysis of statistical arguments against the use of the impact factor at the level of individual articles. Our analysis shows that these arguments do not support the conclusion that the impact factor should not be used for assessing individual articles.

In fact, our computer simulations demonstrate the possibility that the impact factor is a more accurate indicator of the value of an article than the number of citations the article has received.

It is important to critically discuss the dominant role of the impact factor in research evaluations, but the discussion should not be based on misplaced statistical arguments. Instead, the primary focus should be on the socio-technical implications of the use of the impact factor.

URL : Use of the journal impact factor for assessing individual articles need not be statistically wrong

DOI : https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.23418.1

Towards inclusive scholarly publishing: developments in the university press community

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Authors: Niccole Leilanionapae‘aina Coggins, Gisela Concepción Fosado, Christie Henry, Gita Manaktala

This article provides an overview of the ways in which the members of the Association of University Presses are working towards more inclusive practices in scholarly publishing.

The authors consider the Mellon University Press Diversity Fellowship Program (now in its fourth year), the work of the Association’s Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, the Gender, Equity and Cultures of Respect Task Force and the new Equity, Justice and Inclusion Committee.

They also look at press-based working groups and several ‘Toolkits for Equity’ that are currently in development.

The volunteers engaged in these and other efforts are working to document how bias has shaped universities and university presses, to propose actions to disrupt this powerful force and to share what they have learned with their colleagues as well as with the larger scholarly publishing and academic communities.

URL : Towards inclusive scholarly publishing: developments in the university press community

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.506

From Open Access to Open Science: The Path From Scientific Reality to Open Scientific Communication

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Authors : Christian Heise, Joshua M. Pearce

Although opening up of research is considered an appropriate and trend-setting model for future scientific communication, it can still be difficult to put open science into practice. How open and transparent can a scientific work be?

This article investigates the potential to make all information and the whole work process of a qualification project such as a doctoral thesis comprehensively and freely accessible on the internet with an open free license both in the final form and completely traceable in development.

The answer to the initial question, the self-experiment and the associated demand for openness, posed several challenges for a doctoral student, the institution, and the examination regulations, which are still based on the publication of an individually written and completed work that cannot be viewed by the public during the creation process.

In the case of data and other documents, publication is usually not planned even after completion. This state of affairs in the use of open science in the humanities will be compared with open science best practices in the physical sciences.

The reasons and influencing factors for open developments in science and research are presented, empirically and experimentally tested in the development of the first completely open humanities-based PhD thesis.

The results of this two-part study show that it is possible to publish everything related to the doctoral study, qualification, and research process as soon as possible, as comprehensively as possible, and under an open license.

URL : From Open Access to Open Science: The Path From Scientific Reality to Open Scientific Communication

DOI : From Open Access to Open Science: The Path From Scientific Reality to Open Scientific Communication

How common are explicit research questions in journal articles?

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Authors : Mike Thelwall, Amalia Mas-Bleda

Although explicitly labeled research questions seem to be central to some fields, others do not need them.

This may confuse authors, editors, readers, and reviewers of multidisciplinary research. This article assesses the extent to which research questions are explicitly mentioned in 17 out of 22 areas of scholarship from 2000 to 2018 by searching over a million full-text open access journal articles. Research questions were almost never explicitly mentioned (under 2%) by articles in engineering and physical, life, and medical sciences, and were the exception (always under 20%) for the broad fields in which they were least rare: computing, philosophy, theology, and social sciences. Nevertheless, research questions were increasingly mentioned explicitly in all fields investigated, despite a rate of 1.8% overall (1.1% after correcting for irrelevant matches).

Other terminology for an article’s purpose may be more widely used instead, including aims, objectives, goals, hypotheses, and purposes, although no terminology occurs in a majority of articles in any broad field tested. Authors, editors, readers, and reviewers should therefore be aware that the use of explicitly labeled research questions or other explicit research purpose terminology is non-standard in most or all broad fields, although it is becoming less rare.

URL : How common are explicit research questions in journal articles?

Original location : https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/qss_a_00041?af=R&

Hostage authorship and the problem of dirty hands

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Authors : William Bülow, Gert Helgesson

This article discusses gift authorship, the practice where co-authorship is awarded to a person who has not contributed significantly to the study. From an ethical point of view, gift authorship raises concerns about desert, fairness, honesty and transparency, and its prevalence in research is rightly considered a serious ethical concern.

We argue that even though misuse of authorship is always bad, there are instances where accepting requests of gift authorship may nevertheless be the right thing to do. More specifically, we propose that researchers may find themselves in a situation much similar to the problem of dirty hands, which has been frequently discussed in political philosophy and applied ethics.

The problem of dirty hands is relevant to what we call hostage authorship, where the researchers include undeserving authors unwillingly, and only because they find it unavoidable in order to accomplish a morally important research goal.

URL : Hostage authorship and the problem of dirty hands

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/1747016118764305

Faire et contrefaire des discours scientifiques : une forme « normale » de communication stratégique ?

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Auteur/Author : Lucile Desmoulins

L’émergence dans les médias états-uniens et français de discours questionnant la légitimité du rôle politique joué par les think tanks est en partie liée à des actions de communication stratégique illégales et immorales employées par certaines entreprises, qui fabriquent et promeuvent des discours d’une scientificité contestable pour défendre leurs intérêts économiques et faire du lobbying. Cette forme d’instrumentalisation de l’autorité du discours scientifique bénéficie de l’hybridité des formes organisationnelles « think tanks » et « lobbies ».

La fabrication, la médiatisation et l’instrumentalisation de discours auréolés d’une autorité scientifique interroge la normalité des techniques de communication stratégique.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02554508