« Much scholarly attention has been given to the English writing and publishing practices of the academics in non-Anglophone countries, but studies on such practices in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) have in general been limited. The case of Mainland Chinese HSS academics is potentially interesting. On the one hand, international publications in these disciplines have been on the increase, which are also encouraged by the national research policy of “going-out”. On the other hand, unlike those in science and technology (S&T), such practices in the HSS are still much less institutionalized at the local level. In the study reported in this article, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine academics in economics, sociology and archaeology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), and all nine participants had prior experience in international publishing. With a focus on participants’ experiences and perceptions, findings from this study demonstrated the relatively passive role participants played in their international publications, the importance of various resources in bringing forth these publications, and the relations between participants’ alignments with the local or international community and their voluntary investment in participating in their practices. Implications of the study were also discussed. »
Étiquette : scientific practices
« Conclusions of research articles depend on bodies of data that cannot be included in articles themselves. To share this data is important for reasons of both transparency and reuse. Science, Technology, and Medicine journals have a role in facilitating sharing, but by what mechanism is not yet clear. The Journal Research Data (JoRD) Project was a JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee)-funded feasibility study on the potential for a central service on journal research data policies. The objectives of the study included identifying the current state of journal data sharing policies and investigating stakeholders’ views and practices. The project confirmed that a large percentage of journals have no data sharing policy and that there are inconsistencies between those that are traceable. This state leaves authors unsure of whether they should share article related data and where and how to deposit those data. In the absence of a consolidated infrastructure to share data easily, a model journal data sharing policy was developed by comparing quantitative information from analyzing existing journal data policies with qualitative data collected from stakeholders. This article summarizes and outlines the process by which the model was developed and presents the model journal data sharing policy. »
« The paper, by means of citation studies, studies on information seeking behavior, and book format preferences and use, draws conclusions about the deaccession of print books in business, science and interdisciplinary studies in academic libraries. It is argued that deaccession of print books in business and science can proceed more quickly than in the humanities and social sciences. This is especially true for the sciences, with some evidence that print books continue to play a role in business scholarship and teaching. It is difficult to produce generalizations about deaccession in interdisciplinary studies. »
« This short report provides a description of an online-consultation on the scientific publication system. German-speaking scientists from all disciplines were invited to articulate their perspectives on principles and current problems in scientific publishing in the dialogical procedure. 697 participants addressed their opinion in two areas of consultation (a) Consultation area “evaluate principles”: the goal in this section was to find out whether there is a general consensus throughout academia of what constitutes a good publication system. For this purpose, principles of a good scientific publication system could be commented on and evaluated with positive or negative votes. (b) Consultation area “name problems”: this section aimed at obtaining the perspective of the participants on current challenges and problems of the publication system. The contributions of the participants focus on eight topics: (1) printed vs. digital publication, (2) business models of large publishing houses, (3) open access, (4) publication-based performance indicators, (5) authorship, (6) peer review, (7) publication bias, and (8) research data. »
URL : Online-consultation “scientific publication system”: documentation and main results
DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.14293/S2199-1006.1.SOR-SOCSCI.AE2GYG.v1
« Background : In the current information age, the use of data has become essential for decision making in public health at the local, national, and global level. Despite a global commitment to the use and sharing of public health data, this can be challenging in reality. No systematic framework or global operational guidelines have been created for data sharing in public health. Barriers at different levels have limited data sharing but have only been anecdotally discussed or in the context of specific case studies. Incomplete systematic evidence on the scope and variety of these barriers has limited opportunities to maximize the value and use of public health data for science and policy.
Methods : We conducted a systematic literature review of potential barriers to public health data sharing. Documents that described barriers to sharing of routinely collected public health data were eligible for inclusion and reviewed independently by a team of experts. We grouped identified barriers in a taxonomy for a focused international dialogue on solutions.
Results : Twenty potential barriers were identified and classified in six categories: technical, motivational, economic, political, legal and ethical. The first three categories are deeply rooted in well-known challenges of health information systems for which structural solutions have yet to be found; the last three have solutions that lie in an international dialogue aimed at generating consensus on policies and instruments for data sharing.
Conclusions : The simultaneous effect of multiple interacting barriers ranging from technical to intangible issues has greatly complicated advances in public health data sharing. A systematic framework of barriers to data sharing in public health will be essential to accelerate the use of valuable information for the global good. »
URL : A systematic review of barriers to data sharing in public health
Alternative URL : http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/14/1144
« Academic data sharing is a way for researchers to collaborate and thereby meet the needs of an increasingly complex research landscape. It enables researchers to verify results and to pursuit new research questions with « old » data. It is therefore not surprising that data sharing is advocated by funding agencies, journals, and researchers alike. We surveyed 2661 individual academic researchers across all disciplines on their dealings with data, their publication practices, and motives for sharing or withholding research data. The results for 1564 valid responses show that researchers across disciplines recognise the benefit of secondary research data for their own work and for scientific progress as a whole-still they only practice it in moderation. An explanation for this evidence could be an academic system that is not driven by monetary incentives, nor the desire for scientific progress, but by individual reputation-expressed in (high ranked journal) publications. We label this system a Reputation Economy. This special economy explains our findings that show that researchers have a nuanced idea how to provide adequate formal recognition for making data available to others-namely data citations. We conclude that data sharing will only be widely adopted among research professionals if sharing pays in form of reputation. Thus, policy measures that intend to foster research collaboration need to understand academia as a reputation economy. Successful measures must value intermediate products, such as research data, more highly than it is the case now. »
« In an increasingly digital environment, many factors influence how academic researchers decide what to read, what to cite, where to publish their work, and how they assign trust when making these decisions. This study focuses on how this differs according to the geographical location of the researcher, specifically in terms of the country’s level of development. Data were collected by a questionnaire survey of 3650 authors who had published articles in international journals. The human development index (HDI) was used to compare authors’ scholarly behavior. The findings show that researchers from less developed countries such as India and China (medium HDI) compared to those in developed countries, such as the USA and UK (very high HDI) are more reliant on external factors and those criteria that are related to authority, brand and reputation, such as authors’ names, affiliation, country and journal name. Even when deciding where to publish, the publisher of the journal is more important for developing countries than it is for researchers from the US and UK. Scholars from high HDI countries also differ in these aspects: a) they are less discriminatory than authors from developing countries in their citation practices; b) for them the fact that a source is peer reviewed is the most important factor when deciding where to publish; c) they are more negative towards the use of repositories and social media for publishing and more skeptical about their potential for increasing usage or reaching a wider audience. »
URL : http://ciber-research.eu/download/20141207-LISR_Trust.pdf