Étiquette : scientific practices

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The Preprint Club – A cross-institutional, community-based approach to peer reviewing

Authors : Felix Clemens Richter, Ester Gea-Mallorquí, Nicolas Ruffin, Nicolas Vabret

The academic community has been increasingly using preprints to disseminate their latest research findings quickly and openly. This early and open access of non-peer reviewed research warrants new means from the scientific community to efficiently assess and provide feedback to preprints. Yet, most peer review of scientific studies performed today are still managed by journals, each having their own peer review policy and transparency.

However, approaches to uncouple the peer review process from journal publication are emerging. Additionally, formal education of early career researchers (ECRs) in peer reviewing is rarely available, hampering the quality of peer review feedback.

Here, we introduce the Preprint Club, a cross-institutional, community-based approach to peer reviewing, founded by ECRs from the University of Oxford, Karolinska Institutet and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Over the past two years and using the collaborative setting of the Preprint Club, we have been discussing, assessing, and providing feedback on recent preprints in the field of immunology.

In this article, we provide a blueprint of the Preprint Club basic structure, demonstrate its effectiveness, and detail the lessons we learned on its impact on peer review training and preprint author’s perception.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.01.04.522570

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Objectifs et stratégies de publication d’un bulletin de liaison : Le Médiéviste et l’Ordinateur (1979-1989)

Auteur/Author : Edgar Lejeune

En 1979, un petit groupe de spécialistes d’histoire médiévale utilisateurs des ordinateurs lance une publication d’un genre nouveau : le bulletin de liaison Le Médiéviste et l’Ordinateur.

Leur objectif est alors de « créer un réseau » permettant d’échanger des informations sur les nouvelles pratiques de recherche assistée par ordinateur qui se développent dans leur discipline depuis la fin des années 1960.

Cet article propose une analyse des stratégies de publication mises en place par les membres du comité de rédaction du Médiéviste et l’Ordinateur, dans le but d’observer comment une « culture commune » peut se construire en humanités numériques sur la base d’un périodique.

Pour ce faire, nous regarderons dans un premier temps, à partir des archives du comité de rédaction du bulletin conservées à l’Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes (IRHT), comment cette publication est organisée, depuis le choix des auteurs jusqu’à la distribution des exemplaires.

Nous analyserons ensuite comment, dans les pages du bulletin, les éditeurs mettent en place des stratégies de communication permettant de rendre accessibles des contenus « techniques » à l’ensemble du lectorat visé.

URL : Objectifs et stratégies de publication d’un bulletin de liaison : Le Médiéviste et l’Ordinateur (1979-1989)

DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/revuehn.3087

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Faculty Perceptions of Open Access Publishing: Investigating Faculty Publishing Habits to Evaluate Library Collection Alignment

Authors : Elisabeth Shook, Amy Vecchione

Introduction

This investigation, originally conceived as a method for informing Albertsons Library on creative solutions to the collections budget shortfall, sought to determine an institution’s faculty perceptions of publishing and/or using open access (OA) materials, as well as to identify future mechanisms that would shift perceptions of OA publishing to a more favorable light, thereby fostering adoption of OA materials in faculty research and teaching.

Methods

The study used an anonymous electronic survey of 468 faculty members, with a response rate of nearly 34%.

Results and Discussion

Respondents indicated a mixed set of adoption, with equal distribution in willingness to engage with OA journals and publications. Quality of OA publications, combined with concerns for tenure and promotion, holds faculty back from utilizing OA journals and publications in their own research and in the classroom.

Conclusion

The data collected through the course of this perceptions survey provide important insight into the perceptions of faculty at this point in time, laying the groundwork for future surveys to evaluate growth in engagement with OA publishing.

Though the data provided do not immediately alleviate collections budget constraints at Albertsons Library, the survey contributed to a more holistic understanding of faculty publishing behavior in OA journals.

URL : Faculty Perceptions of Open Access Publishing: Investigating Faculty Publishing Habits to Evaluate Library Collection Alignment

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.13216

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Champions of Transparency in Education: What Journal Reviewers Can Do to Encourage Open Science Practices

Authors : Rachel Renbarger, Jill L. Adelson, Joshua Rosenberg, Sondra M Stegenga, Olivia Lowrey, Pamela Rose Buckley, Qiyang Zhang

As the field of education and especially gifted education gradually moves towards open science, our research community increasingly values transparency and openness brought by open science practices.

Yet, individual researchers may be reluctant to adopt open science practices due to low incentives, barriers of extra workload, or lack of support to apply these in certain areas, such as qualitative research.

We encourage and give guidelines to reviewers to champion open science practices by warmly influencing authors to consider applying open science practices to quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research and providing ample support to produce higher-quality publications.

Instead of imposing open science practices on authors, we advocate reviewers suggest small, non-threatening, specific steps to support authors without making them feel overwhelmed, judged, or punished.

We believe that these small steps taken by reviewers will make a difference to create a more supportive environment for researchers to adopt better practices.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.35542/osf.io/xqfwb

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Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists’ productivity in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), and medicine fields

Authors : Seulkee Heo, Alisha Yee Chan, Pedro Diaz Peralta, Lan Jin, Claudia Ribeiro Pereira Nunes, Michelle L. Bell

While studies suggested adverse impacts of COVID-19 on scientific outputs and work routines for scientists, more evidence is required to understand detailed obstacles challenging scientists’ work and productivity during the pandemic, including how different people are affected (e.g., by gender).

This online survey-based thematic analysis investigated how the pandemic affected scientists’ perception of scientific and academic productivity in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and medicine fields.

The analysis examined if inequitable changes in duties and responsibilities for caregiving for children, family, and/or households exist between scientists who are mothers compared to scientists who are fathers or non-parents.

The survey collected data from 2548 survey responses in six languages across 132 countries. Results indicate that many scientists suffered from delays and restrictions on research activities and administrations due to the lockdown of institutions, as well as increased workloads from adapting to online teaching environment.

Caregiving responsibility for children and family increased, which compromised time for academic efforts, especially due to the temporary shutdown of social supports. Higher percentages of female parent participants than male parent participants expressed such increased burdens indicating unequal divisions of caregiving between women and men.

A range of physical and mental health issues was identified mainly due to overworking and isolation. Despite numerous obstacles, some participants reported advantages during the pandemic including the efficiency of online teaching, increased funding for COVID-related research, application of alternative research methodologies, and fluidity of the workday from not commuting.

Findings imply the need for rapid institutional support to aid various academic activities and diminish gender inequity in career development among academicians, highlighting how crisis can exacerbate existing inequalities.

URL : Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists’ productivity in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), and medicine fields

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01466-0

 

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Who Writes Scholarly Code?

Authors : Sarah Nguyễn, Vicky Rampin

This paper presents original research about the behaviours, histories, demographics, and motivations of scholars who code, specifically how they interact with version control systems locally and on the Web.

By understanding patrons through multiple lenses – daily productivity habits, motivations, and scholarly needs – librarians and archivists can tailor services for software management, curation, and long-term reuse, raising the possibility for long-term reproducibility of a multitude of scholarship.

URL : Who Writes Scholarly Code?

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v17i1.839

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Attitudes, behaviours and experiences of authors of COVID-19 preprints

Authors : Narmin Rzayeva, Susana Oliveira Henriques, Stephen Pinfield, Ludo Waltman

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a rise in preprinting, apparently triggered by the need for open and rapid dissemination of research outputs. We surveyed authors of COVID-19 preprints to learn about their experience of preprinting as well as publishing in a peer-reviewed journal.

A key aim was to consider preprints in terms of their effectiveness for authors to receive feedback on their work. We also aimed to compare the impact of feedback on preprints with the impact of comments of editors and reviewers on papers submitted to journals. We observed a high rate of new adopters of preprinting who reported positive intentions regarding preprinting their future work.

This allows us to posit that the boost in preprinting may have a structural effect that will last after the pandemic. We also saw a high rate of feedback on preprints but mainly through “closed” channels – directly to the authors.

This means that preprinting was a useful way to receive feedback on research, but the value of feedback could be increased further by facilitating and promoting “open” channels for preprint feedback. At the same time, almost a quarter of the preprints that received feedback received comments resembling journal peer review.

This shows the potential of preprint feedback to provide valuable detailed comments on research. However, journal peer review resulted in a higher rate of major changes in the papers surveyed, suggesting that the journal peer review process has significant added value compared to preprint feedback.

URL : Attitudes, behaviours and experiences of authors of COVID-19 preprints

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/d96yj