Barriers to Full Participation in the Open Science Life Cycle among Early Career Researchers

Authors : Natasha J. Gownaris, Koen Vermeir, Martin-Immanuel Bittner, Lasith Gunawardena, Sandeep Kaur-Ghumaan, Robert Lepenies, Godswill Ntsomboh Ntsefong, Ibrahim Sidi Zakari

Open science (OS) is currently dominated by a small subset of practices that occur late in the scientific process. Early career researchers (ECRs) will play a key role in transitioning the scientific community to more widespread use of OS from pre-registration to publication, but they also face unique challenges in adopting these practices. Here, we discuss these challenges across the OS life cycle.

Our essay relies on the published literature, an informal survey of 32 ECRs from 14 countries, and discussions among members of the Global Working Group on Open Science (Global Young Academy and National Young Academies).

We break the OS life cycle into four stages—study design and tracking (pre-registration, open processes), data collection (citizen science, open hardware, open software, open data), publication (open access publishing, open peer review, open data), and outreach (open educational resources, citizen science)—and map potential barriers at each stage.

The most frequently discussed barriers across the OS life cycle were a lack of awareness and training, prohibitively high time commitments, and restrictions and/or a lack of incentives by supervisors.

We found that OS practices are highly fragmented and that awareness is particularly low for OS practices that occur during the study design and tracking stage, possibly creating ‘path-dependencies’ that reduce the likelihood of OS practices at later stages.

We note that, because ECRs face unique barriers to adopting OS, there is a need for specifically targeted policies such as mandatory training at the graduate level and promotion incentives.

URL : Barriers to Full Participation in the Open Science Life Cycle among Early Career Researchers

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2022-002

The Data Life Aquatic: Oceanographers’ Experience with Interoperability and Re-usability: Oceanographers’ Experience with Interoperability and Re-usability

Authors : Bradley Wade Bishop, Carolyn F Hank, Joel T Webster

This paper assesses data consumers’ perspectives on the interoperable and re-usable aspects of the FAIR Data Principles. Taking a domain-specific informatics approach, ten oceanographers were asked to think of a recent search for data and describe their process of discovery, evaluation, and use.

The interview schedule, derived from the FAIR Data Principles, included questions about the interoperability and re-usability of data. Through this critical incident technique, findings on data interoperability and re-usability give data curators valuable insights into how real-world users access, evaluate, and use data.

Results from this study show that oceanographers utilize tools that make re-use simple, with interoperability seamless within the systems used. The processes employed by oceanographers present a good baseline for other domains adopting the FAIR Data Principles.

URL : The Data Life Aquatic: Oceanographers’ Experience with Interoperability and Re-usability: Oceanographers’ Experience with Interoperability and Re-usability

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v16i1.635

Open access in the humanities, arts and social sciences: Complex perceptions of researchers and implications for research support

Author : Niamh Quigley

Adoption of open access in the humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS) is a work in progress, with lower engagement in HASS than most of the natural sciences. HASS research impacts how we live, how we learn and how we see ourselves, and research institutions should encourage and enable their HASS research communities to increase the prevalence of open access research outputs.

Six experienced HASS researchers at a single academic institution in Perth, Australia, were interviewed to explore their perceptions and experiences of open access, and any barriers that they had encountered. Thematic analysis was used to code the transcribed interviews, and generate themes.

This study found a wide variance in the adoption of open access practices among HASS researchers. Some participants are publishing via APC-based gold open access (in DOAJ listed journals), while other participants encounter multiple barriers to sharing more of their work as open access.

Confusion about aspects of open access is evident. Even among participants who support open access, some have had poor experiences of open access publishing. This research also found that some participants hold extremely complex opinions on open access, which directly influence participants’ behaviour depending on which perspective they are considering.

These perspectives are: research supervisor, editorial role at journal, funding assessor and global citizen. Within HASS a diversity of behaviours exists around open access, and research institutions need to tailor their research support services around open access and scholarly publishing for different communities of researchers.

URL : Open access in the humanities, arts and social sciences: Complex perceptions of researchers and implications for research support

DOI : https://doi.org/10.53377/lq.10937

Attitudes toward open peer review among stakeholders of a scholar-led journal in Brazil

Authors : Leonardo Ferreira Fontenelle, Thiago Dias Sarti

Scholarly journals should consider the attitudes of their communities before adopting any of the seven traits of open peer review. Unfortunately, surveys from the Global North might not apply to the Global South, where double-blind peer review is commonplace even among natural sciences and medicine journals.

This paper reports the findings of a survey on attitudes toward open peer review among four stakeholder groups of a scholar-led medical journal in Brazil: society members, journal readers, authors, and reviewers.

Compared to a previous survey, which mostly recruited natural sciences researchers from Europe, this survey found similar support for open peer review in general and for most of its traits.

One important exception was open identities, which were considered detrimental by most participants, even more in this survey than in the previous one. Interestingly, participants were more dismissive of open identities as a whole than of statements about its specific consequences.

Because preprints are increasingly popular but incompatible with double-blind review, future research should examine the effects of transitioning from double-blind to open identities, especially on gender bias.

Meanwhile, scholarly journals with double-blind review might prefer to begin by adopting other traits of open review or to make open identities optional at first.

URL : Attitudes toward open peer review among stakeholders of a scholar-led journal in Brazil

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1590/2318-0889202133e200072

L’usage de la plateforme HAL par les unités de recherche de l’Université de Lille. La situation en 2021

Auteurs/Authors : Eric Kergosien, Joachim Schöpfel

Cette note présente les résultats d’une étude de suivi sur l’usage de la plateforme HAL par les laboratoires de recherche de l’Université de Lille, réalisée en avril 2021. L’analyse a porté sur les dépôts dans HAL, sur la création d’une collection et sur la part des documents en libre accès.

L’étude propose une photographie de la situation en 2021, par rapport aux résultats des analyses de 2019 et 2020, en montrant l’évolution de l’usage de HAL par les unités de recherche et l’impact de la mise en place d’une archive institutionnelle locale nommée LillOA.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03372596

L’ouverture des matériaux de recherche ethnographiques en question

Auteur-e-s/Authors : Florence Revelin, Alix Levain, Morgane Mignon, Marianne Noel, Betty Queffelec, Pascal Raux, Hervé Squividant

Le mouvement d’ouverture des données scientifiques constitue, pour les sciences humaines et sociales (SHS), un défi à la fois épistémologique, juridique, éthique et technique. Il se manifeste par des normes et injonctions multiples vis-à-vis des communautés de recherche, qui peinent à s’y conformer et à se saisir des instruments mis à leur disposition.

Le projet PARDOQ vise à rendre intelligibles les implications complexes de ce mouvement pour les communautés travaillant à partir de données qualitatives (ethnographiques), à travers l’analyse de l’expérience de chercheuses et chercheurs confronté.e.s à la tension entre partage et protection des données ethnographiques, en prenant appui d’une part sur une étude de cas (le programme de recherche interdisciplinaire Parchemins) et d’autre part sur une enquête auprès de chercheurs.euses pratiquant l’ethnographie et de membres de réseaux scientifiques, techniques et juridiques d’appui et à la recherche.

URL : L’ouverture des matériaux de recherche ethnographiques en question

Original location : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03238067