scientific practices – Page 7 – InfoDoc MicroVeille

Faculty Use of Open-Access Journals: A Case Study of Faculty Publications and Cited References at a California University

Posté le 6 septembre 2021 par Hans Dillaerts

Author : Kendall Faulkner

Many in the library world see open-access (OA) publishing as the way of the future, necessary to combat ever-rising costs, expand knowledge and information production, and level the playing field for researchers and students across the world.

However, ingrained notions of the publishing process in academia, and concerns over OA journals’ quality and costs often make researchers less enthusiastic. This study takes a close look at faculty habits at the college-department level by reviewing faculty publishing habits and cited references in those publications.

Results show that the faculty in the Psychology Department at California State University, Los Angeles regularly publish at all OA levels, but utilize formal self-archiving less than what is found in their cited references. Furthermore, the department faculty cite fully OA (Gold) journals less than they publish in them.

URL : Faculty Use of Open-Access Journals: A Case Study of Faculty Publications and Cited References at a California University

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9030039

Knowledge and Attitudes Among Life Scientists Toward Reproducibility Within Journal Articles: A Research Survey

Posté le 31 août 2021 par Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Evanthia Kaimaklioti Samota, Robert P. Davey

We constructed a survey to understand how authors and scientists view the issues around reproducibility, focusing on interactive elements such as interactive figures embedded within online publications, as a solution for enabling the reproducibility of experiments.

We report the views of 251 researchers, comprising authors who have published in eLIFE Sciences, and those who work at the Norwich Biosciences Institutes (NBI). The survey also outlines to what extent researchers are occupied with reproducing experiments themselves. Currently, there is an increasing range of tools that attempt to address the production of reproducible research by making code, data, and analyses available to the community for reuse. We wanted to collect information about attitudes around the consumer end of the spectrum, where life scientists interact with research outputs to interpret scientific results.

Static plots and figures within articles are a central part of this interpretation, and therefore we asked respondents to consider various features for an interactive figure within a research article that would allow them to better understand and reproduce a published analysis.

The majority (91%) of respondents reported that when authors describe their research methodology (methods and analyses) in detail, published research can become more reproducible. The respondents believe that having interactive figures in published papers is a beneficial element to themselves, the papers they read as well as to their readers.

Whilst interactive figures are one potential solution for consuming the results of research more effectively to enable reproducibility, we also review the equally pressing technical and cultural demands on researchers that need to be addressed to achieve greater success in reproducibility in the life sciences.

URL : Knowledge and Attitudes Among Life Scientists Toward Reproducibility Within Journal Articles: A Research Survey

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2021.678554

Between administration and research: Understanding data management practices in an institutional context

Posté le 26 août 2021 par Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Stefan Reichmann, Thomas Klebel, Ilire Hasani-Mavriqi, Tony Ross-Hellauer

Research Data Management (RDM) promises to make research outputs more transparent, findable, and reproducible. Strategies to streamline data management across disciplines are of key importance.

This paper presents results of an institutional survey (N = 258) at a medium-sized Austrian university with a STEM focus, supplemented with interviews (N = 18), to give an overview of the state-of-play of RDM practices across faculties and disciplinary contexts.

RDM services are on the rise but remain somewhat behind leading countries like the Netherlands and UK, showing only the beginnings of a culture attuned to RDM. There is considerable variation between faculties and institutes with respect to data amounts, complexity of data sets, data collection and analysis, and data archiving.

Data sharing practices within fields tend to be inconsistent. RDM is predominantly regarded as an administrative task, to the detriment of considerations of good research practice. Problems with RDM fall in two categories: Generic problems transcend specific research interests, infrastructures, and departments while discipline-specific problems need a more targeted approach.

The paper extends the state-of-the-art on RDM practices by combining in-depth qualitative material with quantified, detailed data about RDM practices and needs. The findings should be of interest to any comparable research institution with a similar agenda.

URL : Between administration and research: Understanding data management practices in an institutional context

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24492

Doctoral Students’ Educational Needs in Research Data Management: Perceived Importance and Current Competencies

Posté le 16 août 2021 par Hans Dillaerts

Author : Jukka Rantasaari

Sound research data management (RDM) competencies are elementary tools used by researchers to ensure integrated, reliable, and re-usable data, and to produce high quality research results.

In this study, 35 doctoral students and faculty members were asked to self-rate or rate doctoral students’ current RDM competencies and rate the importance of these competencies.

Structured interviews were conducted, using close-ended and open-ended questions, covering research data lifecycle phases such as collection, storing, organization, documentation, processing, analysis, preservation, and data sharing.

The quantitative analysis of the respondents’ answers indicated a wide gap between doctoral students’ rated/self-rated current competencies and the rated importance of these competencies.

In conclusion, two major educational needs were identified in the qualitative analysis of the interviews: to improve and standardize data management planning, including awareness of the intellectual property and agreements issues affecting data processing and sharing; and to improve and standardize data documenting and describing, not only for the researcher themself but especially for data preservation, sharing, and re-using. Hence the study informs the development of RDM education for doctoral students.

URL : Doctoral Students’ Educational Needs in Research Data Management: Perceived Importance and Current Competencies

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v16i1.684

Publication patterns’ changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal and short-term scientometric analysis

Posté le 12 août 2021 par Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Shir Aviv-Reuven, Ariel Rosenfeld

In recent months the COVID-19 (also known as SARS-CoV-2 and Coronavirus) pandemic has spread throughout the world. In parallel, extensive scholarly research regarding various aspects of the pandemic has been published. In this work, we analyse the changes in biomedical publishing patterns due to the pandemic.

We study the changes in the volume of publications in both peer reviewed journals and preprint servers, average time to acceptance of papers submitted to biomedical journals, international (co-)authorship of these papers (expressed by diversity and volume), and the possible association between journal metrics and said changes.

We study these possible changes using two approaches: a short-term analysis through which changes during the first six months of the outbreak are examined for both COVID-19 related papers and non-COVID-19 related papers; and a longitudinal approach through which changes are examined in comparison to the previous four years.

Our results show that the pandemic has so far had a tremendous effect on all examined accounts of scholarly publications: A sharp increase in publication volume has been witnessed and it can be almost entirely attributed to the pandemic; a significantly faster mean time to acceptance for COVID-19 papers is apparent, and it has (partially) come at the expense of non-COVID-19 papers; and a significant reduction in international collaboration for COVID-19 papers has also been identified.

As the pandemic continues to spread, these changes may cause a slow down in research in non-COVID-19 biomedical fields and bring about a lower rate of international collaboration.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04059-x