Étiquette : United Kingdom

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Researchers and Research Data: Improving and Incentivising Sharing and Archiving

Authors : Minna Ventsel, Beth Montague-Hellen

There has been a lot of discussion within the scientific community around the issues of reproducibility in research, with questions being raised about the integrity of research due to failure to reproduce or confirm the findings of some of the studies. Researchers need to adhere to the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) principles to contribute to collaborative and open science, but these open data principles can also support reproducibility and issues around ensuring data integrity.

This article uses observations and metrics from data sharing and research integrity related activities, undertaken by a Research Integrity and Data Specialist at the Francis Crick Institute, to discuss potential reasons behind a slow uptake of FAIR data practices. We then suggest solutions undertaken at the Francis Crick institute which can be followed by institutes and universities to improve the integrity of research from a data perspective.

One major solution discussed is the implementation of a data archive system at the Francis Crick Institute to ensure the integrity of data long term, comply with our funders’ data management requirements, and to safeguard our researchers against any potential research integrity allegations in the future.

URL : Researchers and Research Data: Improving and Incentivising Sharing and Archiving

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2218/v19i1.983

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Gender diversity and publication activity—an analysis of STEM in the UK

Authors : Yasaman Sarabi, Matthew Smith

Gender diversity in STEM remains a significant issue, as the field continues to be a male dominated one, despite increased attention on the subject. This article examines the interplay between gender diversity on projects funded by a major UK research council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and the publication activity of a project, as measured by the average journal quality of project publication output, over a 10-year period.

The proportion of female representation and leadership on these projects remains very low. For the projects examined as part of this study, over 70% of these projects have no female representation, and less than 15% have a female lead.

This study does not find a significant relationship between gender diversity and journal quality output. This study highlights that an important avenue for future work is the development of alternative metrics to assess the performance of research projects in a discipline characterized by very low levels of gender diversity, to fully unpack the impact of project team gender diversity on project output activity.

URL : Gender diversity and publication activity—an analysis of STEM in the UK

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvad008

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Assessing the Value of Subscription Journal Packages and Open Access Journal Articles in a Community College Context

Authors : Tim Dolan, Duncan Claflin

Introduction

Academic libraries are facing two trends: the rising cost of journal subscriptions—the ongoing ‘serials crisis’—and the increasing availability of scholarly journal articles through free, open access channels.

Methods

This study analyzed the bibliographies from 116 research projects created by students across disciplines at a small community college, and classified citations to journal articles based on the simplest way students could have accessed them.

Results

more than 60% of the scholarly journal articles that students used are available to them for free, while an additional 18% are available through state-sponsored database subscriptions available to any Massachusetts resident. Only 17% of the journal articles used were available to students solely through the library’s database packages, and more than half of those articles were used by students in the ADN nursing program.

Discussion

These findings call into question the value of expensive subscription databases to community college libraries and suggest a pattern of diminishing return on investment and value. The trend towards cancellation of ‘big deal’ journal packages at large institutions addresses similar concerns, though the dynamics are somewhat different at small institutions.

Conclusion

The paper concludes by suggesting some steps that small academic libraries might take to adapt to this changing publishing environment, in the areas of collection development and information literacy instruction, in order to better serve students.

URL : Assessing the Value of Subscription Journal Packages and Open Access Journal Articles in a Community College Context

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.15673

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Publishers, funders and institutions: who is supporting UKRI-funded researchers to share data?

Authors : Beth Montague-Hellen, Kate Montague-Hellen

Researchers are increasingly being asked by funders, publishers and their institutions to share research data alongside written publications, and to include data availability statements to support their readers in finding this data.

In the UK, UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) is one of the largest funding bodies and has had data-sharing policies for several years. This article investigates the reasons why a researcher may or may not share their data and assesses whether funders, publishers and institutions are supporting data-sharing behaviour through their policies and actions.

A survey with 166 responses gave an indicative assessment of researcher opinions around data sharing, and a corpus of 3,277 journal articles retrieved from four UK institutions was analysed using multivariate logistic regression models to provide empirical evidence as to researcher behaviour around data sharing.

The regression models provide insight into how this is affected by the funder, institution and publisher of the research. This study identifies that those publishers and funders who give clear guidance in their policies as to which data should be shared, and where this data should be shared, are most likely to encourage good practice in researchers.

URL : Publishers, funders and institutions: who is supporting UKRI-funded researchers to share data?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.602

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Should open access lead to closed research? The trends towards paying to perform research

Authors : Lin Zhang, Yahui Wei, Ying Huang, Gunnar Sivertsen

Open Access (OA) emerged as an important transition in scholarly publishing worldwide during the past two decades. So far, this transition is increasingly based on article processing charges (APC), which create a new paywall on the researchers’ side. Publishing is part of the research process and thereby necessary to perform research.

This study analyses the global trends towards paying to perform research by combing observed trends in publishing from 2015 to 2020 with an APC price list. APC expenses have sharply increased among six countries with different OA policies: the USA, China, the UK, France, the Netherlands, and Norway.

The estimated global revenues from APC among major publishers now exceed 2 billion US dollars annually. Mergers and takeovers show that the industry is moving towards APC-based OA as the more profitable business model.

Research publishing will be closed to those who cannot make an institution or project money payment. Our results lead to a discussion of whether APC is the best way to promote OA.

URL : Should open access lead to closed research? The trends towards paying to perform research

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04407-5

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To protect and to serve: developing a road map for research data management services

Authors: Andrea Chiarelli, Neil Beagrie, Lotte Boon, Ruth Mallalieu, Rob Johnson, Amy Warner May, Rowan Wilso

Research Data Management (RDM) has become a major issue for universities over the last decade. This case study outlines the review of RDM services carried out at the University of Oxford in partnership with external consultants between November 2019 and November 2020.

It aims to describe and discuss the processes in undertaking a university-wide review of services supporting RDM and developing a future road map for them, with a strong emphasis on the design processes, methodological approaches and infographics used. The future road map developed is a live document, which the consulting team handed over to the University at the end of the consultation process.

It provides a suggested RDM action plan for the University that will continue to evolve and be iterated in the light of additional internal costings, available resources and reprioritization in the budget cycle for each academic year.

It is hoped that the contents of this case study will be useful to other research-intensive universities with an interest in developing and planning RDM services to support their researchers.

URL : To protect and to serve: developing a road map for research data management services

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.566

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How far does an emphasis on stakeholder engagement and co-production in research present a threat to academic identity and autonomy? A prospective study across five European countries

Authors : Annette Boaz, Robert Borst, Maarten Kok, Alison O’Shea

There is a growing recognition that needs more to be done to ensure that research contributes to better health services and patient outcomes. Stakeholder engagement in research, including co-production, has been identified as a promising mechanism for improving the value, relevance and utilization of research.

This article presents findings from a prospective study which explored the impact of stakeholder engagement in a 3-year European tobacco control research project. That research project aimed to engage stakeholders in the development, testing and dissemination of a return-on-investment tool across five EU countries (the Netherlands, Spain, Hungary, Germany and the UK).

The prospective study comprised interviews, observations and document review. The analysis focused on the extent to which the project team recognized, conceptualized and operationalized stakeholder engagement over the course of the research project. Stakeholder engagement in the European research project was conceptualized as a key feature of pre-designated spaces within their work programme.

Over the course of the project, however, the tool development work and stakeholder engagement activities decoupled. While the modelling and tool development became more secluded, stakeholder engagement activities subtly transformed from co-production, to consultation, to something more recognizable as research participation.

The contribution of this article is not to argue against the potential contribution of stakeholder engagement and co-production, but to show how even well-planned engagement activities can be diverted within the existing research funding and research production systems where non-research stakeholders remain at the margins and can even be seen as a threat to academic identify and autonomy.

URL : How far does an emphasis on stakeholder engagement and co-production in research present a threat to academic identity and autonomy? A prospective study across five European countries

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvab013