Open Science – Page 4

"A Decade of Surveys on Attitudes to Data Sharing Highlights Three Factors for Achieving Open Science"

Over a 10 year period Carol Tenopir of DataONE and her team conducted a global survey of scientists, managers and government workers involved in broad environmental science activities about their willingness to share data and their opinion of the resources available to do so. . . .

The most surprising result was that a higher willingness to share data corresponded with a decrease in satisfaction with data sharing resources across nations (e.g., skills, tools, training) (Fig.1). That is, researchers who did not want to share data were satisfied with the available resources, and those that did want to share data were dissatisfied. Researchers appear to only discover that the tools are insufficient when they begin the hard work of engaging in open science practices. This indicates that a cultural shift in the attitudes of researchers needs to precede the development of support and tools for data management.

https://tinyurl.com/4sx54c6d

"Code Sharing Increases Citations, but Remains Uncommon"

Overall, R code was only available in 49 of the 1001 papers examined (4.9%) (Figure 1). When included, code was most often in the Supplemental Information (41%), followed by Github (20%), Figshare (6%), or other repositories (33%). Open-access publications were 70% more likely to include code than closed access publications (7.21% vs. 4.22%, X² = 4.442, p < 0.05). Code-sharing was estimated to increase at 0.5% / year, but this trend was not significant (p=0.11). The year of 2021 and 2022 showed a shift towards more frequent sharing, but the percentage of code-sharing has been consistently below 15% over the past decade (Figure 1).

We found papers including code disproportionately impact the literature (Figure 2), and accumulate citations faster (i.e., a marginally significant year-by-code-inclusion interaction; p = 0.0863). Further, we found a significant interaction between Open Access and code inclusion (p = 0.0265), with publications meeting both Open Science criteria (i.e., open code and open access) having highest overall predicted citation rates (Figure 2). For example, Open Science papers are expected to receive more than doubled citations (96.25 vs. 36.89) in year 13 post-publication compared with fully closed papers (Figure 2).

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3222221/v1

NASA’s Public Access Plan for Increasing Access to the Results of Scientific Research

This section highlights the significant changes to this document since the original plan was released in 2014. To wit:

There shall be no publication embargo period for peer-reviewed publications

Data that support peer-reviewed publications shall be made available in a public archive at the time of publication

Software should be included as part of Open Access, subject to NASA software release requirements

Software used to generate research findings/results should be made available in a public archive at the time of publication

Other data products beyond peer-reviewed publications and software should be considered as part of Open Access

https://tinyurl.com/4h9ezkk8

"The Rights of UC Authors Are at Stake. Here’s What We Are Doing about It."

"We have learned that many publishers are requiring UC authors to sign misleading License to Publish agreements, which undermine the spirit and intent of [UC’s open access policies]," wrote Susan Cochran, Chair of the faculty Academic Senate PDF.

By purporting to restrict an author’s abilities to reuse their own work, "these agreements essentially turn faculty authors into readers, as opposed to creators and owners of their own work," the Academic Senate chair concludes.

The team that leads negotiations with scholarly publishers on behalf of the university, including representatives from UC’s California Digital Library, the 10 campus libraries, and the Academic Senate, is now taking up the charge, making author rights the next frontier in advocating for the UC research community.

https://tinyurl.com/mry3hczw

"The Future of Open Source Is Still Very Much in Flux"

Today, 96% of all code bases incorporate open-source software. GitHub, the biggest platform for the open-source community, is used by more than 100 million developers worldwide. The Biden administration’s Securing Open Source Software Act of 2022 publicly recognized open-source software as critical economic and security infrastructure. Even AWS, Amazon’s money-making cloud arm, supports the development and maintenance of open-source software; it committed its portfolio of patents to an open use community in December of last year. Over the last two years, while public trust in private technology companies has plummeted, organizations including Google, Spotify, the Ford Foundation, Bloomberg, and NASA have established new funding for open-source projects and their counterparts in open science efforts—an extension of the same values applied to scientific research.

https://tinyurl.com/4ksns2ha

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Care to Share? Experimental Evidence on Code Sharing Behavior in the Social Sciences"

Transparency and peer control are cornerstones of good scientific practice and entail the replication and reproduction of findings. The feasibility of replications, however, hinges on the premise that original researchers make their data and research code publicly available. This applies in particular to large-N observational studies, where analysis code is complex and may involve several ambiguous analytical decisions. To investigate which specific factors influence researchers’ code sharing behavior upon request, we emailed code requests to 1,206 authors who published research articles based on data from the European Social Survey between 2015 and 2020. In this preregistered multifactorial field experiment, we randomly varied three aspects of our code request’s wording in a 2x4x2 factorial design: the overall framing of our request (enhancement of social science research, response to replication crisis), the appeal why researchers should share their code (FAIR principles, academic altruism, prospect of citation, no information), and the perceived effort associated with code sharing (no code cleaning required, no information). Overall, 37.5% of successfully contacted authors supplied their analysis code. Of our experimental treatments, only framing affected researchers’ code sharing behavior, though in the opposite direction we expected: Scientists who received the negative wording alluding to the replication crisis were more likely to share their research code. Taken together, our results highlight that the availability of research code will hardly be enhanced by small-scale individual interventions but instead requires large-scale institutional norms.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289380

"Actually Accessible Data: An Update and a Call to Action"

As funder, journal, and disciplinary norms and mandates have foregrounded obligations of data sharing and opportunities for data reuse, the need to plan for and curate data sets that can reach researchers and end-users with disabilities has become even more urgent. We begin by exploring the disability studies literature, describing the need for advocacy and representation of disabled scholars as data creators, subjects, and users. We then survey the landscape of data repositories, curation guidelines, and research-data-related standards, finding little consideration of accessibility for people with disabilities. We suggest three sets of minimal good practices for moving toward truly accessible research data: 1) ensuring Web accessibility for data repositories; 2) ensuring accessibility of common text formats, including those used in documentation; and 3) enhancement of visual and audiovisual materials. We point to some signs of progress in regard to truly accessible data by highlighting exemplary practices by repositories, standards, and data professionals. Accessibility needs to become a mainstream component of curation practice included in every training, manual, and primer.

https://tinyurl.com/2p4au2ar

"Data Journals: Where Data Sharing Policy Meets Practice"

Data journals incorporate elements of traditional scholarly communications practices—reviewing for quality and rigor through editorial and peer-review—and the data sharing / open data movement—prioritizing broad dissemination through repositories, sometimes with curation or technical checks. Their goals for dataset review and sharing are recorded in journal-based data policies and operationalized through workflows. In this qualitative, small cohort semi-structured interview study of eight different journals that review and publish research data, we explored (1) journal data policy requirements, (2) data review standards, and (3) implementation of standardized data evaluation workflows. Differences among the journals can be understood by considering editors’ approaches to balancing the interests of varied stakeholders. Assessing data quality for reusability is primarily conditional on fitness for use which points to an important distinction between disciplinary and discipline-agnostic data journals.

https://doi.org/10.17615/nqtz-b568

"Who Re-Uses Data? A Bibliometric Analysis of Dataset Citations"

Open data is receiving increased attention and support in academic environments, with one justification being that shared data may be re-used in further research. But what evidence exists for such re-use, and what is the relationship between the producers of shared datasets and researchers who use them? Using a sample of data citations from OpenAlex, this study investigates the relationship between creators and citers of datasets at the individual, institutional, and national levels. We find that the vast majority of datasets have no recorded citations, and that most cited datasets only have a single citation. Rates of self-citation by individuals and institutions tend towards the low end of previous findings and vary widely across disciplines. At the country level, the United States is by far the most prominent exporter of re-used datasets, while importation is more evenly distributed. Understanding where and how the sharing of data between researchers, institutions, and countries takes place is essential to developing open research practices.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.04379

"Metadata Standard for Continuous Preservation, Discovery, and Reuse of Research Data in Repositories by Higher Education Institutions: A Systematic Review"

This systematic review synthesised existing research papers that explore the available metadata standards to enable researchers to preserve, discover, and reuse research data in repositories. This review provides a broad overview of certain aspects that must be taken into consideration when creating and assessing metadata standards to enhance research data preservation discoverability and reusability strategies. Research papers on metadata standards, research data preservation, discovery and reuse, and repositories published between January 2003 and April 2023 were reviewed from a total of five databases. The review retrieved 1597 papers, and 13 papers were selected in this review. We revealed 13 research articles that explained the creation and application of metadata standards to enhance preservation, discovery, and reuse of research data in repositories. Among them, eight presented the three main types of metadata, descriptive, structural, and administrative, to enable the preservation of research data in data repositories. We noted limited evidence on how these metadata standards can be used to enhance the discovery and reuse of research data in repositories to enable the preservation, discovery, and reuse of research data in repositories. No reviews indicated specific higher education institutions employing metadata standards for the research data created by their researchers. Repository designs and a lack of expertise and technology know-how were among the challenges identified from the reviewed papers. The review has the potential to influence professional practice and decision-making by stakeholders, including researchers, students, librarians, information communication technologists, data managers, private and public organisations, intermediaries, research institutions, and non-profit organizations.

https://doi.org/10.3390/info14080427

"Policy Recommendations to Ensure That Research Software Is Openly Accessible and Reusable"

There is now an opportunity to expand US federal policies in similar ways and align their research software sharing aspects across agencies.

To do this, we recommend:

As part of their updated policy plans submitted in response to the 2022 OSTP memo, US federal agencies should, at a minimum, articulate a pathway for developing guidance on research software sharing, and, at a maximum, incorporate research software sharing requirements as a necessary extension of any data sharing policy and a critical strategy to make data truly FAIR (as these principles have been adapted to apply to research software [12]).

As part of sharing requirements, federal agencies should specify that research software should be deposited in trusted, public repositories that maximize discovery, collaborative development, version control, long-term preservation, and other key elements of the National Science and Technology Council’s "Desirable Characteristics of Data Repositories for Federally Funded Research" [13], as adapted to fit the unique considerations of research software.

US federal agencies should encourage grantees to use non-proprietary software and file formats, whenever possible, to collect and store data. We realize that for some research areas and specialized techniques, viable non-proprietary software may not exist for data collection. However, in many cases, files can be exported and shared using non-proprietary formats or scripts can be provided to allow others to open files.

Consistent with the US Administration’s approach to cybersecurity [<14], federal agencies should provide clear guidance on measures grantees are expected to undertake to ensure the security and integrity of research software. This guidance should encompass the design, development, dissemination, and documentation of research software. Examples include the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s secure software development framework and Linux Foundation’s open source security foundation.

As part of the allowable costs that grantees can request to help them meet research sharing requirements, US federal agencies should include reasonable costs associated with developing and maintaining research software needed to maximize data accessibility and reusability for as long as it is practical. Federal agencies should ensure that such costs are additive to proposal budgets, rather than consuming funds that would otherwise go to the research itself.

US federal agencies should encourage grantees to apply licenses to their research software that facilitate replication, reuse, and extensibility, while balancing individual and institutional intellectual property considerations. Agencies can point grantees to guidance on desirable criteria for distribution terms and approved licenses from the Open Source Initiative.

In parallel with the actions listed above that can be immediately incorporated into new public access plans, US federal agencies should also explore long-term strategies to elevate research software to co-equal research outputs and further incentivize its maintenance and sharing to improve research reproducibility, replicability, and integrity.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002204

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Trends in Research Data Management and Academic Health Sciences Libraries"

Spurred by the National Institute of Health mandating a data management and sharing plan as a requirement of grant funding, research data management has exploded in importance for librarians supporting researchers and research institutions. This editorial examines the role and direction of libraries in this process from several viewpoints. Key markers of success include collaboration, establishing new relationships, leveraging existing relationships, accessing multiple avenues of communication, and building niche expertise and cachè as a valued and trustworthy partner. [Article includes case studies.]

https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2023.2218776

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Building a Framework for Open Research Skills at the University of York"

This case study describes the development of an open research skills framework at the University of York. The framework responds to a need for more comprehensive training, clarity and understanding around open research practices across disciplines at York, in line with the University’s commitment to the long-term development of an open research culture. The framework was developed by Library, Archives and Learning Services (LALS) in partnership with practitioners from different disciplines across the University’s research community. We summarize the background of open research activities at York since 2020, describe how the project was initiated and progressed during the summer of 2022, then provide an overview of the framework itself including areas for future development and consideration. We conclude with some early indicators of usage and reflections on the project, and we hope that this case study will prove useful for research support staff who may be considering developing a similar framework for their own institution.

https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.618

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

SPARC: "Oppose Section 552 That Will Block Taxpayer Access to Research"

The U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) has released an appropriations bill containing language that would block implementation of the 2022 updated OSTP policy guidance (the Nelson Memo) that would ensure immediate, free access to taxpayer-funded research. If enacted, this will prevent American taxpayers from seeing the benefits of the more than $90 billion in scientific research that the U.S. government funds each year. . . .

Write to Congress

Look up contact details for your Representatives and Senators, then customize the text in this template letter.

Call Congress

Look up contact details for your Representatives and Senators, then call the office and tell them to remove Section 552 of the House CJS bill.

https://tinyurl.com/3mbbmwxw

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"How Are Exclusively Data Journals Indexed in Major Scholarly Databases? An Examination of the Web of Science, Scopus, Dimensions, and OpenAlex"

As part of the data-driven paradigm and open science movement, the data paper is becoming a popular way for researchers to publish their research data, based on academic norms that cross knowledge domains. Data journals have also been created to host this new academic genre. The growing number of data papers and journals has made them an important large-scale data source for understanding how research data is published and reused in our research system. One barrier to this research agenda is a lack of knowledge as to how data journals and their publications are indexed in the scholarly databases used for quantitative analysis. To address this gap, this study examines how a list of 18 exclusively data journals (i.e., journals that primarily accept data papers) are indexed in four popular scholarly databases: the Web of Science, Scopus, Dimensions, and OpenAlex. We investigate how comprehensively these databases cover the selected data journals and, in particular, how they present the document type information of data papers. We find that the coverage of data papers, as well as their document type information, is highly inconsistent across databases, which creates major challenges for future efforts to study them quantitatively. As a result, we argue that efforts should be made by data journals and databases to improve the quality of metadata for this emerging genre.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.09704

Ithaka S+R Draft for Comment: The Second Digital Transformation of Scholarly Publishing: Strategic Context and Shared Infrastructure

The issue that we identified as the biggest gap today is the perceived need for a secure digital identity for legitimate scholars, to help editors triage submissions into more and less trusted categories. We see opportunities for researcher identifiers to be used as the hub for much greater information about digital identity, in part by allowing publishers and other parties to submit markers of identity into identifier records. As examples, publishers that have processed APC transactions using credit cards have substantial signs of verified identity, as do universities that have securely linked an email address.

The boundaries of the scholarly record represent another aspect of research integrity that requires new forms of infrastructure. Of course the record has never had absolute boundaries. But in a subscription landscape, libraries played an important role in establishing the metes and bounds of the scholarly record (and what would be preserved over time) based on their selection decision-making. In a gold or diamond open access environment, libraries may have a reduced role and so other forms of boundary-setting may be required. Journal rankings may increasingly serve to set the boundaries of the scholarly record, although whether that is the right form of shared infrastructure, or whether it has the right governance and business model to allow it to serve this role without fear or favor, is not yet settled.

https://tinyurl.com/mr2ce748

"Over 1000 Institutions Now Covered by RSC (Royal Society of Chemistry) Read & Publish Agreements"

The Royal Society of Chemistry has signed a Read & Publish agreement with CRUE (Conferencia de Rectores de las Universidades Españolas, the national consortium of Spanish Universities), taking the number of institutions in the RSC’s R&P community to more than one thousand covering 32 countries.

https://tinyurl.com/3jc9juus

"Prevalence and Predictors of Data and Code Sharing in the Medical and Health Sciences: Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis of Individual Participant Data"

The review found that public code sharing was persistently low across medical research. Declarations of data sharing were also low, increasing over time, but did not always correspond to actual sharing of data. The effectiveness of mandatory data sharing policies varied substantially by journal and type of data, a finding that might be informative for policy makers when designing policies and allocating resources to audit compliance.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2023-075767

Report on Standards for Best Publishing Practices and Technical Requirements in Light of the FAIR Principles

This report has provided an overview of the current state of scholarly publishing practices and technical requirements in the context of FAIR principles. The report highlights the importance of interoperability to enable discoverability, reuse, and reproducibility of research outputs. In addition to creating an initial connection between scholarly publishing practices and the technical requirements of the FAIR principles, this is (as far as we know) the first attempt to systematically collect and compare the different requirements set by the selected policies and services with each other. From the perspective of a publisher, it would be desirable for the requirements set by different actors to be aligned (so as not to be incompatible with each other), and offer some degree of progression in compliance and implementation so that it is not a matter of all or nothing. This is particularly relevant for the requirements set by DOAJ and cOAlition S, which are essential for most OA journals to fulfil. The requirements criteria set by both of these organisations include both basic and recommended levels. Based on our review, we found that they are well-aligned. If a journal fulfils the requirements of one, it will fulfil a number of requirements of the other.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8112661

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Opening Knowledge: Retaining Rights and Open Licensing in Europe

This report investigates the current landscape of non-legislative policy practices affecting researchers and authors in the authors’ rights and licensing domain. It is an outcome of research conducted by Project Retain led by SPARC Europe, as part of the Knowledge Rights 21 programme. The report concludes with a set of recommendations for institutional policymakers, funders and legislators, and publishers. It is accompanied by the study dataset.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8084050

"Perceived Benefits of Open Data Are Improving but Scientists Still Lack Resources, Skills, and Rewards"

Addressing global scientific challenges requires the widespread sharing of consistent and trustworthy research data. Identifying the factors that influence widespread data sharing will help us understand the limitations and potential leverage points. We used two well-known theoretical frameworks, the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Technology Acceptance Model, to analyze three DataONE surveys published in 2011, 2015, and 2020. These surveys aimed to identify individual, social, and organizational influences on data-sharing behavior. In this paper, we report on the application of multiple factor analysis (MFA) on this combined, longitudinal, survey data to determine how these attitudes may have changed over time. The first two dimensions of the MFA were named willingness to share and satisfaction with resources based on the contributing questions and answers. Our results indicated that both dimensions are strongly influenced by individual factors such as perceived benefit, risk, and effort. Satisfaction with resources was significantly influenced by social and organizational factors such as the availability of training and data repositories. Researchers that improved in willingness to share are shown to be operating in domains with a high reliance on shared resources, are reliant on funding from national or federal sources, work in sectors where internal practices are mandated, and live in regions with highly effective communication networks. Significantly, satisfaction with resources was inversely correlated with willingness to share across all regions. We posit that this relationship results from researchers learning what resources they actually need only after engaging with the tools and procedures extensively.

https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01831-7

Open Science Services by Research Libraries: Organisational Perspectives — A LIBER and ADBU Report

Many research libraries in Europe deliver Open Science services in the field of RDM and OA. However, it is estimated that up to half of European research libraries deliver only limited services in these domains. LIBER and ADBU conducted a study to understand the organisational structures and competences needed to create, and sustain, these services.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8060242

Defining Open Scholarly Infrastructure: A Review of Relevant Literature

This report outlines IOI’s initial attempt towards a framework for understanding open infrastructure for research and scholarship. For this report, we examined a body of literature that includes works across the fields of anthropology, scholarly communications, international development studies, science and technology studies, and infrastructure studies.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7064538

"Open(ing) Access: Top Health Publication Availability to Researchers in Low- and Middle-Income Countries"

Introduction: Improving access to information for health professionals and researchers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is under-prioritized. This study examines publication policies that affect authors and readers from LMICs.

Methods: We used the SHERPA RoMEO database and publicly available publishing protocols to evaluate open access (OA) policies, article processing charges (APCs), subscription costs, and availability of health literature relevant to authors and readers in LMICs. Categorical variables were summarized using frequencies with percentages. Continuous variables were reported with median and interquartile range (IQR). Hypothesis testing procedures were performed using Wilcoxon rank sum tests, Wilcoxon rank sum exact tests, and Kruskal-Wallis test.

Results: A total of 55 journals were included; 6 (11%) were Gold OA (access to readers and large charge for authors), 2 (3.6%) were subscription (charge for readers and small/no charge for authors), 4 (7.3%) were delayed OA (reader access with no charge after embargo), and 43 (78%) were hybrid (author’s choice). There was no significant difference between median APC for life sciences, medical, and surgical journals ($4,850 [$3,500–$8,900] vs. $4,592 [$3,500–$5,000] vs. $3,550 [$3,200–$3,860]; p = 0.054). The median US individual subscription costs (USD/Year) were significantly different for life sciences, medical, and surgical journals ($259 [$209–$282] vs. $365 [$212–$744] vs. $455 [$365–$573]; p = 0.038), and similar for international readers. A total of seventeen journals (42%) had a subscription price that was higher for international readers than for US readers.

Conclusions: Most journals offer hybrid access services. Authors may be forced to choose between high cost with greater reach through OA and low cost with less reach publishing under the subscription model under current policies. International readers face higher costs. Such hindrances may be mitigated by a greater awareness and liberal utilization of OA policies.

https://doi.org/10.5334/aogh.3904

"CORE: A Global Aggregation Service for Open Access Papers"

This paper introduces CORE, a widely used scholarly service, which provides access to the world’s largest collection of open access research publications, acquired from a global network of repositories and journals. CORE was created with the goal of enabling text and data mining of scientific literature and thus supporting scientific discovery, but it is now used in a wide range of use cases within higher education, industry, not-for-profit organisations, as well as by the general public. Through the provided services, CORE powers innovative use cases, such as plagiarism detection, in market-leading third-party organisations. CORE has played a pivotal role in the global move towards universal open access by making scientific knowledge more easily and freely discoverable. In this paper, we describe CORE’s continuously growing dataset and the motivation behind its creation, present the challenges associated with systematically gathering research papers from thousands of data providers worldwide at scale, and introduce the novel solutions that were developed to overcome these challenges. The paper then provides an in-depth discussion of the services and tools built on top of the aggregated data and finally examines several use cases that have leveraged the CORE dataset and services.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02208-w