Open Science – Page 2

"China and Open Access"

In December 2022, the International Association of STM Publishers and the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) released a report: Open Access Publishing in China. The report is openly available in both English and Chinese. This interview with Mark Robertson, consultant to the STM Association on the project, highlights the findings of the report and their implications for the scholarly publishing industry as well as providing background on the STM/CAST collaboration.

bit.ly/3kHUuW5

"Research Data Management Needs Assessment for Social Sciences Graduate Students: A Mixed Methods Study"

The complexity and privacy issues inherent in social science research data makes research data management (RDM) an essential skill for future researchers. Data management training has not fully addressed the needs of graduate students in the social sciences. To address this gap, this study used a mixed methods design to investigate the RDM awareness, preparation, confidence, and challenges of social science graduate students. A survey measuring RDM preparedness and training needs was completed by 98 graduate students in a school of education at a research university in the southern United States. Then, interviews exploring data awareness, knowledge of RDM, and challenges related to RDM were conducted with 10 randomly selected graduate students. All participants had low confidence in using RDM, but United States citizens had higher confidence than international graduate students. Most participants were not aware of on-campus RDM services, and were not familiar with data repositories or data sharing. Training needs identified for social science graduate students included support with data documentation and organization when collaborating, using naming procedures to track versions, data analysis using open access software, and data preservation and security. These findings are significant in highlighting the topics to cover in RDM training for social science graduate students. Additionally, RDM confidence and preparation differ between populations so being aware of the backgrounds of students taking the training will be essential for designing student-centered instruction.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282152

"How and Why Do Researchers Reference Data? A Study of Rhetorical Features and Functions of Data References in Academic Articles"

Data reuse is a common practice in the social sciences. While published data play an essential role in the production of social science research, they are not consistently cited, which makes it difficult to assess their full scholarly impact and give credit to the original data producers. Furthermore, it can be challenging to understand researchers’ motivations for referencing data. Like references to academic literature, data references perform various rhetorical functions, such as paying homage, signaling disagreement, or drawing comparisons. This paper studies how and why researchers reference social science data in their academic writing. We develop a typology to model relationships between the entities that anchor data references, along with their features (access, actions, locations, styles, types) and functions (critique, describe, illustrate, interact, legitimize). We illustrate the use of the typology by coding multidisciplinary research articles (n=30) referencing social science data archived at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). We show how our typology captures researchers’ interactions with data and purposes for referencing data. Our typology provides a systematic way to document and analyze researchers’ narratives about data use, extending our ability to give credit to data that support research.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.08477

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2.6 Billion Total Downloads: arXiv Annual Report 2022

Our critical priorities during 2022 were to secure additional funding, hire technical and program directors, and ramp up our efforts to modernize arXiv’s software by moving it to the cloud, which will provide better stability, scalability and maintainability. I’m pleased to report that we were able to make significant progress on all of these fronts. arXiv brought in more funding than expected in the form of grants, memberships, and donations, and we hired Stephanie Orphan as program director and Charles Frankston as technical director. Both bring strong and complementary expertise to the team. Moving the technical operations of arXiv—a service with a 30 year history—off of Cornell’s on-premises servers is a major, complicated task. The move to the cloud is currently in progress and on track

bit.ly/41exRsX

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"Data Management Librarians Role in a Large Interdisciplinary Scientific Grant for PFAS Remediation: Considerations and Recommendations"

This article explores the conflicts, disparities, and inequalities experienced by two librarians when collaborating on a federal grant proposal. The authors discuss concerns related to time and salary expectations and the inequities that can occur during faculty and staff collaborations on research grants. The bureaucratic structure and the job classifications of staff at academic institutions in addition to the contract limitations of non-faculty status librarian positions can hinder successful collaborations. The authors also describe data management needs that may occur when working with interdisciplinary research teams and detail the type of work that is included in writing a data management grant. This article concludes with considerations and recommendations for other data librarians who may undertake similar projects with a focus on ways to create parity between faculty and staff collaborators.

https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.616

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"There’s No “I” in Research Data Management: Reshaping RDM Services Toward a Collaborative Multi-Stakeholder Model"

Objective: This article examines a reshaped service model for research data management (RDM) founded on centralized and cohesive collaboration between multiple stakeholders at a large research university in Canada. This initiative, along with a newly formed team dedicated to RDM service provision, is a joint effort by the institution’s Vice-Principal Research and Innovation (VPRI), Library, IT Services, and Research Ethics units.

Methods: This article presents a single case study methodology. The authors reflect on services such as "query the panel" sessions where researchers across all disciplines bring their questions to representatives from the Library, IT, Research Ethics, and VPRI. This case study also highlights the use of Jira’s service desk software as a user management system. The authors also present descriptive statistics representing engagement with this new unit and our services.

Results: Support for RDM requires expertise from multiple domains. With a collaborative approach as a guiding principle and a focus on establishing a small, but agile team comprised of a librarian along with stakeholders from IT and VPRI, it is possible to leverage resources and support for RDM from a broad range of units across an institution.

Conclusions: At many institutions, RDM services are siloed within the library or an adjacent campus unit. New digital technologies have profoundly transformed academic research across all disciplines, necessitating the evolution of corresponding research data-related services. The authors will conclude by outlining specific lessons learned in reshaping digital research infrastructure-related services at their institution.

https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.624

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"Are Institutional Research Data Policies in the US Supporting the FAIR Principles? A Content Analysis"

Objective: The FAIR principles were created with the goal of enhancing the reusability of research data and to give guidance on how to make data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. In this article we explore the role of institutional research data policies in enabling and encouraging researchers at their institutions to generate FAIR data.

Methods: We identified the research data policies in place for “very high research activity” institutions (as defined by Carnegie classification) in the United States. We created a list of 31 criteria, based on previous work by Davidson et al. (2019) and Briney et al. (2015), and evaluated the 40 policies using a content analysis methodology.

Results: The guiding principles and the definitions for research data in the policies support the idea that institutional policies are a potential tool for the implementation of the FAIR principles. However, our analysis indicates that they are not generally used for that purpose. Only one policy mentions FAIR. Data sharing is mentioned in half of the policies, but 11 of these only note this concept in the context of funder requirements. Access and retention sections are mostly written without considering publicly available data. Twenty-nine policies do not mention data documentation.

Conclusions: We discuss ways in which these institutional policies represent a missed opportunity to implement the FAIR principles and suggest ways policies could be modified to encourage researchers to follow them. We also discuss future research opportunities to examine how policy implementation may affect what institutional support researchers receive.

https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.614

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Rethinking Data and Rebalancing Digital Power

This report highlights and contextualises four cross-cutting interventions with a strong potential to reshape the digital ecosystem:

Transforming infrastructure into open and interoperable ecosystems.

Reclaiming control of data from dominant companies.

Rebalancing the centres of power with new (non-commercial) institutions.

Ensuring public participation as an essential component of technology policymaking.

http://bit.ly/40WNbKA

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"The Role of Open Data in Digital Society: The Analysis of Scientific Trending Topics through a Bibliometric Approach"

The analysis of contemporary society, characterized by technological, economic, political, social, and cultural changes, has become more challenging due to the development of the internet and information and communication technologies, which provide a vast and increasingly valuable source of information, knowledge, and data. Within this context, so-called open data—that is, data that are made public, especially by public administrations, through an open governance model (transparent and accessible to citizens) are assuming a significant role. This is a topic of growing importance that scientific research is addressing in an attempt to discern the multiplicity of social, educational, legal, technological, statistical, and methodological issues that underlie the creation and use of such data. This article aims to provide insights into understanding scientific trends on the topic of open data through a bibliometric approach. Specifically, a total of 3,110 publications related to the disciplinary fields of the social sciences and humanities published from 2013 to 2022 were collected. The data was then analyzed using network and factorial analysis techniques to detect the conceptual structure to identify the trends of topics and perspectives of research that characterize open data studies.

bit.ly/40Xgahi

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"Data Archive for the BRAIN Initiative (DABI)"

Data sharing is becoming ubiquitous and can be advantageous for most biomedical research. However, some data are inherently more amenable to sharing than others. For example, human intracranial neurophysiology recordings and associated multimodal data have unique features that warrant special considerations. The associated data are heterogeneous, difficult to compare, highly specific, and collected from small cohorts with treatment resistant conditions, posing additional complications when attempting to perform generalizable analyses across projects. We present the Data Archive for the BRAIN Initiative (DABI) and describe features of the platform that are designed to overcome these and other challenges. DABI is a data repository and portal for BRAIN Initiative projects that collect human and animal intracranial recordings, and it allows users to search, visualize, and analyze multimodal data from these projects. The data providers maintain full control of data sharing privileges and can organize and manage their data with a user-friendly and intuitive interface. We discuss data privacy and security concerns, example analyses from two DABI datasets, and future goals for DABI.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-01972-z

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Data Preservation in High Energy Physics: DPHEP Global Report 2022

This document summarizes the status of data preservation in high energy physics. The paradigms and the methodological advances are discussed from a perspective of more than ten years of experience with a structured effort at international level. The status and the scientific return related to the preservation of data accumulated at large collider experiments are presented, together with an account of ongoing efforts to ensure long-term analysis capabilities for ongoing and future experiments. Transverse projects aimed at generic solutions, most of which are specifically inspired by open science and FAIR principles, are presented as well. A prospective and an action plan are also indicated.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.03583

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"Data Sharing and Reuse Practices: Disciplinary Differences and Improvements Needed"

This study investigates differences and commonalities in data production, sharing and reuse across the widest range of disciplines yet and identifies types of improvements needed to promote data sharing and reuse. . . .From the 3,257 survey responses, data sharing and reuse are still increasing but not ubiquitous in any subject area and are more common among experienced researchers.

https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-08-2021-0423

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"Analysis of U.S. Federal Funding Agency Data Sharing Policies: 2020 Highlights and Key Observations "

Federal funding agencies in the United States (U.S.) continue to work towards implementing their plans to increase public access to funded research and comply with the 2013 Office of Science and Technology memo Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research. In this article we report on an analysis of research data sharing policy documents from 17 U.S. federal funding agencies as of February 2021. Our analysis is guided by two questions: 1.) What do the findings suggest about the current state of and trends in U.S. federal funding agency data sharing requirements? 2.) In what ways are universities, institutions, associations, and researchers affected by and responding to these policies? Over the past five years, policy updates were common among these agencies and several themes have been thoroughly developed in that time; however, uncertainty remains around how funded researchers are expected to satisfy these policy requirements.

http://www.ijdc.net/article/view/791

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Forthcoming: Discoverability in Digital Repositories: Systems, Perspectives, and User Studies

It examines discoverability in digital repositories from both user and system perspectives by exploring how users access content (including their search patterns and habits, need for digital content, effects of outreach, or integration with Wikipedia and other web-based tools) and how systems support or prevent discoverability through the structure or quality of metadata, system interfaces, exposure to search engines or lack thereof, and integration with library discovery tools.

bit.ly/3XbbRvT

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"Cluster Analysis of Open Research Data: A Case for Replication Metadata"

Research data are often released upon journal publication to enable result verification and reproducibility. For that reason, research dissemination infrastructures typically support diverse datasets coming from numerous disciplines, from tabular data and program code to audio-visual files. Metadata, or data about data, is critical to making research outputs adequately documented and FAIR. Aiming to contribute to the discussions on the development of metadata for research outputs, I conducted an exploratory analysis to determine how research datasets cluster based on what researchers organically deposit together. I use the content of over 40,000 datasets from the Harvard Dataverse research data repository as my sample for the cluster analysis. I find that the majority of the clusters are formed by single-type datasets, while in the rest of the sample, no meaningful clusters can be identified. For the result interpretation, I use the metadata standard employed by DataCite, a leading organization for documenting a scholarly record, and map existing resource types to my results. About 65% of the sample can be described with a single-type metadata (such as Dataset, Software orReport), while the rest would require aggregate metadata types. Though DataCite supports an aggregate type such as a Collection, I argue that a significant number of datasets, in particular those containing both data and code files (about 20% of the sample), would be more accurately described as a Replication resource metadata type. Such resource type would be particularly useful in facilitating research reproducibility.

http://www.ijdc.net/article/view/833

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"Influence of Research on Open Science in the Public Policy Sphere"

This paper analyses the scientific activity related to open science in Spain and its influence on public policy from a bibliometric perspective. For this purpose, Spanish centres’ projects and publications on open science from 2010 to 2020 are studied. Subsequently, policy documents using papers related to open science are analysed to study their influence on policymaking. A total of 142 projects and 1491 publications are analysed, 15% of which are mentioned in policy documents.The publications cited in policy documents display high proportions of international collaboration, open access publication and publication in first-quartile journals. The findings underline governments’ leading role in the implementation of open science policies and the funding of open science research. The same government agencies that promote and fund open science research are shown to use that research in their institutional reports, a process known as knowledge flow feedback. Other non-academic actors are also observed to make use of the knowledge produced by open science research, showing how the open science movement has crossed the boundaries of academia.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04645-1

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"Research Productivity Among Scholarly Communication Librarians"

Introduction: A growing number of academic libraries have specialized their support for scholarly communication by creating new positions or by expanding units with a focus on providing relevant services. This study was undertaken to explore the extent to which librarians with scholarly communication responsibilities produce research and scholarship, their motivations for doing so, the nature of that productivity, and the perceived impact of that activity on their professional responsibilities. Methods: The authors administered a survey of librarians who identified as having their primary job responsibilities in scholarly communication. Results: Almost all study participants produced their own scholarly work. However, a high percentage indicated that they received no relevant training in their library degree programs, and the majority experienced imposter syndrome pertaining to their own scholarship. Although most respondents were motivated to produce research by institutional expectations for promotion and tenure, greater percentages were driven by personal or professional interests. In addition, participants indicated a strong correlation between producing their own scholarship and their ability to effectively carry out their professional responsibilities. Discussion: There may be an emerging convention for scholarly communication librarianship, i.e., one that includes open education services. Findings suggest a need for scholarly communication training to be more prominent in library degree programs. They also point to the utility of making research production a job requirement, regardless of institutional expectations for professional advancement. Conclusion: The authors argue for adjustments in library education curricula and the inclusion of research production in the portfolios of scholarly communication librarians. Future research directions are proposed.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.15621

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"Open Science, Closed Doors: The Perils and Potential of Open Science for Research in Practice"

This paper advocates for the value of open science in many areas of research. However, after briefly reviewing the fundamental principles underlying open science practices and their use and justification, the paper identifies four incompatibilities between those principles and scientific progress through applied research. The incompatibilities concern barriers to sharing and disclosure, limitations and deficiencies of overidentifying with hypothetico-deductive methods of inference, the paradox of replication efforts resulting in less robust findings, and changes to the professional research and publication culture such that it will narrow in favor of a specific style of research. Seven recommendations are presented to maximize the value of open science while minimizing its adverse effects on the advancement of science in practice.

https://doi.org/10.1017/iop.2022.61

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"Community Consensus on Core Open Science Practices to Monitor in Biomedicine"

The state of open science needs to be monitored to track changes over time and identify areas to create interventions to drive improvements. In order to monitor open science practices, they first need to be well defined and operationalized. To reach consensus on what open science practices to monitor at biomedical research institutions, we conducted a modified 3-round Delphi study. Participants were research administrators, researchers, specialists in dedicated open science roles, and librarians. In rounds 1 and 2, participants completed an online survey evaluating a set of potential open science practices, and for round 3, we hosted two half-day virtual meetings to discuss and vote on items that had not reached consensus. Ultimately, participants reached consensus on 19 open science practices. This core set of open science practices will form the foundation for institutional dashboards and may also be of value for the development of policy, education, and interventions.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001949

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"Challenges of Qualitative Data Sharing in Social Sciences"

Open science offers hope for new accountability and transparency in social sciences. Nevertheless, it still fails to fully consider the complexities of qualitative research, as exemplified by a reflection on sensitive qualitative data sharing. As a result, the developing patterns of rewards and sanctions promoting open science raise concern that quantitative research, whose "replication crisis" brought the open science movement to life, will benefit from "good science" re-evaluations at the expense of other research epistemologies, despite the necessity to define accountability and transparency in social sciences more widely and not to conflate those with either reproducibility or data sharing.

bit.ly/3j6NTTV

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"Phase 1 of the NIH Preprint Pilot: Testing the Viability of Making Preprints Discoverable in PubMed Central and PubMed"

Introduction: The National Library of Medicine (NLM) launched a pilot in June 2020 to 1) explore the feasibility and utility of adding preprints to PubMed Central (PMC) and making them discoverable in PubMed and 2) to support accelerated discoverability of NIH-supported research without compromising user trust in NLM’s widely used literature services. Methods: The first phase of the Pilot focused on archiving preprints reporting NIH-supported SARS-CoV-2 virus and COVID-19 research. To launch Phase 1, NLM identified eligible preprint servers and developed processes for identifying NIH-supported preprints within scope in these servers. Processes were also developed for the ingest and conversion of preprints in PMC and to send corresponding records to PubMed. User interfaces were modified for display of preprint records. NLM collected data on the preprints ingested and discovery of preprint records in PMC and PubMed and engaged users through focus groups and a survey to obtain direct feedback on the Pilot and perceptions of preprints. Results: Between June 2020 and June 2022, NLM added more than 3,300 preprint records to PMC and PubMed, which were viewed 4 million times and 3 million times, respectively. Nearly a quarter of preprints in the Pilot were not associated with a peer-reviewed published journal article. User feedback revealed that the inclusion of preprints did not have a notable impact on trust in PMC or PubMed. Discussion: NIH-supported preprints can be identified and added to PMC and PubMed without disrupting existing operations processes. Additionally, inclusion of preprints in PMC and PubMed accelerates discovery of NIH research without reducing trust in NLM literature services. Phase 1 of the Pilot provided a useful testbed for studying NIH investigator preprint posting practices, as well as knowledge gaps among user groups, during the COVID-19 public health emergency, an unusual time with heightened interest in immediate access to research results.

https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.12.520156

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"Guest Post — How Do We Measure Success for Open Science?"

If the success of an innovation relates to the practice of Open Science — which at PLOS is about much more than reputation; it’s central to our mission — then what does success look like? And how do you measure it at the publisher scale? Indeed, to make progress towards any goal, good data are needed, including a view of your current and desired future states. Unfortunately, as recently as last year, there were no tools or services that could tell us everything we wanted to know, at PLOS, about Open Science practices. . . . This is, in part, why we developed and have recently shared the initial results of our "Open Science Indicators" initiative.

bit.ly/3PlXWAR

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"Evaluation of Publication of COVID-19–Related Articles Initially Presented as Preprints"

In this study, we identified 3343 COVID-19–related preprints posted on medRxiv in 2020. Our March 2022 search indicated that 1712 of those preprints (51.2%) were subsequently published in the peer-reviewed literature; this number increased to 1742 (52.1%) when we repeated the search in October 2022. Not considering January 2020, in which only 1 article on COVID-19 was posted, the rate of subsequent publication in a scientific journal ranged from 43.5% (94 of 216 preprints; observed in March 2020) to 60.6% (177 of 292 preprints posted in August 2020). The Table shows the top 25 of 579 peer-reviewed journals in which these preprints were published; 827 preprints (47.5%) were subsequently published in quartile 1 journals (Figure).

bit.ly/3HprhIq

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Wolters Kluwer: The Path to Open Medicine: Driving Global Health Equity through Medical Research

The paper is divided into three parts. Part 1 traces the historical events that led to the modern system of scientific research, funding, knowledge dissemination, and recognition, which largely confines health and medical knowledge production to those in HICs [high income countries]. By understanding our shared past and the rise of structural barriers to global health equity, we can better inform our shared path to dismantle them. Part 2 takes a clear-eyed look at where the scientific community is now. Are the ideals of Open Medicine playing out as envisioned? Are the benefits of Open Medicine shared amongst all of humanity, or with only a select few? Lastly, Part 3 offers ideas and recommendations for all stakeholders to chart a path to bring Open Medicine into alignment with its goals and aspirations.

https://cutt.ly/E15vETj

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"Why We Need Open-Source Science Innovation — Not Patents and Paywalls"

The results of a survey study of university professors in Canada found 81.1 percent of Canadian faculty would trade all IP for an open-source endowed chair and 34.4 percent of these faculty would require no additional compensation. Surprisingly, even more American faculty (86.7 percent) are willing to accept an open-source endowed professorship.

https://cutt.ly/x190Hso

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