Category Archives: oa.disciplines

The status quo of Indian data repositories indexed in re3data registry

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Abstract:  Purpose

The purpose of this study was to understand the landscape of Indian research data repositories (RDRs) indexed in the re3data.org. The study analysed the metadata elements of Indian RDRs to identify their disciplinary orientations, typology, standards adopted, foreign collaborations, etc. The study ascertained the current status of the Indian RDRs by visiting their respective websites and tried to identify and map the exact disciplinary orientation of each RDR.

Design/methodology/approach

The study used “content analysis” of the metadata elements extracted from re3data.org along with the information analysis of the respective websites of the registered RDRs.

Findings

The study identified that only 80% of the Indian RDRs listed by the re3data.org is currently active. Most of the Indian RDRs are hosted by the central and state governments and are almost equally distributed among Life Sciences, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences domains. The data provided by the re3data.org for the Indian RDRs are not complete and up-to-date.

Practical implications

The findings indicate the presence of a good number of inactive RDRs in the re3data.org. The study suggests using a revised version of the DFG subject classification scheme or considering a standard classification scheme for subject indexing.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind that critically analysed the metadata values extracted and moved further to identify the current status of Indian RDRs.

Factors influencing researchers to publish in open-access: Is it a self-decision or a self-reinforcing cycle? | Emerald Insight

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Abstract:  Purpose

The current study examined Israeli researchers from various disciplines concerning their perceptions, attitudes and awareness of scientific publications in open access (OA) journals and repositories.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey instrument was developed and distributed to 202 Israeli researchers from universities, colleges and research institutions. The study used the united theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model as a tool for mapping the factors known to influence researchers to publish in OA journals and repositories.

Findings

The empirical model confirmed the mediating effect of the association between researchers’ perceptions and the actual publishing in OA, through their behavioral intentions (BI). Furthermore, the BI are mediated by researchers’ self-decision to publish in OA. More specifically, a researcher’s publication level in OA depended not only on the positive attitudes (Atti), performance expectancy (PE) and social influence (SI) mediated by BI, but also on conditions that support researchers who publish in OA, and disciplinary affiliation to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) which lead the researcher to voluntarily publish in both green and gold OA.

Research limitations/implications

This study contributed to the cumulative understanding of OA publishing by formulating and validating an empirical research model of acceptance and use.

Practical implications

The implications of the findings for scientific publication theory and practices are discussed.

Originality/value

The study suggests an effective framework to understand the researcher’s final decision to publish in OA. This study’s results are an essential step towards the cumulative understanding of OA publicity adoption and use by researchers as a global issue in general and in Israeli academic institutions in particular.

Data sharing and reuse practices: disciplinary differences and improvements needed | Emerald Insight

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Abstract:  Purpose

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.

Design/methodology/approach

The first authors of randomly selected publications from 2018 to 2019 in 20 Scopus disciplines were surveyed for their beliefs and experiences about data sharing and reuse.

Findings

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. Researchers with previous data reuse experience were more likely to share data than others. Types of data produced and systematic online data sharing varied substantially between subject areas. Although the use of institutional and journal-supported repositories for sharing data is increasing, personal websites are still frequently used. Combining multiple existing datasets to answer new research questions was the most common use. Proper documentation, openness and information on the usability of data continue to be important when searching for existing datasets. However, researchers in most disciplines struggled to find datasets to reuse. Researchers’ feedback suggested 23 recommendations to promote data sharing and reuse, including improved data access and usability, formal data citations, new search features and cultural and policy-related disciplinary changes to increase awareness and acceptance.

Originality/value

This study is the first to explore data sharing and reuse practices across the full range of academic discipline types. It expands and updates previous data sharing surveys and suggests new areas of improvement in terms of policy, guidance and training programs.

Listing quality: Chinese journal lists in incoherent valuation regimes | Science and Public Policy | Oxford Academic

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Abstract:  Lists of endorsed and discouraged scholarly publications recently emerged as an important transition in Chinese journal evaluation. Among the targeted users of these lists are researchers, who are to avoid publishing in discouraged journals and focus efforts on endorsed journals. However, it is unclear how these lists affect researchers’ valuations when choosing publication outlets. This explorative study investigates the reception of such journal lists in Chinese scientists’ research practices. Our findings suggest that three logics interact in respondents’ journal valuations: institutional evaluation regimes, differing epistemic cultures, and the influence of the commercial publishing industry. The reactive effects of both endorsed and discouraged journal lists appear to differ with the ranking status of universities, the seniority of scholars, and research fields. Apart from the new institutional evaluation regimes in this interplay, there appear to be more predominant factors than journal lists that inform publishing choices: quantitative indicators, publishers’ branding, epistemic cultures, and editorial procedures and publishing models.

 

Tracing data: A survey investigating disciplinary differences in data citation | Quantitative Science Studies | MIT Press

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Abstract:  Data citations, or citations in reference lists to data, are increasingly seen as an important means to trace data reuse and incentivize data sharing. Although disciplinary differences in data citation practices have been well documented via scientometric approaches, we do not yet know how representative these practices are within disciplines. Nor do we yet have insight into researchers’ motivations for citing – or not citing – data in their academic work. Here, we present the results of the largest known survey (n = 2,492) to explicitly investigate data citation practices, preferences, and motivations, using a representative sample of academic authors by discipline, as represented in the Web of Science (WoS). We present findings about researchers’ current practices and motivations for reusing and citing data and also examine their preferences for how they would like their own data to be cited. We conclude by discussing disciplinary patterns in two broad clusters, focusing on patterns in the social sciences and humanities, and consider the implications of our results for tracing and rewarding data sharing and reuse.

 

Measuring open access publications: a novel normalized open access indicator

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Abstract:  The issue of open access (OA) to scientific publications is attracting growing interest within the scientific community and among policy makers. Open access indicators are being calculated. In its 2019 ranking, the ”Centre for Science and Technology Studies” (CWTS) provides the number and the share of OA publications per institution. This gives an idea of the degree of openness of institutions. However, not taking into account the disciplinary specificities and the specialization of institutions makes comparisons based on the shares of OA publications biased. We show that OA publishing practices vary considerably according to discipline. As a result, we propose two methods to normalize OA share; by WoS subject categories and by disciplines. Normalized Open Access Indicator (NOAI) corrects for disciplinary composition and allows a better comparability of institutions or countries.

Open Access Effects (OASE) – The influence of structural and author-specific factors on the impact of open access publications from various disciplines

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Abstract:  This study report describes the qualitative part of the project “Open Access Effects – The influence of structural and author-specific factors on the impact of open access publications from various disciplines” (OASE). The aim of the project was to describe the transformation process from traditional to open access publishing with a bibliometric approach and to analyse existing (if applicable future) publishing strategies and conflicts in the context of open access. Related questions were discussed within three focus group interviews conducted online with researchers from 8 different disciplines and 14 different countries around the world. Interviewees were recruited from participants in a previous survey (Fraser, Mayr & Peters, 2021) and from registrations for a workshop held the day before. Mixed sampling approach (convenience and theoretical sampling) to contrast views from researchers of different career status, discipline and resident country. Group size: 7-8 participants. Interview length: approx. two hours each. Among the participants were PhD students (3), postdoctoral researchers (6) and professors (13). Nine participants had a natural science background and 13 had a social science background. They were located in 14 different countries. Following a mixed sampling procedure, two groups were formed in which career status, field of study and country of residence were contrasted, and one group in which senior researchers were predominantly represented in terms of career status. 

 

Taubert et. al. (2023) Understanding differences of the OA uptake within the Germany university landscape (2010-2020) — Part 2: repository-provided OA | ArXiv

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by Niels Taubert, Anne Hobert, Najko Jahn, Andre Bruns, Elham Iravani

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2308.11965

This study investigates the determinants for the uptake of institutional and subject repository Open Access (OA) in the university landscape of Germany and considers three factors: the disciplinary profile of universities, their OA infrastructures and services and large transformative agreements. The uptake of OA as well as the determinants are measured by combining several data sources (incl. Web of Science, Unpaywall, an authority file of standardised German affiliation information, the ISSN-Gold-OA 4.0 list, and lists of publications covered by transformative agreements). For universities OA infrastructures and services, a structured data collection was created by harvesting different sources of information and by manual online search. To determine the explanatory power of the different factors, a series of regression analyses was performed for different periods and for both institutional as well as subject repository OA. As a result of the regression analyses, the most determining factor for the explanation of differences in the uptake of both repository OA-types turned out to be the disciplinary profile, whereas all variables that capture local infrastructural support and services for OA turned out to be non-significant. The outcome of the regression analyses is contextualised by an interview study conducted with 20 OA officers of German universities. The contextualisation provides hints that the original function of institutional repositories, offering a channel for secondary publishing is vanishing, while a new function of aggregation of metadata and full texts is becoming of increasing importance.

A decade of surveys on attitudes to data sharing highlights three factors for achieving open science | Impact of Social Sciences

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“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 (Tenopir et al., 2011, 2015, 2018, 2020). Comparing the responses over that time shows a general increase in the willingness to share data (and thus engage in Open Science)….

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….

Mandated requirements to share data really do work. However, this effect was shown in the surveys as government researchers were consistently far more willing to share data than those in academia or corporations, and this willingness to share increased substantially from 2011 to 2019….

Researchers working in academia were less willing to share than those in government, but did show significant increases in willingness to share from 2011 to 2015. Researchers in the commercial sector were, unsurprisingly, the least willing to share their data….

government involvement and funding play an important role in improving the attitudes researchers have towards open science practices. The organisational influence of government funding and mandates shifts individual incentives. Researchers then realize that they lack the knowledge, tools, and training they need to properly share data, which can push the social change needed to drastically change the way that science is done for the better.”

Proactive Institutional Repository Collection Development Techniques: Archiving Gold Open Access Articles and Metadata Retrieved with Web Scraping: Journal of Library Administration: Vol 0, No 0

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Abstract:  Many institutions face low deposit rates with their institutional repositories despite investing substantial resources in implementing and supporting these systems. Deposit rates are higher in IRs that offer mediated deposits; however, this can be a time and labor intensive process. This article describes a method for copying open access articles and corresponding descriptive metadata from open repositories for archiving in an institutional repository using Beautiful Soup and Selenium as web scraping tools. This method quickly added hundreds of articles to an IR without relying on faculty participation or consulting publisher policies, increasing repository downloads and usage.

 

Peer-reviewed preprints: Benefits and limitations for young Indian researchers – International Science Council

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“In-group discussions that followed brought to light several observations on challenges and opportunities in the current publishing system:

Open peer review can be advantageous, particularly when the contents of the reviewer reports are made public while respecting the privacy of reviewers’ identities due to potential conflict of interest. This approach helps distribute the reviewing workload and allows experts to review papers within their specific areas of expertise.

The practice of preprint publishing is subject-specific: in physics and mathematics, it is customary to publish the preprints beforehand to invite comments and suggestions, but in applied areas such as agriculture, biomedical, or other fundamental areas like chemistry and biology, sharing preprints is seen as risky due to potential scooping.

Preprints are not considered for promotions, funding, and appraisal. However, preprints usher productivity in some situations as this is a medium of quick dissemination of information among peers.

At the same time, the papers already available in the public domain may face challenges in getting accepted in a journal. The journals that run on subscription models may have severe reservations about publishing preprinted work.

Misconduct regarding reviewing should also be considered, as anybody can post harsh or biased comments, which might affect the spirit and zeal of many early-career researchers. 

Suggestions to popularize preprint services include uploading preprints only when the manuscript is ready for publication and promoting the concept of overlay journals. We must encourage young researchers to adopt innovative publication methods and foster collaborations with scholars worldwide to implement new publishing systems.

In the context of India, the new University Grant Commission (UGC) guidelines allow preprints to be considered for awarding doctoral degrees. Existing policies governing the publication system need to be revised, accounting for the value of Open Access, and peer-reviewed preprints, which allow wider dissemination of research findings while maintaining rigorous peer review.

A shift towards a more inclusive and transparent publishing model can promote accessibility and accelerate the progress of scientific knowledge, but we need to address the challenges of educating the public and researchers about the limitations of preprints….”

SocArXiv Papers | To Preprint or Not to Preprint: A Global Researcher Survey

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Abstract:  Open science is receiving widespread attention globally, and preprinting offers an important way to implement open science practices in scholarly publishing. To develop a systematic understanding of researchers’ adoption of and attitudes toward preprinting, we conducted a survey of authors of research papers published in 2021 and early 2022. Our survey results show that the US and Europe lead the way in the adoption of preprinting. US and European respondents reported a higher familiarity with and a stronger commitment to preprinting than their colleagues elsewhere in the world. The adoption of preprinting is much stronger in physics and astronomy as well as mathematics and computer science than in other research areas. Respondents identified free accessibility of preprints and acceleration of research communication as the most important benefits of preprinting. Low reliability and credibility of preprints, sharing results before peer review and premature media coverage are the most significant concerns about preprinting, emphasized in particular by respondents in the life and health sciences. According to respondents, the most crucial strategies to encourage preprinting are integrating preprinting into journal submission workflows and providing recognition for posting preprints.

 

Faculty participation in open access repositories (OARs) based on their individual traits | Emerald Insight

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Abstract:  Purpose

The number of open access repositories (OARs) has been growing globally, but faculty members have been reluctant to embrace OAR and submit their work. While there are studies that looked at sociotechnical factors that affect faculty participation in OARs, this study aims to explore how the individual characteristics of faculty might impact faculty willingness to deposit their work in an OAR.

Design/methodology/approach

The survey was distributed to all faculty at a large public university in the USA who were identified as having their primary job responsibilities in teaching and research. This study used a correlational analysis between faculty individual characteristics (i.e. age, rank, status and academic discipline) and their willingness to deposit their work.

Findings

The findings show that there is a difference in faculty familiarity with open access (OA) principles and faculty awareness of OA policy based on individual characteristics. Furthermore, these individual characteristics have a significant impact on faculty willingness to participate in OARs. While this study reveals a significant correlation between the faculty intent to deposit and the respondent’s academic discipline, rank and status, there are other factors that affect faculty intent to participate in OAR, such as familiarity with OA principles and awareness of institution’s OA Policy.

Research limitations/implications

There were no significant responses from the Colleges of Science or Health and Public Service and, therefore, did not yield any statistically significant results. Measuring the university’s promotion system was outside the scope of this research.

Practical implications

Results of this research can provide insight on how individual characteristics of faculty might impact their willingness to embrace OA publishing in general and OARs in particular.

Social implications

The findings from this research will be a valuable source of information for librarians and OA staff in developing more effective outreach programs to increase faculty participation in OA and OARs.

Originality/value

This study reveals that individual faculty traits do have an impact on faculty willingness to participate in OARs. The academic discipline was found to make the most significant difference in faculty intent to deposit their work in an OAR. However, due to the ever-changing landscape of OA publishing and the ongoing outreach efforts by librarians, the faculty members’ perception and participation in OARs is likely to evolve.

Survey of US Higher Education Faculty 2023, Use of Academia.Edu & ResearchGate

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“This study looks closely at the incidence, extent and kind of use of the major academic social networking sites Academia.Edu and ResearchGate by higher education faculty in the USA.  The report presents data for each service individually, with distinct data sets for the percentage of faculty using a particular service, the extent of their use, and their evaluation of the usefulness of the service to the individual scholar.  The study helps its readers to answer questions such as: what type of faculty value ResearchGate or Academia.Edu the most?  How much time do faculty in the sciences spend each month on these sites compared to faculty in the humanities? Visual arts? Social sciences? Business?  How does usage and valuation breakdown by age, gender, work title, or race/ethnicity of the faculty member? 

Data in the report is based on a survey of 731 higher education faculty, randomly chosen from a representative universe of more than 500 colleges and universities in the USA; surveying was conducted in April, May & early June 2023. Data in the report is broken down by a wide range of institutional and personal variables enabling the study’s users to pinpoint – by useful criteria – how these sites are being used and by whom.

Just a few of this comprehensive 115-page report’s many findings are that:

25.72% of faculty surveyed report having used Academic.Edu in the past month.
Faculty from research universities checked ResearchGate a mean of 3.27 times in the past month.
Faculty from MA/doctoral level colleges had the highest propensity to value Academia.Edu
Posting frequency on ResearchGate correlated highly with personal income level.”

Open Access Advantages as a Function of the Discipline: Mixed-methods Study – ScienceDirect

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Abstract:  Purpose

This mixed-methods study integrates bibliometric and altmetric investigation with a qualitative method in order to assess the prevalence and societal-impact of Open-Access (OA) publications, and to reveal the considerations behind researchers’ decision to publish articles in closed and open-access.

Design/methodology/approach

The bibliometric-altmetric study analyzed 584 OA and closed publications published between 2014 and 2019 by 40 Israeli researchers: 20 from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) and 20 from SSH (Social Sciences and Humanities) discipline. We used a multistage cluster sampling method to select a representative sample for the STEM disciplines group (engineering, computer science, biology, mathematics, and physics), and for the SSH disciplines group (sociology, economics, psychology, political science, and history). Required data were extracted from Scopus and Unpaywall databases, and the PlumX-platform. Among the 40 researchers who were selected for the bibliometric-altmetric study, 20 researchers agreed to be interviewed for this study.

Findings

Comparing bibliometrics and altmetrics for the general publications did not reveal any significant differences between OA and closed publications. These were found only when comparing OA and closed publications across disciplines. STEM-researchers published 59 % of their publications in OA, compared to just 29 % among those in SSH, and they received significantly more bibliometric and altmetric citations from SSH OA publications and from their own closed-access publications. The altmetrics findings indicate that researchers are well acquainted and active in social media. However, according to the interviewees, there is no academic contribution for sharing research findings on social-media; it is viewed as a “public-service”. Researchers’ primary consideration for publishing in closed or OA was the journal impact-factor.

Research limitations/implications

Our findings contribute to the increasing body of research that addresses OA citations and societal-impact advantages. The findings suggest the need to adopt an OA-policy after a thorough assessment of the consequences for SSH disciplines.