Category Archives: oa.genres

Data Paper’s Functions in Scholarly Communication Ecosystem as Perceived by Natural Scientists – Huang – 2023 – Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology – Wiley Online Library

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Abstract:  Data papers, a new class of scholarly publication emerging from the open-science movement, foster data discovery and reuse by offering comprehensive descriptions of research data. Yet, despite their promising growth, the role of data papers in scholarly communication remains underexplored. This work therefore investigates the perceived contributions and functions of data papers to scholarly communication by interviewing 14 data-paper authors operating in the field of natural science. Using conceptual frameworks adopted from Borgman (2007) and Van de Sompel et al. (2004), we identify four general functions of scholarly communication (i.e., legitimization; dissemination; access, preservation, and curation; and rewarding). Additionally, our data lead us to propose that verification is a distinct scholarly communication, underscoring the importance of data papers in validating research findings in the context of ensuring research transparency. By elucidating the crucial role that data papers now play within the scholarly communication ecosystem, this study seeks to raise the academic community’s awareness of their fundamental position, as well as their co-existence with other forms of data publication, in advancing scientific research.

 

Open access encyclopedia: an important component of knowledge infrastructure | PUBMET

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Abstract:  Since the era of Enlightenment, the role of encyclopaedias has been to organise and structure knowledge, and communicate it to society. In the digital age, professionally edited encyclopaedias have not lost its enlightenment mission; on the contrary, its role in enabling systemic and reliable orientation within the ever-increasing amount of data and information is even more emphasised. By entering the digital age the functionality and usability of encyclopaedias are enhanced enormously. Digital technologies transformed the ways in which encyclopaedic knowledge is prepared, organised and presented, and more importantly facilitated its distribution, accessibility and usage (Jermen & Jeci?, 2018; Jermen & Jeci?, 2020).

Professionally edited open access national encyclopaedias contribute to raising the level of public knowledge by dissemination of reliable and verified information in users’ mother tongue. They provide a connection between experts and average citizens, acting as an important science communication tool, and as such should be at the core of the research and didactic infrastructure of any modern society (Jeci? & Jermen, 2020). Furthermore, in fierce competition with various, often unreliable online information sources, they could also play an important role in the struggle against the speedy growth of disinformation and misinformation (Bentzen, 2018).

As one of the prominent examples of the importance of encyclopedistics in the modern age is the very existence of the Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography in Croatia, a publishing house and a scientific institution, which is defined in the governmental act as a “public institution of relevance for the Republic of Croatia”. With the mission to systematise and disseminate scientifically verified knowledge in the broadest span of scientific disciplines, its publications (encyclopaedias, encyclopaedic monographs, lexicons, dictionaries, etc.), targeted for a broader audience, as well as specialists, have been produced in collaboration with numerous high-profile researchers from academia since its foundation in 1950. Since 2008, the Institute has been developing freely accessible collections of digital encyclopaedic editions, which currently comprise approximately 270,000 articles. A great number of Institute’s editions (along with the additional digital content) that are available in open access surely contributes to their increased visibility (more than 15 million page views in 2022) and hence the potential for creating societal impact.

This presentation aims to provide an overview of the development of lexicography and encyclopedistics in the digital environment, primarily from the perspective of the Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography. It places special emphasis on the Institute’s open access publishing efforts over the past 15 years. Considering the fact that there are still no dedicated open access publishing schemes for books in Croatia, and that open access still represents a relatively small part of the book publishing landscape in Europe (Gimenez-Toledo et al. 2022), the Institute’s endeavours in this area have been rather innovative. Along with the dissemination of scientifically verified information, open access encyclopaedias give the possibilities of linking to the digital data and collections of other research and cultural institutions, thus serving as the important component of digital knowledge infrastructure (Jermen & Jeci?, 2018). Thanks to this increased connectivity, the Institute has taken part in several projects, initiatives, and communities, both in Croatia and abroad, which will be described in this presentation.

Transforming health and well?being through publishing computable biomedical knowledge (CBK) – Koru – 2023 – Learning Health Systems – Wiley Online Library

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Abstract:  Computable biomedical knowledge artifacts (CBKs) are software programs that transform input data into practical output. CBKs are expected to play a critical role in the future of learning health systems. While there has been rapid growth in the development of CBKs, broad adoption is hampered by limited verification, documentation, and dissemination channels. To address these issues, the Learning Health Systems journal created a track dedicated to publishing CBKs through a peer-review process. Peer review of CBKs should improve reproducibility, reuse, trust, and recognition in biomedical fields, contributing to learning health systems. This special issue introduces the CBK track with four manuscripts reporting a functioning CBK, and another four manuscripts tackling methodological, policy, deployment, and platform issues related to fostering a healthy ecosystem for CBKs. It is our hope that the potential of CBKs exemplified and highlighted by these quality publications will encourage scientists within learning health systems and related biomedical fields to engage with this new form of scientific discourse.

 

Introducing Short Reports—A new platform for swiftly communicating research findings | PLOS Pathogens

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“We are excited to share that we are expanding PLOS Pathogens’ offerings through the launch of a new manuscript type: Short Reports. This addition augments the spectrum of exceptional research we consider for publication.

Pathogens has long been esteemed for its rigorous long-form publications, presenting in-depth mechanisms alongside observations through our Research Articles. But, we recognize that impactful discoveries come in various sizes. The birth of Short Reports signifies our acknowledgment that sometimes exceptional content arrives in compact not-yet-fully understood form. Scientific findings vary—while some warrant patience until mechanistic intricacies are unraveled and verified by multiple experimental approaches, others are intrinsically groundbreaking, serving the scientific community best when shared in their nascent stages—even if the driving mechanism has not yet revealed itself—thus allowing for collective exploration. Furthermore, Short Reports find their niche by encapsulating succinct yet ingenious experiments. These studies might describe novel phenomena, reconcile erstwhile contradictory observations, untangle specific enigmas, or apply established techniques to furnish brief yet compelling responses to scientific queries.

We anticipate that Short Reports will provide a vital platform for researchers to swiftly communicate their findings.”

Why should researchers publish all their … | Open Research Europe

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“Traditionally, research articles comprise the majority of publications across all disciplines, with journals prioritizing these above all else. However, in Open Research Europe, they represent 51% of all articles – so what are the remaining 49%?

In this blog, we highlight why broadening this focus of publishable work is important and the benefits different article types on Open Research Europe can bring to your research….”

Octopus and ResearchEquals aim to break the publishing mould

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“Instead of fully fledged manuscripts, Octopus and ResearchEquals allow researchers to publish individual units of research — from research questions and hypotheses to code, multimedia and presentations. The concept is called modular publishing, and both sites hope to push academics to think beyond conventional publications as the primary unit of scholarly research by breaking the research cycle into pieces….”

Guest Post – Open Access Beyond Scholarly Journals – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“Many of us probably share the following intuitions: to keep up with the ever-growing amount of literature, researchers have to specialize more and more; this reduces the potentially fruitful exchange between specialist bubbles. And: a growing number of political, economic, and societal decisions are made based on science. However, science gives guidance only; it does not make decisions for us. Given the participatory nature of democratic societies, we all need to understand what science generally – not only science from one’s own field of expertise – actually tells us about climate change, future energy systems, COVID-19, multiresistant bacteria, loss of biodiversity, etc.

But would researchers or stakeholders read the original papers in fields beyond their own expertise? Many wouldn’t – and they’d miss the information. The value of press releases, newspapers, and popular science magazines, on the other hand, is limited . These aim at being comprehensible to broader audiences and, to this end, refrain from presenting the full complexity and limitations of the actual findings.

The conceptual gap between these types of document is usually large. An article that falls within that gap, however, might offer an appropriate balance of simplicity and complexity for researchers with different specializations, policymakers, decision-makers, funders, early career scientists, journalists, educated generalists – in short, for those less likely to read the original research but who have an in-depth interest in the science presented.

I’d therefore like to suggest that this gap is a place in its own right that deserves additional coverage….”

A new model for computational book publishing | Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

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by Simon Bowie

As part of COPIM’s pilot project looking at computational book publishing, we’ve worked on a new technical model and workflow for publishing computational books using a combination of Jupyter Notebook, Quarto, and GitHub Pages. This blogpost outlines the details of this model and further blogposts in this series will examine how we have applied it practically to produce some computational publications.

[…]

 

Sharing, showcasing and understanding the impact of non-traditional research outputs – Digital Science

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“Research outputs are no longer just academic papers and datasets. 

Arts performances, conceptual designs, music scores, costumes, models and all other non-traditional research outputs can and should be shared, showcased and tracked.

Join us for this webinar on non-traditional research outputs with Figshare and Altmetric where we will discuss: 

Sharing and showcasing non-traditional research outputs in Figshare
How DOIs and robust metadata can ensure these outputs are discoverable and citable
How Altmetric attention data provides a unique insight into the online conversations surrounding these outputs

Sharing real examples from institutions around the world and with product specialists from both Figshare and Altmetric, this webinar will provide an overview of how you can share NTROs and why it’s important….”

Chefs de Cuisine: Perspectives from Publishing’s Top Table – Charles Watkinson – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“In developing services, our philosophy is “first of a kind, not one of a kind.” A good example is the Fulcrum publishing platform, developed with support from the Mellon Foundation and now self-sustaining. Fulcrum shares an open-source backend with the Deep Blue data repository. That means every type of output is a first-class publication: A Fulcrum-hosted monograph with integrated multimedia gets the same stewardship commitment that Deep Blue applies to health sciences research data. And the creator of a research dataset gets the same rich metrics (e.g., citations, altmetrics, downloads) that we would deliver to a monograph author….

I think we’re at the “so now what” stage of open access (OA). With a critical mass of freely-available, reusable literature and data, what tangible benefits can publishers offer society? And how should publishers format and distribute the outputs of open scholarship to turn free access into valuable access? With this question in mind, we’re doing several things at Michigan: expanding discovery networks (e.g., creating best practices for research data through the Data Curation Network, delivering OA books to public libraries via the Palace project, highlighting quality certification via the DOAB PRISM service), making sure our platforms and content are accessible (staying current with Benetech Certified Global Accessible audits, making monographs available as audiobooks through the Google Text-to-Speech program) and scoping open source integrations with partners that complement Fulcrum’s functionality (working with Mellon and the Big Collection initiative to integrate Fulcrum, Manifold, and Humanities Commons, and integrating Fulcrum repository functionality into the Janeway journals platform). 

We’re also focused on how to measure and communicate the greater reach and engagement OA enables. We’re working with Curtin University to refine a publicly-accessible Books Analytics Dashboard and partnering with Jisc and Lyrasis to expand US participation in IRUS repository statistics. The IP Registry is developing a product with us to identify the institutional use of OA books, and we’re supporting the OAeBU project to build a trusted framework for publishers to exchange OA usage metrics. We recorded at least 12 million Total Item Requests in 2022 for Michigan Publishing publications. But that’s a meaningless number unless put in context.

 

Authors should never be required to pay to publish open works. Let’s try and avoid perpetuating or creating a new inequity of access. The Fund to Mission program, supported by our parent institution and more than 100 libraries, enables this for U-M Press. We also partner with a consortium of over 50 liberal arts colleges to run Lever Press as a truly diamond open-access book publisher. The capacity to do such work is building. I particularly credit Lyrasis Open Programs, the BTAA Big Collection academy-led publishing program, the American Council of Learned Societies Publishing Initiatives, the S2O community of practice, and the Open Access Books Network….

I worry that larger publishers with better resources to handle complexities like transformative agreements are sucking away the resources to support open-access books and journals. Small, independent publishers (barely for-profit, if commercial) face similar challenges to university presses. We must ensure that funder and library policies don’t accidentally erase the bibliodiversity that independent and institutional presses have brought to their regions and disciplines for decades. I am particularly excited by the potential that Path to Open (JSTOR) and the 

The Future of the Monograph in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences: Publisher Perspectives on a Transitioning Format | SpringerLink

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Abstract:  A web-based survey of academic publishers was undertaken in 2021 by a team at Oxford International Centre for Publishing into the state of monograph publication in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. 25 publishing organisations responded, including many of the larger presses, representing approximately 75% of monograph output. Responses to the survey showed that the Covid 19 pandemic has accelerated the existing trend from print to digital dissemination and that Open Access (OA) titles receive substantially greater levels of usage than those published traditionally. Responses also showed that for most publishers OA publication stands at under 25% of output and that fewer than 10% of authors enquire about OA publication options. Continuing problem areas highlighted by respondents were the clearing of rights for OA publication and the standardisation of title and usage metadata. All responding organisations confirmed that they expect to be publishing monographs in ten years’ time, but that they anticipate the format and/or the model will be different, with open access expected to play a key part in the future, perhaps in the context of a mixed economy of OA and ‘toll access’ publication.

 

Tackling overpublishing by moving to open-ended papers | Nature Materials

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“Regarding the future of publishing, we suggest that its current rapid expansion should result in a phase transition, eventually offering new opportunities for research communication. A fast evolution towards data and code sharing, open-access publishing and the widespread use of preprints seems to be just the beginning. Below we outline our view on the paradigm shift in publishing that we think will benefit the scientific community.

First, we can make it easy to track scientific progress and reduce overpublishing by moving to open-ended and stackable publications instead of publishing multiple papers for each research direction. For example, instead of ten papers published on one line of research, a scientist can prepare a single study where each piece (‘chapter’) can be stacked with or inserted into the previous piece. A similar approach is implemented on Github where codes can be updated and expanded; or on Jupyter where the data, analysis and text can be published on a single page (with more chapters being added as the study develops further). Importantly, Jupyter notebooks are free and do not charge for open access as most publishers do, pointing towards a possible solution for reduced publishing fees….”

Guidelines for Broadening the Definition of Historical Scholarship | Perspectives on History | AHA

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“n January 5, 2023, the AHA Council approved the Guidelines for Broadening the Definition of Historical Scholarship. In most history departments, “scholarship” has traditionally and primarily encompassed books, journal articles and book chapters, and papers presented at conferences. The weight and significance of each of these vary considerably by institution. The most valued coin of the realm remains not just the book—especially for early and midcareer scholars—but a particular kind of book known only in academia and scholarly publishing as a “monograph.” Yet many other categories of books don’t count: textbooks, official histories, anthologies, translations and critical editions, reference books, and more. These have not been deemed to be “creating new knowledge.” …

The AHA Council has decided that it is time to map a broader terrain of scholarship, with more flexible boundaries. There are many ways to be a historian, many ways to do historical work….

This recommendation and the guidelines that follow rest on four pillars:

A wide range of scholarly historical work can be undertaken in ways consistent with our disciplinary standards and values, from writing briefing papers and op-eds, to testifying in legislatures and courts, participating in the work of regulatory agencies, publishing textbooks and reference books, expanding our media presence across a wide range of platforms, and more.
To support such publicly engaged and/or policy-oriented work, history departments should give it appropriate scholarly credit in personnel decisions. Not doing so diminishes the public impact of historians and cedes to others—observers less steeped in our discipline-specific methods, epistemologies, and standards—the podium from which to shape the historical framing of vital public conversations.
Historians cannot expect decision makers or other potential audiences to appreciate the value of our work if we don’t affirm its value ourselves.
All historical work can be peer-reviewed, whether before or after publication….”

 

COPIM conference “Experimental Books – Re-imagining Scholarly Publishing” – Part One, 20 February 2023 @ online | Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs

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COPIM’s Experimental Publishing group is delighted to announce Experimental Books: Re-imagining Scholarly Publishing, the final conference of COPIM’s Experimental Publishing and Reuse work package including talks, roundtables, and workshops, exploring archival data performances, re-using as re-writing, and computational books. 20 February, 9 March, & 13 March 2023   REGISTER NOW: https://experimentalbooks.pubpub.org/ This three-part conference – including talks, roundtables, and workshops – will discuss alternative publishing options for the humanities by showcasing some of the experiments that are currently taking place in the realm of academic book publishing. It aims to inspire authors, publishers, technology developers and others, to (continue to) speculate on new collaborative futures for open humanities research and publication. It also aims to discuss how these book experiments could sit within more standardised or established workflows for print and online book production, dissemination, and preservation.

Part One: Monday, 20 February 2023

13:00-13:20 (GMT)

Welcome & Conference Outlook

Dr. Janneke Adema (COPIM, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University)

 

13:20-14:40

Introducing Computational, Combinatorial, and Data Books

A roundtable conversation with Dr. Janneke Adema (COPIM, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University), Simon Bowie (COPIM, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University), Joana Chicau (Creative Computing Institute, University of the Arts London), Prof. Gary Hall (COPIM, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University), Dr. Kat Jungnickel (Goldsmiths, University of London), Dr. Julien McHardy (COPIM), Dr. Gabriela Méndez Cota (Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México, Department of Philosophy), Rebekka Kiesewetter (COPIM, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University), Dr. Simon Worthington (Open Science Lab, TIB Hannover)

 

COPIM’s Experimental Publishing Work Package has worked with authors, designers, developers, providers of open source platforms and tools, and publishers on a series of Pilot Projects that are examining ways to align existing open source software, tools, workflows and infrastructures for experimental publishing with the workflow of open access book publishers. To do so, we have co-developed a set of pilot experimental academic books together with the scholar-led  presses Open Humanities Press, Mattering Press, and Open Book Publishers. 

This roundtable session serves as a pre-launch for the resulting pilot books Archival Conversations, Ecological Re-writing as Disappropriation. Situated Encounters with the Chernobyl Herbarium, and X-Sketchbook.  Joined by many of the involved makers and writers, we will collectively reflect on the journey that lead to these books and, looking forward, looking back, consider what it takes to nurture experimentation in scholarly publishing.

 

14:40-15:00 Coffee Break

 

15:00-17:00

Publishing from Collections: Introducing Computational Publishing for Culture

Workshop with Dr. Simon Worthington (Open Science Lab, TIB Hannover)

 

Computational publishing was developed in the life sciences and STEM subjects to allow publishers and authors to embed executable code, visualisations and advanced media objects alongside conventional text in a document. This hands-on workshop demonstrates one way how humanities scholars might use computational publishing.

During the workshop, we will auto-compile catalogue publications for exhibitions or publication listings from multiple open data sources; and show how such compilations can be published multi-format: web, PDF, ebook, etc. A series of exercises, using Jupyter Notebooks for code and the Quarto platform to wrap up the notebooks for multi-format outputting, will give participants a practical introduction to some of the tools, possibilities and concepts of computational publishing.

Participation in this workshop is limited. Please register HERE.

 

17:00-17:15 Coffee Break

 

17:15-18:30

De-schooling rewriting: or the promise of desapropiación

Keynote by Dr. Gabriela Méndez Cota (Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México, Department of Philosophy)

 

Cristina Rivera Garza’s theory and practice of desapropiación has inspired numerous rewriting experiments in the Mexican context, among them the rewriting of The Chernobyl Herbarium by graduate students and early career researchers in collaboration with COPIM.