Elsevier is the latest in a lengthening list of publishers to announce their adoption for 1,200 journals of the CASRAI Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT). Authors of papers in these journals will be required to define their contributions in relation to a predefined taxonomy of 14 roles. In this post, Elizabeth Gadd weighs the pros and cons of defining contributorship in a more prescriptive fashion and asks whether there is a risk of incentivising new kinds of competitive behaviour and forms of evaluation that doesn’t benefit researchers. … Read More →
Peer review is not just quality control, it is part of the social infrastructure of research [Originally published in LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog in June/2019]
The purpose of peer review is often portrayed as being a simple ‘objective’ test of the soundness or quality of a research paper. However, it also performs other functions primarily through linking and developing relationships between networks of researchers. In this post, Flaminio Squazzoni explores these interconnections and argues that to understand peer review as simply an exercise in quality control is to be blind to the historical, political and social dimensions of peer review. … Read More →
The SciELO publication model as an open access public policy
This post shares the brief description of the SciELO open access publication model presented by Abel L Packer, Director of SciELO, at the 14th Berlin Debate on Science and Science Policy which was themed “Who Owns Science? Reshaping the Scientific Value Chain in the 21st Century”. The description highlights the SciELO Program as a framework for the development and implementation of national policies to support quality journals and as an international cooperation program. The debate was held in the context of the Falling Walls Conference commemorating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. … Read More →
Working to the rule – How bibliometric targets distorted Italian research [Originally published in LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog in November/2019]
As Goodhart’s law states: “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”. Using bibliometrics to measure and assess researchers has become increasingly common, but does implementing these policies therefore devalue the metrics they are based on? In this post Alberto Baccini, Giuseppe De Nicolao and Eugenio Petrovich, present evidence from a study of Italian researchers revealing how the introduction of bibliometric targets into the Italian academy has changed the way Italian academics cite and use the work of their colleagues. … Read More →
A look at peer review of grant proposals
The scholarly peer review tracking platform Publons has launched the Grant Review in Focus on project assessment and identification for funding. Four thousand and seven hundred researchers were interviewed as well as data extracted from Web of Science. … Read More →
Google Scholar, Web of Science or Scopus, which gives us better indexing coverage?
Recent analysis of the indexing coverage of the Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus databases shows that higher values do not always mean higher quality or better indexing, as the inclusion of more lower-quality or lower-impact documents may reflect in other aspects of the analysis and, depending on the type of assessment, it should be necessary to eliminate certain types of documents from the citation count. … Read More →
Transparency: What Can One Learn from a Trove of Invoices? [Originally published in the Scholarly Kitchen blog in November/2019]
A new dataset from the Gates Foundation offers insights into author choices and APC pricing. … Read More →
The Open Science Data Librarian expertise
The professional expertise of Data Librarians is expected to rapidly flourish with the advancement of Open Science. This is an innovation, a necessity and an opportunity for the countries of the SciELO Network to create new areas of work for scientific information professionals as part of the alignment of research with open science practices. … Read More →
Tropical Medicine/Infectious and Parasitic Diseases journals align with open science editorial practices
Three of the most important journals in the areas of Tropical Medicine/Infectious and Parasitic Diseases of the SciELO Brazil Collection decided to adopt open science practices to provide more transparency, increase sharing and open access to the research results they report. This is the first of a series of novel pilot projects promoted by SciELO to inform editorial policies as well as to enable the management and operation of journals in the appropriation of and interoperability with preprints, research data and other content underlying the article texts for subsequent progressive opening of the peer review process. … Read More →
Accelerating scholarly communication via preprints
There are more than 60 preprint servers worldwide. It seems to be a trend, but the model still has problems and unresolved issues, both in terms of digital preservation and financing and collaboration of its technological solutions. It would be important for funding agencies to find out how to support these proposals. … Read More →
How to write an academic review? [Originally published in DADOS’ blog in July/2019]
The purpose of this post is to outline what a reviewer should consider before writing an assessment. In it, we discuss issues such as the importance of writing reviews, the types of possible reviews, what to do when detecting a conflict of interest, etc. … Read More →
Journal Indexing: Core standards and why they matter [Originally published in LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog in August/2019]
The ways in which journals are indexed online is essential to how they can be searched for and found. Inclusion in certain indexes is also closely linked to quality assessment, with research funders often requiring their grantees to publish in outlets listed in certain indexes. In this post Danielle Padula explains the importance of good journal indexing and how journals that apply key standards can increase the reach and impact of their publications. … Read More →
The 2019 Workshop on Open Scientometric Data Infrastructures at Leiden University [Originally published in the CWTS blog in August/2019]
The Open Scientometric Data Infrastructures Workshop took place at CWTS on 28 February and 1 March 2019. Over the course of two days, 14 researchers from CWTS and other research institutes and universities came together to discuss current projects and initiatives regarding open scientometric data infrastructures. This blog post provides a summary on the presentations and discussions held at the event. … Read More →
Open Science and the new research communication modus operandi – Part II
The adopting process of open science modus operandi involves all phases, actors, and political and institutional research instances. In research projects, openness is organized and pervasive throughout the entire research cycle. This post provides an overview of the openness process, content, and research outcomes in light of the SciELO Program’s priority lines of action. It is divided into two parts. See Part I here. … Read More →
Open Science and the new research communication modus operandi – Part I
The adopting process of open science modus operandi involves all phases, actors, and political and institutional research instances. In research projects, openness is organized and pervasive throughout the entire research cycle. This post provides an overview of the openness process, content, and research outcomes in light of the SciELO Program’s priority lines of action. It is divided into two parts. See Part II here. … Read More →
Recent Comments