Publications doi: 10.3390/publications12010009
Authors: Marian Oliński Krzysztof Krukowski Kacper Sieciński
This study delves into a bibliometric analysis of ChatGPT, an AI tool adept at analysing and generating text, highlighting its influence in the realm of social sciences. By harnessing data from the Scopus database, a total of 814 relevant publications were selected and scrutinised through VOSviewer, focusing on elements such as co-citations, keywords and international collaborations. The objective is to unearth prevailing trends and knowledge gaps in scholarly discourse regarding ChatGPT’s application in social sciences. Concentrating on articles from the year 2023, this analysis underscores the rapid evolution of this research domain, reflecting the ongoing digital transformation of society. This study presents a broad thematic picture of the analysed works, indicating a diversity of perspectives—from ethical and technological to sociological—regarding the implementation of ChatGPT in the fields of social sciences. This reveals an interest in various aspects of using ChatGPT, which may suggest a certain openness of the educational sector to adopting new technologies in the teaching process. These observations make a contribution to the field of social sciences, suggesting potential directions for future research, policy or practice, especially in less represented areas such as the socio-legal implications of AI, advocating for a multidisciplinary approach.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications12010008
Authors: Dolores Mumelaš Alisa Martek
Participating in collaborative scientific research through citizen science, a component of open science, holds significance for both citizen scientists and professional researchers. Yet, the advantages for those orchestrating citizen science initiatives are often overlooked. Organizers encompass a diverse range, including governmental entities, non-governmental organizations, corporations, universities, and institutions like libraries. For libraries, citizen science holds importance by fostering heightened civic and research interests, promoting scientific publishing, and contributing to overall scientific progress. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the specific ways in which citizen science can benefit libraries and how libraries can effectively utilize citizen science to achieve their goals. The paper is based on a systematic review of peer-reviewed articles that discuss the direct benefits of citizen science on libraries. A list of the main benefits of citizen science for libraries has been compiled from the literature. Additionally, the reasons why it is crucial for libraries to communicate the benefits of citizen science for their operations have been highlighted, particularly in terms of encouraging other libraries to actively engage in citizen science projects.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications12010007
Authors: Cicero Cena Daniel A. Gonçalves Giuseppe A. Câmara
The burgeoning landscape of scientific communication, marked by an explosive surge in published articles, journals, and specialized publishers, prompts a critical examination of prevailing assumptions. This article advocates a dispassionate and meticulous analysis to avoid policy decisions grounded in anecdotal evidence or superficial arguments. The discourse surrounding so-called predatory journals has been a focal point within the academic community, with concerns ranging from alleged lack of peer review rigor to exorbitant publication fees. While the consensus often leans towards avoiding such journals, this article challenges the prevailing narrative. It calls for a more nuanced understanding of what constitutes predatory practices and underscores the importance of skeptical inquiry within our daily academic activities. The authors aim to dispel misconceptions and foster a more informed dialogue by scrutinizing APCs, impact factors, and retractions. Furthermore, the authors delve into the evolving landscape of scientific publishing, addressing the generational shifts and emerging trends that challenge traditional notions of prestige and impact. In conclusion, this article serves as a call to action for the scientific community to engage in a comprehensive and nuanced debate on the complex issues surrounding scientific publishing.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications12010006
Authors: Ljiljana Poljak Bilić Kristina Posavec
This paper explores the landscape of research data in the humanities in the European context, delving into their diversity and the challenges of defining and sharing them. It investigates three aspects: the types of data in the humanities, their representation in repositories, and their alignment with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). By reviewing datasets in repositories, this research determines the dominant data types, their openness, licensing, and compliance with the FAIR principles. This research provides important insight into the heterogeneous nature of humanities data, their representation in the repository, and their alignment with FAIR principles, highlighting the need for improved accessibility and reusability to improve the overall quality and utility of humanities research data.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications12010005
Authors: Luciano Rossoni Rodrigo Assunção Rosa
The inclusion of scientific journals in prestigious indexers is often associated with higher citation rates; journals included in such indexers are significantly more acknowledged than those that are not included in them. This phenomenon refers to the Matthew effect on journal citations, according to which journals in exclusive rankings tend to be increasingly cited. This paper shows the opposite: that the inclusion of journals in local indexers ruled by inclusive logic reduces the Matthew effect on journal citations since it enables them to be equally exposed. Thus, we based our arguments on the comparison of 68 Brazilian journals before and after they were indexed in the Scientific Periodicals Electronic Library (Spell), which ranks journals in the Brazilian management field based on local citations. Citation impact indicators and iGini (a new individual inequality analysis measure) were used to show that the inclusion of journals in Spell has probably increased their impact factor and decreased their citation inequality rates. Using a difference-in-differences model with continuous treatment, the results indicated that the effect between ranking and inequality declined after journals were included in Spell. Additional robustness checks through event study models and interrupted time-series analysis for panel data point to a reduction in citation inequality but follow different trajectories for the 2- and 5-year impact. The results indicate that the indexer has reduced the Matthew effect on journal citations.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications12010004
Authors: Elizabeth Troncoso Daniel A. López René Ruby-Figueroa Dieter Koch Ricardo Reich
This study analyzes the research quality assurance processes in Chilean universities. Data from 29 universities accredited by the National Accreditation Commission were collected. The relationship between institutional accreditation and research performance was analyzed using length in years of institutional accreditation and eight research metrics used as the indicators of quantity, quality, and impact of a university’s outputs at an international level. The results showed that quality assurance in research of Chilean universities is mainly associated with quantity and not with the quality and impact of academic publications. There was also no relationship between the number of publications and their quality, even finding cases with negative correlations. In addition to the above, the relationship between international metrics to evaluate research performance (i.e., international collaboration, field-weighted citation impact, and output in the top 10% citation percentiles) showed the existence of three clusters of heterogeneous composition regarding the distribution of universities with different years of institutional accreditation. These findings call for a new focus on improving regulatory processes to evaluate research performance and adequately promote institutions’ development and the effectiveness of their mission.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications12010003
Authors: Tomislav Korman Tomislav Malvić Vasyl Lozynskyi Zlatko Briševac Zoran Kovač Lidia Hrnčević Krešimir Pavlić
The 2022 JCR included ESCI journals for the first time, increasing the number of publication titles by approximately 60%. In this paper, the subcategory Mining and Mineral Processing (part of the Engineering and Geosciences category, where 12 of the ESCI journals were merged with the 20 SCIEx ones) is presented and analyzed. Only three of the ESCI journals included in the database were ranked Q1/Q2. The inclusion of the entire ESCI added new content for readers and authors relying on JCR sources. This paper offers authors, researchers, and publishers in the Mining and Mineral Processing field practical insights into the potential benefits and challenges associated with the changing landscape of indexed journals, as well as in-depth, systematic analyses that provide potential authors with the opportunity to select the most suitable journal for submitting their papers.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications12010002
Authors: Stefano Guizzardi Maria Teresa Colangelo Prisco Mirandola Carlo Galli
We previously examined the diachronic shifts in the narrative structure of research articles (RAs) and review manuscripts using abstract corpora from MEDLINE. This study employs Nini’s Multidimensional Analysis Tagger (MAT) on the same datasets to explore five linguistic dimensions (D1–5) in these two sub-genres of biomedical literature, offering insights into evolving writing practices over 30 years. Analyzing a sample exceeding 1.2 million abstracts, we observe a shared reinforcement of an informational, emotionally detached tone (D1) in both RAs and reviews. Additionally, there is a gradual departure from narrative devices (D2), coupled with an increase in context-independent content (D3). Both RAs and reviews maintain low levels of overt persuasion (D4) while shifting focus from abstract content to emphasize author agency and identity. A comparison of linguistic features underlying these dimensions reveals often independent changes in RAs and reviews, with both tending to converge toward standardized stylistic norms.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications12010001
Authors: Wenqi Fu Jie Xu Qing Fang Jingjia Ding Hanqing Ma
This study aims to investigate the attitudes and actions of scientific journal editors in China towards open access. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 Chinese editors from various scientific journals during September and October of 2022. The results indicate that the editors generally possess knowledge of open access and have implemented an appropriate open access model for their respective journals. However, the Chinese-language journal editors expressed a lack of motivation to adopt open access, unless there is a reform in the mechanism of academic publishing or a policy is imposed. On the other hand, the English-language journal editors acknowledged that they have no other choice but to adopt open access. This study helps us learn about Chinese editors’ understanding and attitudes towards open access, the current status of open access in China’s scientific journals, and the mechanisms of academic publishing in China.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11040052
Authors: Julia Heuritsch
The author was responsible for these errors in the original publication [...]
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11040051
Authors: Eungi Kim Da-Yeong Jeong
The Scopus journal classification method, known as All Science Journal Classification (ASJC), follows a hierarchical organization of subject categories: minor, major, and supergroups. At the minor level, journals are assigned to one or more subject categories. We refer to this classification scheme as a multiple-category hierarchical scheme. The objective of this study is to investigate the dominant characteristics of subject categories within the Scopus database and quantify their dominance using various subject indices. To conduct the study, we formulated a set of subject category indices, including the Number of Journals (J), Total Instances of Subject Categories (SC), Number of Unique Subject Categories (USC), and Dominance Index (DOMI). The results showed that high DOMI values in subject categories indicate specialization and limited associations with other fields. There were minimal correlations between DOMI and other subject category indices like J, SC, and USC, demonstrating their uniqueness and independence. The study also revealed that subject categories within the Health Sciences exhibited higher DOMI values and greater specialization compared to those in the Physical Sciences, indicating a pronounced dominance in Health Sciences minor categories. Finally, minor subject categories exhibited more variation in subject category indices compared to their upper-level subject categories, highlighting the intricate variations within the hierarchical system of the Scopus classification. These findings have implications for researchers, emphasizing the need to consider a subject category’s dominance and associations when selecting journals for their research.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11040050
Authors: Xiatinghan Xu
In most global contexts, academic publishing plays an essential part of scholars’ professional lives. For multilingual scholars, who may use multiple languages and publish for different communities, publishing can entail making a range of important choices. To date, while there has been a substantial amount of research on multilingual scholars’ choices of language and genre, little has focused on their choices of topics, methodologies, and theories, which are also important aspects of their research and publishing practices. In this review article, I explore specifically what the extant research has found about why multilingual scholars make particular choices of topics, methodologies, and theories outside of Anglophone contexts. Reviewing research published between 2004 and 2023, I found that overall, scholars’ choices in such aspects are motivated by their desire for professional success and their aims of making academic and social contributions. Also, their choices can be further complicated by various sociopolitical factors. I argue that the current strand of research mainly focuses on the neoliberal contexts of publishing and the effects of Anglophone academia on global knowledge production, whereas the practices of multilingual scholars outside the Anglosphere can be also affected by many other factors that have received less attention.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11040049
Authors: Yrjö Lappalainen Matti Lassila Tanja Heikkilä Jani Nieminen Tapani Lehtilä
This article describes a complex CRIS (current research information system) implementation project involving the migration of around 120,000 legacy publication records from three different systems. The project, undertaken by Tampere University, encountered several challenges in data diversity, data quality, and resource allocation. To handle the extensive and heterogenous dataset, innovative approaches such as machine learning techniques and various data wrangling tools were used to process data, correct errors, and merge information from different sources. Despite significant delays and unforeseen obstacles, the project was ultimately successful in achieving its goals. The project served as a valuable learning experience, highlighting the importance of data quality and standardized practices, and the need for dedicated resources in handling complex data migration projects in research organizations. This study stands out for its comprehensive documentation of the data wrangling and migration process, which has been less explored in the context of CRIS literature.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11040048
Authors: Latefa Ali Dardas Ahmad M. A. Malkawi Sami Sweis Nadia Sweis Amjad Al-Khayat Faleh A. Sawair
Middle Eastern and Arab countries have been experiencing significant advancements in scientific research and development over the past few decades. Understanding the trends, patterns, and impact of research within this region can provide valuable insights into its scientific landscape, identify areas of strength, and uncover potential areas for improvement. This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of research productivity in the Middle Eastern and Arab region over a 20-year period. The findings revealed a consistent increase in research productivity, yet mapped significant disparities between countries in scholarly output, excellence, and impact. Adjusting for population size and GDP, Iran displayed the highest publication activity, trailed by Egypt and Turkey. Delving into the distribution of research output across different journal quartiles, the results revealed that this region has a lower percentage of scholarly output published in high-impact journals (both the top 10% and the top 25% categories). Compared to North America and the European Union, the Middle Eastern and Arab region consistently exhibited lower performance in terms of top 10% citations, average citations per publication, and field-weighted citation impact. The field of physical sciences took the lead as the most prevalent subject area in the Middle Eastern and Arab region, comprising about 60.5% of the research emphasis. Conversely, social sciences garnered comparatively less research attention, making up approximately 8.9% of the focus. The region showed strong international collaboration levels (40.5%), yet relatively low national (24.4%) and academic–corporate collaborations (1.5%). The outcomes of this study can facilitate international comparisons and benchmarking, allowing Middle Eastern and Arab countries to position themselves within the global scientific community. There remains a need to prioritize quality over quantity by emphasizing rigorous research practices and collaboration. An ongoing evaluation of research performance using a combination of indicators can help track progress and adjust strategies as needed.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11040047
Authors: Bor Luen Tang
Once retracted, the citation count of a research paper might be intuitively expected to drop precipitously. Here, we assessed the post-retraction citation of life and medical sciences papers from two top-ranked, multidisciplinary journals Nature and Science, from 2010 to 2018. Post-retraction citations accounted for a staggering 47.7% and 40.9% of total citations (median values), respectively, of the papers included in our analysis. These numbers are comparable with those from two journals with lower impact factors, and with retracted papers from the physical sciences discipline. A more qualitative assessment of five papers from the two journals with a high percentage (>50%) of post-retraction citations, all of which are associated with misconduct, reveal different contributing reasons and factors. Retracted papers associated with highly publicized misconduct cases are more prone to being cited with the retraction status indicated, or projected negatively (such as in the context of research ethics and misconduct discussions), with the latter also indicated by cross-disciplinary citations by humanities and social sciences articles. Retracted papers that retained significant validity in their main findings/conclusions may receive a large number of neutral citations that are somewhat blind to the retraction. Retracted papers in popular subject areas with massive publication outputs, particularly secondary publications such as reviews, may also have a high background citation noise. Our findings add further insights to the nature of post-retraction citations beyond the plain notion that these are largely made through sheer ignorance or negligence by the citing authors.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11040046
Authors: Claudia N. Gonzalez Brambila José I. Ponce Silvia B. Gonzalez Brambila Matias F. Milia
Engineers make things, make things work, and make things work better and easier. This kind of knowledge is crucial for innovation, and much of the explicit knowledge developed by engineers is embodied in scientific publications. In this paper, we analyze the evolution of publications and citations in engineering in a middle-income country such as Mexico. Using a database of all Mexican publications in Web of Science from 2004 to 2017, we explore the characteristics of publications that tend to have the greatest impact; this is the highest number of citations. Among the variables studied are the type of collaboration (no collaboration, domestic, bilateral, or multilateral), the number of coauthors and countries, controlling for a coauthor from the USA, and the affiliation institution of the Mexican author(s). Our results emphasize the overall importance of joint international efforts and suggest that publications with the highest number of citations are those with multinational collaboration (coauthors from three or more countries) and when one of the coauthors is from the USA. Another interesting result is that single-authored papers have had a higher impact than those written through domestic collaboration.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11030045
Authors: Dirk H. R. Spennemann
The recent public release of the generative AI language model ChatGPT has captured the public imagination and has resulted in a rapid uptake and widespread experimentation by the general public and academia alike. The number of academic publications focusing on the capabilities as well as practical and ethical implications of generative AI has been growing exponentially. One of the concerns with this unprecedented growth in scholarship related to generative AI, in particular, ChatGPT, is that, in most cases, the raw data, which is the text of the original ‘conversations,’ have not been made available to the audience of the papers and thus cannot be drawn on to assess the veracity of the arguments made and the conclusions drawn therefrom. This paper provides a protocol for the documentation and archiving of these raw data.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11030044
Authors: Heinz Pampel
Open access (OA) has become a critical issue in science policy and affects a wide range of activities in universities and research labs. Research-performing organizations (RPOs), defined as publicly funded universities and research institutions, face significant challenges in shaping the OA transformation. This article examines the spheres of activity available to RPOs for shaping the OA transformation, using a categorization of 22 spheres of activity related to OA. These spheres of activity include strategy and communication, services and infrastructures, business relationships with publishers, and collaborations. Current challenges and future action areas in promoting OA are also described, providing support for RPOs in handling OA and highlighting key issues. The categorization can serve as a tool for systematically assessing OA activities at RPOs and shows that OA is a cross-cutting issue in these organizations. Collaboration on OA activities, both within and beyond organizations, presents a challenge. To effectively promote OA, it is crucial to strengthen the interaction between funding agencies and RPOs. Libraries are critical stakeholders, playing a vital role in advancing OA at the local, national, and international levels in partnership with RPO management and other partners in faculty, administration, and information technology.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11030043
Authors: Péter Sasvári Tamás Kaiser Krisztián Várföldi Csaba Fási
The following paper examines some of the publishing habits observed among the winning applicants of the Bolyai János Research Scholarship. As an academic support programme, the Bolyai Research Scholarship forms a bridge between scholars with the title of doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) and the young generation of researchers with an academic degree. The winning applicants in 2021 were researchers under the age of 45, cooperating with international co-authors, having highly cited publications and showing a continuous publication history of 15 years on average. The scholarship holders come primarily from research centres and universities. The paper argues that the achievements of scholarship holders follow the international patterns of academic excellence and publication as well as the requirements for international cooperation and publishing mainly in open access journals. In doing so, they prefer journals under the umbrella of Elsevier for performing their publication activities; however, there has been a significant increase in those publishing in MDPI journals, recently. The results show that one-third of the applicants had published before and a fifth of them had published in one of the journals of MDPI two months after announcing the list of the winning applicants. At the same time, differences in publication traditions and award systems reveal marked differences in publication strategies and evaluation criteria across fields of science. Based on this, the descriptive statistics presented in this paper contribute to our understanding of the conscious career planning of young scholars in line with international standards.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11030042
Authors: Robertas Damaševičius Ligita Zailskaitė-Jakštė
This paper analyzes the impact of the ongoing war in Ukraine on the productivity and collaboration networks of Ukrainian academics. As a case study, we analyze the publication patterns in open-access MDPI journals using bibliographic analysis methods and compare the research output published in 2022 with research papers published in the three preceding years (2019–2021) with at least one author having an Ukrainian affiliation. A total of 2365 publications were analyzed. The identified publication trends provide an interesting insight into the dynamics of the research network of Ukrainian researchers, which demonstrated a decline in diversity of international collaborations in 2022. The findings of this study emphasize the necessity of international research collaboration in a variety of fields in order to mitigate the detrimental effects of national crises and emergencies.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11030041
Authors: Paul Longley Arthur Lydia Hearn John C. Ryan Nirmala Menon Langa Khumalo
Democratizing access to information is an enabler for our digital future. It can transform how knowledge is created, preserved, and shared, and strengthen the connection between academics and the communities they serve. Yet, open scholarship is influenced by history and politics. This article explores the foundations underlying open scholarship as a quest for more just, equitable, and inclusive societies. It analyzes the origins of the open scholarship movement and explores how systemic factors have impacted equality and equity of knowledge access and production according to location, nationality, race, age, gender, and socio-economic circumstances. It highlights how the privileges of the global North permeate academic and technical standards, norms, and infrastructures. It also reviews how the collective design of more open and collaborative networks can engage a richer diversity of communities, enabling greater social inclusion, and presents key examples. By fostering dialogue with multiple stakeholders, more effective avenues for knowledge production and representation can be built based on approaches that are accessible, participatory, interactive, ethical, and transparent, and that reach a far broader public. This expansive vision of open science will lead to a more unified knowledge economy.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11030040
Authors: Oswaldo Terán Jacinto Dávila
Open Access is a global cause with the aim of allowing unrestricted access to all scientific research output in electronic formats. This paper presents a model for simulating the game of interests behind this cause in order to investigate ways of promoting the practice of open access. The model represents the following actors: Academics, Administrators, Funders, Publishers and Politicians. Five scenarios were developed to represent both realistic and ideal, interesting, situations. The model was developed using the SocLab platform—a formalization of the sociology of organizational action. It is based on previous descriptions of the game and expert knowledge. A structural analysis permits us to examine the properties of the sub-model behind each scenario. The results corroborate certain intuitions about the scenarios representing realistic cases, e.g., they indicate that publishers, being isolated in their interests, are subject to strong pressures from other actors, who have a circumstantial alliance. Administrators take an intermediate stance in all scenarios. The best scenarios for open access are those in which Politicians and Funders clearly support the cause by expressing mandates in that direction, backing academics. Surprisingly, the model shows that it is in the Publishers’ interest not to take an extremist position against open access.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11030039
Authors: Jadranka Stojanovski Iva Grabarić Andonovski
Open access has emerged from the need to make scholarly communication freely available to the scientific community and not hidden behind a paywall [...]
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11030038
Authors: Milijana Mićunović Sabina Rako Kristina Feldvari
The purpose of this study is to map the practices regarding open educational resources’ (OERs) development and implementation at European higher education institutions (HEIs) in the field of library and information science (LIS) during the COVID-19 pandemic and to identify the challenges and obstacles to their full and optimal utilization, both during crisis situations and beyond. A systematic literature review and questionnaire-based survey yielded results from 56 European LIS schools/departments (n = 56). Statistical analysis was performed using the R programming language, and descriptive statistics were used to quantify the data sets. The results have shown that the COVID-19 pandemic served as an impetus for the adoption of OERs, particularly in the context of digital education (DE) and remote learning. However, there is still a lack of awareness of the many benefits and opportunities they provide to higher education, as evidenced by the fact than less than half LIS schools/departments used OERs. Certain issues were identified, such as the lack of institutional policies regarding OERs, inadequate peer-review of OERs, and, in most cases, the absence of monitoring and evaluation practices for OERs. The results and insights from this study can be used to improve all aspects of OERs’ implementation and thus accelerate their adoption, both with regard to LIS schools/departments and other fields. Further research into the topic through interviews and focus groups should provide a deeper understanding of opportunities, challenges and practices surrounding the adoption of OERs in the field of LIS education.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11030037
Authors: Oleksandr Kuchanskyi Yurii Andrashko Andrii Biloshchytskyi Serik Omirbayev Aidos Mukhatayev Svitlana Biloshchytska Adil Faizullin
The article’s purpose is an analysis of the citation impact of scientific publications by authors of different gender compositions. The page method was chosen to calculate the citation impact of scientific publications, and the obtained results allowed to estimate the impact of the scientific publications based on the number of citations. The normalized citation impact is calculated according to nine subsets of scientific publications that correspond to patterns of different gender compositions of authors. Also, these estimates were calculated for each country with which the authors of the publications are affiliated. The Citation database, Network Dataset (Ver. 13), was chosen for the scientometric analysis. The dataset includes more than 5 million scientific publications and 48 million citations. Most of the publications in the dataset are from the STEM field. The results indicate that articles with a predominantly male composition are cited more than articles with a mixed or female composition of authors in this direction. Analysis of advantages in dynamics indicates that in the last decade, in developed countries, there has been a decrease in the connection between the citation impact of scientific publications and the gender composition of their authors. However, the obtained results still confirm the presence of gender inequality in science, which may be related to socioeconomic and cultural characteristics, natural homophily, and other factors that contribute to the appearance of gender gaps. An essential consequence of overcoming these gaps, including in science, is ensuring the rights of people in all their diversity.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11030036
Authors: Reggie Raju Jill Claassen Kaela De Lillie
The current publishing landscape perpetuates biases that continue to exclude those who have been previously marginalized, specifically from the Global South including Africa. Incorporating philanthropy as the only driving principle to openly share knowledge is insufficient to truly empower and be inclusive to those who have been relegated to the periphery of the scholarly communication ecosystem. Social justice principles have to underpin the foundation of this ecosystem, in tandem with philanthropy, to shed light on these exclusionary, systemic publishing practices and processes. This will entail first breaking down these unfair practices and then rebuilding the ecosystem by advancing equity, diversity and inclusion. This paper highlights the current gaps in the openness movement and demonstrates, through an exemplar of a publishing platform, how the publishing landscape can be transformed. The publishing platform employs a multi-tenant model that enables multiple institutions to publish and disseminate knowledge on one shared instance of the software. The continental platform and the tenant model that it utilizes address the technological and infrastructural barriers often experienced in the Global South and Africa, while simultaneously serving as a collective hub for hosting African scholarship. This case study methodology is used to investigate how the alternate publishing route recaptures the philanthropic pillars of the openness movement. The findings provide evidence for a return to the founding principles of the openness movement and, as importantly, demonstrates the impact of open access on student success.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11030035
Authors: Dirk H. R. Spennemann Rudolf J. Spennemann
Born-digital content is rapidly becoming the norm for literary works, professional reports, academic journal articles, and formal corporate correspondence. From the perspective of digital forensics, there is a need to understand the origin of a document and its entire creation process, from outlining and drafting to editing the final version of the text. Revision save identifier (RSID) numbers embedded in MS Word documents have been used to examine the nature and extent of individual edits within a document. These RSIDs remain logged in the metadata even if the text with which they were associated has been removed. As copies of such files retain the original’s RSIDs, this metadata can be used to determine the order in which documents were cloned from each other. As a proof-of-concept, this paper examined over 400 template files generated by a single publisher for manuscript submissions to its journals. The study can show that it is possible to establish genealogies and thus relative chronologies of born digital content by first identifying those documents that share a document (root) RSID and then seriating those RSIDs that are shared between two or more documents.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11020034
Authors: Stephen Kenneth Donovan
What are the essential abilities that make proficient book review editors? They should preferably be a seasoned reviewer themselves, with the ability to read a book and write a review in short time in an emergency. They will develop a group of trusted reviewers—the ‘regulars’—which may include the editors themselves. However, there will also be a blacklist of failed reviewers not to be approached again. Recognising that book reviews were dropped by many journals, which were commonly wanting more printed space for research articles, does not mean that they will not be needed in the future. In the age of online publication, page space is no longer a valid limitation. If they are not on board already, electronic journals should be appointing new book review editors and expecting an influx of copy.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11020033
Authors: Julia Heuritsch
The concept of evaluation gaps captures potential discrepancies between what researchers value about their research, in particular research quality, and what metrics measure. The existence of evaluation gaps can give rise to questions about the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to perform research, i.e., how field-specific notions of quality compete with notions captured via evaluation metrics, and consequently how researchers manage the balancing act between intrinsic values and requirements of evaluation procedures. This study analyses the evaluation gap from a rational choice point of view for the case of observational astronomers, based on a literature review and 19 semi-structured interviews with international astronomers. On the basis of the institutional norms and capital at play in academic astronomy, I shed light on the workings of the balancing act and its consequences on research quality in astronomy. I find that astronomers experience an anomie: they want to follow their intrinsic motivation to pursue science in order to push knowledge forward, while at the same time following their extrinsic motivation to comply with institutional norms. The balancing act is the art of serving performance indicators in order to stay in academia, while at the same time compromising research quality as little as possible. Gaming strategies shall give the appearance of compliance, while institutionalised means to achieve a good bibliometric record are used in innovative ways, such as salami slicing or going for easy publications. This leads to an overall decrease in research quality.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11020032
Authors: Carol Nash
There is a noticeable paucity of recently published research on the roles and responsibilities of peer reviewers for international journals. Concurrently, the pool of these peer reviewers is decreasing. Using a narrative research method developed by the author, this study questioned these roles and responsibilities through the author’s assessment in reviewing for five publishing houses July–December 2022, in comparison with two recent studies regarding peer review, and the guidelines of the five publishing houses. What should be most important in peer review is found discrepant among the author, those judging peer review in these publications, and the five publishing houses. Furthermore, efforts to increase the pool of peer reviewers are identified as ineffective because they focus on the reviewer qua reviewer, rather than on their primary role as researchers. To improve consistency, authors have regularly called for peer review training. Yet, this advice neglects to recognize the efforts of journals in making their particular requirements for peer review clear, comprehensive and readily accessible. Consequently, rather than peer reviewers being trained and rewarded as peer reviewers, journals are advised to make peer review a requirement for research publication, and their guidelines necessary reading and advice to follow for peer reviewers.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11020031
Authors: Daniela De Filippo Fernanda Morillo Borja González-Albo
Scientific activity in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) presents special characteristics that require the use of various sources and methodologies to adequately assess its impact and influence on both academic and non-academic audiences. This study aims to explore the validity of traditional and alternative information sources for the analysis of the characteristics of HSS research and its academic impact and influence (considering social, media, informative and political influence). It is also intended to highlight the differences between Humanities (H) and Social Sciences (SS) and analyse the variables that determine the different types of impact and influence of research in each of them. The following sources of information are used: Web of Science, conCIENCIA (institutional database), Google Scholar, Unpaywall, Altmetric.com and Overton, focused on the study of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). The results obtained show that institutional sources make local research visible, which has high percentages of open access. The usefulness of alternative sources to measure social, media, informative and political influence is verified, since HSS publications have an important number of mentions. Significant differences are observed between H and SS in terms of publication coverage (higher in H in the institutional database), language (more Spanish in H), open access (higher percentages in SS) and impact measured through conCIENCIA (the greatest number of documents with a high impact is found in H). In addition, the influence on non-academic audiences is increased by the international orientation of research, the greater academic impact, the participation of SS centres and the immediacy of publications. This study is a starting point for future research, as it explores several tools and data sources to analyse the influence of HSS research on different audiences. A comprehensive analysis will also facilitate the proposal of new metrics applied to the HSS assessment, highlighting its importance for society as a whole.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11020030
Authors: Angélica Ferreira Melo Woska Pires da Costa Rhanya Rafaella Rodrigues Lorena de Almeida Cavalcante Brandão Nunes Priscilla Rayanne E Silva Noll Matias Noll
Undergraduate Research (UR) is an institutional program that introduces undergraduate students to scientific research. The program selects research projects proposed by advisors and students for execution. Despite the importance of knowing the stages of research activities in undergraduate research, only a few studies have evaluated data on this subject. Therefore, this study aims to outline an overview of UR in a Brazilian educational institution, considering the profiles of students and advisors, students’ scientific productions, and perceptions about the experience of both. The study was a mixed-approach case study conducted through a questionnaire and interviews. The sample consisted of 213 undergraduate students and 167 UR supervisors. The results show that the largest group of students were aged 21 and 22 (46.6%) and supervisors 33 to 38 years (38.9%). Regarding the scientific productions of students, those who participated twice or more in undergraduate research had higher indicators compared to those who were participating for the first time. Students’ perceptions of their evolution and perceptions of the advisors were mostly positive, with a greater number of responses classified as very good to good. Thus, the satisfaction of researchers in being part of this experience was perceived and the need to improve the scientific production indicators of students, mediated by the advisors stimulating the writing of articles, abstracts, and books, as well as participation in events and patent development, was shown. We conclude that undergraduate research activities promote the integral development of students’ academic, scientific, personal, and professional terms, which ultimately reflect critical and emancipatory actions in society.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11020029
Authors: Joachim Schöpfel Stéphane Chaudiron Bernard Jacquemin Eric Kergosien Hélène Prost Florence Thiault
(1) Background: The 2002 Budapest Open Access Initiative recommended the self-archiving of scientific articles in open repositories, which has been described as the “green road” to open access. Twenty years later, only one part of the researchers deposits their publications in open repositories; moreover, one part of the repositories’ content is not based on self-archived deposits but on mediated nonfaculty contributions. The purpose of the paper is to provide more empirical evidence on this situation and to assess the impact on the future of the green road. (2) Methods: We analyzed the contributions to the French national HAL repository from more than 1000 laboratories affiliated with the ten most important French research universities, with a focus on 2020, representing 14,023 contributor accounts and 164,070 deposits. (3) Results: We identified seven different types of contributor accounts, including deposits from nonfaculty staff and import flows from other platforms. Mediated nonfaculty contributions (deposits by libraries, import of bibliographic records, migration from other platforms, etc.) account for at least 48% of the 2020 deposits. We also identified differences between institutions and disciplines. (4) Conclusions: Our empirical results reveal a transformation of open repositories from self-archiving and direct scientific communication towards research information management. Repositories like HAL are somewhere in the middle of the process. The paper describes data quality as the main issue and major challenge of this transformation.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11020028
Authors: Samuel A. Moore
This article presents a commentary on the recent resurgence of interest in the practice of rights retention in scholarly publishing. Led in part by the evolving European policy landscape, rights retention seeks to ensure immediate access to accepted manuscripts uploaded to repositories. The article identifies a trajectory in the development of rights retention from something that publishers could previously ignore to a practice they are now forced to confront. Despite being couched in the neoliberal logic of market-centric policymaking, I argue that rights retention represents a more combative approach to publisher power by institutions and funders that could yield significant benefits for a more equitable system of open access publishing.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11020027
Authors: Maria Soledad Ramirez-Montoya Hector G. Ceballos Sandra Martínez-Pérez Luis M. Romero-Rodríguez
Researchers primarily dedicate their time to teaching in Latin American universities. For this reason, it is essential to determine how teaching time affects (or contributes to) the scientific productivity of researchers working under these conditions. We analyzed the incidence of gender, groups taught at undergraduate and graduate levels, the researcher proficiency level, and the number of thesis students advised, among others, for the impact on the scientific productivity (annual publications) of a group of professors. We analyzed the data using both statistical and regression methods. Contrary to our initial hypothesis, the number of groups taught does not significantly influence research productivity; it is affected by other factors such as belonging to the Mexican Researcher System (SNI) or having a researcher or administrative position at the institution. Our results can help guide the formulation of academic and research policies that contribute to the scientific productivity of Latin American universities.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11020026
Authors: Stefano Guizzardi Maria Teresa Colangelo Prisco Mirandola Carlo Galli
Previous analysis has shown that the use of narrative devices in the biomedical literature has changed over time. The purpose of the present study was to measure the degree of narrativity in corpora of scientific abstracts obtained from Pubmed through the use of a proprietary software LIWC 2022, which, based on pre-set dictionaries, attributes scores for Staging, Plot Progression and Cognitive Tension to texts. Each text is automatically divided into a number of segments, so that the score change can be assessed throughout the different parts of a text, thus identifying its narrative arc. We systematically applied the scoring system to a corpus of 680,000 abstracts from manuscripts of any kind and genre published in the years 1989–2022 and indexed in MEDLINE, an independent corpus of 680,000 abstracts of Primary studies published in the same years, and finally a corpus of 680,000 abstracts of Review papers that appeared in the 1989–2022 interval. We were able to create plots of the pattern of how these three scores changed over time in each corpus and observed that the prototypical pattern observed in narrative texts, e.g., novels, is not seen in abstracts of the scientific literature, which, however, mostly possess a diverse but quite reproducible pattern. Overall, Reviews better conform to a higher degree of narrativity than Primary studies.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11020025
Authors: Abdulrahman Essa Al Lily Abdelrahim Fathy Ismail Rahima Aissani Fathi M. Abunasser Samia M. Shahpo Ali Khalifa Atwa Abdullatif Ghada N. Elmorsy
Although ambiguity in written, oral, and visual communication is inevitably present across all human societies and cultures, variation among these societies and cultures occurs in the sociocultural causes of its existence. This study helps formulate a conceptual framework that enables the enrichment of knowledge about this variation. It takes a first step by highlighting Arab-specific reasons behind ambiguity in academic writings in humanities and social sciences. The investigation entails thematically analysing the thoughts of 905 Arabs in academia. The findings point to a ‘doing-the-minimum’ mentality, whereby one may act hastily and impatiently and do just enough for one’s manuscript to be published in any journal, thereby rushing into publication while skimping on quality and diminishing attention to manuscript clarity. Another finding is the ambition for rewards that Arab institutions assign to publication, whereby one may boost their publication records to reap these rewards, resulting in high quantity while sacrificing quality (e.g., clarity). Another reason discovered is the conceptualisation of writing as a formulaic and ‘fill-in-the-blanks’ task (templates to be completed and, thus, manuscripts to be constructed), instilling a focus on technicality instead of cognitive depth and clarity. An additional reason found is the passive application of foreign theories and conceptual frameworks without subjecting them to critical reflection, reapplying foreign surveys and mimicking survey-based articles, thereby making their articles culturally shallow, suffer from cultural irrelevance, and thus, ambiguity. This is along with the integration of poetry (wherein ambiguity is culturally viewed as desirable and showing poets to be sophisticated) into Arabs’ daily social and educational lives and mindsets, encouraging the acceptability of ambiguity as a possible linguistic quality in scholarly writing as well. The social context lacks direct, explicit, and free articulation, encouraging one to resort to roundabout ways of composing their manuscripts, thus, making the manuscripts fall into ambiguity.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11020024
Authors: Mikhail Gorbunov-Posadov
An alive publication is a new genre for presenting the results of scientific research, where the scientific work is published online, and then is constantly being developed and improved by its author. Serious errors and typos are no longer fatal, nor do they haunt the author for the rest of his or her life. The reader of an alive publication knows that the author is constantly monitoring changes occurring in this branch of science. Alive publication faces the inertia of scientific publishing traditions and, in particular, traditional bibliometrics. Unfortunately, at present, the author who supports an alive publication is dramatically losing out on many generally accepted bibliometric indicators. The alive publication encourages the development of the bibliography apparatus. Each bibliographic reference will soon have to contain on-the-fly attributes such as attendance, number of external links, date of the last revision, etc. In the opinion of the writer of these lines, as the alive publication spreads over to the scientific world, the author’s concern for the publication’s evolution will become like a parent’s care for the development of a child. The Internet will be filled with scientific publications that do not lose their relevance with time.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11020023
Authors: Gianfranco Carotenuto Francesca Nicolais
The relevance of the technical results included in a scientific paper is proved by the quantity of citations received by the article over the years [...]
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11020022
Authors: Carlos S. Galina José F. Martínez Bruce D. Murphy
Science is an international effort, receiving contributions from researchers across the globe. The capacity of a country or a region to generate and publish quality research varies greatly according to the location examined. Among the factors that dictate the quantity and quality of scientific research are the availability of infrastructure and human resources, the traditions related to research endeavors, and, most significantly, local governmental support for research. There are several conditions that both individually and cooperatively limit research activities in Latin America, such as insufficient governmental support, a paucity of material and technical resources, heavy teaching loads, the absence of peer networks, and multiple constraints on publication. This commentary has been developed to discuss each of the issues that permit and, more frequently, limit biological and agricultural research endeavors in Latin America.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11020021
Authors: Chompunuch Saravudecha Duangruthai Na Thungfai Chananthida Phasom Sodsri Gunta-in Aorrakanya Metha Peangkobfah Punyaphet Tippawan Sookruay Wannachai Sakuludomkan Nut Koonrungsesomboon
Biomedical fields have seen a remarkable increase in hybrid Gold open access articles. However, it is uncertain whether the hybrid Gold open access option contributes to a citation advantage, an increase in the citations of articles made immediately available as open access regardless of the article’s quality or whether it involves a trending topic of discussion. This study aimed to compare the citation counts of hybrid Gold open access articles to subscription articles published in hybrid journals. The study aimed to ascertain if hybrid Gold open access publications yield an advantage in terms of citations. This cross-sectional study included the list of hybrid journals under 59 categories in the ‘Clinical Medicine’ group from Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports (JCR) during 2018–2021. The number of citable items with ‘Gold Open Access’ and ‘Subscription and Free to Read’ in each journal, as well as the number of citations of those citable items, were extracted from JCR. A hybrid Gold open access citation advantage was computed by dividing the number of citations per citable item with hybrid Gold open access by the number of citations per citable item with a subscription. A total of 498, 636, 1009, and 1328 hybrid journals in the 2018 JCR, 2019 JCR, 2020 JCR, and 2021 JCR, respectively, were included in this study. The citation advantage of hybrid Gold open access articles over subscription articles in 2018 was 1.45 (95% confidence interval (CI), 1.24–1.65); in 2019, it was 1.31 (95% CI, 1.20–1.41); in 2020, it was 1.30 (95% CI, 1.20–1.39); and in 2021, it was 1.31 (95% CI, 1.20–1.42). In the ‘Clinical Medicine’ discipline, the articles published in the hybrid journal as hybrid Gold open access had a greater number of citations when compared to those published as a subscription, self-archived, or otherwise openly accessible option.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11020020
Authors: Mariana Cernicova-Buca
Scientific authorship is an evolving concept, being challenged by the numerous varieties in definition and practice of its ideational form. Variations in interpretation occur not only along the traditional demarcation line between hard sciences and the social sciences and humanities but also within the same science branch, along parameters such as geography or institutional representation. This article explores the websites of internationally indexed communication science journals in Romania, from the point of view of authorship definitions, authorship requirements, and author-related ethical provisions. The web-based analysis is supplemented by opinions shared by editors of seven journal publishing venues. Findings show that less than half of the Romanian communication science journals allude to the international debate concerning authorship vs. contributorship models. A data-based critique of the self-presentation of the selected journals on their main page is also formulated. The findings of this study can help improve the journals’ self-presentation and self-promotion and set a benchmark for science communication among disciplines in SSH. In addition, it opens the floor for debate on scientific publishing patterns and practices in the given domain in Romania, making room for comparisons and filling in gaps in information on the topic.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010019
Authors: João Génio Alina Trifan António J. R. Neves
In a research organization, finding someone who is an expert in a field and that can take up a given role, defining areas of excellence, or employing a new member all require understanding the competences that are available in-house. This work explores the idea of using knowledge or competence maps as support tools for managing scientific competences. We implemented a use case at the Institute of Electronics and Informatics Engineering of Aveiro, a research institute at the University of Aveiro, but the methodology we proposed can be adapted to virtually any research organization. Knowledge maps are visual representations of information that can be designed with variable granularities with respect to the knowledge assets of an organization. From a research management perspective, knowledge maps support the discovery of research competences and provide an instant overview of a topic by showing the main areas at a glance. This solution explored in this work employed data mining approaches for gathering information from public databases and presenting it using knowledge maps. Other visualization tools, such as bar graphs, tables, filters and search functionalities, were created and integrated into a web platform. When put together, these components could turn the platform into a key component for the administration of a research organization.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010018
Authors: Guangwei Hu Shaoxiong Brian Xu
Many of us may remember Hester Prynne, the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, who was stigmatized for conceiving a daughter out of wedlock [...]
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010017
Authors: Iva Melinščak Zlodi
(1) Background: Open access to scholarly works is globally recognized as a goal to be achieved as soon as possible; however, there is not yet a general understanding of how to achieve open access for books. In considering the most appropriate models of transition, an accurate and detailed insight into national and regional specifics can be of great importance. The aim of this research is to show the current state of scholarly book publishing in Croatia: recognising the key stakeholders, their characteristics, and the current level of open access to scholarly books. (2) Methods: The existing data from two different sources were used: the data about the public subsidies for book publishers by the Ministry of Science and Education and the data on published books from the Croatian Scientific Bibliography CROSBI, both for the period from 2018 to 2021. (3) Results: In the four-year period, 224 Croatian publishers were awarded subsidies to publish 2359 book titles. The majority of the publishers received support for only a small number of titles and relatively low amounts of subsidies. More than half of the titles are published by small private commercial publishers. However, the uptake of digital publishing among commercial publishers is very modest. Open access to scholarly books is almost entirely in the domain of non-commercial publishers. Most open access titles are available on the websites of their publishers. (4) Conclusions: The analysis of the data from these two sources have resulted in an overview of the current state of book publishing in Croatia. Such an overview provides a good basis for designing future measures and creating a national open science plan and can also be a useful contribution to international discussions.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010016
Authors: Tamara Heck Dirk Tunger Marc Rittberger
Ten years after the journal’s first publication, we are taking a closer look at the knowledge flows of the output of the journal Publications. We analyzed the papers, topics, their authors and countries to assess the development of scholarly communication within Publications. Our bibliometric analyses show the research journal’s community, where the knowledge of this community is coming from, where it is going, and how diverse the community is based on its internationality and multidisciplinarity. We compare these findings with the scopes and topical goals the journal specifies. We aim at informing the editors and editorial board about the journal’s development to advance the journal’s role in scholarly communication. The results show that regarding topical diversity and internationality, the journal has remarkably developed. Moreover, the journal tends towards the field of library and information science, but strengthens its multidisciplinary status via its topics and author backgrounds.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010015
Authors: Kim Britt Pijselman Miklós Sükösd
This study examined and mapped the extent to which gender became incorporated into the intersecting research fields of communications, film, and media studies. A total of 8054 academic publications from these disciplines, indexed in the Web of Science between 1975 and 2022 (ndocs = 8054), were extracted to create two types of bibliometric maps: (a) an author co-citation map, and (b) a co-occurrence map of key terms (taken from keyword lists, titles, and abstracts of publications). Our results revealed a pattern of seven distinct clusters of 995 authors (nauthors = 995) in the field. Additional research is needed to analyze the internal structure of these seven clusters, and label them accordingly. The key terms in the same authors’ works, however, show a distinctively different pattern, namely a divided, dichotomous, polarized structure (nterms = 720). Judging from this, we hypothesize that gender is discussed in two main ways: either as a critical concept concerning discourses, representations, and other social and cultural constructs, or as a variable in more formal sociological and psychological research designs. The conceptual framework and results of the present study lay the foundation for further research regarding the diverse academic agendas of the seven author clusters, the split nature of their discursive communities, as well as the key difference between the two patterns.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010014
Authors: Walter R. Schumm Duane W. Crawford Lorenza Lockett Asma bin Ateeq Abdullah AlRashed
A variety of ways to detect problems in small sample social science surveys has been discussed by a variety of authors. Here, several new approaches for detecting anomalies in large samples are presented and their use illustrated through comparisons of seven retracted or corrected journal articles with a control group of eight articles published since 2000 by a similar group of authors on similar topics; all the articles involved samples from several hundred to many thousands of participants. Given the small sample of articles (k = 15) and low statistical power, only 2/12 of individual anomaly comparisons were not statistically significant, but large effect sizes (d > 0.80) were common for most of the anomaly comparisons. A six-item total anomaly scale featured a Cronbach alpha of 0.92, suggesting that the six anomalies were moderately correlated rather than isolated issues. The total anomaly scale differentiated the two groups of articles, with an effect size of 3.55 (p < 0.001); an anomaly severity scale derived from the same six items, with an alpha of 0.94, yielded an effect size of 3.52 (p < 0.001). Deviations from the predicted distribution of first digits in regression coefficients (Benford’s Law) were associated with anomalies and differences between the two groups of articles; however, the results were mixed in terms of statistical significance, though the effect sizes were large (d ≥ 0.90). The methodology was able to detect unusual anomalies in both retracted and non-retracted articles. In conclusion, the results provide several useful approaches that may be helpful for detecting questionable research practices, especially data or results fabrication, in social science, medical, or other scientific research.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010013
Authors: Yawen Li Yushan Zhao
There is a significant difference between the number of male and female Chinese publishing practitioners. To investigate the gender gap among Chinese publishing practitioners, we surveyed 3372 valid questionnaires from 30 April 2020 to 31 December 2020. This research mainly adopts the Chi-square and T-test to analyze the gender gap in publishing practitioners’ career choices, career plans, career developments, etc. The results show that although females occupy nearly 70% of the samples in the data, males perform more competitively in multiple indicators such as salary and career development. There is also a significant gender gap in terms of career plans and career perception. However, our research shows that the gender gap is not obvious in terms of workload and willingness to change jobs. This study provides a factual basis and data support for the current gender situation, and discusses the reasons for the gender gap in the Chinese publishing industry, to provide references for the Chinese publishing industry to build a healthy gender structure.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010012
Authors: Ana Magdalena Figueroa Nzube Chukwuma Lumanyano Ngcayisa
This paper analyzes students, recent graduates, and emerging scholars’ involvement in academic publishing, specifically by studying the impact of their publications in Politikon, the International Association for Political Science Students’ Journal, and their academic careers. The results of a standardized self-administered survey serve to assess authors’ motivations and impact of publish ing with IAPSS Politikon. The data show that publishing with Politikon has helped emerging researchers get more experience concerning the publication process and has improved their research, writing, and analyzing skills. Additionally, an essential part of them said they increased their educational background or obtained a new higher position after publishing with Politikon. In fact, 50 per cent of these scholars said they were promoted after publishing with the journal. Furthermore, Politikon, establishes a platform for Global South scholarship to be at the forefront of Political Science/International Relations debates and knowledge production. This implies the importance of Politikon in the early career of scholars by giving them the right tools to develop professionally and by reaching scholars from all around the world, especially from the Global South in an effort to contribute to global international relations and global governance reform.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010011
Authors: José Álvarez-García Amador Durán-Sánchez Néstor Montalván-Burbano María de la Cruz del Río-Rama
The Spanish Journal of Finance and Accounting (SJFA) is a leading international journal in the field of accounting and finance, which was founded in 1972 with the aim of serving as a platform for dissemination at the service of academics, researchers and accounting and business professionals. The aim of this research is to examine the development of the SJFA journal from its creation to the present day, with the purpose of identifying the journal’s trend through published articles, authors, the most productive institutions and countries, and research topics, as well as citation patterns (most cited papers and typology of citing articles). The methodology used is bibliometric analysis and the data on which the bibliometric indicators are applied are taken from the Scopus database. This study also develops a graphical mapping of the bibliometric material by using the visualisation of similarities software. These graphs represent keyword co-occurrence, citation and co-citation analysis, and Journal Co-citation Analysis. The results show a significant growth of the journal over time, both in terms of the number and diversity of documents published and citations received, which has contributed to the positive evolution in terms of its impact and visibility. It is noteworthy that the journal is becoming more geographically diverse. The main topics covered in the journal are accounting and auditing management, and performance management. Papers dealing with topics related to management accounting, auditing, and management control, together with earnings management, accounting history and accounting regulation, stand out in terms of number of papers. Both topics are mediated by the subject of corporate governance.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010010
Authors: Andrew Kirby
This paper explores ways in which open access bibliometric software can be used to undertake exploratory research and to generate new avenues of inquiry. It takes as its focus VOSviewer, a freely available software package used to construct and display bibliometric relationships between a variety of variables. Beginning with published examples, the paper proceeds to create an original case study using bibliometrics to explore the extent to which the field of remote sensing is contributing to the implementation of sustainable development goals. This example uses Scopus data and VOSviewer to examine and contrast co-occurrence data among publications in six journals, and it demonstrates how such software can be successfully used to undertake preliminary studies and to shape subsequent research which employs more formal approaches.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010009
Authors: Mirela Roncevic
The aim of the study was to identify the traits of 100 European universities across 26 countries that did or did not support one particular library crowdfunding initiative for open access (OA) monographs over the past few years. By relying on the rankings of four sources, including THE, ARWU, QS, and Leiden, the study identifies some of the traits of the universities that have shown strong interest in the model by already taking part in an established library crowdfunding initiative, as well as those that may play a vital role in its sustainability. The study’s results show that the institutions that are likely to participate in library crowdfunding initiatives for OA monographs may be defined as highly ranked and produce research in quantity, quantity, relevance, and timeliness. The study’s key revelation is the high academic standing of the institutions that rarely participate in one crowdfunding initiative. These institutions may not be as “international” in their outlooks, but they stand out for their high-quality and significant research output. As such, they may accelerate the model’s adoption with more consistent participation in library crowdfunding.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010008
Authors: Libor Ansorge Lada Stejskalová
Citing sources is an important part of any research paper. A number of studies in the past have dealt with discrepancies or errors in citations. The citation errors range from several percent to tens of percent. Although in most cases, these are minor formal inconsistencies that do not prevent tracing the source used, there are cases where the citations are incorrect or refer to non-existent articles. In this study, an analysis of the citation of the grey water footprint definition was conducted. The water footprint concept was introduced in 2002 as a methodology for the description of quantity aspects linked to water use in the life cycle. The grey water footprint, which represents the quality aspects of water use, was added to the water footprint concept later on. In this study, almost 300 articles that provide a definition of the grey water footprint and are indexed in the Scopus database were reviewed. More than two-thirds of the articles added the definition by citing the source. Only 3.5% of the citing articles contained an incorrect citation that could be considered a significant error. Although this is a low number, these significant errors have been appearing only in recent years. This suggests the possibility that the percentage of errors could gradually increase as the use of grey water footprint expands in practice. In the first period (up to 2017), only the grey water footprint originators are cited. From 2017 onwards, papers not written by the originators of the grey water footprint idea are also cited.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010007
Authors: C. Sean Burns
Science depends on a communication system, and today, that is largely provided by digital technologies such as the internet and web. Despite the fact that digital technologies provide the infrastructure for this communication system, peer-reviewed journals continue to mimic workflows and processes from the print era. This paper focuses on one artifact from the print era, the journal issue, and describes how this artifact has been detrimental to the communication of science, and therefore, to science itself. To replace the journal issue, this paper argues that scholarly publishing and journals could more fully embrace digital technologies by creating digital libraries to present and organize scholarly output.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010006
Authors: Alice Keller
This article discusses three questions: “How can libraries make an effective contribution to resolving the sustainability challenges we are collectively facing?”; “When are libraries truly sustainable?”; and “How can library management support this shift?”. Looking across libraries and their history over the last few decades, the author discerns different stages of development leading to sustainability. In line with the work of Dyllick and Muff the author describes Sustainability Levels 0.0 to 3.0. The highest level requires a quantum leap and shifts from thinking inside out to thinking outside in. This article addresses the need that there is virtually no academic management literature on the topic of sustainability in libraries. It shows that whilst there are many examples of individual projects or activities, there is a serious lack of methodology at the senior management level.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010005
Authors: Latefa Ali Dardas Malik Sallam Amanda Woodward Nadia Sweis Narjes Sweis Faleh A. Sawair
Background: The evaluation of scholarly articles’ impact has been heavily based on the citation metrics despite the limitations of this approach. Therefore, the quest for meticulous and refined measures to evaluate publications’ impact is warranted. Semantic Scholar (SS) is an artificial intelligence-based database that allegedly identifies influential citations defined as “Highly Influential Citations” (HICs). Citations are considered highly influential according to SS when the cited publication has a significant impact on the citing publication (i.e., the citer uses or extends the cited work). Altmetrics are measures of online attention to research mined from activity in online tools and environments. Aims: The current study aimed to explore whether SS HICs provide an added value when it comes to measuring research impact compared to total citation counts and Altmetric Attention Score (AAS). Methods: Dimensions was used to generate the dataset for this study, which included COVID-19-related scholarly articles published by researchers affiliated to Jordanian institutions. Altmetric Explorer was selected as an altmetrics harvesting tool, while Semantic Scholar was used to extract details related to HICs. A total of 618 publications comprised the final dataset. Results: Only 4.57% (413/9029) of the total SS citations compiled in this study were classified as SS HICs. Based on SS categories of citations intent, 2626 were background citations (29.08%, providing historical context, justification of importance, and/or additional information related to the cited paper), 358 were result citations (3.97%, that extend on findings from research that was previously conducted), and 263 were method citations (2.91%, that use the previously established procedures or experiments to determine whether the results are consistent with findings in related studies). No correlation was found between HICs and AAS (r = 0.094). Manual inspection of the results revealed substantial contradictions, flaws, and inconsistencies in the SS HICs tool. Conclusions: The use of SS HICs in gauging research impact is significantly limited due to the enigmatic method of its calculation and total dependence on artificial intelligence. Along with the already documented drawbacks of total citation counts and AASs, continuous evaluation of the existing tools and the conception of novel approaches are highly recommended to improve the reliability of publication impact assessment.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010004
Authors: Delwen L. Franzen
While open access (OA) is growing, many publications remain behind a paywall. This limits the impact of research and entrenches global inequalities by restricting access to knowledge to those that can afford it. Many journal policies allow researchers to make a version of their publication openly accessible through self-archiving in a repository, sometimes after an embargo period (green OA). Unpaywall and Shareyourpaper are open tools that help users find OA articles and support authors to legally self-archive their papers, respectively. This study leveraged these tools to assess the potential of green OA to increase discoverability in a cohort of clinical trial results publications from German university medical centers. Of the 1897 publications in this cohort, 46% (n = 871/1897, 95% confidence interval (CI) 44% to 48%) were neither openly accessible via a journal or a repository. Of these, 85% (n = 736/871, 95% CI 82% to 87%) had a permission to self-archive the accepted or published version in an institutional repository. Thus, most of the closed-access clinical trial results in this cohort could be made openly accessible in a repository, in line with World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations. In addition to providing further evidence of the unrealized potential of green OA, this study demonstrates the use of open tools to obtain actionable information on self-archiving at scale and empowers efforts to increase science discoverability.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010003
Authors: Publications Editorial Office Publications Editorial Office
High-quality academic publishing is built on rigorous peer review [...]
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010002
Authors: Uchendu Eugene Chigbu Sulaiman Olusegun Atiku Cherley C. Du Plessis
The ability to conduct an explicit and robust literature review by students, scholars or scientists is critical in producing excellent journal articles, academic theses, academic dissertations or working papers. A literature review is an evaluation of existing research works on a specific academic topic, theme or subject to identify gaps and propose future research agenda. Many postgraduate students in higher education institutions lack the necessary skills and understanding to conduct in-depth literature reviews. This may lead to the presentation of incorrect, false or biased inferences in their theses or dissertations. This study offers scientific knowledge on how literature reviews in different fields of study could be conducted to mitigate against biased inferences such as unscientific analogies and baseless recommendations. The literature review is presented as a process that involves several activities including searching, identifying, reading, summarising, compiling, analysing, interpreting and referencing. We hope this article serves as reference material to improve the academic rigour in the literature review chapters of postgraduate students’ theses or dissertations. This article prompts established scholars to explore more innovative ways through which scientific literature reviews can be conducted to identify gaps (empirical, knowledge, theoretical, methodological, application and population gap) and propose a future research agenda.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications11010001
Authors: Carsten Borchert Roberto Cozatl Frederik Eichler Astrid Hoffmann Markus Putnings
Due to resource constraints, most Diamond Open Access journals publish fewer than 25 articles per year, and 75% of journals are not able to provide their content in XML and HTML, primarily providing only PDFs. In order to keep up with larger commercial publishers, a high degree of automation and streamlining of processes is necessary. The Open Source Academic Publishing Suite (OS-APS) project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, aims to achieve this. OS-APS automatically extracts the underlying XML from Word manuscripts and offers optimization and export options in various formats (PDF, HTML, EPUB). The professional corporate design, e.g., of the PDFs, is managed automatically using templates or creating one’s own using a Template Development Kit. OS-APS will also connect to scholarly-led and community-driven publishing platforms such as Open Journal Systems (OJS), Open Monograph Press (OMP), and DSpace: the software will be able to be integrated into a wide range of publication processes, whether at small, low-resource commercial Open Access Publishers, or institutional and Diamond Open Access Publishers.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040052
Authors: Alisa Martek Dorja Mučnjak Dolores Mumelaš
Citizen science has many definitions but it is commonly known as collaboration between professional scientists and the rest of society. Although there have been cases of its implementation in the past, the term became globally known in 2012. Citizen science activities cover a wide range of academic disciplines and vary widely in what is required of the activity participants in terms of knowledge, time commitment, travel, and the use of technology). For the past ten years, libraries have often introduced citizen science in order to encourage greater interaction between science and society as a form of their services or specially organized activities. The types of libraries that often conduct citizen science are academic, public, and research libraries. Each of these library types has a specific user population; academic libraries have students and scientific and teaching staff; public libraries have the local community; and research libraries have researchers. However, libraries usually carry out CS activities separately, and very rarely in cooperation with other types of libraries. Some collaboration challenges are related to its complexity, the uncertainty regarding research cocreation, and participant retention strategies. Such cooperation is one of the aspects explored by the LIBER project CeOS_SE Project—Citizen-Enhanced Open Science in Southeastern Europe Higher Education Knowledge Hubs. The main goal of the project is to raise awareness of mainstream Open Science and CS practices in Southeastern (SE) Europe. As a project partner, the National and University Library in Zagreb, in cooperation with the University Library of Southern Denmark, conducted a survey that included other European countries in addition to SE Europe to examine and collect good practices of civil engagement in university libraries.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040051
Authors: Ákos Lencsés Péter Sütő
National Initiatives for Open Science in Europe (NI4OS-Europe) is a Horizon 2020 project related to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). One of the project objectives is promoting EOSC and open science in 15 Central and East European EU states and EU-associated countries. This paper describes the variety of promoting activities carried out in Hungary as part of the NI4OS-Europe project by the Governmental Agency for IT Development (KIFÜ). Identifying good practices will give us the chance to find the best communication channels and methods to promote open science and to manage expectations of funders, researchers and librarians. The audience diversity of organized NI4OS events was analyzed in this study. The anonymized dataset based on registration forms was filtered by profession. Results suggest that events are generally visited by more librarians than researchers. The only exception is the third forum where the main Hungarian research fund as co-organizer might have attracted researchers’ attention. This suggests that librarians are considered to be in charge of open science issues in general. Usage data of the open science news feed were also studied. The 130 posts between May 2021 and April 2022 and 2500 visitors until the end of June 2022 give us the chance to learn about the characteristics of the most visited posts. We can conclude that the focus of communication is on open and FAIR data management, while other areas receive less attention. The results show that despite more international posts being published, the target group is more interested in local information.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040050
Authors: Lindung Parningotan Manik Zaenal Akbar Aris Yaman Ariani Indrawati
Performing research data governance is critical for preventing the transfer of technologies related to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). While research data governance is common in developed countries, it is still often considered less necessary by research organizations in developing countries such as Indonesia. An investigation of research data governance behavior for Indonesian scientists was conducted in this study. The theories of planned behavior (TPB) and protection motivation (PMT) were used to explain the relationships between different factors influencing scientists’ behavior. The theories have been widely used in the information security domain, and the approach was adopted to build the research model of this study. The obtained data were analyzed using partial least-squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to answer the main research question: “what factors determine the likelihood of practicing research data governance by Indonesian scientists to prevent WMD-applicable technology transfer?” By learning what motivates scientists to adopt research data governance practices, organizations can design relevant strategies that are directed explicitly at stimulating positive responses. The results of this study can also be applied in other developing countries that have similar situations, such as Indonesia.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040049
Authors: Stefano De Paoli Emilie Blotière Paula Forbes Sona Arasteh-Roodsary
Previous research on indicators for measuring the success of Open Science tends to operate at a macro/global level and very rarely addresses the need to measure success at the level of a single project. However, this previous research has the merit of arguing for the definition of indicators that offer an alternative to more traditional bibliometric measures or indicators that focus on mere performance. This paper is the outcome of work conducted for a specific project that aims to build a discovery platform for social sciences and humanities, the platform GoTriple. GoTriple is designed taking inspiration from Open Science principles and has been built through a user-centered approach. The paper details the practice-led work conducted by the GoTriple team for assessing the meaning of the term success for the project and to identify indicators. To this end, this paper proposes the concept of compass indicators and presents how the project team arrived at the definition of this concept. The paper also highlights a distinction between compass indicators, which are modest measures, and key performance indicators, which tend to be tied up with measurable objectives. Compass indicators are defined as indicators that do not aim to achieve a specified numerical target of success but rather explain the journey of a project toward achieving certain desirable outcomes and offer insights to take action. Compass indicators defined for the project embrace areas such as diversity, inclusivity, collaboration, and the general use of the platform. In the final discussion, the paper offers reflections on the potential relevance of the notion of compass indicators and closes with a discussion of the next steps for this work.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040048
Authors: Mikhail Gorbunov-Posadov
A scientific work posted on the internet, which its authors constantly keep up to date, is called an ‘alive’ publication. The genre of alive publishing has many attractive features. However, it requires a certain expansion of the composition of the meta-attributes of the publication: along with the traditional attributes, the date of the appearance of the new, fresh revision is brought to the fore here. Such a date is placed in a prominent place in the text of the publication. Along with this, it becomes highly desirable to include a dynamically (“on the fly”) generated date in a bibliographic reference to an alive publication. The currently used methods of dynamic extraction of this date are considered for a simple online publication, for a publication that has received a DOI through Crossref, and for a publication posted in arXiv. Thanks to adding this meta-attribute, references to alive publications will improve any bibliographic list.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040047
Authors: Eitan Frachtenberg
Performance evaluation is a broad discipline within computer science, combining deep technical work in experimentation, simulation, and modeling. The field’s subjects encompass all aspects of computer systems, including computer architecture, networking, energy efficiency, and machine learning. This wide methodological and topical focus can make it difficult to discern what attracts the community’s attention and how this attention evolves over time. As a first attempt to quantify and qualify this attention, using the proxy metric of paper citations, this study looks at the premier conference in the field, SIGMETRICS. We analyze citation frequencies at monthly intervals over a five-year period and examine possible associations with myriad other factors, such as time since publication, comparable conferences, peer review, self-citations, author demographics, and textual properties of the papers. We found that in several ways, SIGMETRICS is distinctive not only in its scope, but also in its citation phenomena: papers generally exhibit a strongly linear rate of citation growth over time, few if any uncited papers, a large gamut of topics of interest, and a possible disconnect between peer-review outcomes and eventual citations. The two most-cited papers in the dataset also exhibit larger author teams, higher than typical self-citations, and distinctive citation growth curves. These two papers, sharing some coauthors and a research focus, could either signal the area where SIGMETRICS had the most research impact, or they could represent outliers; their omission from the analysis reduces some of the otherwise distinctive observed metrics to nonsignificant levels.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040046
Authors: Inga Patarčić Jadranka Stojanovski
Journal policies continuously evolve to enable knowledge sharing and support reproducible science. However, that change happens within a certain framework. Eight modular standards with three levels of increasing stringency make Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) guidelines which can be used to evaluate to what extent and with which stringency journals promote open science. Guidelines define standards for data citation, transparency of data, material, code and design and analysis, replication, plan and study pre-registration, and two effective interventions: “Registered reports” and “Open science badges”, and levels of adoption summed up across standards define journal’s TOP Factor. In this paper, we analysed the status of adoption of TOP guidelines across two thousand journals reported in the TOP Factor metrics. We show that the majority of the journals’ policies align with at least one of the TOP’s standards, most likely “Data citation” (70%) followed by “Data transparency” (19%). Two-thirds of adoptions of TOP standard are of the stringency Level 1 (less stringent), whereas only 9% is of the stringency Level 3. Adoption of TOP standards differs across science disciplines and multidisciplinary journals (N = 1505) and journals from social sciences (N = 1077) show the greatest number of adoptions. Improvement of the measures that journals take to implement open science practices could be done: (1) discipline-specific, (2) journals that have not yet adopted TOP guidelines could do so, (3) the stringency of adoptions could be increased.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040045
Authors: Parminder Bakshi-Hamm Andreas Hamm
Scholarly publications are among the most tangible forms of knowledge production. Therefore, it is important to analyse them, amongst other features, for gender or country differences and the incumbent inequalities. While there are many quantitative studies of publication activities and success in terms of publication numbers and citation counts, a more content-related understanding of differences in the choice of research topics is rare. The present paper suggests an innovative method of using term communities in co-occurrence networks for detecting and evaluating the gender- and country-specific distribution of topics in research publications. The method is demonstrated with a pilot study based on approximately a quarter million of publication abstracts in seven diverse research areas. In this example, the method validly reconstructs all obvious topic preferences, for instance, country-dependent language-related preferences. It also produces new insight into country-specific research focuses. It emerges that in all seven subject areas studied, topic preferences are significantly different depending on whether all authors are women, all authors are men, or there are female and male co-authors, with a tendency of male authors towards theoretical core topics, of female authors towards peripheral applied topics, and of mixed-author teams towards modern interdisciplinary topics.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040044
Authors: Guy Assaker Wassim Shahin
This paper examines how journal-, article-, and author-related factors influence citation counts in the business field using 236 journal articles collected from an AACSB medium research output business school in the Middle East between 2017 and 2021. Results from association tests demonstrated that journal rank and format, the subfield of the article, and author prestige are significantly related to the number of citations. Results from CHAID further demonstrated the presence of an interaction/joint effect among variables; in particular: (1) articles published in Q1 WoS journals that are also authored/co-authored by prestige authors resulted in the highest number of citations; (2) articles published in Q2–Q3 WoS journals that also belonged to the business and management domain resulted in an average number of citations, and (3) articles published in Q4 or unranked journals in WoS also ranked Q3–Q4 or unranked in Scimago resulted in the lowest number of citations. These results provide theoretical implications and practical recommendations for faculty and business schools interested in enhancing their scholarly impact and rankings.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040043
Authors: Danijela Pongrac Mihaela Banek Zorica Roman Domović
This article addresses Croatian scholars’ information behavior and how they use technology to acquire information in three areas of their work: teaching, research, and administrative activities. Our study aims to find which communication channels scholars utilize to find and share knowledge. Are they using communication channels targeting a broader audience, i.e., formal–explicit communication, or those targeting a narrower one, i.e., informal–implicit communication? The questionnaire used included four questions regarding scholar activities, with nine possible communication channels, scored on a seven-point Likert scale. Considering many channels for each area of activity, a reduction was made through Principal Component Analysis (PCA), to determine latent components in various channels. In finding information for teaching activities, the main communication channel is informal and implicit, while for research and administrative activities, it is formal and explicit. PCA shows a distinction between social and technical domains of science in terms of how scholars collect material for administrative tasks. A further communication channel is reduced to two factors for all questions, where the first factor has formal–explicit and the second has informal–implicit characteristics. This work is part of a larger study aimed at determining the mechanisms of information diffusion within academic institutions, utilizing the Information space model.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040042
Authors: Milica Ševkušić Eleni Toli Katerina Lenaki Kalliopi Kanavou Electra Sifakaki Biljana Kosanović Ilias Papastamatiou Elli Papadopoulou
The Horizon 2020 project National Initiatives for Open Science in Europe—NI4OS Europe supports the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) by integrating 15 countries in Southeast Europe into the governance structure of this new pan-European research environment. Through a qualitative secondary analysis of the data collected during the project, the paper focuses on the main instrument developed by the project with the aim of enabling the integration of the partner countries in the EOSC—a network of national Open Science Cloud Initiatives (NOSCIs)—and explains how the concept of NOSCI and a wide range of related activities, tools, services, and resources foster research and open scholarly communication. The paper has three main sections: the first identifies challenges to scholarly communication in Southeast Europe, the second describes the methodology used to deal with these challenges revolving around the concept of NOSCI, whereas the third presents a set of indicators to track the change generated by project actions and discusses the impact of this methodology and project outputs in the area of scholarly communication.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040041
Authors: Roberto Carlos Dávila Morán
The objective of this research was to study the perception of academic plagiarism as a dishonest behavior and the factors that characterize it in industrial engineering students at a public university in Lima. This work corresponds to a basic type of study with a quantitative approach, non-experimental design and cross-sectional descriptive level. From the operational field, the study variable was the perception of academic plagiarism, and its dimensions were knowledge, motivations and practices. The population consisted of 2145 students, and intentional non-probabilistic sampling was carried out, resulting in a sample of 155 students in the 8th and 9th cycles of this public university. For data collection, a questionnaire was designed with 35 questions referring to the variable and its dimensions, with each question having five response options according to a Likert-type scale which were answered virtually by the students. The results from the descriptive point of view reflect that 56.1% of the students perceived plagiarism in a negative way and 43.9% perceived it in an irrelevant way. In the inferential field, the results did not show significant statistical differences (p > 0.05). In conclusion, most students believe that academic plagiarism is a behavior that affects their education and is unethical and dishonest.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040040
Authors: Alexander Kuchansky Andrii Biloshchytskyi Yurii Andrashko Svitlana Biloshchytska Adil Faizullin
This study aims to estimate the scientific productivity of collective subjects. The objective is to build a method for evaluating scientific productivity through calculation, including for new collective subjects with a small citation network—the paper proposes the Time-Weighted PageRank method with citation intensity (TWPR-CI). The Citation Network Dataset (ver. 13) has been analyzed to verify the method. The dataset includes more than 5 million scientific publications and 48 million citations. Four classes of collective subjects (more than 27,000 collective subjects in total) were established. For each class, scientific productivity estimates from 2000 to 2021 were calculated using the PageRank, Time-Weighted PageRank, and TWPR-CI methods. It is shown that the advantage of the TWPR-CI method is the higher sensitivity of the scientific productivity estimates for new collective subjects on average during the first ten years of observation. At the same time, the assessment of scientific productivity for other collective subjects according to this method is stable. However, the small citation network of the new collective subjects prevents the adequate assessment of scientific productivity during the first years of its operation. Therefore, the TWPR-CI method can be used to assess the scientific productivity of collective subjects, in particular the productivity of new ones.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040039
Authors: Barbara McGillivray Paola Marongiu Nilo Pedrazzini Marton Ribary Mandy Wigdorowitz Eleonora Zordan
The humanities and social sciences (HSS) have recently witnessed an exponential growth in data-driven research. In response, attention has been afforded to datasets and accompanying data papers as outputs of the research and dissemination ecosystem. In 2015, two data journals dedicated to HSS disciplines appeared in this landscape: Journal of Open Humanities Data (JOHD) and Research Data Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences (RDJ). In this paper, we analyse the state of the art in the landscape of data journals in HSS using JOHD and RDJ as exemplars by measuring performance and the deep impact of data-driven projects, including metrics (citation count; Altmetrics, views, downloads, tweets) of data papers in relation to associated research papers and the reuse of associated datasets. Our findings indicate: that data papers are published following the deposit of datasets in a repository and usually following research articles; that data papers have a positive impact on both the metrics of research papers associated with them and on data reuse; and that Twitter hashtags targeted at specific research campaigns can lead to increases in data papers’ views and downloads. HSS data papers improve the visibility of datasets they describe, support accompanying research articles, and add to transparency and the open research agenda.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040038
Authors: Akira Akabayashi Eisuke Nakazawa Katsumi Mori
A follow-up study was conducted 25 years after the 1997 British Medical Journal report. Articles with at least one Japanese author were defined as ‘Article by Japanese’ and those with no Japanese authors were defined as ‘Article by Non-Japanese’. The number of authors per article for the years 2000, 2010, and 2020 in Circulation, Circulation Research, and the Japanese Circulation Journal was studied. Results are: (1) In all journals and all years covered, ‘Article by Japanese’ had more authors per article than ‘Article by Non-Japanese’. Twenty-five years later, the results were similar. (2) Comparison by year revealed that all journals showed increases with time in the number of authors per article. We have discussed the problem of the Science Council of Japan’s statement, influence on practising physicians and sample providers, and influence on international collaborations. This 25-year follow-up study highlights once again the need for global discussions on the qualifications for authorship in research studies.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040037
Authors: Diana Amirbekova Timur Narbaev Meruyert Kussaiyn
Kazakhstan has implemented numerous policy reforms to improve its research environment since 1991, experiencing both positive changes and critical challenges. In this study, we conduct a comprehensive investigation of the country’s research environment. Our materials include statistical data, science policy reports, bibliometric data from Scopus, and interview responses. Using descriptive statistics and regression analysis, we analyze the country’s publication capacity, key characteristics, and science funding by the government. We critically review significant policy reforms and conduct interviews with subject matter experts. Our findings suggest there has been an increasing number of publications and growth in citations since joining the Bologna process in 2010, and that there is a high positive correlation between the volume of science funding and publication output, development levels across fields of science, and focus from science on commercialization of science. The challenges relate to publishing in international journals, government financing and commercialization, researcher capacity, scientific areas, and international collaboration. Our contributions to scholarly communication and science policy are two-fold. First, we present the relationship between several factors/policies and the research environment. Second, we reveal the main challenges Kazakhstan and its academic community have experienced which can be considered by stakeholders, including the government, academic institutions, researchers, and other developing countries.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040036
Authors: Nicholas Yee Liang Hing Xin Ci Wong Pei Xuan Kuan Mohan Dass Pathmanathan Mohd Aizuddin Abdul Rahman Kalaiarasu M. Peariasamy
Background: The publication rates of abstracts after they were presented at the National Conference for Clinical Research (NCCR), a scientific conference held in Malaysia, was determined to gauge the scientific value of the conference, whilst providing comparative information with other scientific conferences. Methods: All the abstracts that were presented at the NCCR from 2014 to 2016 were analysed. Keywords from the abstract title, along with the first, second, and last author’s name, were searched via PubMed, Google Scholar, and Scopus to determine publication status. Results: A total of 320 abstracts were analysed. Of those, 57 abstracts (17.8%) were published. Almost 70% of published abstracts appeared in open access journals that charge article processing fees. Early publications (≤18 months from the conference date) had higher median journal impact factors compared to later publications. Approximately 42% of the published abstracts had collaborations with the Institute for Clinical Research (ICR) or Clinical Research Centres (CRCs). An increasing number of authors in an abstract and having the first author from a research centre, reduced and increased the odds of publication, respectively. Conclusions: The NCCR publication rate is lower compared to the reported average in other scientific conferences abroad. More encouragement and support to publish should be provided to the presenting authors. Clinicians should also be encouraged to collaborate with research centres such as those from the ICR or CRCs to boost publication likelihoods.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040035
Authors: Zsolt Kohus Márton Demeter Gyula Péter Szigeti László Kun Eszter Lukács Katalin Czakó
Several strategies are used by researchers and research facilities to increase their scientific production and consequent research quality. Bibliometric records show that coauthorship and the number of participating organizations in research publications are steadily increasing; however, the effect of collaboration varies across disciplines, and the corresponding author’s country appears to influence research impact. This finding inspired our research question for this study: How does international cooperation affect scientific impact, and does the affiliation of corresponding authors influence citation impact indicators at the level of individual publications? To this end, we provide a comparative evaluation of research articles published in Q1 journals among Visegrad Group countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) in Medical and Health sciences between 2017 and 2021. The study investigates the relationship between collaboration type (national vs. international) and scientific impact (impact factor of the journal and category normalized citation impact or research papers), as well as the impact of the country of the corresponding author’s affiliation on quantitative quality of individual papers. We show that Q1 research papers in international collaboration have a higher scientific impact than papers published in national partnerships. Moreover, the corresponding authors’ country of affiliation significantly affects scientific impact.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040034
Authors: Fernando Almeida José Morais José Duarte Santos
The projects funded under the European Horizon 2020 program have responded to the challenges facing small enterprises and have provided a framework for different actors (e.g., universities, R&D centers, SMEs) to collaborate and find innovative approaches to address the challenges of digital transformation. This study conducts a bibliometric analysis of the scientific production supported by this project, between 2014 and 2021, evaluating 114 projects, which have associated 2312 scientific production items and 1460 deliverables. The results demonstrate that scientific production is mostly carried out collaboratively with project partners and is mainly published in peer-reviewed journals. The research demonstrates that resources, such as Horizon 2020, provide a useful adjunct to other databases as a basis for bibliometric and related analyses.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10040033
Authors: Robert G. Alexander Stephen L. Macknik Susana Martinez-Conde
When we believe misinformation, we have succumbed to an illusion: our perception or interpretation of the world does not match reality. We often trust misinformation for reasons that are unrelated to an objective, critical interpretation of the available data: Key facts go unnoticed or unreported. Overwhelming information prevents the formulation of alternative explanations. Statements become more believable every time they are repeated. Events are reframed or given “spin” to mislead audiences. In magic shows, illusionists apply similar techniques to convince spectators that false and even seemingly impossible events have happened. Yet, many magicians are “honest liars”, asking audiences to suspend their disbelief only during the performance, for the sole purpose of entertainment. Magic misdirection has been studied in the lab for over a century. Psychological research has sought to understand magic from a scientific perspective and to apply the tools of magic to the understanding of cognitive and perceptual processes. More recently, neuroscientific investigations have also explored the relationship between magic illusions and their underlying brain mechanisms. We propose that the insights gained from such studies can be applied to understanding the prevalence and success of misinformation. Here, we review some of the common factors in how people experience magic during a performance and are subject to misinformation in their daily lives. Considering these factors will be important in reducing misinformation and encouraging critical thinking in society.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10030032
Authors: Tomislav Malvić Željko Andreić Uroš Barudžija Gordan Bedeković Lidia Hrnčević Josip Ivšinović Tomislav Korman Zoran Kovač Krešimir Pavlić Borivoje Pašić
The term “small journal” has been used for a journal published as a single journal or one of a few serials, mostly by an academic publisher. This case study showed the challenges that a journal must override to be indexed in Scopus and WoS, especially if Q1/Q2 are targeted. The number of submissions, and especially of the published papers, are not the most critical variables for an increase of journal citations. The most important is the further activity of researchers included in the paper’s authorship, their future publication rate and continuation of similar research, which implies the citations of previous works belonging to the same authors and/or research groups. The larger the number of papers per issue, the increased probability of such an event, but there is no linear correlation. Moreover, the editorial work, especially during the initial editorial screening of received submissions, makes the consequent reviewer’s work easier, faster, and of higher quality, which certainly increases the quality of publications and their further citation life. The cited half-life vs. cited half-life ratio in small journals would need to be less than one (here 0.25), making the published papers fast cited, with first citations coming early enough that they could fit in a three-year window, and be countable for the calculation of indexing measures like Citescore or the Impact Factor.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10030031
Authors: Luis Corujo
The perceived need to improve the infrastructure supporting the re-use of scholarly data since the second decade of the 21st century led to the design of a concise number of principles and metrics, named FAIR Data Principles. This paper, part of an extended study, intends to identify the main authors, entities, and scientific journals linked to research conducted within the FAIR Data Principles. The research was developed by means of a qualitative approach, using documentary research and a constant comparison method for codification and categorization of the sampled data. The sample studied showed that most authors were located in the Netherlands, with Europe accounting for more than 70% of the number of authors considered. Most of these are researchers and work in higher education institutions. These entities can be found in most of the territorial-administrative areas under consideration, with the USA being the country with more entities and Europe being the world region where they are more numerous. The journal with more texts in the used sample was Insights, with 2020 being the year when more texts were published. Two of the most prominent authors present in the sample texts were located in the Netherlands, while the other two were in France and Australia.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10030030
Authors: Pınar E. Dönmez
This article aims to engage critically with the scholarly narratives and the emerging literature on the gender impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in academia. It outlines the key contours and themes in these scholarly discourses and conceptions, acknowledging their richness, depth and strengths especially given the short timespan within which they have developed since 2020. The article then suggests broadening and historicising the critique advanced by the literature further. In doing so, the hierarchies and vulnerabilities exposed in the academic domain by the pandemic are positioned within a holistic understanding of crisis-ridden characteristics of social relations under capitalism.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10030029
Authors: Nicole Shu Ling Yeo-Teh Bor Luen Tang
The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating to all human endeavors, and scientific research has not been spared. We queried how the retraction of publications might have been affected during the pandemic years 2020–2021. Searches performed with Retraction Watch Database (RWD) revealed that the total number of retractions (as proxied by retraction-related notices) rose steadily from 2013 into the pandemic years 2020–2021. Interestingly, while retractions in the physical and social sciences tapered during 2020–2021, those of the basic life sciences and health sciences showed robust increases in 2020, with the former maintaining a steep rise in 2021. This rise in retractions belied a tapering of total relevant publications in the same year and is confirmed with a complementary search strategy in Scopus. The retraction rate in the medical sciences, particularly those relating to infectious disease, is clearly affected by the anomalous high retraction rate of COVID-19-related papers. However, the sustained increase in the retraction rate of the basic life sciences papers, could be due, at least partly, to retraction spikes in several journals. The rise in retractions in the life and medical sciences could be attributed to heightened post-publication peer review of papers in online platforms such as PubPeer, where numerous problematic papers have been revealed.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10030028
Authors: Wanida Mala Polrat Wilairatana Apichai Wattanapisit Kwuntida Uthaisar Kotepui Manas Kotepui
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been reported to affect malaria intervention strategies, the suspension of malaria elimination programs, and the publication of malaria research. We compared differences in authorship, affiliations, countries, funding sources, article types, keywords, languages, and citations between studies published before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The searches were performed online using the Scopus database on 8 April 2022. The searches were limited to two periods: before the COVID-19 pandemic (2018–2019) and during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021). The information of authorship, affiliations, countries, funding sources, article types, keywords, languages, and citations between studies published before and during the COVID-19 pandemic were compared using frequency and percentage. The relationships between the most productive authors, countries, affiliations, journals, and frequently used keywords were visualized using the VOSviewer (version 1.6.18) software. A total of 2965 articles were identified in two periods and, among those, 1291 relevant studies were included. There was no difference in malaria publications before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (679 articles, 52.6% vs. 612 articles, 47.4%). Compared between the two periods, the preliminary trend of malaria publications in terms of authorship, affiliations, countries, funding sources, article types, keywords, languages, and citations were different. In conclusion, the current study showed the preliminary trends in malaria publications before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of this study would encourage researchers to perform a scoping review or systematic review to better understand the direction of malaria publications during the COVID-19 pandemic.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10030027
Authors: Eisuke Nakazawa Shoichi Maeda Makoto Udagawa Akira Akabayashi
Retrospective observational studies using medical records require researchers to guarantee the right to opt out of the study. However, is it also necessary to confirm whether the medical professionals who created those medical records permit their use as well? In this article, we consider possible options based on a fictitious scenario. Based on our deliberations, we recommend that the information be disclosed on the hospital’s homepage or in leaflets (principal investigator: hospital director), and, similar to patients, attending physicians should be given the opportunity to opt out. We also recommend that an application be submitted to the hospital’s research ethics committee. In this paper, we address the public interest aspect of the use of patient information as a primary item for ethical scrutiny. In addition to research ethics, this particular point underscores the importance of public health ethics, particularly as they pertain to the conflict between individual freedom and public interest.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10030026
Authors: Gustavo Vaccaro Pablo Sánchez-Núñez Patricia Witt-Rodríguez
Innovations in dental sciences are potentially disruptive; however, the language barrier in the case of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) limits access to scientific studies. There is a necessity to measure the development of dental research across the LAC region, where economic power and postgraduate education access vary significantly. This article aims to analyze documents, citations, and journals and compare the SJR, H-Index, citation rates, and Co-occurrence Networks (Keywords) between dental journals published in LAC and the rest of the world, according to the report of Scimago Journal and Country Rank, between the years 1996 and 2020. Results show that Brazil leads dental research in the LAC, scoring the highest number of published documents, citations, and SJR metrics. The mean H-index and SJR of LAC dentistry journals are significantly lower than those of other regions (p < 0.03); however, there are no significant differences in the mean total citations in the last 3 years between LAC and other regions (p > 0.15). This suggests that the articles published in dentistry journals from LAC are being cited in similar proportions to the journals of other regions, but a large portion of these citations came from publications with low scientific impact.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10030025
Authors: Elizabeth Troncoso Francisco Ganga-Contreras Margarita Briceño
Missing Acknowledgments [...]
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10030024
Authors: Bjørn Hofmann
Open Science (OS) is envisioned to have a wide range of benefits including being more transparent, shared, accessible, and collaboratively developed than traditional science. Despite great enthusiasm, there are also several challenges with OS. In order to ensure that OS obtains its benefits, these challenges need to be addressed. Accordingly, the objective of this study is to provide an overview of one type of challenge, i.e., epistemological challenges with OS knowledge production, and their ethical implications. Based on a literature review, it (a) reveals factors undermining the envisioned benefits of OS, (b) identifies negative effects on knowledge production, and (c) exposes epistemological challenges with the various phases of the OS process. The main epistemic challenges are related to governance, framing, looping effects, proper data procurement, validation, replication, bias, and polarization. The ethical implications are injustice, reduced benefit (efficiency), increased harm (as a consequence of poor-quality science), deception and manipulation (reduced autonomy), and lack of trustworthiness. Accordingly, to obtain the envisioned benefits of OS, we need to address these epistemological challenges and their ethical implications.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10030023
Authors: Eun Sil Kim Eungi Kim
The purpose of this study was to compare Asian law journals published in Asia with those published in Western countries to determine the characteristics of the journals in relation to the geographic region in which they are published. In this study, Western countries refer to the Anglo-Saxon English-speaking countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Using the Scimago Journal and Country Rank (SJR), 12 Asian law journals published in Asia and 8 Asian law journals published in Western countries were analyzed for performance, authorship, and topical research areas. Human rights issues affecting Asian countries were more prevalent in journals published in Western countries. In terms of journal performance, Asian law journals published in Western countries had a higher h-index, SJR, and citation rate than those published in Asia. Journals published in Western countries are published by reputable commercial publishers or university presses, and journals published in Western countries have longer coverage years. These reasons likely contributed to better visibility, which resulted in better performance.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10030022
Authors: Katie Wilson Chun-Kai (Karl) Huang Lucy Montgomery Cameron Neylon Rebecca N. Handcock Alkim Ozaygen Aniek Roelofs
In this article, we ask whether dominant narratives of gender and performance within academic institutions are masking stories that may be both more complex and potentially more hopeful than those which are often told using publication-related data. Influenced by world university rankings, institutions emphasise so-called ‘excellent’ research practices: publish in ‘high impact’, elite subscription journals indexed by the commercial bibliographic databases that inform the various ranking systems. In particular, we ask whether data relating to institutional demographics and open access publications could support a different story about the roles that women are playing as pioneers and practitioners of open scholarship. We review gender bias in scholarly publications and discuss examples of open access research publications that highlight a positive advantage for women. Using analysis of workforce demographics and open research data from our Open Knowledge Initiative project, we explore relationships and correlations between academic gender and open access research output from universities in Australia and the United Kingdom. This opens a conversation about different possibilities and models for exploring research output by gender and changing the dominant narrative of deficit in academic publishing.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10030021
Authors: Andreas Nishikawa-Pacher
A well-formulated research question should incorporate the components of a ‘problem’, an ‘intervention’, a ‘control’, and an ‘outcome’—at least according to the PICO mnemonic. The utility of this format, however, has been said to be limited to clinical studies that pose ‘which’ questions demanding correlational study designs. In contrast, its suitability for descriptive approaches outside of clinical investigations has been doubted. This paper disagrees with the alleged limitations of PICO. Instead, it argues that the scheme can be used universally for every scientific endeavour in any discipline with all study designs. This argument draws from four abstract components common to every research, namely, a research object, a theory/method, a (null) hypothesis, and the goal of knowledge generation. Various examples of how highly heterogenous studies from different disciplines can be grounded in the single scheme of PICO are offered. The finding implies that PICO is indeed a universal technique that can be used for teaching academic writing in any discipline, beyond clinical settings, regardless of a preferred study design.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10020020
Authors: Elizabeth Troncoso Francisco Ganga-Contreras Margarita Briceño
Most state universities in Chile (15 out of 18) have monetary incentive policies for scientific publications, but they are based on criteria that do not necessarily aim to improve institutional performance in all disciplines. This work compares affinities and differences of these policies in three areas: (i) type of publications encouraged, (ii) beneficiaries, and (iii) monetary amounts per type of publication. It was found that the 15 universities encourage publications with WoS indexing, 13 do so for Scopus and SciELO, and 6 are open to other databases. Only seven institutions encourage the production of books and book chapters. As expected, the 15 universities direct the incentives to their academic staff, although with different requirements, six accept non-academic staff, and only one university considers its student body. In general, the highest monetary amounts are received by WoS publications, with differentiation by quartile or impact factor of the journal. All in all, there is a clear need to design incentive policies in universities that are more homogeneous and take into account the “quality” and “impact” of the research they publish based on different metrics that tend to provide robust analyses in the different areas of knowledge.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10020019
Authors: Matthew G. Davey Martin S. Davey Aoife J. Lowery Michael J. Kerin
Objective: To perform a systematic review and bibliometric analysis of systematic reviews and meta-analyses published in the Annals of Surgery during a 10-year eligibility period and determine the unambiguity of concluding statements of these reviews published in the journal. Background: Systematic reviews and meta-analyses integrate clinically pertinent results from several studies to replicate large-volume, ‘real world’ scenarios. While the assimilation of results from multiple high-quality trials are at the summit of the evidence-base, the increasing prevalence of reviews using low-to-moderate levels of evidence (LOE) limit the ability to make evidence-based conclusions. In surgery, increasing LOE are typically associated with publication in the highest impact surgical journals (e.g., Annals of Surgery). Methods: A systematic review was performed as per PRISMA guidelines. An electronic search of the Annals of Surgery for articles published between 2011 and 2020 was conducted. Descriptive statistics were used. Results: In total, 186 systematic reviews (with or without meta-analyses) were published in the Annals of Surgery between 2011 and 2020 (131 systematic reviews with meta-analyses (70.4%) and 55 without meta-analyses (29.6%)). Study data were from 22,656,192 subjects. In total, 94 studies were from European research institutes (50.5%) and 58 were from North American institutes (31.2%). Overall, 75.3% of studies provided conclusive statements (140/186). Year of publication (P = 0.969), country of publication (P = 0.971), region of publication (P = 0.416), LOE (P = 0.342), surgery performed (P = 0.736), and two-year impact factor (IF) (P = 0.251) failed to correlate with conclusive statements. Of note, 80.9% (106/131) of meta-analyses and 61.8% of systematic reviews (34/55) provided conclusive statements (P = 0.009, †). Conclusions: Over 75% of systematic reviews published in the Annals of Surgery culminated in conclusive statements. Interestingly, meta-analyses were more likely to provide conclusive statements than systematic reviews, while LOE and IF failed to do so.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10020018
Authors: Catalin Toma Liliana Padureanu Bogdan Toma
Background. Retraction of problematic scientific articles after publication is one of the mechanisms for correcting the literature available to publishers. The market volume and the busi-ness model justify publishers’ ethical involvement in the post-publication quality control (PPQC) of human-health-related articles. The limited information about this subject led us to analyze Pub-Med-retracted articles and the main retraction reasons grouped by publisher. We propose a score to appraise publisher’s PPQC results. The dataset used for this article consists of 4844 Pub-Med-retracted papers published between 1.01.2009 and 31.12.2020. Methods. An SDTP score was constructed from the dataset. The calculation formula includes several parameters: speed (article exposure time (ET)), detection rate (percentage of articles whose retraction is initiated by the edi-tor/publisher/institution without the authors’ participation), transparency (percentage of retracted articles available online and the clarity of the retraction notes), and precision (mention of authors’ responsibility and percentage of retractions for reasons other than editorial errors). Results. The 4844 retracted articles were published in 1767 journals by 366 publishers, the average number of retracted articles/journal being 2.74. Forty-five publishers have more than 10 retracted articles, holding 88% of all papers and 79% of journals. Combining our data with data from another study shows that less than 7% of PubMed dataset journals retracted at least one article. Only 10.5% of the retraction notes included the individual responsibility of the authors. Nine of the top 11 publishers had the largest number of retracted articles in 2020. Retraction-reason analysis shows considerable differences between publishers concerning the articles’ ET: median values between 9 and 43 months (mistakes), 9 and 73 months (images), and 10 and 42 months (plagiarism and overlap). The SDTP score shows, from 2018 to 2020, an improvement in PPQC of four publishers in the top 11 and a decrease in the gap between 1st and 11th place. The group of the other 355 publishers also has a positive evolution of the SDTP score. Conclusions. Publishers have to get involved actively and measurably in the post-publication evaluation of scientific products. The introduction of reporting standards for retraction notes and replicable indicators for quantifying publishing QC can help increase the overall quality of scientific literature.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10020017
Authors: Otmane Azeroual Tibor Koltay
Recommendation (recommender) systems have played an increasingly important role in both research and industry in recent years. In the area of publication data, for example, there is a strong need to help people find the right research information through recommendations and scientific reports. The difference between search engines and recommendation systems is that search engines help us find something we already know, while recommendation systems are more likely to help us find new items. An essential function of recommendation systems is to support users in their decision making. Recommendation systems are information systems that can be categorized into decision support systems, as long as they are used for decision making and are intended to support people instead of replacing them. This paper deals with recommendation systems for research information, especially publication data. We discuss and analyze the challenges and peculiarities of implementing recommender systems for the scientific exchange of research information. For this purpose, data mining techniques are examined and a concept for a recommendation system for research information is developed. Our aim is to investigate to what extent a recommendation system based on a collaborative filtering approach with cookies is possible. The data source is publication data extracted from cookies in the Web of Science database. The results of our investigation show that a collaborative filtering process is suitable for publication data and that recommendations can be generated with user information. In addition, we have seen that collaborative filtering is an important element that can solve a practical problem by sifting through large amounts of dynamically generated information to provide users with personalized content and services.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10020016
Authors: Sorana-Alexandra Constantinescu Maria-Henriete Pozsar
Recent developments in workplace dynamics have made us even more aware of the importance of gender representation in all work-related decisions. Working from home during the pandemic, a decision that was generally the norm for European universities, forced us to rethink what are the main priorities when addressing the different needs of academic workers. The present paper tackles this overall issue from the perspective of gender representation, looking at the gender composition of the leadership structures of universities and their policy responses to employee needs. All the state-accredited universities in the following countries were included in the analysis: Romania, Denmark, Hungary and UK. These countries were chosen for the diversity in the state of their gender politics and in their overall quality of higher education. Primary results show not only that gender equality within academic leadership lags behind, but also that this lag may be associated with a poorer policy response to challenges typically faced by women during the COVID-19 pandemic.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10020015
Authors: Pedro Jerónimo Marta Sanchez Esparza
Fake news and disinformation are not a new phenomenon. However, in recent years, they have acquired great prominence on the public agenda, conditioning electoral results and generating episodes of political destabilization. Academic interest runs in parallel with the consideration of disinformation as a growing priority for governments and international organizations, due to its geostrategic relevance and its importance for national sovereignty and security. The interference of countries such as Russia or China in other nations’ electoral processes, using new tools and methods to manipulate public opinion and proliferate cyberattacks have led to the creation of agencies or regulations aimed at curbing disinformation in some states. The UN, the EU and other countries’ governments have tried to develop strategies to respond to this growing threat. The pandemic has accelerated the decline of local media, which leaves communities in a state of serious vulnerability. Reliable resources and sources around local information are scarce assets, information is increasingly consumed through social media, and in them disinformation easily proliferates. With this proposal, we intend to start a discussion around disinformation at a local level, something that has been absent in disinformation studies.
]]>Publications doi: 10.3390/publications10020014
Authors: Pilar Mur-Dueñas Rosa Lorés
The communication of science goes hand in hand with technological development and, in general, with the need to apply scientific advancements to the improvement of human wellbeing [...]
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