Abstract
Background: Earth sciences is one of those sensitive field sciences that are closely needed to solve local problems within local physical and social settings. Earth researchers find state-of-the-art of topics in earth sciences by using scientific databases, conduct research on the topics, and write about them. However, the accessibility, readability, and usability of those articles for local communities are major problems in measuring the impact of research, although it may be covered by well-known international scientific databases. Objectives: To ascertain empirically whether there are differences in document distribution, in the proportions of openly accessible documents, and in the geographical coverage of earth sciences topics as revealed through analyses of documents retrieved from scientific databases and to propose new measures for assessing the impact of research in earth sciences based on those differences. Methods: Relevant documents were retrieved using ‘earth sciences’ as a search term in English and other languages from ten databases of scientific publications. The results of these searches were analysed using frequency analysis and a quantitative- descriptive design. Results: (1) The number of articles in English from international databases exceeded the number of articles in native languages from national-level databases. (2) The number of open-access (OA) articles in the national databases was higher than that in other databases. (3) The geographical coverage of earth science papers was uneven between countries when the number of documents retrieved from closed-access commercial databases was compared to that from the other databases. (4) The regulations in Indonesia related to promotion of lecturers assign greater weighting to publications indexed in Scopus and the Web of Science (WoS) and publications in journals with impact factors are assigned a higher weighting. Conclusions: The dominance of scientific articles in English as well as the paucity of OA publications indexed in international databases (compared to those in national or regional databases) may have been due to the greater weighting assigned to such publications. Consequently, the relevance of research reported in those publications to local communities has been questioned. This article suggests some open-science practices to transform the current regulations related to promotion into a more responsible measurement of research performance and impact.
Highlights
Research in earth sciences, as in other fields of science, seeks to solve local community problems related to the earth
Compared to their English-speaking counterparts, earth scientists from underrepresented or non-English-speaking countries carry a heavier burden because they have a dual responsibility: (1) they must publish in peer-reviewed and reputable journals using a high standard of English to meet such conventional academic metrics as citation counts, h-index, journal impact factor, and SCImago Journal Rank—metrics that are endorsed by the national regulations as relevant to measuring the performance of academics for promotion and (2) they must aim at community outreach and engagement using local languages to discharge their responsibility to society
The number of articles published in English (OA and paywalled articles combined) as retrieved from the international databases (Scopus and Web of Science (WoS)) – a total of more than 1 million documents – greatly exceeded the numbers retrieved from the national or regional databases: Korean Citation Index (KCI), Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI), and Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) together yielded only about 25,000 documents in English, indicating that documents in Korean and Russian as well as in other regional languages dominate those three databases (Table 1)
Summary
As in other fields of science, seeks to solve local community problems related to the earth. In Indonesia, many Desa Siaga Bencana (community hazards preparedness) programmes have been developed based on scientific studies using Bahasa Indonesia[1] and disseminated through INA-Rxiv (https://osf.io/preprints/inarxiv/) Compared to their English-speaking counterparts, earth scientists from underrepresented or non-English-speaking countries carry a heavier burden because they have a dual responsibility: (1) they must publish in peer-reviewed and reputable journals using a high standard of English to meet such conventional academic metrics as citation counts, h-index, journal impact factor, and SCImago Journal Rank—metrics that are endorsed by the national regulations as relevant to measuring the performance of academics for promotion and (2) they must aim at community outreach and engagement using local languages to discharge their responsibility to society ( this is seldom their priority given their limited working hours). The accessibility, readability, and usability of those articles for local communities are major problems in measuring the impact of research, it may be covered by well-known international scientific databases
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