Data Journal Research Articles

Episciences overlay journals

Watch VIDEO. Episciences is a publishing platform for diamond open access overlay journals. The ambition is to provide scientific communities with the technical means to produce high-quality, cost-effective journals in line with FAIR principles. The process is based on open repositories (arXiv; Zenodo; HAL). All the published content of a journal is hosted on repositories. Episciences is therefore set up as a service layer for repositories, using them as input and output for open access publication. The platform was launched in 2013 as a peer review service for preprints hosted in open archives. Over the years, the list of services offered has grown and adapted to new trends in scientific publications. For example, peer review reports are now a new type of content that can be hosted in repositories, along with datasets and software code for publications. Support for these new objects in Episciences increases transparency and reproducibility of science. Support for datasets and software code also means that both data journals and software journals can be easily created on top of repositories. The platform has implemented new protocols and workflows promoted by the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) Next Generation Working Group, such as COAR Notify and SignPosting. It has enabled us to build innovative new services for researchers on top of the HAL repository. We have also connected Episciences to other open science services such as OpenAIRE Graph, OpenCitations and Scholexplorer. This has allowed us to add new services at the same time for journals and the HAL repository. The presentation will explain how Episciences and overlay journals in general can be a bridge between publications, open repositories, data and software repositories - and more broadly with open science infrastructures.

How (not to) Run an AI Project in Investigative Journalism

ABSTRACT Data journalists are increasingly reliant on automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to process and analyse massive datasets. AI can contribute to journalism by creating visualizations, verifying accuracy of information, analysing historical data, monitoring social media, finding patterns and outliers, generating text and much more. However, the integration of AI into the newsroom comes with its own challenges. In this article, we take a practice-based approach to develop a deeper understanding of how to overcome such challenges. Our teams of data scientists, AI experts and journalists took on four projects incorporating data science and machine learning into investigative journalism. From those experiences, we found that access to data at scale, data quality and reworking the concept of “newsworthy” as a machine learning question were the most significant obstacles to deploying AI in the newsroom. We recommend closer collaborations between team members of different disciplines to create a truly trans-disciplinary approach, as well as some practical considerations for choosing projects to facilitate successful AI-assisted investigations.

The digital turn from a newsroom perspective – How German journalists from different generations reflect on the digitalization of journalism

In times of crisis, journalism’s own history needs to be reflected upon, both from within and from outside the newsroom. This paper attempts both. From a scientific perspective, we examined the process of the digitalization of journalism and then asked journalists from different generations to reflect on this process. Based on data gathered from these semi-structured interviews with German journalists, our paper presents their evaluation on the evolution from analog to digital journalism—from retired male reporters who wrote most of their articles on typewriters to young female data journalists. The interviews with journalists—including local newspaper reporters, public broadcasting services and news magazines’ editors, freelancers and former German Democratic Republic (GDR) journalists—are part of a larger funded research project on German journalism. Their analysis reveals a common problematization of the growing pace of news production and the hybridization of media formats. The qualitative data confirm data from quantitative surveys on journalism and can help international journalism research to get an in-depth understanding on how journalists perceive the changes over the last decades in their trade.

Flash Point of Gel-Polymer Electrolytes: Effect of the Molecular Interaction between Nitrile (HNBR) and Carbonyl (PC)

Gel-polymer electrolytes are receiving increasing attention as they compromise between a good ionic conductivity (10-3S/cm) [1, 2] and good safety features. The solvent trapped into the polymeric matrix increases the ionic conductivity while the polymeric matrix enhances safety due to its mechanical strength repressing dendrite growth [3, 4]. Gel polymer electrolytes are almost universally presumed to be less flammable than current commercialize battery (organic liquid electrolyte) [5, 6]. However, there is no universal test to compare the flammability of a liquid and the flammability of a gel.Our work focuses on the flash point measurement of gel-polymer electrolytes. The flash point temperature is a standardized test and is one of the top experiments to measure flammability [7]. The Flash point temperature is well studied for liquid electrolytes [7, 8] but had never been conducted for gel-polymers. We developed a method to analyze the flash point of gel-polymer electrolytes by pairing the closed-cup flash point tester with a thermal imaging camera. This new apparatus was used it to analyze a promising system: HNBR with different grade of nitrile doped with PC. The goal is to find the relation between the flash point and the nitrile contains in the polymeric matrices.Our research sheds light on the effect of molecular interactions between the nitrile of HNBR and the carbonyl of PC on the flammability of the overall gel-polymer electrolyte with FT-IR. The study has also been conducted adding a lithium salt (LiTFSI) to be representative of real battery application. Agrawal, R.C. and G.P. Pandey, Solid polymer electrolytes: materials designing and all-solid-state battery applications: an overview. J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys., 2008. 41(22): p. 223001-223019.Cheng, X., et al., Gel Polymer Electrolytes for Electrochemical Energy Storage. Advanced Energy Materials, 2018. 8(7).Hassouna, J. and B. Scrosati, Review—Advances in Anode and Electrolyte Materials for the Progress of Lithium-Ion and beyond Lithium-Ion Batteries. Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 2015. 162 p. A2582-A2588.Ren, W., et al., Advanced gel polymer electrolytes for safe and durable lithium metal batteries: Challenges, strategies, and perspectives. Energy Storage Materials, 2021. 34: p. 515-535.Castillo, J., et al., Safe, Flexible, and High-Performing Gel-Polymer Electrolyte for Rechargeable Lithium Metal Batteries. Chemistry of Materials, 2021. 33(22): p. 8812-8821.Li, Q., et al., Progress in electrolytes for rechargeable Li-based batteries and beyond. Green Energy & Environment, 2016. 1(1): p. 18-42.Liu, X.S. and Z.Y. Liu, Research Progress on Flash Point Prediction. Journal of Chemical and Engineering Data, 2010. 55(9): p. 2943-2950.Catoire, L., S. Paulmier, and V. Naudet, Experimental determination and estimation of closed cup flash points of mixtures of flammable solvents. Process Safety Progress, 2006. 25(1): p. 33-39.

Data-Driven Journalism Media

Research with the title data-driven journalism this Tempo aims to find out why and how to digitize media used in data journalism on data-driven Journalism Tempo. This research uses qualitative methods and uses new media theory, mediamorphosis theory, and the concept of journalism data to analyze research and achieve these goals. The results of this study show Tempo applies data journalism in its investigations in order to assert differentiation; in line with their vision of media digitization, and in order to maximize the end result of the content. The application of media digitization and data journalism also influences the adjustment of thinking patterns in the ranks of the public editor. The conclusion of this research is that Tempo has a vision for the process of media digitization that they do. The existence of data-driven journalism is in line with Tempo's digitalization vision. This is confirmed by the presence of an application that offers creative space for data-based investigative content. The application can become Tempo's support in attracting a number of millennial generation readers for the sake of supporting the sustainability of the media.

At the Intersection of Mobile Thematic Cartography and Data Journalism

At the Intersection of Mobile Thematic Cartography and Data Journalism

User experience with smartphone based global-scale thematic maps in data journalism

User experience with smartphone based global-scale thematic maps in data journalism

Multimedia Planning Strategies as a Tool for International Journalism and Alternative Media Studies

News development is currently affected by digitalization. Therefore, media scholars using digital means to cover the news must develop the so-called “multimedia mindset” among professional journalists and media students. It is not enough to teach the technology—the scholars have to embrace new journalism tools to incorporate them with the story planning activities. This article aims to look into how the aforementioned planning activities are used in the curriculum for Russian media students and professionals in the field of international journalism. The paper is qualitative and descriptive based on secondary data reported in hybrid written media. Also, this research uses a case study dealing with a proposed new program “International News Production” a track within the Contemporary Journalism Master program including alternative media at the High School of Economics Media Institute in Moscow. The findings of this study shed light on the skills needed in new alternative media. Students undergoing the proposed new program in alternative and international media enhance their professional skills and qualifications while experiencing Russian culture. Graduates from the program shall have ample opportunities to pursue careers in various areas of the media industry, including visual journalism, data journalism, storytelling, production, and newsroom management at various international newsrooms. Teaching new alternative media methods can be easily projected to the work with practicing journalists in news channels and information agencies.

Identification of herbarium specimen sheet components from high-resolution images using deep learning.

Advanced computer vision techniques hold the potential to mobilise vast quantities of biodiversity data by facilitating the rapid extraction of text- and trait-based data from herbarium specimen digital images, and to increase the efficiency and accuracy of downstream data capture during digitisation. This investigation developed an object detection model using YOLOv5 and digitised collection images from the University of Melbourne Herbarium (MELU). The MELU-trained 'sheet-component' model-trained on 3371 annotated images, validated on 1000 annotated images, run using 'large' model type, at 640 pixels, for 200 epochs-successfully identified most of the 11 component types of the digital specimen images, with an overall model precision measure of 0.983, recall of 0.969 and moving average precision (mAP0.5-0.95) of 0.847. Specifically, 'institutional' and 'annotation' labels were predicted with mAP0.5-0.95 of 0.970 and 0.878 respectively. It was found that annotating at least 2000 images was required to train an adequate model, likely due to the heterogeneity of specimen sheets. The full model was then applied to selected specimens from nine global herbaria (Biodiversity Data Journal, 7, 2019), quantifying its generalisability: for example, the 'institutional label' was identified with mAP0.5-0.95 of between 0.68 and 0.89 across the various herbaria. Further detailed study demonstrated that starting with the MELU-model weights and retraining for as few as 50 epochs on 30 additional annotated images was sufficient to enable the prediction of a previously unseen component. As many herbaria are resource-constrained, the MELU-trained 'sheet-component' model weights are made available and application encouraged.

Стратегии визуальной риторики в сфере журналистики данных (на примере инфографики «РИА Новости» о COVID-19)

Data journalism of RIA News has a unique appeal at the level of visual rhetoric. Using the example of the RIA News infographic about COVID-19, this article examines the strategies of visual rhetoric in responding to public health events and analyzes the significance of visual rhetoric of the infographic from RIA News in public crisis communication. The study showed that RIA Novosti uses various tools, such as the rhetoric of time, spatial rhetoric and interactive rhetoric, to select, analyze, process and visualize data, forming a new system of expressive meanings, which allows data journalism to provide the public with objective and realistic information about crisis.

Show and tell: Audience engagement in reporting on Covid-19 vaccination in data journalism-based media

Data journalism is a new genre in journalism that utilizes data visualization to engage the audience in news reporting. This engagement also provides certainty and minimizes the spread of misinformation regarding the COVID-19 vaccination policy in Indonesia. This study aims to explain how data journalism-based media, which is Katadata.co.id, communicates their news and embodies audience engagement through data visualization. The type of research is content analysis with quantitative and qualitative data collection techniques. In quantitative data collection, 49 news titles were searched, which were the results of keyword discovery in January-March 2021 in the “Data Journalism” rubric of Katadata.co.id. The data were coded according to indicators from a multimodal perspective in the concept of ergodic work, which are static information graphs, non-interactive dynamic data visualizations, and interactive dynamic data visualizations. Furthermore, in the qualitative step, the data was analyzed in-depth to explore how Katadata.co.id communicated news about COVID-19 vaccination with the showing and telling models. As a result, the COVID-19 vaccination news on Katadata.co.id also involved the audience in communicating it. In reporting the news, Katadata.co.id uses narrative techniques, which is the instance of narrators technique to characterize the narrative through the presence of news writers, the sequentiality technique to show the movement from one event to another by sliding the pages, the temporal dimension technique to describe the changes over the time with the help of dynamic elements, and tellability techniques to describe the worth-presenting COVID-19 vaccination news.

Editorial for the Special Issue on Quality Assessment of Data Security

This editorial summarizes the content of the Special Issue on Data Quality and Ethics of the Journal of Data and Information Quality (JDIQ). The issue accepted submissions from June 1 to July 30, 2021.

Desiderata for Intelligent Maps: A Multiperspective Compilation

Interactive digital maps are useful for illustrating and analyzing geographic data and are used for diverse purposes (e.g., wayfinding, data journalism, data analysis, and citizen engagement). This article discusses the requirements of intelligent maps from three perspectives: the literature, a user survey, and a reverse-brainstorming workshop. The ideas brought forth are relevant to researchers and designers of digital maps as they incorporate innovative features and strive for a good user experience.

How Data Papers Present a Unique Contribution To Open Research In The Humanities And Social Sciences

The open research movement and initiatives like the FAIR principles have been critical in establishing the importance of data in research, particularly within the sciences. Alongside the sciences, attention to openly available data in Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) research has gradually grown. This growth is largely attributed to the increased availability of digital collections, the development of new data-intensive methods, an increasingly solid infrastructure, increased pressure from funders, the requirement of data management plans for preservation purposes, and the involvement of research libraries in data curation. In this context, attention to how data is produced, how it is openly and transparently shared, and how it can be reused has generated great interest, accompanied by an inevitable need for reputable data sharing outlets. One such outlet is the data paper – a peer-reviewed publication that focuses on describing a curated dataset. Data papers can be shared in traditional research journals as one subtype of article publication, or, more recently, in data journals which are dedicated to the publication of data papers. This presentation focuses on the work done by the open access Journal of Open Humanities (JOHD) in promoting the practice of publishing data papers with their accompanying open access datasets. JOHD was established with Ubiquity Press in 2015 to promote awareness, use, and reuse of humanities data. JOHD data papers promote the comprehensive description of how a dataset was assembled, where it may be accessed, and any crucial context including the research questions that framed the data gathering, including limitations to the original methods or scope of sources included. JOHD data papers suggest potential future reuses of data, which recent analytics seem to suggest has helped increase the visibility of datasets, and therefore their research impact (Marongiu et al., forthcoming; McGillivray et al., 2022). In addition, an overview of the three key elements (the “golden triangle”) that assess the impact of open research efforts as represented by different research outputs (datasets, data papers and research papers) will be presented, along with proposed initiatives for linking these. In doing so, we aim to (a) find a programmatic way to identify these links by extracting information from available metadata of datasets and verifying their accuracy, and (b) create a “ground truth” in a manual and/or machine-assisted way which would enable the training of more sophisticated NLP-based methods as a next step. We hope to illustrate the importance of including data papers into the research conversation given that they present a unique contribution to addressing global challenges within the open research arena.

Data Stories of Water: Studying the Communicative Role of Data Visualizations within Long‐form Journalism

AbstractWe present a methodology for making sense of the communicative role of data visualizations in journalistic storytelling and share findings from surveying water‐related data stories. Data stories are a genre of long‐form journalism that integrate text, data visualization, and other visual expressions (e.g., photographs, illustrations, videos) for the purpose of data‐driven storytelling. In the last decade, a considerable number of data stories about a wide range of topics have been published worldwide. Authors use a variety of techniques to make complex phenomena comprehensible and use visualizations as communicative devices that shape the understanding of a given topic. Despite the popularity of data stories, we, as scholars, still lack a methodological framework for assessing the communicative role of visualizations in data stories. To this extent, we draw from data journalism, visual culture, and multimodality studies to propose an interpretative framework in six stages. The process begins with the analysis of content blocks and framing elements and ends with the identification of dimensions, patterns, and relationships between textual and visual elements. The framework is put to the test by analyzing 17 data stories about water‐related issues. Our observations from the survey illustrate how data visualizations can shape the framing of complex topics.

Moderasi Beragama Pada Kurikulum Pendidikan Agama Islam di Madrasah

A radical or liberal practice as a form of understanding that is too self-controlled and does not justify other people's understanding, thus causing violence, hoaxes, SARA issues which mutually undermine other people's understanding. The purpose of this study is to analyze and describe how religious moderation is implemented in the curriculum at the elementary school or madrasah. The type of research used is qualitative research using library research methods. Starting from collect the data journals, books, etc., then analyzing and describing the conclusion. The results of the study are that religious moderation carried out in educational institutions is very effective where educational institutions are places that easily provide religious moderation education for each student. Islamic religious education must also be able to provide learning that is very effective in providing Islamic religious teaching material and adapting it to real life, where PAI has basically provided education about moderation. The role of the government and educational institutions to carry out a curriculum development containing religious moderation needs to be done to provide a middle way or a solution to minimize the existence of violent practices, injustice in the school environment or in the social community.

Data journalism visualization in Ukraine and in Europe: a comparative analysis

The article aims to investigate the peculiarities of data visualization in Ukrainian and European data media, which will help outline trends and development tendencies in data journalism. The research results will form a list of promising methods and forms of data visualization in journalistic practice. The research used the method of content analysis of journalistic materials and comparative analysis of Ukrainian and European data media. The use of such a methodological toolkit is due to the visual component of the analyzed objects and the need to fill a gap in data journalism research as a comparative analysis of the Ukrainian and European practice of visualizing materials in data media has not been conducted before. The study results showed common trends in using visual resources as the most common way of visualizing data. The European edition uses more types of visual objects in the same material. It was also found that the European data media pay more attention to the text, while the Ukrainian one focuses on the visual component. Common trends are observed when analyzing visualization and interactivity functions. Both editions mostly use visualization to reinforce and supplement textual information, and the hypothesis of a fading trend toward interactivity is confirmed.

Assessing the growth of data journalism start-ups as alternative media and their roles in “flawed democracies”

Data journalism start-ups have emerged as viable forces in the news industry in recent years, with their creation of strong data stories that have won global data journalism awards. Such start-ups may be seen to play particularly important roles to safeguard democracy in societies where mainstream media is strictly controlled, taking on the role of alternative media to challenge the status quo. This study examines such start-ups in Asia, a fast-growing region with high Internet penetration rates but declining democracy and press freedom in international indices. This study focuses on India, Thailand and Singapore, listed as “flawed democracies” in the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index, to discover the dimensions and roles of alternative media exhibited by selected data journalism start-ups there, particularly in their organizational structure, form, processes, content, and motive. Results show these organizations as focused not primarily on profits but on creating social change, offering to audiences more critical content and community voices, and playing the roles of interpreter, populist mobilizer, and even adversary. That said, politics and government do not tend to be common topics they cover – rather, systemic faults are revealed through investigations into social issues instead, revealing similarities with broader data journalism practice in the region.

Research on the practice and exploration progress of data journals

With the booming trend of data publishing, data journals have carried out much extensive practice for the exploration of open data sharing. This study focuses on the publishing practice of data journals, which took representative, relatively mature and different disciplinary scopes of data journals as the research objects. The publishing volume and proportion of data papers in data journals are calculated. Based on the author's practical experience in data publishing for several years, this study explores the formulation rules and implementation of data publishing policies. The study results show that data journals generally have well-developed regulations on data use license, data storage and permanent identifier, associated access from paper to data, data review, standardized data citation, but with few practical cases of data update and less attention paid to the problem of data security and data copyright. To facilitate the further development of data journals, we proposed in this study that more operational and reference details of data publishing should be considered in the practice of data publishing in journals.

Molecular mechanisms of neuroprotective effects of thyroid hormones and their metabolites in acute brain ischemia

As endovascular reperfusion advances and multimodal neuroimagimg is implemented, neuroprotection in ischemic stroke progresses to the next level. In the recent years, the focus of neuroprotection research has been gradually shifting towards the research of endogenous substances and their synthetic analogs. According to the available evidence, thyroid hormones (THs) and their metabolites are potentially effective neuroprotectors in brain ischemia.
 Objective. To identify and classify TH neuroprotective effects in acute brain ischemia by analyzing contemporary data.
 We studied and analyzed publications indexed in РubMed, SciElo, ScienceDirect, Scopus, Biomedical Data Journal, and eLibrary.
 The molecular basis of TH effects includes genomic and non-genomic mechanisms aimed at mitochondrial activity regulation, neuro- and angiogenesis, axonal transport, cytoskeleton maintenance, and impact on ion channels as well as activation and expression of specific proteins. TH effects on the central nervous system can be classified into following clusters: influence on neuronal and glial metabolism, apoptosis modulation, neuroplasticity and angiogenesis, impact on hemostasis, and local and systemic immune response.
 Conclusion. THs are multimodal and selective regulators of cellular processes that affect neuroplasticity and neuro-reintegration both in the brain ischemic zone and beyond it. Therefore, a promising research can cover THs and and their metabolites as cerebral cytoprotectors to improve functional outcomes of ischemic strokes.