Scholarly Communication Practices Research Articles

Open Access, Scholarly Communication, and Open Science in Psychology: An Overview for Researchers

Scholarly communication, Open Access (OA), and open science practices in Psychology are rapidly evolving. However, most published works that focus on scholarly communication issues do not target the specific discipline, and instead take a more “one size fits all” approach. When it comes to scholarly communication, research practices and traditions vary greatly across and within disciplines. This monograph presents a current overview that aims to cover Open Access (OA) and some of the newer open science-related issues that are affecting Psychology. Issues covered include topics around OA of all types, as well as other important scholarly communication-related issues such as the emergence of preprint options, the evolution of new peer review models, citation metrics, persistent identifiers, coauthorship conventions, field-specific OA megajournals, and other “gold” OA psychology journal options, the challenges of interdisciplinarity, and how authors are availing themselves of green and gold OA strategies or using scholarly networking sites such as ResearchGate. Included are discussions of open science strategies in Psychology such as reproducibility, replication, and research data management. This overview will allow psychology researchers to get up to speed on these expansive topics. Further study into researcher behavior in terms of scholarly communication in Psychology would create more understanding of existing culture as well as provide researchers with a more effective roadmap to the current landscape. As no other single work is known to provide a current look at scholarly communication topics that is specifically focused on Psychology, this targeted overview aims to partially fill that niche.

Assessing the Use of Scholarly Communication Platforms in Zambia

Abstract This study examines the use of scholarly communication platforms in Zambia, exploring the perceptions, usage patterns and factors influencing the adoption and utilisation of these platforms among Zambian researchers and academics. Employing a cross-sectional survey design, the study gathered data from a sample of faculty members and researchers at selected universities in Zambia. The survey instrument consisted of three sections, collecting information on demographic background, scholarly communication practices in Zambia and the scholarly communication platforms used by the academic community. The findings reveal insights into the perceptions of scholarly communication services, the challenges faced by Zambian researchers in accessing and utilising scholarly resources and potential strategies to enhance scholarly communication in the country. Additionally, the study identifies the scholarly communication platforms most widely used by the Zambian academic community and the factors influencing their adoption and usage. This research contributes to the limited literature on scholarly communication in Zambia, providing valuable insights for stakeholders involved in promoting and enhancing scholarly communication practices within the country.

Knowledge and experience of Zambian teaching faculties with scholarly communication and dissemination practices

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the knowledge and experience of Zambian teaching faculties with scholarly communication and dissemination practices. Design/methodology/approach The researchers used a survey to quickly obtain information about a large sample of individuals of interest. The study population consisted of faculties from two Zambian public universities with research and publication experience. The researchers used random sampling techniques. A total of 125 valid responses were received from the selected population. Findings The findings show that most respondents agreed that publishing in open-access journals increased visibility and readership, had a more significant impact, facilitated collaboration and interdisciplinary research, was cost-effective and provided accessibility. Google Scholar was the most commonly used platform, followed by ResearchGate and ORCID. Research limitations/implications This study’s limitations focus on only two Zambian public universities. This study’s practical implications include improving the universities’ open-access policies and educating faculties on the benefits of open access. Originality/value This study’s originality lies in exploring the Zambian teaching faculties’ perceptions of open access and academic social networking sites. The results of this study can help universities and researchers in Zambia to understand the importance of scholarly communication and dissemination practices and help them implement effective policies for promoting open-access publishing, institutional repositories and academic social networking sites.

Scholarly communication practices and attitudes of Egyptian junior researchers: An exploratory study

Arab early career researchers (ECRs) are strongly encouraged to actively participate in scholarly communication activities, as it not only enhances their academic standing but also facilitates career advancement and garnering recognition from both the scientific community and the broader public. Nevertheless, the constantly evolving landscape of scholarly communication has imposed significant challenges on researchers. This paper is dedicated to an examination of the scholarly communication practices of early career researchers in Egypt, with the overarching objective of providing insights into the transformations occurring within the scholarly communication framework, particularly within the context of developing nations.In our paper, we employed a quantitative research design to scrutinize the scholarly communication system in Egypt. This endeavor encompassed the distribution of questionnaires to early career researchers hailing from prominent Egyptian universities, resulting in a total of 441 respondents representing various academic institutions across the country.Our analysis revealed that junior scholars predominantly adhere to conventional scholarly methodologies in their research pursuits. This conformity is, in part, attributed to the promotion system in Egypt, which places considerable emphasis on established practices, such as single-author publication, while discouraging the utilization of informal channels for garnering recognition and accolades.The findings of this study furnish us with a more profound comprehension of the prevailing scholarly system in Egypt, which in turn can serve as a foundation for potential system enhancement. It is imperative to acknowledge, however, that this study is not without limitations. The response rate could not be precisely quantified due to the online dissemination of the questionnaires, and the distribution of respondents across diverse scholarly disciplines exhibited significant disparities.

Pedagogical strategy for scholarly communication literacy and avoiding deceptive publishing practices

Informing and supporting researchers’ understanding of the challenges of scholarly communication, particularly how to avoid deceptive publishing practices, remains a challenge for the academic community and its stakeholders. Over the past decade, this community has developed various strategies to assist its members in addressing this issue. However, these measures do not seem to be sufficient, and many researchers, particularly younger and less experienced ones, continue to fall prey to predatory publications. This article presents a series of workshops on scholarly communication literacy as a pedagogical strategy to raise awareness and to prevent novice researchers from falling victim to the challenges of scholarly communication and unethical publishing practices. Most participants perceived these training workshops as an effective educational approach. The results of these educational seminars demonstrate that this type of pedagogical strategy that consists of training, awareness-raising, and prevention approaches is a key factor to informing and warning novice researchers about scholarly communication pitfalls and deceptive publishing practices.

A Bibliometric Analysis of Work Stress Research: Three Decades (1992-2022) Publication Trends

Work stress is an issue that always occurs in many organizations, especially in organizational management systems; thus, it should be well fostered. The responsibilities and obligations of the organization are aimed at reducing the possible problems of work stress and the total deterioration of employee performance by fostering motivation and enthusiasm among employees is very necessary. This study aims to explore work stress-related publishing patterns and rank the most used author keywords in the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases. The eminent software, ScientoPy and VOSviewer, are used to run and execute relevant publication data retrieved from Scopus and WoS. The results showed a positive trend in the growth of work stress literature in both databases since 2008. The top three research areas that dominate this topic are “psychology”, “public, environmental and occupational health”, and “business and economics”. Based on the country analysis, the United States has become an active publisher, followed by United Kingdom and Germany. Importantly, this study emphasised the scholarly communication practices prevalent in work stress research have impressively propagated. The trends will assist researchers in recognising the various fields in identifying the core areas, proactive institutions, and core source titles published in this knowledge for supplementary investigation. Besides, by examining the most popular keywords, the results of this study enable researchers to discover the possibility for future research that may be conducted, particularly concerning the annual growth rates, which have been trending in the last five years.

Unveiling the Trends of Safety Motivation Research in Scopus and Web of Science Databases

Safety motivation is a decisive safety variable in many organisations, particularly in high-risk industries; thus, it should be well fostered. The company’s responsibility and legal obligation are meant to lessen the likelihood of accidents and the amount of workers’ compensation claims, circumlocutorily needful cultivating safety motivation. This study aims to explore safety motivation-related publishing patterns and rank the most used author keywords in the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases. The eminent software, ScientoPy and VOSviewer, are used to run and execute relevant publication data retrieved from Scopus and WoS. The results showed a positive trend in the growth of safety motivation literature in both databases since 2008. The top three research areas that dominate this topic are “engineering”, “public, environmental and occupational health”, and “transportation”. Based on the country analysis, the United States has become an active publisher, followed by China and Australia. Importantly, this study emphasised the scholarly communication practices prevalent in safety motivation research have impressively propagated. The trends will assist researchers in recognising the various fields in identifying the core areas, proactive institutions, and core source titles published in this knowledge for supplementary investigation. Besides, by examining the most popular keywords, the results of this study enable researchers to discover the possibility for future research that may be conducted, particularly concerning the annual growth rates, which have been trending in the last two years.

Outside the library: Early career researchers and use of alternative information sources in pandemic times

AbstractPresents findings from a study into the attitudes and practices of pandemic‐era early career researchers (ECRs) in regard to obtaining access to the formally published scholarly literature, which focused on alternative providers, notably ResearchGate and Sci‐Hub. The study is a part of the Harbingers project that has been exploring the work lives and scholarly communication practices of ECRs in pre‐pandemic times and during the pandemic, and utilizes data from two rounds of interviews with around 170 ECRs from the sciences and social sciences in eight countries. Findings show that alternative providers, as represented by ResearchGate and Sci‐Hub, have become established and appear to be gaining ground. However, there are considerable country‐ and discipline‐associated differences. ECRs' country‐specific level of usage of the alternative providers is partly traceable to the adequacy of library provisions, although there are other factors at play in shaping ECRs' attitudes and practices, most notably convenience and time saving, as well as the fact that these platforms have become embedded in the scholarly dashboard. There is a dearth of evidence of the impact of the pandemic on ECRs' ways of obtaining scholarly papers.

Holocaust Distortion During the Global Pandemic: An Exercise in Anti-Democratic Demagoguery

Far-right demagogues, including Thomas Massie (R-KY), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) have compared COVID related mandates to Nazi-era policies that restricted the movement of Jewish peoples, have repeatedly evoked the image of the concentration camp tattoo, and have referenced the Nazi’s T4 programme that mandated the forced sterilisation of people with disabilities. This rhetorical strategy is a form of Holocaust distortion, the active excusing, minimisation, or misrepresentation of the Holocaust for political purposes. This essay explores how right-wing politicians use Holocaust distortion as a rhetorical strategy during the global pandemic, to the detriment of democratic deliberation. Our analysis focuses on the tactics of Holocaust distortion: hyperbole, comparison, argument by analogy, and the slippery slope fallacy. We suggest that COVID-19 era related Holocaust distortion has grave consequences for democratic life in the United States. We recommend adaptations in our cultural and scholarly communication practices that may help resist the demagogic logics of Holocaust denial.

The Epistemic Cultures of the Digital Humanities and Their Relation to Open Science: Contributions to the Open Humanities Discourse

The epistemic cultures approach exposes the different ways knowledge production channels are built up among the various fields of study. In revealing these differences, the fragmentation of science can be clearly seen. Digital humanities is one such field. It is an inter- and transdisciplinary field, composed of diverse epistemic cultures and marked by distinct knowledge production practices. In the current landscape of scholarly communication, namely the open science paradigm, open practices have been at the forefront of conversation and research. The discourse’s true focus, however, is more along the lines of the epistemic cultures of the hard sciences, meaning that it does not fully consider other domains of knowledge. Thus, through a literature review, this study aims to frame the digital humanities’ epistemic cultures in the discourse of open science. The conclusion is, a conversation needs to be had specifically about the openness of knowledge, also considering other epistemic cultures’ diversity of scholarly communication practices. This would include the humanities. While simultaneously opening up this discourse, it is considered that digital humanities can also contribute to its consolidation.

Assessing Open Access Scholarly Communication Practices of Early and Mid-Career Researchers in Canada

Open access (OA) to research outputs is fundamental to promoting equity of access to scientific information and knowledge. Although there’s a positive paradigm shift towards OA, actual OA publishing practices tend to lag among researchers. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study investigated OA publishing practices of researchers in Canada.

Raising efficiency and effectiveness in scholarly communication

Current concerns about scholarly communication activities highlight its complexity (Baffy et al., 2020). Researchers need support in many areas, such as in disseminating research findings (both publications and research data) openly, in promoting scientific output, or in preparing data management plans (DMPs). Scholarly communication is constantly evolving by introducing new avenues such as Plan S, open peer review, or data citations shaping the academic environment and researchers’ recognition and prestige.Changes in scholarly communication and difficulties caused by COVID-19 had given rise to new dissemination channels, openness in publishing results, and discussion between researchers, publishers, funders, or librarians on modern scholarly communication practices (Cuevas Shaw, 2021).To keep up with these changes in the scholarly communication landscape, the Gdańsk University of Technology (Gdańsk Tech) Library had actively been involved in two projects that raised effectiveness and efficiency in sharing and disseminating research findings. The first project was the Multidisciplinary Open System Transferring Knowledge. The acronym of its name in the Polish language is “MOST Wiedzy”, which means “the bridge of knowledge”, and its primary objective was to introduce openaccess infrastructure to the academic community (Wałek & Lubomski, 2017). The second project – the Bridge of Data – was established to support researchers in managing different layers of research data. All our websites and services are available through the MOST Wiedzy platform. The project was unique in this part of Central and Eastern Europe and included launching of the Open Science Competence Centre as part of the Gdańsk Tech Library.With a strong infrastructure composed of a current research information (CRIS) system, repositories (publications, OA publications, and research data), and scholarly support services we were able to establish a platform for managing and promoting scientific output. This platform develops with shifts in the scholarly communication environment (such as Plan S, evaluation units, and academic ranking), and we handle the challenges of open science and intellectual property rights as they emerge, shaping and guiding our platform’s further development. Working with and for researchers, the Gdańsk Tech Library seeks to tailor its infrastructure to meet new needs. At the same time, our Competence Centre offers customized services to upgrade research, digital, and information skills through webinars, training, interactive knowledge hubs, or professional working groups, and networking to improve the use of available infrastructure (e.g. we teach researchers how to fill in metadata).The aim of our study is to review scholarly communication support provided by the Gdańsk Tech Library. We will first identify the main scholarly communication activities (e.g., creation, publication, dissemination, and discovery of academic research, applying for research funding, writing DMPs, cross-checking requirements of Plan S, assessment & impact metrics) and then map the process against provided support and infrastructure (e.g. institutional repository, research data repository, training, copyright service). In addition, we will invite authors to identify areas that still need support and improvement. Our findings, we hope, will help to understand changes in scholarly communication and the supporting role of a modern library. Building support infrastructure and being part of cultural change toward openness in science may be challenging but is highly rewarding and far-reaching.

Choosing the ‘right’ journal for publication: Perceptions and practices of pandemic‐era early career researchers

AbstractPresents early data from an investigation of the work lives and scholarly communication practices of 177 early career researchers (ECRs) from eight countries. Utilizing mainly coded and textual data from interviews, the paper reports on the findings that pertain to publishing papers in peer reviewed journals. We examine which factors are taken into account when choosing the journal to publish their research in, identifying similarities/differences by country, age, academic status and discipline. Also, explored is whether the pandemic has changed decision‐making. Main findings are that the aim for ECRs is to publish in the ‘best’ journals, variably measured by prestige, impact factor, standards of peer review and indexation. Appropriateness of audience is the only factor unrelated to the quality of the journal that figures highly among the factors that guide ECRs in the process of selecting a journal. The pandemic has made little difference to the majority of ECRs when they decide on a journal for publishing their research. However, there is a greater awareness of the need for a faster turnover rate, brought on by the importance accorded to speedy publication during the pandemic.

Retractions in Scopus: An Engineering Journal Articles Investigation

ABSTRACT This study explores retracted journal articles in the engineering literature indexed in Scopus in order to determine how easy it is for non-expert users to identify retracted publications and interpret the reasons for retractions. The authors also analyzed citations both pre- and post-retraction to compare the methods Scopus uses to alert readers to the retracted status of an article. The results show that the current practice is inconsistent and the methods Scopus uses for indicating retraction status are equally inefficient in preventing the accumulation of post-retraction citations. Engineering librarians can use these results to educate engineering students and researchers on retraction-related topics and scholarly communication practices.

Post or Perish? – Scholarly Communication Practices on Social Media in Times of Deep Mediatization

The rise of the Internet and social media has introduced profound changes to (media-related) practices and communication strategies to accumulate power in the field of science. These are often described as the result of a (deep) mediatization of science with the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating the effects of (deep) mediatization further. The aim of this paper is to identify field-specific social media practices to accumulate capital in the field of science and analyze how they have been changed in the wake of (deep) mediatization processes. The paper does so by using the concept of field-specific mediatization as a theoretical basis. The empirical part of the study builds on 55 qualitative interviews with German-speaking scholars that were conducted in 2016. It compares their description of social media usage and communication strategies to accumulate power to scholarly practices currently conducted under the influence of the pandemic as described in the literature. The results of the analysis show that scholars accumulate capital by networking (social capital), accessing and sharing information and publications (cultural capital) and increasing their visibility (symbolic capital). Due to field-specific processes of mediatization of the field, external communication has become more important and internal communication has gained a more personal quality. Overall, formerly clear-cut boundaries of internal and external target groups as well as personal and professional spheres have become more blurred and pressure connected to visibility enhanced.

Bibliometric Analysis of Safety Behaviour Research

Individuals may be able to deal with their apprehension, but it was revealed that positive emotional states about safe acts are interrelated to how they act. Accordingly, it is necessary to understand how individuals behave to be safe and evolve their behaviour. This study examines publication trends and delves into information on authors’ keywords pertinent to safety behaviour in the Scopus and Web of Science databases. The metadata collected in this study is processed using the ScientoPy and VOSviewer software. The results designated that since 2008, the literature on safety behaviour has risen at a favourable rate in both databases. The top three research areas were acknowledged as (i) Psychology, (ii) Environmental Science and Ecology, and (iii) Public, Environmental, and Occupational Health. The United States contributed the most publications, followed by China and the United Kingdom. Safety behaviour has been investigated extensively and has been found to be knottily linked to the keywords of “COVID-19”, “Social anxiety”, “Assessment”, and “Mental health”. The keywords “COVID-19” and “Patient safety” have been used most frequently by prior studies in the last five years (2017 to 2021). This study highlighted the scholarly communication practices prevalent in safety behaviour research. These trends will aid researchers from various fields in identifying the core areas, core authors, and core source titles that publish this knowledge. Moreover, the result of this study encourages researchers to work together and develop new ways to study safety behaviour by glancing at the most popular keywords.

SKG4EOSC - Scholarly Knowledge Graphs for EOSC: Establishing a backbone of knowledge graphs for FAIR Scholarly Information in EOSC

In the age of advanced information systems powering fast-paced knowledge economies that face global societal challenges, it is no longer adequate to express scholarly information - an essential resource for modern economies - primarily as article narratives in document form. Despite being a well-established tradition in scholarly communication, PDF-based text publishing is hindering scientific progress as it buries scholarly information into non-machine-readable formats. The key objective of SKG4EOSC is to improve science productivity through development and implementation of services for text and data conversion, and production, curation, and re-use of FAIR scholarly information. This will be achieved by (1) establishing the Open Research Knowledge Graph (ORKG, orkg.org), a service operated by the SKG4EOSC coordinator, as a Hub for access to FAIR scholarly information in the EOSC; (2) lifting to EOSC of numerous and heterogeneous domain-specific research infrastructures through the ORKG Hub’s harmonized access facilities; and (3) leverage the Hub to support cross-disciplinary research and policy decisions addressing societal challenges. SKG4EOSC will pilot the devised approaches and technologies in four research domains: biodiversity crisis, precision oncology, circular processes, and human cooperation. With the aim to improve machine-based scholarly information use, SKG4EOSC addresses an important current and future need of researchers. It extends the application of the FAIR data principles to scholarly communication practices, hence a more comprehensive coverage of the entire research lifecycle. Through explicit, machine actionable provenance links between FAIR scholarly information, primary data and contextual entities, it will substantially contribute to reproducibility, validation and trust in science. The resulting advanced machine support will catalyse new discoveries in basic research and solutions in key application areas.

Scaling Small; Or How to Envision New Relationalities for Knowledge Production

Within the field of open access (OA) publishing, community-led publishing projects are experimenting increasingly with new forms of collaboration and organisation. They do so by focusing on setting up horizontal alliances between independent projects within a certain sector (e.g., scholar-led presses), or vertically across sectors with other not-for-profit organisations (e.g., through collaborations with libraries, universities, and funders), in order to create multi-stakeholder ecologies within scholarly publishing. Yet at the same time, imaginaries for future modes of OA knowledge production are still controlled through demands for ‘scalability’ and ‘sustainability’, which are both seen as preconditions for scholarly communication models and practices to succeed and to be efficient. But they are also prerequi­sites to receive funding for publishing projects or infrastructure development. The scalability of open models is perceived as essential to compete in a landscape dominated by a handful of major corporate players.Drawing on our work with the Radical Open Access Collective, the ScholarLed consortium, and the Community-led Open Publishing Infrastructures for Mono­graphs (COPIM) project, this article outlines an alternative organisational prin­ciple for governing community-led publishing projects based on mutual reliance, care, and other forms of commoning. Termed ‘scaling small’, this principle eschews standard approaches to organisational growth that tend to flatten community diversity through economies of scale. Instead, it puts forward the idea that scale can be nurtured through intentional collaborations between community-driven pro­jects that promote a bibliodiverse ecosystem while providing resilience through resource sharing and other kinds of collaboration. Following Anna Tsing’s recom­mendations to keep in mind how reimagining our knowledge practices requires we pay particular attention to articulations between the scalable and the nonscalable (Tsing, 2012), what is needed to enable this is, first and foremost, a rethinking of existing systems and infrastructures and how they currently function – systems that have historically developed and been continuously remade to encourage fur­ther scalability. We further explore the possibilities of scaling small with particular reference to Anna Tsing’s work on the ‘latent commons’ and Massimo De Angelis’ discussion of ‘boundary commoning’, examining how these concepts are on display within the Radical Open Access Collective, ScholarLed and the COPIM project. As we will argue, reimagining the relations within publishing beyond a mere calcula­tive logic, i.e., one that is focused on assessing the sustainability of alternative models, is essential in not-for-profit OA publishing environments, particularly if we want new forms of collaboration to arise and to redefine the future of scholarly publishing in communal settings.

Perceptions regarding academic social networks for scholarly communications

Purpose This study aims to investigate the perceptions of academics regarding the use and usefulness of academic social networks (ASNs) in the scholarly communication practices of faculty members in Kuwaiti Universities. Design/methodology/approach The study was conducted through a survey. In total, 100 faculty members from the disciplines of business administration, humanities and social sciences from three universities in Kuwait filled in an online questionnaire. The statistical feature of the Web-based tool was used for data analysis. Findings The results show that most faculty members are aware of the importance of ASNs. They perceive that these networks are useful, as more publications have become available, it has become easier for scholars to connect with colleagues who share similar research interests. Research limitations/implications The study is descriptive and restricted to a specific country (Kuwait). It also only covered faculty members from three academic disciplines. Furthermore, the use of a questionnaire, while appropriate for descriptive research, restricted us from conducting probing designed to gain deeper insights regarding participants’ motivations and explanations for not realizing the potential of these networks. Practical implications Future research should expand the scope of this study to cover faculty members from other disciplines (e.g. science, engineering and medicine), while also including more universities from other countries in the Arabian Gulf region. Future research should also examine how academics’ information-finding practices are changing as a result of the availability of information sources through ASNs. Originality/value No similar study has been conducted previously in Kuwait. This study provided useful information regarding the use and perceptions of ASNs in the context of faculty members of Kuwaiti universities. This information is of interest to scholars, information providers and those who design such networks.

Conflating scholarly and science communication practices: the production of open letters on climate change

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore and analyse interfaces between scholarly and science communication practices by using the production of open letters on climate change as a point of departure. Furthermore, the paper highlights an understudied form of science communication – open letters.Design/methodology/approachThe material consists of nine open letters on climate change, written and signed by academics and published in 2018–2019, as well as 13 semi-structured interviews with the initiators and co-authors of the letters. The interviews were analysed by qualitative thematic analysis and grouped into thematic clusters.FindingsThe study finds that three practices used in scholarly communication – more specifically: peer review, professional community building and, to a certain extent, communication as “merit-making” – are central in the making of the open letters, illustrating an integration of scholarly communication practices in academic science communication activities.Social implicationsThe study suggests that the conflation of communication practices needs to be seen in relation to larger structural changes in the academic working environment, as well as in relation to the specific environment in which communication about climate change occurs.Originality/valueThis study contends that the proposed conflation between scholarly and science communication concerns not only texts and genres but also practices integral to contemporary science, thereby conflating the forms of communication at a practical level.