Scholarly Communication Process Research Articles

Redesigning for Open Educational Practices: A Faculty-Librarian Collaboration

Open educational practices (OEP) are rarely explored in LIS education, despite its alignment with many of the core values in library science. Recent scholarship on LIS pedagogy does speak to the merits of OEP, which can include open and equitable access, real-world learning experiences, and principles of social justice. However, there is little discussion about what this looks like in practice and within the LIS curriculum. This thought piece examines the practical aspect of using OEP in the LIS graduate classroom and describes the collaborative reflections of an LIS faculty member, librarian, and university librarian to prepare to implement OEP at a regional comprehensive university. This collaboration found that OEP is a good fit for the library science curriculum, but that there are important support considerations which need to be secured before implementation, such as access to participatory technology, training on intellectual property and staffing. In addition, the dynamic nature of OEP addresses some of the challenges associated with the current landscape of online learning in higher education, including delivering more engaging pedagogy, increasing student digital literacy and student involvement in the scholarly communication process.

Open Science Under Debate: Disentangling the Interest on Twitter and Scholarly Research

Open science movement gains attention since it might enable a second scientific revolution that fundamentally changes research methods and standards across science. However, the discussion topics towards opens science both from the academia and the environments outside the scholarly communication process have not been formally identified. This paper contributes to that end by analyzing 145,716 open-science-related tweets and 3,200 research papers in Scopus from 2011 to 2022. The results show there is increasing interest about open science both on Twitter and from academia. There are similar foci for both the public on Twitter and the academia from Scopus, including cloud computing and COVID-19 pandemic. When the public on Twitter focus on open science events and citizen science, the scholarly research is more concerned about the detailed aspects and novel innovation in research. The findings might interest the policy-maker for offering evidence to facilitate open science policies and practices.

Research on scientific knowledge evolution patterns based on ego-centered fine-granularity citation network

A deep comprehension of the development of scientific knowledge is necessary to properly appreciate technological advancement and the process of knowledge innovation. However, fine-grained citation networks are less frequently utilized to characterize the evolution of scientific knowledge. To bridge this gap, we first constructed the fine-grained citation networks based on the PubMed and Web of Science (WOS) databases, then extracted the ego-centered networks of scientific knowledge, and finally employed Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) to analyze the factors influencing the formation of Ego-centered Fine-granularity Citation Networks (EFCNs), taking into account the endogenous network structure and exogenous knowledge attribute variables. The results reveal that both types of variables play pivotal roles in the evolution of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, we found that (1) the in-degree and the out-degree centrality have a positive effect on knowledge evolution, respectively, in the 98.5 % and 99.9 % sample networks, while the clustering coefficient only has a positive effect on the edge formation of the 6.8 % sample network at the 0.05 significance level. (2) The citation behavior and domain impact of authors positively influence the scientific knowledge evolution, respectively, in the 63.2 % and 78.3 % sample networks. (3) There is a tendency to form citation relationships between scientific knowledge units of similar age in 67.1 % of the sample networks. (4) There is a greater possibility of developing a citation relationship between scientific knowledge with the same journal impact rank and knowledge type. Our findings indicate that the evolution of scientific knowledge is influenced not only by the process of scholarly communication but also by self-organizing mechanisms at the fine granularity level.

Structured abstract generator (SAG) model: analysis of IMRAD structure of articles and its effect on extractive summarization

An abstract is the most crucial element that may convince readers to read the complete text of a scientific publication. However, studies show that in terms of organization, readability, and style, abstracts are also among the most troublesome parts of the pertinent manuscript. The ultimate goal of this article is to produce better understandable abstracts with automatic methods that will contribute to scientific communication in Turkish. We propose a summarization system based on extractive techniques combining general features that have been shown to be beneficial for Turkish. To construct the data set for this aim, a sample of 421 peer-reviewed Turkish articles in the field of librarianship and information science was developed. First, the structure of the full-texts, and their readability in comparison with author abstracts, were examined for text quality evaluation. A content-based evaluation of the system outputs was then carried out. System outputs, in cases of using and ignoring structural features of full-texts, were compared. Structured outputs outperformed classical outputs in terms of content and text quality. Each output group has better readability levels than their original abstracts. Additionally, it was discovered that higher-quality outputs are correlated with more structured full-texts, highlighting the importance of structural writing. Finally, it was determined that our system can facilitate the scholarly communication process as an auxiliary tool for authors and editors. Findings also indicate the significance of structural writing for better scholarly communication.

Seamless M4T for librarians to communicate and provide multilingual collection services

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in libraries, especially university libraries, which are faced with users from various countries who have different languages and cultures. Seamless M4T, which is being developed, has great potential for helping university librarians maximize library services by providing ease of communication. Design/methodology/approach Analyzing the possibility of developing Seamless M4T using natural language processing techniques and how to train language models to be smarter AI tools and can be used to break down language barriers between librarians and users. Findings The implementation of AI-based application Seamless M4T can help university librarians provide maximum service to users who are hampered by language and culture with advanced communication skills. Seamless M4T has an automatic speech recognition feature for dozens of languages, so it can translate speech-to-text, text-to-speech or both text and speech. To convert written words into verbal forms, this AI can also translate and transcribe text and speech in real-time without significant delays. Originality/value This paper emphasizes the use of AI in university libraries to improve services, especially in communication due to language differences between librarians and users. Advantages in using AI in libraries can support the collaboration and scholarly communication process.

Scholarly Communication and Machine-Generated Text: Is it Finally AI vs AI in Plagiarism Detection?

This study utilizes GPT (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) language model-based AI writing tools to create a set of 80 academic writing samples based on the eight themes of the experiential sessions of the LTC 2023. These samples, each between 2000 and 2500 words long, are then analyzed using both conventional plagiarism detection tools and selected AI detection tools. The study finds that traditional syntactic similarity-based anti-plagiarism tools struggle to detect AI-generated text due to the differences in syntax and structure between machine-generated and human-written text. However, the researchers discovered that AI detector tools can be used to catch AI-generated content based on specific characteristics that are typical of machine-generated text. The paper concludes by posing the question of whether we are entering an era in which AI detectors will be used to prevent AI-generated content from entering the scholarly communication process. This research sheds light on the challenges associated with AI-generated content in the academic research literature and offers a potential solution for detecting and preventing plagiarism in this context.

AI Tools for the Researcher: Streamlining the Scholarly Communications Process

AI Tools for the Researcher: Streamlining the Scholarly Communications Process

Does publication history influence the integrity of the journals: studying publication timelines and their impact on journal metrics?

PurposeThe purpose of the study is to evaluate the relationship of Journal Publication Timeline (submission to first decision and submission to final decision) with various Journal Metrics (citing half-life, article influence score, the immediacy index, the acceptance rate, the impact factor (IF), five years IF, Eigenfactor and cited half-life) of top 600 journals retrieved from Journal Citation Report (JCR) 2020 under the tag, Elsevier Unified.Design/methodology/approachTop 600 journals in the decreasing order of the IFs under the tag, “Elsevier Unified” were retrieved from JCR 2020 of Clarivate Analytics. Information about “Journal Metrics” was ascertained using “Customized Service” of JCR, while information about the “Publication Timeline” of each journal was obtained using Elsevier's “Journal Insights Service.” It was found that only 177 journals provided the complete information regarding the “Publication Timeline” and hence considered for the study. Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis was conducted to test the different hypotheses.FindingsIt was found that submission to first decision has a significant relationship with the immediacy index, citing half-life and the acceptance rate. Submission to final decision has a significant relationship with Journal Impact Factor (JIF), the immediacy index, Eigenfactor, citing half-life and the acceptance rate.Research limitations/implicationsThe study will provide the authors with sound and valuable information to support their selection of journals. Inferences in light of fluctuations in the scholarly communication process in terms of Publication Timelines and Journal Metrics can be deeply understood with the aid of the current study's findings. What considerations authors have to take before submitting their papers is the main implication of the study. Journal administrators can also benefit from the findings of the current study as it can help recruit and manage reviewers, which will ensure a successful publication timeline.Originality/valueThe study correlates Publication Timeline Indicators with Journal Metrics Indicators using secondary cross-sectional data. Though most previous studies only examine the relationship of the Publication Timeline with the Journal Impact Factor (JIF), there is very scarce literature that deciphers the influence of Publication Timeline indicators on different Journal Metrics indicators (including JIF).Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-02-2022-0108.

Are automated accounts driving scholarly communication on Twitter? a case study of dissemination of COVID-19 publications.

From a network perspective, this study analyzes 659 users mentioning sampled COVID-19 articles 10 or more times on Twitter with a focus on their roles in facilitating the process of scholarly communication. Different from existing studies, we consider both the user types and the automation of accounts to profile influential users in the network of research dissemination. Our study found that similar to academic users, non-academic users can also be active players in communicating scientific publications. The results highlight the intensive interactions between human users and automated accounts, including bots and cyborgs, which accounted for 45% of connections among the top users. This study also demonstrates the important role of automated accounts in initiating and facilitating research dissemination. Specifically, (1) bot-assisted academic publishers showed the highest amplifier scores, which measures a user’s tendency of being the first to share information and reach out to others within their trusted networks, (2) 5.28% of the selected articles was first tweeted by automated research feeds, ranking the fourth among the 22 classified user groups, and (3) bot-assisted publishers and automated feeds of generic topics and news alerts were highly ranked in authority, a network measure to quantify the degree to which a user consumes important resources of relevant topics. In the conclusion section, we discuss future directions to improve the validity of Twitter metrics in assessing research impacts.

Measuring the citation context of national self‐references

AbstractThe emphasis on research evaluation has brought scrutiny to the role of self‐citations in the scholarly communication process. While author self‐citations have been studied at length, little is known on national‐level self‐references (SRs). This paper analyses the citation context of national SRs, using the full‐text of 184,859 papers published in PLOS journals. It investigates the differences between national SRs and nonself‐references (NSRs) in terms of their in‐text mention, presence in enumerations, and location features. For all countries, national SRs exhibit a higher level of engagement than NSRs. NSRs are more often found in enumerative citances than SRs, which suggests that researchers pay more attention to domestic than foreign studies. There are more mentions of national research in the methods section, which provides evidence that methodologies developed in a nation are more likely to be used by other researchers from the same nation. Publications from the United States are cited at a higher rate in each of the sections, indicating that the country still maintains a dominant position in science. On the whole, this paper contributes to a better understanding of the role of national SRs in the scholarly communication system, and how it varies across countries and over time.

Library and Information Science Journal Editors’ Views on Query Letters

Query letters may offer an effective way to increase author engagement in the scholarly communication process, yet they are not a common practice in library and information science (LIS). A survey and interviews were conducted with LIS journal editors to explore experiences, attitudes, and opinions concerning query letters. Results indicate query letters can be of great benefit to both authors and editors, if approached properly. Yet editors expressed varying levels of enthusiasm and offered some divergent opinions. Such editorial inconsistencies may contribute to authors’ uncertainty and anxiety. Thus, this article concludes with ideas for empowering authors and improving editor-author communication.

The Implications of Epidemic Risks for Scholarly Communication and Higher Education Processes. Preliminary Remarks

Purpose/Thesis: The aim of this paper is to reflect and to start a discussion on changes in scholarly communication, both in the field of scientific research and university instruction, during an epidemiological crisis. Approach/Methods: Presented reflections on changes in scholarly communication are of theoretical nature. The text emerged from online discussions with second-year students taking the course on Scholarly Communication as a part of their degree in Information Space Architecture (Faculty of Journalism, Information and Book Studies, University of Warsaw), in March 2020. Results and conclusions: The epidemic threat of the coronavirus (COVID-19), which has disrupted our social life in recent weeks, affects the communication processes in science as well. The most obvious effect of the pandemic in the area under discussion will be the development of distance learning methods and technologies. This may also increase the scope of scientific papers available in the open access. Changes are inevitable, therefore we encourage a reflection on their direction so that we can prepare for the shift and actively participate in the designing of the future form of the scholarly communication. Originality/Value: This type of consideration is justified by the current state of affairs. We are now in the middle of a transformation that needs to be acknowledged & discussed to give it the desired direction as far as possible.

Characteristics of high‐impact agronomic journals

AbstractAgronomy journals form a core part of the process of scholarly communication and scientific research in the agronomic field. Determining the key features of high‐impact agronomic journals will be a central component for identifying the disciplinary development in the field of agronomy. In this study, we conducted a bibliometric study to fill this knowledge gap based on 64,703 articles published in 18 main agronomy journals since 1948 derived from the Scopus database. Our main findings were that (a) over 20% of publications in Advances in Agronomy and Agricultural and Forest Meteorology received more than 50 citations; (b) authors from the United States, China, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia published the most articles in these journals, comprising 22.4, 11.5, 10.7, 8.7, and 8.0% of the total number of publications, respectively; and (c) journals published in a given country had a greater number of papers published by authors of that country than by authors of other countries. Furthermore, three clusters for these 18 journals were identified that included the topics of agronomy, interactions between agronomy and soil sciences, and interactions between agronomy and plant sciences. The results of this study provide valuable insights regarding the current state of and future development trends in agronomic journals.

Digital Libraries

The Italian Research Conference on Digital Libraries (IRCDL) is the annual Italian forum to discuss research topics on Digital Libraries and related technical, practical, and social issues. Along the years, IRCDL touched several aspects underlying the ?Digital Library" domain and promptly adapted to the evolution of the field. Today, the ?Digital Library" field includes theory and practices reflecting the evolution of the role of libraries in the scholarly communication domain, and also embracing scholarly communication and open science. The theme of IRCDL 2019 was ?Digital Libraries: Supporting Open Science". Three main reasons motivated this theme: (i) science is increasingly becoming digital, meaning that research is performed using data services and digital tools; (ii) the results of the research are no longer just traditional scientific publications; (iii) the outcomes of science are increasingly encompassing datasets, software, and experiments. As digital artifacts, such products can be shared and re-used together with the article, thus enabling comprehensive research assessment and various degrees of reproducibility of science. Positive consequences of this shift towards Open Science are: accelerating science, optimizing the cost of research, fraud detection, and fullyfledged scientific reward. Digital Libraries are central in the evolution of research outputs by targeting findability, preservation, interlinking, and re-use of research products and by integrating the components of the scholarly communication process. The conference has been organized in Pisa, and the proceedings are published in the Springer CCIS series Vol. 988 [22]. Pre-print versions, research datasets, and research software relative to the accepted contributions are accessible via Zenodo.org.

Diferenças na produção, no compartilhamento e no (re)uso de dados de pesquisa: a percepção de pesquisadores de Química, Antropologia e Educação

Discussões sobre as práticas de produção/obtenção, compartilhamento e re(uso) de dados de pesquisa sob o espectro das diferenças disciplinares têm sido relevantes ao processo de comunicação científica, especialmente, à luz da Ciência Aberta. O objetivo deste estudo foi identificar as práticas de produção/obtenção, compartilhamento e (re)uso de dados de pesquisa em Química, Antropologia e Educação. No campo metodológico, é uma pesquisa de natureza descritiva, em que foi adotada a estratégia de investigação qualitativa e o método de levantamento. Os participantes do estudo foram docentes permanentes dos Programas de Pós-Graduação em Química (três pesquisadores), Antropologia (três pesquisadores) e Educação (quatro pesquisadores) da Universidade de Brasília (UnB). A coleta dos dados procedeu mediante entrevistas semiestruturadas e a utilização do software NVivo (edição Starter) auxiliou os procedimentos de análise dos dados coletados. Os resultados do estudo demonstraram diferenças entre as três disciplinas, em relação aos aspectos que influenciam a produção/obtenção de dados, aos fatores que estimulariam ou inibiriam o compartilhamento de dados e aos fatores que estimulariam ou inibiriam o (re)uso de dados. Entre as conclusões, destaca-se que tais diferenças disciplinares constituem requisitos fundamentais para o desenvolvimento ou aperfeiçoamento de sistemas de informação que gerenciam dados de pesquisa.

Citations to chemical databases in scholarly articles: to cite or not to cite?

PurposeChemical databases have had a significant impact on the way scientists search for and use information. The purpose of this paper is to spark informed discussion and fuel debate on the issue of citations to chemical databases.Design/methodology/approachA citation analysis to four major chemical databases was undertaken to examine resource coverage and impact in the scientific literature. Two commercial databases (SciFinder and Reaxys) and two public databases (PubChem and ChemSpider) were analyzed using the “Cited Reference Search” in the Science Citation Index Expanded from the Web of Science (WoS) database. Citations to these databases between 2000 and 2016 (inclusive) were evaluated by document types and publication growth curves. A review of the distribution trends of chemical databases in peer-reviewed articles was conducted through a citation count analysis by country, organization, journal and WoS category.FindingsIn total, 862 scholarly articles containing a citation to one or more of the four databases were identified as only steadily increasing since 2000. The study determined that authors at academic institutions worldwide reference chemical databases in high-impact journals from notable publishers and mainly in the field of chemistry.Originality/valueThe research is a first attempt to evaluate the practice of citation to major chemical databases in the scientific literature. This paper proposes that citing chemical databases gives merit and recognition to the resources as well as credibility and validity to the scholarly communication process and also further discusses recommendations for citing and referencing databases.

Does open access make cents? Return on investment in the institutional repository

Access to information resources is a traditional library service. Public libraries were the first to provide unfettered access to print information resources to a general population. It is not a stretch to recognize those institutions as the earliest providers of open access (OA). Now the term open access is generally defined as the free and immediate online availability of research and scholarship, adapting to the widespread change in delivery format from print to digital. OA as a library service—most commonly in support of the scholarly communication process—has become a priority for most academic libraries. Academic libraries and librarians are increasingly engaged in both providing and promoting OA, primarily through institutional repository (IR) services with roles as creators, disseminators, publishers, and preservers of scholarly content.

Modelling Open Social Scholarship Within the INKE Community

Given the current state of digital technology, there is a clear opportunity to revamp scholarly communication into a multi-faceted, open system that integrates and takes advantage of the near-ubiquitous global network. In doing so, the values of collaboration, sharing, and transparency inherent to open social scholarship can be integrated into knowledge dissemination methods. The Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) community is currently organized around the idea of open social scholarship, but putting this into practice will involve assessing and revising INKE’s own scholarly communication processes. In this paper, we explore the current state of open access to academic research and ruminate on next steps, beyond open access. We consider the role of collaboration in contemporary academic practice, and the importance of transparency in regards to multiplayer work. Further, we examine the standard scholarly communication model, especially as it pertains to INKE. Finally, we make recommendations and suggest alternatives for transforming our stock scholarly communication models into open social scholarship practices.

2251 Assessing research impact: It takes a team

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Dissemination of research findings through the published literature is a complex but critical part of the scholarly communication process. Additionally, this time point on the translational spectrum is a key objective of the National Clinical Association for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). Tracking the dissemination of research outputs can be difficult to identify and evaluate. The purpose of this case study was 2-fold: (1) identify tools and resources available freely to the public and through university subscriptions used to assess research output; and (2) compare the effectiveness of these tools oat tracking output at different levels of granularity. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: The authors, Spectrum staff (D.A.) and School of Medicine librarian (M.B.), attended webinars hosted by other Academic Medical Center libraries conducting work on impact tracking and learned from vendor product managers about available tools and resources during on-site campus visits. Publications from Stanford’s Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) were used to track the diffusion of research outputs (e.g., number of citations, document types, research areas, relative citation ratio, CTSAs collaboration) via library subscription services (e.g., Web of Science and Scopus) and freely available tools (e.g., iCite and PubMed). RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: The authors found certain tools were more inclusive in retrieving grant funded research outputs. For example, in the case of UL1 grant (UL1TR001085, UL1TR000093, UL1RR025744), on a grant-level output, there were discrepancies in the number of publications retrieved: (1) PubMed found 644 outputs; (2) Web of Science found 497 outputs; and (3) Scopus found 190 outputs. After de-duplication, the search across Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, and PubMed yielded 899 publications. In total, 389 outputs were unique to PubMed; 165 were unique to WoS; and 90 were unique to Scopus. Future analysis will be conducted to identify the source of unique outputs from each database (e.g., conference proceeding, specific journals). Additional analysis based on other units of research outputs (e.g., author-level outputs and article-level outputs) are expected to yield similar discrepancies. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Citation analysis is a valuable method of assessing research output and, to a larger extent, research impact in a given field. It can help investigators illustrate qualifications for undertaking new projects, highlight collaborations across schools and departments, justify a grant renewal, and/or highlight accomplishments for promotion. However, systematic and comprehensive evaluations are needed in tandem with citation analysis/bibliometric analysis to assess the translation and uptake of research outputs and activities that result in research impact. Furthermore, both investigators and staff need adequate time and training to process research outputs/activities and to effectively organize them in easily understood visualizations.

Measuring Scientific Value of Indian Journals Beyond Impact Factor:A Case with Physics–Chemistry–Biology Journals

Qualitative scientific journals play a vital role in scholarly communication processes. However, during the last few years, there is a mushroom growth of journals in every discipline in India. There has been no single source of systematic advice on how to measure the scientific value of Indian journals. The present study is an attempt to minimize the gap by developing a mechanism for measuring scientific value of Indian journals. Consulting various international databases and their journal inclusion policy, a viable mechanism has been devised and tested with 100+ Indian journals in the fields of physics, chemistry and biology. The results indicate that although the quantity of yearly additions of new journals in each of the three disciplines is quite impressive, the yearly discontinuation is also alarming. Almost 29% of physics journals, 11% of chemistry journals and 21% of biology journals were stopped within a year. Although irregularity in publication, improper execution of review process, non-disclosure of article processing charges, lower percentage of foreign contributors and low citation rate were identified as some drawbacks with Indian physics, chemistry and biology journals. The percentage of predatory journals in these three disciplines is quite less till date. In order to choose a better platform of scholarly publishing, this study suggests some recommendations for prospective authors.