OAI12 - The Geneva Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication
13
2021
77
3 hours 13 minutes
13 results
07:13
8Bertou, XavierOn February 15, 2021, the Pierre Auger Collaboration released a first dataset representing 10% of all its cosmic ray data acquired since 2004. During the 16 months preceding the release, most work went into creating a framework allowing for releasing more than just the high level reconstructed parameters of observed cosmic rays. The framework contains: pseudo-raw data at the detector level, a website providing a complete description of the data as well as their recording and analysis by the Collaboration, an event display for visualising the different detector signals, and a series of analysis notebooks that can be run online to replicate the main physics results published by the Collaboration and improve the understanding of the use of these data. This presentation will focus on the importance and the added value of this framework to help scientists or science enthusiasts delve into the data without being discouraged at first sight.
2021CERN et al.
07:01
8Özdemir, DenizDue to the adaptation of technological advancements in our digital society in 21st century, one shall ponder how the open science will be meaningful and applicable to humans by the means of information technology components, ranging widely from wearable smart technologies to robotics, constantly sharing information to its end users. For the future of open science, the contributions derived from artificial intelligence concepts may provide a promising and eccentric road to distribute scientific knowledge respectively, connecting research data across the continents in the form of transparent knowledge process.
2021CERN et al.
13:45
8Ainsworth, RachaelWorking in a truly open, reproducible and inclusive way is not yet fully supported within modern research culture. Metrics, rewards and progression still focus on the publication record of the individual researcher and the end product of the research, instead of the process by which the research is conducted. For example, the sustainability of software and data which underpin research is vital to ensure the work is reproducible in the future and can be built upon, but is not sufficiently incentivised or supported. Emerging roles and ways of working highlight how unfit current measures of success in research are. Systemic solutions such as promoting collaborative ways of working and professionalising alternative but essential roles to support them, such as Research Software Engineers, Data Stewards and Community Managers, can lead to more sustainable, reproducible and efficient research.
2021CERN et al.
17:53
1Beretta, Francesco2021CERN et al.
11:19
1Sène, Fama DiagneHigher education institutions play a primary role in socio-economic development due to their three-fold mission: (1) Providing advanced training and education to an increasing proportion of the population, (2) promoting scientific research, (3) providing services to the wider community. In this context, in the year 2000 Senegal decided to grant a significant means of education in general, and higher education in particular, through public financing close to 11% of the national budget, which compares to an average acros Africa of around 3.8%. This was reinforced by Project for Governance and Finance of Higher Education based on results (PGF-Sup), signed between the senegalese government and the World Bank in May 2011. The PGF-Sup was supported financially with 50.6 billion FCFA (101.3 million USD). The Government of Senegal has allocated the sum of CFAF 21.5 billion (USD 43 million) to the “financing based on performance contracts” sub-component. However, at the end of the four years of performance of the performance contract, Senegalese universities have not achieved the aim of "publication of textbooks and booklets" by teaching and research staff (PER). Teaching therefore seems to have a higher priority on university campuses, above that of research and scientific publication, despite the emphasis placed by the LMD (Masters and Doctoral training) reform on the importance of scientific documentation in course syllabi and the work of students (TPE). Meanwhile, on the editorial side: The Dakar PUD university press was set up by rectoral decree No. 626 of September 2, 1991. The University Press of Saint Louis (PUS) was created in 2007, and for SAHEL University in 2000. The creation and mission of PUB was established in March 2015. In other words, 4 presses in 12 universities: 33 percent. PUBs provides institutional support for the promotion of research and for the publication and dissemination of scientific and didactic work. Internal regulations specify the functions of PUBs. A call for applications received nearly 25 requests which are ready for publication. In Bambey, for example: we have retained 14 publications. Despite these efforts and a visit to request support from the president of the scientific council and the administrative secretary, things have remained at this point and the university does not have the means to publish the teachers' books. This is very problematic, and the national agencies to which requests have been made have not been able to respond. What can we do about this lack of resources? Should we let teachers publish elsewhere, in Europe for example, and what kind of strategies can we put in place for a publishing operation that favors research in Senegal and promotes open access?
2021CERN et al.
08:26
33Yan, Shuai et al.Two years ago, China triggered an “Excellence Action Plan” to help China-based STM journals further enhance their international impact. In 2019, 20 journals were selected as "leading journals" and will be charged with the goal of ranking among the world’s top STM journals within 5 years. Besides those, 30 "key journals" and 200 "emerging journals" were selected to improve international editorial practices, service capabilities, international communication, etc. Furthermore, for each year between 2019 and 2023, China will choose and launch 30 new titles as “high potential journals” based on China’s priority research fields. This presentation will introduce more details and some achievements of this ambitious plan.
2021CERN et al.
38:28
Masuzzo, PaolaThe last science paradigm has marked the beginning of the e-Science, or Science 2.0: we are immersed in an enormous amount of data and are equipped with the computational resources and infrastructure needed to make sense of these data. However, the process of scholarly communication and especially the one of research evaluation need to still shift the focus from the traditional research outputs (aka, the paper) to data. In this talk, I will make the case that the 21st century academic production can no longer be PDF-centric, but needs to look at data as first-class citizens of science, recognizing that the publishing system, as well as the assessment criteria, need to move towards dataset publication, citation, evaluation.
2021CERN et al.
13:42
5Barnes, LucyOpen access (OA) book publishing is undergoing a period of transition. While scholar-led presses have long been at the forefront of OA book publishing, developing innovative business models and publication workflows and advocating for a broader shift to OA, larger commercial and university presses are now beginning to take OA books seriously. Community-led approaches such as the ScholarLed consortium and the Radical Open Access Collective may be threatened by the emergent trend towards 'big deals' and 'transformative' agreements in the OA book world, through which institutions and authors are encouraged to support only the ‘big players’ with money or manuscripts, potentially leaving smaller and academic-led presses out in the cold (e.g. see https://group.springernature.com/gp/group/media/press-releases/new-open-access-book-partnership-with-uc-berkeley-library/18993926). The ‘scaling small’ approach (see Adema & Moore, 2021, https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.918) offers one alternative to this monopolistic vision, focusing on collaboration between smaller, academic-led and non-profit entities to build systems and infrastructures that provide mutual support at multiple scales. This ‘scaling small’ philosophy is being put powerfully to work by the Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project, a major three-year international project bringing together libraries, scholar-led OA publishers, researchers, and infrastructure providers to build open, non-profit, community-governed infrastructures to expand the publication of OA books. COPIM, which includes members of both ScholarLed and the Radical Open Access Collective, is developing platforms and partnerships to address key technological, structural, and organisational hurdles around the funding, production, dissemination, discovery, reuse, and archiving of OA books. The project thus aims to build the structures that can sustain a diverse, scholar-led, not-for-profit OA publishing ecosystem according to the principle of ‘scaling small’. We are approaching the halfway point of our project and this paper will share insights into our progress so far, together with our plans for the next phase of our work, outlining how COPIM is putting ‘scaling small’ into action. This includes: 1) a non-profit, community-governed platform to facilitate the exchange of information and funding between libraries, OA book publishers, researchers and the wider public; 2) Opening the Future, a business model enabling the transition of legacy publishers to a non-BPC (book processing charge) OA business model; 3) the study and development of appropriate and robust governance models for non-profit, community-owned infrastructures; 4) Thoth, an open-source OA book metadata creation and dissemination system and service; 5) a report, toolset and use cases exploring the field of experimental book publishing practices, including a review of open-source tools and platforms; 6) technical and legal solutions to effectively archive and preserve complex digital research publications. This paper will lay out these developments and the philosophy of the project as a whole, giving attendees at OAI 2021 valuable insight into a major new initiative supporting scholar-led OA for books. As Adema and Moore (2021) argue (building on the work of Anna Tsing): ‘scaling small’ can ‘be perceived “as a way to reconceptualize the world – and perhaps rebuild it”’.
2021CERN et al.
10:12
2Onie, SandersanIn recent years, the academic community has evaluated the research ecosystem and identified key issues which undermine the trustworthiness of its output. With it, myriad suggestions, and solutions. Despite this, change is slow and well-meaning initiatives often have adverse reactions. This is because the process of determining a vision for an ideal research system and implementing it are altogether different challenges. Furthermore, research systems in Asia, Latin America, and Africa are substantially more heterogenous than in North America, Europe, and Australia. For example, in many countries in the Global South, research culture is still labile due to the sudden introduction of policies and unique incentive structures which champion research quantity .Thus many ideas generated in one research system do not translate well and vice versa. The question becomes given reach region's unique state, how do we champion process and institutional transparency? In this talk I discuss the different factors that affect how we approach each country, including but not limited to existing policies, centralisation of research authority, and inherent cultural beliefs. Further, I outline strategies for reform using Indonesia as an example, from a grassroots movement to influencing national infrastructure and policy.
2021CERN et al.
20:28
2Rio Riande, Gimena delThe Digital Humanities propose innovative digital and computational methodologies and practices, together with new approaches to research, publication and evaluation. Although debates about the values of the Digital Humanities have a long history in Northern academies, Latin America has been more interested in rethinking the Digital Humanities from open access and open science movements. Values such as diversity, inclusion and collaboration have thus been benefited by new theoretical approaches and implementation through different scholarly communication resources and digital tools.
2021CERN et al.
12:20
1Toth Czifra, ErzsébetPeer review is central scholarly practice that carries fundamental paradoxes from its inception. On the one hand, it is very difficult to open up peer review for the sake of empirical analysis, as it usually happens in closed black boxes of publishing and other gatekeeping workflows that are embedded in a myriad of disciplinary cultures, each of which comes very different, and usually competing notions of excellence. On the other hand, it is a practice that carries an enormous weight in terms of gatekeeping; shaping disciplines, publication patterns and power relations within academia. This central role of peer review alone explains why it is crucial to study to better understand situated evaluation practices, and to continually rethink them to strive for their best, and least imperfect (or reasonably imperfect) instances. How the notion of excellence and other peer review proxies are constructed and (re)negotiated in everyday practices across the SSH disciplines; who are involved in the processes and who remain out; what are the boundaries of peer review in terms of inclusiveness with content types; and how the processes are aligned or misaligned to research realities? What are the underlying reasons behind the persistence of certain proxies in the system and what are emerging trends and future innovations? To gain an in-depth understanding of these questions, as part of the H2020 project OPERAS-P, our task force collected and analysed 32 in-depth interviews with scholars about their motivations, challenges and experiences with novel practices in scholarly writing and in peer-review. The presentation will showcase the results of this study. Focus will be on the conflict between the richness of contemporary scholarship and the prestige economy that defines our current academic evaluation culture. The encoded and pseudonymized interview transcripts that form the basis of our analysis will be shared as open data in a certified data repository together with a rich documentation of the process so that our interpretations, conclusions and the resulting recommendations are clearly delineable from the rich input we had been working with and which are thus openly reusable for other purposes.
2021CERN et al.
11:40
4Funamori, MihoTalking about diversity and inclusion, we often take for granted that it benefits everyone and that it is a goal to be pursued for the sake of equality and innovation. However, there are cases where inclusion, in fact, can harm local scholarship. For instance, being included in global scholcomm assumes working on research topics that are interesting and relevant to the global audience. This presumption can undermine local scholarship focused on domestic issues such as national history, literature, local economy, legal framework, and other social issues. Since many countries put it on their agenda to compete globally and achieve high world university rankings, their researchers are sometimes forced to change their research topics to be able to publish in global and high-impact journals if they want to sustain their academic career. Thus, it can be said that the pursuit towards inclusive scholcom largely distorts the scholarship landscape, ending up in research detached from local interests. But shouldn’t research also serve local interests, especially if it is publicly funded? This presentation is based on discussions and confrontations that occurred at forming the internationalization of the University of Tokyo.
2021CERN et al.