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OAI11 - CERN-UNIGE Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (19-21 June 2019)

OAI11 - CERN-UNIGE Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (19-21 June 2019)

The CERN-UNIGE Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication will be held at University of Geneva in June 19th-21st 2019. The main theme of this edition is: Open Science - its impact and potential as a driver for radical change.

How many reviewers are required to obtain reliable evaluations of NIH R01 grant proposals?

How many reviewers are required to obtain reliable evaluations of NIH R01 grant proposals?

The National Institutes of Health uses small groups of scientists to judge the quality of the grant proposals that they receive, and these quality judgments form the basis of its funding decisions.  In order for this system to fund the best science, the subject experts must, at a minimum, agree as to what counts as a “quality”proposal.  We investigated the degree of agreement by leveraging data from a recent experiment with 412 scientists.

About University Journals

About University Journals

Fourteen universities from five European countries started a collaboration to set up University Journals as an alternative to the current journal system that requires authors to transfer their copyright or charges article processing charges.

Saint Matthew Strikes Again: An Agent-based Model of Peer Review and the Scientific Community Structure

Saint Matthew Strikes Again: An Agent-based Model of Peer Review and the Scientific Community Structure

This paper investigates the impact of referee reliability on the quality and efficiency of peer review. We modeled peer review as a process based on knowledge asymmetries and subject to evaluation bias.

Opening the Black-Box of Peer Review

Opening the Black-Box of Peer Review

This paper investigates the impact of referee behaviour on the quality and efficiency of peer review. We focused on the importance of reciprocity motives in ensuring cooperation between all involved parties. We modelled peer review as a process based on knowledge asymmetries and subject to evaluation bias. We built various simulation scenarios in which we tested different interaction conditions and author and referee behaviour. We found that reciprocity cannot always have per se a positive effect on the quality of peer review, as it may tend to increase evaluation bias. It can have a positive effect only when reciprocity motives are inspired by disinterested standards of fairness.

Assessing Peer Review by Gauging the Fate of Rejected Manuscripts: the Case of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation

Assessing Peer Review by Gauging the Fate of Rejected Manuscripts: the Case of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation

This paper investigates the fate of manuscripts that were rejected from JASSS- The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, the flagship journal of social simulation. We tracked 456 manuscripts that were rejected from 1997 to 2011 and traced their subsequent publication as journal articles, conference papers or working papers.

The Peer Review Game: an Agent-based Model of Scientists Facing Resource Constraints and Institutional Pressures

The Peer Review Game: an Agent-based Model of Scientists Facing Resource Constraints and Institutional Pressures

This paper looks at peer review as a cooperation dilemma through a game-theory framework. We built an agent-based model to estimate how much the quality of peer review is influenced by different resource allocation strategies followed by scientists dealing with multiple tasks, i.e., publishing and reviewing.

Thousands of Scientists Back "young Protesters" Demanding Climate Change Action

Thousands of Scientists Back "young Protesters" Demanding Climate Change Action

"Without bold and focused action, their future is in critical danger. There is no time to wait until they are in power," scientists say.

Meet the Scientist Painter Who Turns Deadly Viruses into Beautiful Works of Art

Meet the Scientist Painter Who Turns Deadly Viruses into Beautiful Works of Art

David Goodsell's scientifically precise watercolor paintings of the cells and microbes he studies grace journal covers and impress colleagues.

How Katie Bouman Accidentally Became the Face of the Black Hole Project

How Katie Bouman Accidentally Became the Face of the Black Hole Project

The project included more than 200 researchers around the world, about 40 of them women, including Dr. Bouman.

Concerns of Young Protesters Are Justified

Concerns of Young Protesters Are Justified

The world's youth have begun to persistently demonstrate for the protection of the climate and other foundations of human well-being. As scientists and scholars who have recently initiated similar letters of support in our countries, we call for our colleagues across all disciplines and from the entire world to support these young climate protesters. Their concerns are justified and supported by the best available science.

Brazil's Government Freezes Nearly Half of Its Science Spending

Brazil's Government Freezes Nearly Half of Its Science Spending

The decision could derail multi-million-dollar research projects such as the Sirius synchrotron.

A Belief in Meritocracy Is Not Only False: It's Bad for You

A Belief in Meritocracy Is Not Only False: It's Bad for You

Despite the moral assurance and personal flattery that meritocracy offers to the successful, it ought to be abandoned both as a belief about how the world works and as a general social ideal.

Exposing DOI Metadata Provenance

Exposing DOI Metadata Provenance

DOI metadata provenance is describing the history of a particular DOI metadata record, i.e. what changes were made when and by whom. This information is now stored and provided via an API for all DOI registrations since March 10, 2019. 

Few Open Access Journals Are Compliant with Plan S

Few Open Access Journals Are Compliant with Plan S

Much of the debate on Plan S seems to concentrate on how to make toll-access journals open access, taking for granted that existing open access journals are Plan S-compliant. This question was examined using Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) metadata. The conclusion was that a large majority of open access journals are not Plan S-compliant, and that it is small publishers in the SSH that will face the largest challenge with becoming compliant. 

Is It Publish or Perish for PhD Students?

Is It Publish or Perish for PhD Students?

Nature Human Behaviour and the Behavioural and Social Sciences Community invite researchers across all career stages and disciplines to share their thoughts on publishing while training for a PhD. A broad selection of submissions will be published as World Views in Nature Human Behaviour or will be posted on the Behavioural and Social Sciences community page. Send us a short presubmission enquiry now!

So What About Editor Compensation?

So What About Editor Compensation?

As open access Plan S draws closer editors start to re-evaluate the business case of academic publishing, and their role in it. A major investigation reveals that editors at academic journals can make up to five figure salaries.

Bringing Citations and Usage Metrics Together to Make Data Count

Bringing Citations and Usage Metrics Together to Make Data Count

Over the last years, many organizations have been working on infrastructure to facilitate sharing and reuse of research data - but what is needed to make data count?

How Can Publishers and Librarians Work Together to Increase Engagement to Digital Collections?

How Can Publishers and Librarians Work Together to Increase Engagement to Digital Collections?

UKSG Breakout session: Increasing Engagement with Digital Collections.

Normalizing Data (sharing)

Normalizing Data (sharing)

Introducing Five Essential Factors, our latest white paper. Over the past two years, we've heard from more than 11,000 researchers about their views on data sharing, what they do in practice and the challenges they face. Building on that understanding, today we have released a whitepaper which proposes five key factors to make data management and sharing "business as usual" for all researchers.

Gender Bias in Teaching Evaluations

Gender Bias in Teaching Evaluations

Paper provides new evidence on gender bias in teaching evaluations. Despite the fact that neither students’ grades nor self-study hours are affected by the instructor’s gender, it was found that women receive systematically lower teaching evaluations than their male colleagues.

Module 1 of the Open Science MOOC: Open Principles

Module 1 of the Open Science MOOC: Open Principles

This is Module 1 of the Open Science MOOC. This course is totally SELF-PACED, meaning it can be completed whenever you want and in your own time. Rationale: To innovate in a field frequently implies moving against prevailing trends and cultural inertia. Open Science is no different. No matter how convinced you are, you will come across resistance from peers and colleagues, and the best defence is strong personal conviction that what you are doing may not be perfect now, but is the right decision in the long run. This module will introduce the guiding principles of the 'open movement', the different actors involved, and the impact that they are having. Learning outcomes You will be able to describe the ethical, legal, social, economic, and research impact arguments for and against Open Science. After deciding which platforms/tools/services are most useful for themselves and their community, you will develop a personal profile for showcasing your research profile and outputs. After reflecting on the status of Open Science within your research group or lab, you will devise concrete ways to locally improve open practices. Using the guidelines published by their research laboratories, departments, or institutes, you will identify the policies for career progression and assessment, publishing and open access, data sharing, and intellectual property. Resources: Open Principles There are two tasks that are optional as part of this module: Defining how Open Science affects you. Developing your digital researcher profile. These tasks are OPTIONAL. You do NOT need to complete them in order to finish this module. They are, however, strongly recommended still. To complete this module, the only thing you need to do is complete the quiz! Once you have done that, you get this cool certificate to proudly display (the real one is bigger and nicer). Citation: We strongly encourage maximal sharing, re-use, and remixing of all content available for this module. It is also openly-licensed (CC0 or CC-BY at source) and copyright free as such. To cite this work, please use: Jon Tennant; Bruce Caron; Jo Havemann; Samuel Guay; Julien Colomb; Eva Lantsoght; Erzsébet Tóth-Czifra; Katharina Kriegel; Justin Sègbédji Ahinon; Cooper Smout & Gareth O'Neill. (2019, March 16). OpenScienceMOOC/Module-1-Open-Principles 2.0.0 (Version 2.0.0). Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2595951 Other live modules: Module 5: Open Research Software and Open Source

Making Progress Towards Gender Parity and Increased Diversity

Making Progress Towards Gender Parity and Increased Diversity

Many previous attempts at achieving gender parity - like special awards for women - are decried as tokenism, and seem unlikely to induce sustained and systemic change. Given this mindset, our research team decided to take a slightly different approach - with promising results.

Affordable College Textbook Act Reintroduced in U.S. Congress

Affordable College Textbook Act Reintroduced in U.S. Congress

The Affordable College Textbook Act aims to make higher education more affordable by expanding the use and awareness of open educational resources.

SPARC Landscape Analysis - The Changing Academic Publishing Industry

SPARC Landscape Analysis - The Changing Academic Publishing Industry

This landscape analysis studies the growing trend of commercial acquisition of critical research infrastructure. It intends to provide a comprehensive look at the current players in this arena, their strategies and potential actions. They conclude that key stakeholders such as libraries must be able to prioritize their own infrastructure funding.