scholarly journals The Uptake and Impact of a Label for Peer-Reviewed Books

2022 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eline Vandewalle ◽  
Raf Guns ◽  
Tim C. E. Engels
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Research Funding ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Peer Review Process ◽  
Formal System ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Funding System ◽  
The Social ◽  
Book Publishers

This article presents an analysis of the uptake of the GPRC label (Guaranteed Peer Reviewed Content label) since its introduction in 2010 until 2019. GPRC is a label for books that have been peer reviewed introduced by the Flemish publishers association. The GPRC label allows locally published scholarly books to be included in the regional database for the Social Sciences and Humanities which is used in the Flemish performance-based research funding system. Ten years after the start of the GPRC label, this is the first systematic analysis of the uptake of the label. We use a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods. Our two main data sources are the Flemish regional database for the Social Sciences and Humanities, which currently includes 2,580 GPRC-labeled publications, and three interviews with experts on the GPRC label. Firstly, we study the importance of the label in the Flemish performance-based research funding system. Secondly, we analyse the label in terms of its possible effect on multilingualism and the local or international orientation of publications. Thirdly, we analyse to what extent the label has been used by the different disciplines. Lastly, we discuss the potential implications of the label for the peer review process among book publishers. We find that the GPRC label is of limited importance to the Flemish performance-based research funding system. However, we also conclude that the label has a specific use for locally oriented book publications and in particular for the discipline Law. Furthermore, by requiring publishers to adhere to a formalized peer review procedure, the label affects the peer review practices of local publishers because not all book publishers were using a formal system of peer review before the introduction of the label and even at those publishers who already practiced peer review, the label may have required the publishers to make these procedures more uniform.

Ambiguity in identification of peer-reviewed publications in the Finnish and Flemish performance-based research funding systems

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janne Pölönen ◽  
Tim Engels ◽  
Raf Guns
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Research Funding ◽  
Publishing Process ◽  
Review Status ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social

Abstract In performance-based research funding systems evidence of peer review is often considered a requirement for publications to be included. Originating from the sciences, pre-publication peer review is very common in the publishing process, also in the social sciences and humanities. Sometimes, however, it is ambiguous whether a publication is peer-reviewed or not. In this contribution, we analyse the ambiguity in identifying a journal’s or publication’s peer-review status by comparing the classification of journals in Finland and Flanders, and by taking stock of Finnish authors’ reporting of peer-review status of publications. We find that ambiguity in terms of peer review status is rather common, especially in the humanities. Indeed, we find differences in peer review status in about 10 per cent of all cases, both when comparing Finland and Flanders, and when comparing author-reported and centralised identification of peer-review status.

scholarly journals SIOR: An Egalitarian Scientific Agora

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (8-9) ◽  
pp. 955-961
Author(s):  
Esther Oliver ◽  
Andrea Scharnhorst ◽  
Joan Cabré ◽  
Vladia Ionescu
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Open Access ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
International Level ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Unique Data ◽  
The Social ◽  
Data Source

The Social Impact Open Repository (SIOR) has become a unique data source at the international level in which researchers can display, quote, and store the social impact of their research results. SIOR arises from the social and political needs to know and connect with scientific projects to assess their social impact, promoting transparency of science and open-access systems. This repository has been designed to allow researchers to link their social impacts with research institutions and citizens. In short, SIOR reveals possibilities for transforming scientific research through means such as developing a qualitative tool as an egalitarian scientific agora that enables assessment of social improvements derived from social sciences and humanities (SSH) research. SIOR is a qualitative and open peer-review tool that allows citizens to comment online about an investigation’s impact on society.

scholarly journals Open text editing tools for open scholarly communications

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Wilm
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Review Process ◽  
Peer Review Process ◽  
Integrated System ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scholarly Communications

Scholarly communication is undergoing a revolution with the move to open access. This has opened new opportunities and also new challenges. One of the most problematic issues are the costs of publishing. Some of this may be excessive profits of some publishers, but another part are actual costs associated with typesetting and document conversion.In 2012, the open source Fidus Writer editor was born with the vision of creating a fully web-based semantic editor for academics that would not require manual typesetting after the authors are finished with their text. Since 2015 the GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and University of Bonn have been working on the “Open Scholarly Communications in the Social Sciences” project. The project is financed by the German Research Foundation, DFG, and it has been enhancing Fidus Writer and connecting it with a number of other tools, such as citation databases for automatic citation retrieval and the Open Journals Systems (OJS) to offer an integrated peer-review process. The aim is to create a fully integrated system for social Scientists and others that does away with conversion steps and makes scientific text creation both less costly and improves the tools available, also for non-technically inclined users.While several other projects have come into being simultaneously with Fidus Writer, their focus has been somewhat different: ShareLatex/Overleaf have focused on LaTeX users and is therefore not suitable for scientists who do not code. Other editors are either not open source, not working as collaborative editors or do not provide the tools needed by humanists and social scientists.We have written several papers collaboratively using our combined tool that have been submitted and published and are now working with two journals to obtain real-world experience using Fidus Writer with social scientists in the journal peer review process. In this poster I would like to present the current status of our tool and project.

scholarly journals Ethics in Ethnobiology Publication

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 96-97
Author(s):  
James R. Welch
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Review Process ◽  
Peer Review Process ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Multiple Stakeholders ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cumulative Process ◽  
High Standards ◽  
Published Research

With the recent multiplication of traditional and electronic venues for publishing in ethnobiology, the social sciences, the life sciences, and related fields, it is increasingly important that authors practice self-diligence to ensure that the contents of their publications meet criteria of veracity and ethical soundness. Although the peer-review process encourages high standards, it is an insufficient means for verifying the ethical worthiness of most publications. The ethical merits of published research derive from a cumulative process including formulating a research design, obtaining permissions, collecting and analyzing data, and finally composing and submitting a manuscript. Unfortunately, there is no failsafe ethical gatekeeper at any stage of the process. The importance of ethical publishing is all the more important in the field of ethnobiology, as professionals in the field  often cross the intellectual and methodological boundaries between disciplines, and their research often involves multiple stakeholders in widespread jurisdictions.

scholarly journals Editorial

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Sirkeci
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Review Process ◽  
Peer Review Process ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Editorial Team ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Open Issue

On behalf of the editorial team of Border Crossing journal, I am pleased to introduce the first issue of the tenth volume. Border Crossing aims to offer a multidisciplinary venue for sharing interesting and novel research from any fields of Social Sciences and Humanities. The “open issue” model we have started last year seems appreciated by authors and readers as it allows us to release the articles once they are through the peer-review process and finalised without delay which is normally the case for most journals. In this issue, we bring four articles and a book review to you.

Fast growth of the number of proceedings papers in atypical fields in the Czech Republic is a likely consequence of the national performance-based research funding system

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiri Vanecek ◽  
Ondrej Pecha
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Czech Republic ◽  
Research Funding ◽  
Publication Output ◽  
Fast Growth ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Funding System ◽  
The Social ◽  
National Performance ◽  
Institutional Funding

Abstract This article compares the growth rates of Web of Science indexed research publications in 11 European countries from 2000 to 2015. The growth of publication output in the Czech Republic was very fast: the annual production increased more than threefold. However, the number of articles increased only 2.6-fold, whereas the number of proceedings papers increased eightfold. During 2013–15 almost one-third of the papers published by researchers based in the Czech Republic were proceedings papers, a much higher share than in any other benchmark country. Such a high share is undesirable, because proceedings papers are generally much less often cited than journal articles. The growth of the number of proceedings papers is fastest in 17 fields belonging to the social sciences which usually do not hold proceedings papers in high regard. Our analysis shows that this undesirable development started after the introduction of national performance-based research funding system (PRFS) in the Czech Republic. Hence, the effort made to publish proceedings papers seems to reflect an optimization strategy in the light of the PRFS. In the Czech PRFS, proceedings papers have been rewarded point values similar to articles in refereed journals and a large portion of the institutional funding is allocated according to the evaluation results. As a consequence of very fast growth of proceedings papers in the social sciences, the university institutional funding in these fields has grown faster than in other fields. In conclusion, the fast growth of proceedings papers represents an adaptive behavior to the context of the PRFS.

Women break down the barriers to the Vietnamese social sciences and humanities

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quan-Hoang Vuong
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Middle Income Country ◽  
Women In Science ◽  
Income Country ◽  
The West ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Low And Middle Income

Valian rightly made a case for better recognition of women in science during the Nobel week in October 2018 (Valian, 2018). However, it seems most published views about gender inequality in Nature focused on the West. This correspondence shifts the focus to women in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in a low- and middle-income country (LMIC).

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