Invisible science: publication of negative research results

An important part of scientific research activities yield negative results – non-confirmatory and null data, inconclusive experiments, unexpected data. These results permeate the entire research cycle and constitute an important part of the full scientific knowledge flow generation. However, despite the acknowledgment that it is the non-confirmatory findings that result in the rejection of consolidated hypotheses that drive the progress of science, most of these investigation routes are not documented. Growing competition for resources, tenure, and impact publications induces researchers to produce “positive” results that are more likely to be published, interfering with the principles of science reproducibility and self-correction and in the scientific communication cycle. This study aims to review negative results incorporation in the traditional academic publication cycle. It also seeks to identify and systematize the main barriers that prevent researchers from publishing negative results. This exploratory study is based methodologically on the scarce literature on the subject. It confirms the initial assumption that few scientific journals accept, edit special issues or are dedicated to the publication of negative results.

Compromiso de los Ayuntamientos Malagueños con la divulgación de información responsable

Resumen La divulgación de información sobre Responsabilidad Social se desarrolló en el sector privado, hecho que ha ido extendiéndose de forma paulatina al sector público, donde las administraciones locales o entidades gubernamentales presentan sus informes al respecto. En este contexto, el presente estudio se centra en analizar el grado de divulgación de información sobre Responsabilidad Social que ofrecen los ayuntamientos malagueños a través de sus páginas webs, utilizando la técnica de análisis de contenido. Los resultados muestran que el grado de información divulgado es alto, como lo revela el índice de divulgación total (70,34%), y que la información que más se divulga es la social, seguida de la información medioambiental y la económica. La información divulgada sobre servicios y obras públicas es la menos divulgada. De entre los ayuntamientos analizados, destaca de forma notable el compromiso de la capital Malagueña. El estudio persigue un doble objetivo. Por un lado, supone una contribución a la explicación de lo que ocurre con relación a la divulgación de información sobre Responsabilidad Social en el ámbito local. Por otro, fomenta la cultura informativa responsable de los propios ayuntamientos, con el objetivo de que incorporen en sus respectivas páginas web la información necesaria o complementaria en materia de Responsabilidad Social, lo cual contribuye a lograr un aumento del nivel de la información útil e importante que ofrecen a los ciudadanos y a la sociedad en general.

Reasons and implications of retracted articles in Brazil

Over the years, cases of retractions due to unintentional errors or research misconduct have been the subject of discussion, being indispensable to avoid the propagation of misleading information. To understand this matter in the Brazilian scenario, this study characterizes the retractions of authorship or co-authorship of Brazilian researchers between 2002 and 2019, their related consequences and impacts on scientific activity. With a data collection performed at the Retraction Watch database, we analyzed quantitative aspects of the reasons for retractions, stratification by areas of knowledge, the time between publication and retraction, the association of journals and impact factor, authors’ recidivism, the institutional collaboration between Brazilian institutions and countries and funding sources. The results of the analysis of 162 retractions indicate the prevalence of plagiarism (12.2%), the incidence of retracted articles in the Bioscience area (28.1%), in journals with Impact Factors between 2 and 5 (38.0%), and with 2 to 4 authors (38.8%). The occurrences and recurrences of retractions due to misconduct have an impact not only the author’s professional activity but science. Thus, this article emphasizes the importance of prompt retraction, as well as of the need to improve mechanisms to prevent these articles from being published from the start.

Attitudes toward open peer review among stakeholders of a scholar-led journal in Brazil

Scholarly journals should consider the attitudes of their communities before adopting any of the seven traits of open peer review. Unfortunately, surveys from the Global North might not apply to the Global South, where double-blind peer review is commonplace even among natural sciences and medicine journals. This paper reports the findings of a survey on attitudes toward open peer review among four stakeholder groups of a scholar-led medical journal in Brazil: society members, journal readers, authors, and reviewers. Compared to a previous survey, which mostly recruited natural sciences researchers from Europe, this survey found similar support for open peer review in general and for most of its traits. One important exception was open identities, which were considered detrimental by most participants, even more in this survey than in the previous one. Interestingly, participants were more dismissive of open identities as a whole than of statements about its specific consequences. Because preprints are increasingly popular but incompatible with double-blind review, future research should examine the effects of transitioning from double-blind to open identities, especially on gender bias. Meanwhile, scholarly journals with double-blind review might prefer to begin by adopting other traits of open review or to make open identities optional at first.

Impact of teacher education abroad in international co-authorship: a study of Federal University of São Carlos’s scientifics production indexed in the Web of Science

Metric studies on internationalization, especially indicators of co-authorship, present challenges regarding the collection, representativeness, and reliability of the data measuring the impacts of international mobility. Aiming to contribute to the understanding of scientific collaboration initiatives, the present research’s objective was to investigate the relationship between outside teacher education, represented by the completion of a doctoral degree and post-doctoral internship, and international collaboration, identified by the international co-authorships in institutional scientific output. The research method was the exploratory case study, and the case unit was the Federal University of São Carlos. The Lattes Platform and the Web of Science were used as sources of information, and the sample analyzed comprised 12,787 scientific articles and 1,915 Lattes resumés. It was found that 1,850 teachers have doctoral or post-doctoral education (96.6%) and, of these, 632 graduated abroad (33.1%). Regarding the scientific output, 3,487 of the 12,787 articles were published in international co-authorship (27.3%). From the scientific output in international co-authorship, indicators on the groups of teachers with and without education abroad were analyzed. Among the indicators developed, 8.43 articles per teacher were identified for the group with education abroad, while in the group without education abroad, 4.26 articles were identified per teacher. The results demonstrate a positive relationship between doctoral or post-doctoral education abroad with international co-authorships, contributing to institutional internationalization.

Thesaurus and subject heading lists as Linked Data

Most libraries put a lot of effort into developing subject headings or thesauri, which are used to index and retrieve information. Nevertheless, in the library field, controlled vocabularies are associated to authority records as authority files. In order to become findable by search engines, these authority files should be modelled on semantic vocabularies. This research proposes an authority-record conversion process for publishing thesauri and subject headings as linked data, by using the Simple Knowledge Organization Systems data model. To this purpose, we undertook a bibliographic and documentary research on the World Wide Web Consortium recommendation guidelines, which were used to produce a set of procedures and technologies to support the conversion proposal. This research provides evidences that controlled vocabularies are an important resource for improving information retrieval on the web. The proposed conversion process works as a quick guide for controlled vocabulary integration and reuse among users and systems on the linked data environment. Although the proposal was originally intended for a library setting, it can be applied and tested in another type of institution, such as documentation centres, museums, or cultural heritage archives. It can also be used in other linked open data projects.

For a decolonial social epistemology

The visualization of Information Science as a postmodern science must aim at overcoming borderline dominant models, surpassing simplistic methodological impasses, and covering complex phenomena. In this regard, the article is inserted in the epistemological discussions, selecting social epistemology and decolonial thought as its themes. Its purpose is to identify the possible convergences between decolonial thought and social epistemology and, based on that, to propose, in an essay-like way, a decolonial social epistemology. In the methodological aspect, this is an exploratory, qualitative, and bibliographic research. The technical procedure for the analysis of the bibliography took place using a non-probabilistic approach, by judgment. The main result of this article is the construction of a historical and epistemological panorama that makes possible the approximation of thematics that, although produced in different contexts and interests, converge in a common objective: that of constituting a social, democratic epistemic field and that does not disregard the different subjects of knowledge. Thus, the reflections that combine the proposal of social epistemology with the decolonial thought or movement may bring theoretical panoramas and perspectives closer to the professional practice and research aimed at the 21st century informational context.

Esquema básico de metadados para representação descritiva de obras de arte em museus brasileiros

Resumo Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar recomendações de diretrizes internacionais sobre a representação descritiva de objetos museológicos e, a partir delas, propor um esquema básico de metadados para representar obras de arte, considerando os contextos brasileiros. A proposta se justifica uma vez que parte dos museus locais declaradamente afirma não registrar suas coleções e que outra parte não adota recursos metodológicos para a catalogação. A metodologia utilizada teve apoio na literatura de terminologia, para o cotejo de metadados, bem como na norma de construção de tesauros da International Standard Organization nº 25964-1/2 e na literatura internacional, para a realização do mapeamento e do crosswalk das diretrizes selecionadas. Como resultado, foi elaborado um esquema concreto de metadados para orientar metodologicamente a descrição básica de coleções de arte, e foram feitas sugestões sobre sua utilização por museus de arte em nível nacional. A aplicabilidade do esquema foi verificada a partir de uma pequena amostra que buscou representar a diversidade das categorias da tipologia Artes Visuais presentes nos museus do Brasil. Acredita-se que a adoção de um esquema mínimo de metadados nas práticas catalográficas dos museus brasileiros poderá contribuir para uma maior organização das informações sobre as obras e permitir sua recuperação de modo mais consistente, potencializando o acesso às informações sobre essas coleções de arte no cenário nacional e internacional. A reflexão sobre o emprego de metodologias para o tratamento informacional das obras de museus põe em destaque a necessidade emergencial do uso de processos, de procedimentos e de políticas de gestão de coleções museológicas alinhados entre si, em função do desenvolvimento de boas práticas. Como continuidade do trabalho, está projetada a expansão do experimento para análise e para identificação de situações não previstas no uso da proposta.

The intellectual foundation of the elite of Brazilian researchers on knowledge organization domain

This study aims to analyze the intellectual foundation of the literature on knowledge organization published from 1972 to 2018 by authors enrolled in the Research Productivity Fellowship from Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, in Brazil. The corpus of analysis is composed of 166 papers indexed in Base de Dados Referencial de Artigos de Periódicos em Ciência da Informação, which is a database that gathers the scientific literature published in Information Science journals in Brazil. It is an exploratory study that uses citation analysis as the methodological procedure, through author co-citation analysis and author bibliographic coupling. Fujita is identified as the most productive author, with 18 articles. Dahlberg is the most cited author, with 53 citations. The highest frequency of author co-citation is between Hjørland and Dahlberg; Tálamo and Kobashi. They are the seminal authors to the Brazilian scientists studied in this paper. The strongest relationships in the author bibliographic coupling network are between Lara and Bufrem, Lara and Guimarães, and Bufrem and Fujita. They cited 9 authors in common in the papers analyzed in this research. The conclusion is that there is an influence of European literature among the scientists addressed in this study. The results indicate the possibility of developing diachronic studies on the continuing influences of cited authors, especially from seminal authors, to analyze their permanence or transience over time.

Oligopólios e publicação científica: a busca por impacto na América Latina

Resumo Este artigo investiga os editores da produção científica latino-americana. Os dados coletados na Web of Science entre os anos de 2014 a 2016 mostram 251.312 artigos em 11.965 periódicos, publicados majoritariamente por editoras comerciais (56,48%), dentre as quais se destacam Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Taylor & Francis e Sage Group. Essas instituições concentram o maior volume de títulos e artigos em Ciências da Vida & Biomedicina, Ciências Físicas e em Tecnologia. Nas Ciências Sociais e Artes & Humanidades sobressaem-se os editores universitários da região. Discute-se o investimento para publicar ao estimar os valores das taxas de publicação cobradas pelos títulos com maior número de artigos. A conclusão aponta a relevância da editoria universitária regional para publicação em títulos mainstream nos campos relegados pela Web of Science e seu papel na promoção do acesso aberto pela via platina. Por fim, aponta-se o papel exercido pelos grandes editores comerciais no acompanhamento de demandas de abertura científica, sem perda de mercado.