At this year’s World Conference on Research Integrity, a team of researchers from Digital Science led by Pritha Sarkar presented a poster with findings from their deep dive on conflict of interest (COI) statements. Entitled Conflict of Interest: A data driven approach to categorisation of COI statements, the initial goal was to look at COI statements with a view to creating a binary model that determines whether a Conflict of Interest statement is present or not in an article. 

However, all was not as it seemed. While some articles had no COI and some had one present, those present covered a number of different areas, which led the team to think COIs might represent a spectrum rather than binary options.

Gold standard

Conflict of interest is a crucial aspect of academic integrity. Properly declaring a COI statement is essential for other researchers to assess any potential bias in scholarly articles. However, those same researchers often encounter COI statements that are either inadequate or misleading in some way even if they are present. 

The Digital Science team – all working on research integrity with Dimensions – soon realized the data could be leveraged further to better explore the richness inherent in the nuanced COI statements. After further research and analysis, it became clear that COI statements could be categorized into six distinct types:

1. None Declared
2. Membership or Employment
3. Funds Received
4. Shareholder, Stakeholder or Ownership
5. Personal Relationship
6. Donation

This analysis involved manually annotating hundreds of COI statements with Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools. The aim was to create a gold standard that could be used to categorize all other COI statements, however despite the team’s diligence a significant challenge persisted in the shape of ‘data skewness’ – which can be defined as an imbalance in the distribution of data within a dataset that can impact data processing and analytics.

Fatal flaw

One irresistible conclusion to the data skewness was a simple one – that authors weren’t truthfully reporting their conflicts of interest. But could this really be true?

The gold standard approach came from manually and expertly annotating COI statements to develop an auto-annotation process. However, despite the algorithm’s ability to auto-annotate 33,812 papers in just 15 minutes, the skewness that had been initially identified persisted, leading to the false reporting theory for authors (see Figure 1 of COI Poster). 

To firm up this hypothesis, when the Retraction Watch database was analyzed, the troubling trend, including the discrepancy between reported COI category and retraction reason, became even more apparent (see Figure 2 of the COI Poster). 

Moreover, when the team continued with the investigation, they found there were 24,289 overlapping papers in Dimensions GBQ and Retraction Watch, and among those papers, 393 were retracted due to conflict of interest. Out of those 393 papers, 134 had a COI statement, however 119 declared there was no conflict to declare.

Conclusion

Underreporting and misreporting conflict of interest statements or types can undermine the integrity of scholarly work. Other research integrity issues around paper mills, plagiarism and predatory journals have already damaged the trust the public has with published research, so further problems with COIs can only worsen the situation. With the evidence of these findings, it is clear that all stakeholders in the research publication process must adopt standard practices on reporting critical trust markers such as COI to uphold the transparency and honesty in scholarly endeavors. 

To finish on a positive note, this research poster was awarded second-place at the 2024 World Conference on Research Integrity, showing that the team’s research has already attracted considerable attention among those who seek to safeguard research integrity and trust in science.

You can find the poster on Figshare: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25901707.v2

Partial data and the code for this project are also available on Figshare.

For more on the topic of research integrity, see details of Digital Science’s Catalyst Grant award for 2024, which focuses on digital solutions around this topic.

About the Author

Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press | Digital Science

Simon has 20 years’ experience in scholarly communications. He has lectured and published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact, and has recently authored a book on predatory publishing. Simon is an ALPSP tutor and has also served as a COPE Trustee.

The post Shining a light on conflict of interest statements appeared first on Digital Science.

At Digital Science, we recognize that the journey toward AI adoption is as unique as the organizations and individuals we support. From bench researchers to medical affairs professionals to research offices, our approach is grounded in collaboration and deep understanding.

Since 2013, we’ve been investing in advanced AI methodologies, expanding our technical and analytical capabilities, and assembling a global team of AI experts. To us,  AI isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution; it encapsulates a range of both new and existing capabilities and approaches that when thoughtfully applied, can significantly enhance capabilities and streamline workflows. Our commitment continues to be focused on working closely with our partners, deeply understanding their unique challenges and aspirations, to deliver innovative and responsible AI capabilities that enhance human intelligence, drive progress, and unlock the full potential of the research community.

Our Capabilities

For the last decade, we have focused around machine learning innovations with Dimensions.ai, investment in Writefull and development of different LLMs. Building on this AI lineage, 2024 will see a continuous flow of new releases, starting with Dimensions Research GPT Enterprise and Dimensions Research GPT.

Dimensions in ChatGPT

Available via OpenAI’s GPT Store, the new products aim to provide users looking to use ChatGPT for research-related questions with generative answers they can trust – grounded in scientific evidence from Digital Science’s Dimensions database.

Key features of Dimensions Research GPT Enterprise – available to Dimensions customers with a ChatGPT Enterprise licence – include: 

• Answers to research queries with publication data, clinical trials, patents and grant information
• Set up in the client’s private environment and only available to client’s end users
• Notifications each time content generated is based on Dimensions data, with references and citation details
• Possible for clients to have custom features (following prior discussion with Dimensions).

For Dimensions Research GPT, answers to research queries are linked to tens of millions Open Access publications, and access to the solution is free to anyone with a Plus or Enterprise subscription to OpenAI’s GPT Store.

Next-generation search experience

Dimensions has introduced a new summarization feature to support the user in their discovery process for publications, grants, patents and clinical trials. It has integrated AI-driven summarization capabilities into the Dimensions web application to enable all users to accelerate the identification of the most relevant content for their research questions. Short, concise summaries are now available for every record in a given search result list with a single click, providing users with AI-generated insights quickly. The Dimensions team has used feedback from members of the research community – including academic institutions, industry, publishers, government, and funders – to develop this summarization feature in the Dimensions web app.

Smarter searching in Dimensions

Other AI solutions will follow shortly from Digital Science, all of which seek to surface AI capabilities to support users with specific, relevant functionalities where AI in particular can offer improved results. Just as importantly, they have been developed with a grounding in reliability and responsibility so that users can trust them as they do with all our other products. 

Connecting your Data

The Dimensions Knowledge Graph, powered by metaphactory, aims at helping customers harness the synergy of global research knowledge and their internal data, and enable AI-powered applications and business decisions.

AI-Powered Writing Support

Writefull uses big data and Artificial Intelligence to boost academic writing. With language models trained on millions of journal articles, it provides the best automated language feedback to date leading the next generation of research writing help.

Deeper Understanding of Scholarly Papers

Available within ReadCube Enterprise Literature Management & Papers Reference Management, our beta AI Assistant is designed to enhance research efficiency by providing real-time, in-depth analysis, summarization, and contextual understanding of scholarly articles within a researcher’s literature library.

Our latest AI insights

An experienced partner in AI

The history of AI at Digital Science

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AI & Digital Science

How does Digital Science use AI? We ask ChatGPT

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The post Digital Science and Artificial Intelligence appeared first on Digital Science.

Digital Science’s flagship product Dimensions has announced a new solution for research institutions and industry, helping to identify risks associated with government research security requirements. Why is the Dimensions Research Security app the right choice for your research operations?

Universities and industry involved in research and development are no strangers to the need to protect intellectual property and mitigate against risk. Nevertheless, organizations around the world – from the FBI in the United States to Universities UK – are increasingly calling for these risks to be taken more seriously.

Inevitably, additional government regulations and recommendations have followed, requiring research institutions – and individual researchers who receive government funding – to demonstrate compliance within their local jurisdictions. Failing to do so can result in penalties and loss of reputation, as well as the impact on research, and economies that rely on that research.

The complexity of these issues combined with the vast networks of research globally means that institutions often can’t “go it alone” – they need something to shine a stronger, brighter spotlight on research security compliance, and to provide the right information to assist in making the best decisions.

Dimensions – among the world’s largest linked research databases – is perfectly placed to be a beacon of light on these issues.

The new Dimensions Research Security app

The Dimensions Research Security app includes a visual dashboard that enables research organizations to obtain information quickly and easily.

Reviewing research collaborations for compliance? Dimensions Research Security enables you to thoroughly and efficiently conduct due diligence on potential research collaborations, helping you to save on time and resources.

With Dimensions Research Security, you can:

• Efficiently verify disclosures
• See all research collaborations – via grant funding information or co-authorship on publications, in patents or in clinical trials
• Surface multiple affiliations for individual researchers
• Screen for restricted entities or individuals
• Pinpoint countries of interest
• Uncover direct and indirect funding sources
• Reveal undisclosed collaborations or international funding sources that could put grant applications at risk.

Research organizations are then able to assess and prioritize potential risks, with the power of world-leading information at their fingertips.

Find out more about the new Dimensions Research Security app at the Dimensions blog site, or ask for a demonstration today.

About Dimensions

Part of Digital Science, Dimensions is among the world’s largest linked research database and data infrastructure provider, re-imagining research discovery with access to grants, publications, clinical trials, patents and policy documents all in one place. www.dimensions.ai. Follow @DSDimensions on X (Twitter) and LinkedIn.

About the Author

David Ellis, Press, PR and Social Manager | Digital Science

David has 30 years’ experience in media and communications. With a background in broadcast journalism, his career focus has been in research communication – including science, health science and medicine – spanning 25 years of service in the university sector. His experience also includes both internal and external communications in the health and manufacturing sectors.

The post Dimensions shines a spotlight on research security appeared first on Digital Science.

When the UN adopted the SDGs in 2015 to focus attention on the major challenges facing the world, it did so seeking to recognise all 193 signatory countries equally. It has always been apparent that some of the worst problems facing humanity are felt much more keenly in developing countries, however the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past and even out inequalities.

However, there has been a nagging doubt, to paraphrase George Orwell, that ‘all countries are equal, but some countries are more equal than others’. This fear has been realized in a landmark white paper by Times Higher Education (THE),  Prince Sultan University and Digital Science, titled ‘Research in the Context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in the Developed and Developing World: Evidence From the Past 15 Years’ and available on the website of the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Congress where it was released last week. 

The white paper is the most comprehensive of its kind to date and calls for greater equity for developing nations within the global research ecosystem, especially as those countries are impacted most by the issues the SDGs focus on. 

The white paper was commissioned by THE and utilizes data from Dimensions to uncover significant gaps in research funding, collaboration and assessment between developed and developing countries. Lower income countries struggle to gain recognition for their contributions towards the SDGs. The authors wanted to level the playing field with a series of recommendations, including:

• Targeted interventions to support lower-income countries, promote research infrastructure, and provide funding opportunities to bolster their research capacities and collaborations
• Continued use of THE Impact Rankings to help address global inequalities and promote strong SDG partnerships between regions
• Use of comprehensive and (if needed) bespoke metrics that capture the multidimensional aspects of research impact aligned with the SDGs, to provide valuable insights and guide policy-making and funding decisions
• Incentives at local and international levels to accelerate SDG research and research collaboration between high-income and lower-income countries, to help uplift scholars from countries that suffer from structural, historical and contemporary imbalances of power in the global research ecosystem.

When reviewing the report, it is clear from the analysis that there is a substantial gap between higher and lower income nations when it comes to research funding and recognition. Perhaps most importantly, this gap has been closing only slowly over the past 15 years, not quickly as one might hope and expect. 

The authors – Professor Mohammad Nurunnabi (Prince Sultan University), Dr Sanjida Haque (Prince Sultan University), Ms Ann Campbell (Digital Science), Dr Juergen Wastl (Digital Science), Dr Ishan Cader (Times Higher Education) – conclude by seeking to reinforce the urgent calls to action by policymakers, both regionally and globally. They say there is a clear need to reflect the quality and impact of research within less developed regions and implement strategies that not only improve the research ecosystem, but that utilize the global influence of university impact rankings. For everyone’s sake, let’s hope the game can be changed in favor of those who have been at a disadvantage since the first whistle.

About the Author

Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press | Digital Science

Simon has 20 years’ experience in scholarly communications. He has lectured and published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact, and has recently authored a book on predatory publishing. Simon is also a COPE Trustee and ALPSP tutor, and holds Masters degrees in Philosophy and International Business.

The post SDGs: A level playing field? appeared first on Digital Science.

In keeping with many Digital Science new starters, Chief of Staff Alison Mitchell has had an exhilarating first few months at the company. Here she reflects on the theme of change in terms of leadership and growth in a complex organization.

For many years I’ve watched Digital Science from afar, and I’ve always been aware of its long-held commitment to helping researchers and research institutions make a difference. For more than a decade, Digital Science has been committed to maximizing the impact research and researchers can have throughout society. We do this by providing researchers with the full range of data they need, by giving them access to analytics that enable better decision-making about research, and by supplying better tools to help communicate the outcomes – including the impact – of their research more broadly. 

We’re in an era of major crises across the world that can be solved only through open debate and knowledge sharing, and it’s rewarding and energizing to be part of an organization that is committed to listening to, understanding and helping to solve the problems faced in the research ecosystem.

Once you join Digital Science, it’s clear from day one that everyone has a shared desire to help researchers create a positive impact on the world. To do this consistently well – to continue to serve researchers and solve their pain points – we need to understand the people who use our products and evolve how we work with them. As we continue on our journey to achieve that mission, Digital Science is focused on listening to our customers’ needs, building on the close working relationships we’ve developed, and offering multi-product experiences as products become more integrated across all our different user groups. This integrated approach will not only lead to more benefits for customers, but it will also open up potential new solutions to pressing academic and research problems. For example, we’ve developed Dimensions Modules&Apps in 2023, which provides analytical and workflow apps for different users and use cases, all drawing on the world’s largest linked research information dataset.

Change is also happening quickly in terms of our people, and within my own Chief of Staff area we have already created two new teams. The first is a Business Intelligence Unit, led by Dr Jennifer Wooldridge, which will support the business with timely, accurate, easy-to-use reporting and analysis on performance, competitors and the wider market. The second is a new team that will lead the company in exploring new ideas and insights across the research ecosystem. We’ve called the team ‘TL;DR’ – a play on the fact that we’re trying to be brief and accessible – and launched a new website to host the blogs, interviews and other content that the team produces. The team includes former Overleaf CEO John Hammersley, founder of Ripeta Leslie McIntosh, and other Digital Science leaders Suze Kundu, Briony Fane and Simon Porter who, together, are aiming to develop a “new avenue for interesting things”.

I titled this post “leadership for change” because change has been the theme of my first months with Digital Science. I see a company that’s moving from its sometimes disparate start-up roots to being a joined-up team that’s evolving and scaling to meet the needs of the important communities it serves – all the while maintaining the spirit of innovation that I knew Digital Science for before I joined. It’s an exciting journey, and I’m proud to be a part of it.

Alison Mitchell
Chief of Staff
10 May 2023

The post My First 100 Days: Leadership for Change appeared first on Digital Science.

“Climate change is one of the biggest threats to health.”
—Dr Beth Thompson, interim Director of Strategy, Wellcome Trust (7 February 2023).

This blog addresses the impact of climate change on infectious diseases, in particular infectious diseases with the potential to transmit from animals to humans, also known as zoonotic diseases. To set the scene for this, we first consider the wider context of how global warming has far-reaching consequences for humans and the planet. The global changes that we are currently experiencing have never happened before, with climate change representing one of the principal environmental and health challenges. We use Dimensions to explore published research, research funding, policy documents and citation data. To help us perform a deeper analysis of the data, we access the Dimensions data through its Google BigQuery (GBQ) provision. This allows us to integrate data from Dimensions with one of the  publicly available World Bank datasets on GBQ.  

We also look at the research in conjunction with two United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – SDG3 Good Health and Well-being and SDG13 Climate Action – and assess how they add to the narrative. Many of the health impacts associated with climate change are a particular threat to the poorest people in low- and middle-income countries where the burden of climate sensitive diseases is the greatest. This also suggests that the impact in these regions, based on the UN SDGs, may reach beyond climate (SDG13) and health (SDG3) to affect those who live in extreme poverty (SDG1) and/or those who experience food insecurity (SDG2).

“The climate crisis is a health crisis”

Introduction

1. Climate change and zoonotic diseases

Climate change has far-reaching implications for human health in the 21st century, with significant increases in temperature extremes, heavy precipitation, and severe droughts.¹ It directly impacts health through long-term changes in rainfall and temperature, climatic extremes (heatwaves, hurricanes, and flash floods), air quality, sea-level rise in low-land coastal regions, and many different influences on food production systems and water resources.²

In terms of human health, climate change has an important impact on the transmission of vector-borne diseases (human illnesses caused by parasites), in particular zoonotic infectious diseases (infections transmitted from animal to humans by the bite of infected arthropod species, such as mosquitoes and bats), and has a particular relevance due to the most recent COVID-19 and Zika virus outbreaks. Arthropods are of major significance due to their abundance, adaptability, and coevolution to different kinds of pathogens.³ 

Zoonotic infectious diseases are a global threat because they can become pandemics, as we have seen in the case of COVID-19, and are currently considered one of the most important threats for public health globally. The COVID pathogen spread worldwide, recording 255,324,963 cases with 5,127,696 deaths as of November 2021.⁴

One reason for this turnaround could be related to the widespread adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in particular SDG6, which sets out to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”.⁹ The achievement of this Goal, even if partially, would greatly benefit people and the planet, given the importance of clean water for socio-economic development and quality of life, including health and environmental protection. SDG6 considers improvement of water quality by reducing by half the amount of wastewater that is not treated by 2030.

The changes in climatic conditions have forced many pathogens and vectors to develop adaptation mechanisms. For example, in the case of African Ebola, climate change is a factor in the rise in cases over the past two decades, with bats and other animal hosts of the virus being driven into new areas when temperatures change, potentially bringing them into closer contact with humans.  

Examples highlighting how the acceleration of zoonotic pathogens is attributable to changes in climate and ecology due to human impact are common. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), almost six out of every 10 infectious diseases can be spread from animals to humans; three out of every four emerging infectious diseases in humans originate from animals.⁵ Zoonotic diseases, such as those spread by mosquitoes and other related vectors, have increased in recent years. This is because the rise in global temperatures has created favourable conditions for breeding specific pathogens, especially in poorly developed countries predominantly in the Global South.⁶ Further, climate change is causing people’s general health to deteriorate, making it easier for zoonotic infections to spread, as seen with the Zika and dengue viruses.⁷

The changes in climatic conditions have forced pathogens and vectors to develop adaptation mechanisms. Such development has resulted in these diseases becoming resistant to conventional treatments due to their augmented resilience and survival techniques, thus further favouring the spread of infection.

2. Exploring links between climate change and zoonotic diseases as evidenced by mentions in policy documents

Developments in policy are generally rooted in academic research. Applying research to policy relevant questions is increasingly important to address potential problems and can often identify what has been successful or not successful elsewhere. Citations to the research that underpins policy documents is known to be an important (proxy) indicator of the quality of the research carried out. Awareness and the course of action taken by governments, NGOs and other health-focused institutions is evident by their activity in this area. For example, in the UK the government has recently allocated £200 million to fight zoonotic diseases.⁹ Actions that are taken relevant to this are communicated by, for example, relevant policy documents which mention the research influencing public policy decision making in this area. Policy documents provide us with a different perspective for analysis, allowing a closer proximity to ‘real world’, society-facing issues. 

3. The SDG3 and SDG13 crossover: research outputs associated with zoonotic diseases and climate change

The UN launched the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to address an ongoing crisis: human pressure leading to unprecedented environmental degradation, climatic change, social inequality, and other negative planet-wide consequences.¹⁰ There is growing evidence that environmental change and infectious disease emergence are causally linked and there is an increased recognition that SDGs are linked to one another. Thus, understanding their dynamics is central to achieving the vision of the UN 2030 Agenda. But environmental change also has direct human health outcomes via infectious disease emergence, and this link is not customarily integrated into planning for sustainable development.¹¹

Two of the 17 UN SDGs of most relevance to zoonotic diseases and climate change are SDG3 and SDG13.

Looking specifically at SDG3, reducing global infectious disease risk is one of the targets for the Goal (Target 3.3), alongside strengthening prevention strategies to identify early warning signals (Target 3.d).¹² Given the direct connection between environmental change and infectious disease risk, actions taken to achieve other SDGs also have an impact on the achievement of SDG3. Moreover, strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters is one of the targets for SDG13 (Target 13.1).¹³ The two SDGs perhaps highlight two sides of the same coin – SDG3 focusing on preventing and reducing disease risks and SDG13 focusing on strengthening resilience of climate-related hazards (infectious disease being an obvious hazard).

Exploring the crossover between SDG3 and SDG13 using Dimensions, reveals interlinkages with other SDGs – SDG1 No Poverty and SDG2 Zero Hunger. We know that living in poverty has negative impacts on health, and in respect of climate change, economic loss attributed to climate-related disasters is now a reality. Experiencing hunger can be a consequence of vulnerable agricultural practices that negatively impact food productivity and production. In 2020, between 720 and 811 million persons worldwide were suffering from hunger, as many as 161 million more than in 2019.¹⁴ Moreover, climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters progressively deteriorate land and soil quality, severely affecting the cost of food items.

4. Funding of research associated with SDG3 and SDG13 – increases in SDG research funding

Scientific advances reveal empirical observations of the association between climate change and shifts in infectious diseases. Using Dimensions we can examine the scientific evidence for this by looking at the impact of climate change on zoonotic diseases. We can also track the science, through the lens of research outputs associated with both SDG3 and SDG13.  

Being able to assess publishing and funding behaviours by comparing the Global North and Global South countries provides us with an insight into where research is both funded and ultimately published. Moreover, one question we might ask is, given that the Global South is currently hardest hit by the consequences of climate change from an infectious disease perspective, will we see changes in publishing and funding practices in the future?

Furthermore, climate change has exacerbated many influencing factors. It has generated habitat loss, pushed wild animals from hotter to cooler climates where they can mix with new animals and more people, and it has lengthened the breeding season and expanded the habitats of disease-spreading mosquitoes, ticks, etc.,¹⁵ and so we could potentially see more zoonotic infectious disease spreading to countries in the Global North. Given these factors, and the capability of Dimensions, we can make comparisons over time and geolocation to track where changes are occurring.

Dimensions search strategy and data investigation

i. Search strategies

Research data were retrieved using Digital Science’s Dimensions database and Google BigQuery (GBQ). For initial searches we created a specific search term to identify publications associated with zoonotic/infectious diseases and climate change. Two sets of terms were used to define the searching keywords. The first was made up of keywords associated with zoonotic and infectious diseases, and the second was simply one word, ‘Climate’, as follows:

Zoonoses OR "zoonotic diseases" OR "parasitic diseases" OR "zoonotic pathogens" OR "vector borne diseases" OR "climate-sensitive infectious diseases" OR "infectious disease risk" OR "infectious diseases" AND Climate.

Dimensions’ inbuilt SDG classification system allowed for the linking of research outputs associated with SDGs both individually and in combination. On this basis we were able to include SDG3 Good Health and Well-being and SDG13 Climate Action to the search, allowing us to include outputs associated with both Goals. The main focus of the search carried out was on peer-reviewed articles and government policy documents between 2010 and 2022. A set of 1,436 research publications were retrieved and entered into further analyses separately. The research outputs retrieved shared a focus on the impact of climate change on pathogen, host and transmission of human zoonotic/infectious diseases.

A dataset based on the research outputs retrieved from Dimensions was created within GBQ. This allowed integration with publicly available datasets from the World Bank to ascertain low and high income countries and regions. The Dimensions GBQ provision also facilitates in-depth targeted analyses. This allowed us to look solely at the publications resulting from our search in order to identify trends in concepts, citations, policy documents and collaborations by geographic region.

ii. Findings

a) Publication timeline trends for research outputs tagged in Dimensions jointly with SDG3 and SDG13 and associated with zoonotic/infectious diseases and climate change were plotted.

Figure 3 highlights the trajectory over a 13-year time period for publications associated with both SDG3 and SDG13 in Dimensions. Of note, following implementation of the UN SDGs in January 2016, the upward trend in numbers of publications begins to rise sharply until the end of 2021, with a dip in 2022.

b) Co-authorship analysis: Collaboration by geographic region

Figure 4a reveals that for every 40 publications authored in a high-income country, one publication was in collaboration with a low-income country-based researcher. Figure 4b reveals that two in three publications authored by low-income country based researchers have been in collaboration with high-income country based researchers. We conclude from this that it is proportionately more likely for low-income country researchers to collaborate with researchers in the Global North than for researchers in the Global North to collaborate with researchers in the Global South. However, it is important to note here that numbers of research outputs are disproportionate between the global regions (see Table 1 below). 

2010-2022	Number and percentage of authors publishing climate change and infectious (zoonotic) diseases research	Number of authors publishing research outputs associated with SDG13	Number of authors publishing research outputs associated with SDG3	Total number of authors publishing in each geographic income region
Global South
Low-income countries	52 (0.11%)	2,818 (6.22%)	26,649 (58.85%)	45,285 (100%)
Lower-middle-income countries	468 (0.03%)	85,931 (6.07%)	409,355 (28.93%)	1,415,019 (100%)
Global North
High-income countries	618 (0.01%)	365,917 (4.73%)	2,337,971 (30.22%)	7,736,160 (100%)
Upper-middle-income countries	2,419 (0.06%)	194,187 (4.56%)	850,954 (19.97%)	4,260,966 (100%)

Table 1 outlines the combined total number of authors of published research in the Global South and Global North, including the proportion of researchers against the total number of researchers in each of these regions. The figures in the table reveal that proportionally the number of researchers publishing research on zoonotic diseases and climate change is higher than that of higher-income countries. We argue here that this research focus is not necessarily a niche area for Global South countries (even though their number of research outputs and activity is low in real terms). Consideration of the number of authors publishing zoonotic diseases and climate change research papers against numbers of authors publishing in areas associated more generally with SDG3 and SDG13 provides a glimpse of the breadth of sustainable development research of which our topic area is just one component. 

Despite the crossover with SDG3 and SDG13 not being high, it shows that the engagement of researchers in low-income countries with zoonotic diseases research is notable and contributes to research progress in this area. However, the research is better represented if we look proportionally. For example, 52 researchers in low-income countries represent 8% of the number of zoonotic disease researchers in high-income countries (618), but the total number of researchers publishing overall in low-income countries (45,285) represents just 0.5% of all researchers in high-income countries (7.7 million) making the proportional contribution by low-income country researchers 40 times greater than high-income country researchers in this research area.

c) Research publications by geographic region

Figure 5 above reveals a total of 1,419 research publications pre- and post-SDG period from 2010-2022 by country income group have been captured by Dimensions. The numbers represented in the chart reveal that publications have at least one author in the country income groupings outlined. In order to incorporate collaborations, a publication is included twice if it includes an author within each income group. This only applies for the analysis of country income groups. It allows us to see any increases/decreases in collaborative behaviour. In this respect, we note the contribution (either through collaborating or writing their own publications) from low/low-medium-income (Global South) countries has risen both in number and as a proportion of the outputs from 2010.

d) Citation analysis by geographic regions

The data in Figure 6a and 6b above reveal that:

1. South-East Asia as a producer of this research is dominant in the Global South (see Fig. 6b).

2. In the Global South, South-East Asia both publishes research and favourably cites research from the same region (see Fig. 6a).

3. Research output in South-East Asia is not as highly cited by the Global North (see Fig. 6b). What is notable however, is the overall dominance of the Global North for both research output and citation counts. We conjecture one reason for why this might be the case is that the Global South may not have access to the same level of funding or collaboration opportunities. Moreover, differences in research focus could account for the distinction. Moreover, interest in these areas by high-income country research(ers) may be less pronounced than those research areas elsewhere in the Global South (eg, Africa) where there is more collaboration, or more ‘gain’ for Global North countries (Ebola, Zika etc). For example, if India’s research focus was local to aspects of zoonotic diseases that only affect this country, then it might be less likely that higher income countries would cite the research. This warrants a deeper dive into the data to uncover such findings but is outside the scope of the blog.

In conclusion, it is perhaps the case that areas which are most affected by climate change and zoonotic diseases have become publication ‘hotspots’ which are not yet attractive to researchers in Global North countries.

e) Funding – by income/geography; Funder type

The general trend seen in Fig. 7 above reveals government funding to be the major driving force in zoonotic diseases and climate change research in all of the country groupings.  What Dimensions reveals in this respect is that governments in the Global North provide 100% of the government funding that is held in the Dimensions database for research on these topics in the Global South. This would explain perhaps why low-income countries in the Global South, where research infrastructure isn’t as well funded, receives less government funding as it is awarded by the Global North. Looking at funding from non-profit sources, which includes organisations such as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Science and Technology Development Fund, we note that such organisations provide nearly a quarter of all research funding held in Dimensions, in the Global South. As with government funding, 98% of all non-profit research funding in both regions comes from non-profit organisations in the Global North. It is interesting to note, given the focus of the research, that only a very small proportion of funding is received across all funder types from the healthcare sector. All other funders included in Fig. 7 92.5% of funding comes from the Global North (healthcare funding is included in this figure).¹⁶

f) Policy documents and their citing publications

In Dimensions, policy sources and document types range from government guidelines, reports or white papers; independent policy institute publications; advisory committees on specific topics; research institutes; and international development organisations. The top 12 policy publishers that are outlined in Fig. 8 above represent those publishers of policies citing research outputs associated with climate change and zoonotic diseases. It is perhaps not unexpected that the number of publications cited by the World Health Organization would be high given its global vision to eliminate the disease burden globally and to reverse climate change. Zoonotic diseases are very much on the radar of the global agencies concerned with global health which, given climate change, means that spread of these diseases in the Global North is more likely.

Takeaway findings

Using Dimensions’ capability to take a deep dive into research exploring zoonotic diseases and climate change in the context of SDGs has enabled us to uncover a number of interesting findings that are illuminating in the context of a world view.

Our investigations have revealed several interesting findings, including:

• Research publications in this area have increased more than two-fold since the implementation of the SDGs.  
• Collaboration patterns in the Global North and Global South reveal that researchers in Global South countries are more likely to collaborate with researchers in the Global North than vice versa.
• The total number of authors publishing research on zoonotic diseases and climate change in the lowest-income countries represents 8% of the total number of zoonotic disease researchers in high-income countries (see Table 1). Expanding this out across all research publications, the total number of researchers publishing in low-income countries represents just 0.5% of all researchers in high-income countries, making the proportional representation of low-income country researchers 40 times greater than high-income country researchers. Although actual numbers would reveal a different story, we believe that depicting the data in this way provides a balanced representation of the research output.
• Research carried out on zoonotic diseases and climate change in the lower income countries is less well cited by higher income countries.
• The data in Dimensions highlights that government organisations in the Global North award much of the funding for research in the Global South, and likewise for funding from non-profit agencies. What we might consider here as an explanation is that numerous organisations in the Global North such as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the SCI Foundation, along with governments, are committed to the elimination of zoonotic diseases and in helping reduce carbon emissions to reverse climate change at a global level.

Conclusion

What is apparent is that governments around the world are investing large sums of money as part of the global mission to halt the spread of animal diseases and to protect the public against zoonotic disease outbreaks before they become pandemics that pose a risk globally.

Digital Science’s Dimensions database provided us with enormous opportunities for the interrogation of data to gather insights on zoonotic diseases and climate change (much more than could be included in this blog). The comprehensiveness of the database in terms of its coverage of publications, policy documents, grant funding and SDG-associated output (among others) in the Global North and Global South allows for creating the most value. As a linked research database, the possibilities for generating downstream link- and flow- analyses across geographies means it is an invaluable tool for the widest possible discovery across the research ecosystem.

About Dimensions

Part of Digital Science, Dimensions is the largest linked research database and data infrastructure provider, re-imagining research discovery with access to grants, publications, clinical trials, patents and policy documents all in one place. www.dimensions.ai

About the Authors

Dr Briony Fane, Director, Researcher Engagement, Data | Digital Science

Dr Briony Fane gained a PhD from City, University of London, and has worked both as a funded researcher and a research manager in the university sector. Briony plays a major role in investigating and contextualising data for clients and stakeholders. She identifies and documents her findings, trends and insights through the curation of customised in-depth reports. Briony has extensive knowledge of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and regularly publishes blogs on the subject, exploring and contextualising data from Dimensions.

Ann Campbell, Product Technical Specialist | Dimensions

Ann Campbell (MPhil) joined Digital Science after almost 16 years working in the university sector where she successfully implemented several information systems used across the student and research lifecycle. Ann has a broad knowledge of data integration and analysis, primarily in the areas of academic research and impact, research assessment, diversity and inclusion and the UN SDGs. With extensive expertise in academic related data, she has played a lead role in data preparation for a number of REF assessments, diversity and inclusion charters and mandatory submissions.

Dr Juergen Wastl, Director of Academic Relations and Consultancy | Digital Science

Dr Juergen Wastl leads on supporting research institutions, funders, governments and other institutions with research capabilities to make better use of data to inform their strategies and decisions. Juergen headed the team that developed the Sustainable Development Goals classification for Dimensions and spearheads investigations and innovative analysis based on the UN SDGs. He is also Associate Director at the Research on Research Institute (RoRI) and he has considerable experience in all matters associated with research evaluation, assessment and interoperability.

¹ https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s40121-022-00647-3.pdf

² Field, C.B., V.R. Barros, D.J. Dokken,et al. 2014. Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects.Working Group II Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK and New York,NY: Cambridge University Press.

³ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4459090/pdf/fpubh-03-00157.pdf

⁴ Ajuwon BI, Roper K, Richardson A, Lidbury BA. One Health Approach: A Data-Driven Priority for Mitigating Outbreaks of Emerging and Re-Emerging Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. Trop Med Infect Dis. 2021 Dec 29;7(1):4. doi: 10.3390/tropicalmed7010004. PMID: 35051120; PMCID: PMC8780196

⁵ Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(2), 893; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19020893

⁶ We use the terms Global North/Global South and High- high middle income and low- low middle income countries interchangeably.

⁷ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31196187/

⁸ https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11356-020-08896-w

⁹ https://www.gov.uk/government/news/200-million-investment-to-fight-zoonotic-diseases#:~:text=The%20%C2%A3200%20million%20funding,Capability%20in%20Animal%20Health%20programme

¹⁰ https://news.un.org/en/search/Sustainable%20development%20goals

¹¹ https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.2001655117

¹² https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal3

¹³ https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal13

¹⁴ https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/hunger/

¹⁵ https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/inevitable-outbreaks-spillovers-pandemics

¹⁶ It is important to note here that Dimensions funding data is skewed towards the Global North.

The post Zooming in on zoonotic diseases appeared first on Digital Science.

Daniel Hook, one of the co-founders of Symplectic and now CEO of Digital Science, reflects on the past 20 years of growth and change at Symplectic – and what makes it such a special partner within the research community.

Twenty years is a long time in tech but a short time in the world of research. There are other, perhaps more appropriate measures by which to measure the age of Symplectic: in UK terms, Symplectic is ‘three REFs’ old, from a New Zealand perspective it is just two PBRFs, and in an Australian context it is four (and a bit) ERAs old. From a software development perspective, Symplectic is six major versions old. From a client perspective, it is more than 120 installations old. From a personal perspective, it is two CEOs old – indeed, around Christmas this year, I will become the second-longest serving CEO of Symplectic, having moved into the Digital Science leadership team in 2015 and handed the reins of Symplectic over into the capable hands of Jonathan Breeze.

As with almost any 20-year-old, this one, which was started by four friends who happened to share an office while doing their PhDs, has grown so as to be almost completely unrecognisable. And yet, there are things that were important to us when we founded the company 20 years ago that remain at the heart of what we do now. I like to think that there are two guiding principles in what Symplectic does: firstly, whatever we do, we do it collaboratively; secondly, we want to save people time. There are other things that flow from this: bringing an academic perspective; helping people to make better decisions; ensuring that data are re-used; making sure that we preserve key aspects of choice in how users of Elements are able to work with the data that it contains; interoperability between systems and so on. At the core each of these things is an expression of those two guiding principles.

Setting collaboration at the centre of Symplectic’s world has created a very special ethos in the company, as both those inside the company and those who work with Symplectic’s team will attest. Symplectic’s story is not just about those of us who founded the company or those of us who have been part of the team – it is a story that is shared with Symplectic’s wider community. There are simply too many people to name who have played pivotal roles in making Symplectic the company that it is today. I know this because, in preparation for this blog, I tried to write such a list and found myself with more than 50 names of people simply from my time as CEO in the first ten years of Symplectic. And, that list specifically did not include the many colleagues and friends who were actually part the Symplectic team itself over that period. I can only imagine that Jonathan Breeze, my successor, has a list at least as long as the company has expanded significantly under his tenure. All these contributors have made Symplectic what it is today. 

Symplectic enjoys a special level of collaboration with its clients, partners, friends, and colleagues. So many over the years have taken a long view – not solely focusing on their own project or installation but giving their time and knowledge generously. This has not only created a company and a piece of software, but also a shared store of deep domain knowledge. Every relationship has gone toward ‘paying it forward’ so that the broader Symplectic community benefits from the innovations and ideas of each participant. When once, in the early phase of Symplectic’s development around 2008, a perceptive UK-based client observed, “You’re really just centralising development funding from many universities so that you can give us a great product and keep it moving forward in a way that we can afford”, they were not wrong.

Our second focus of saving people time sits as a key part of this collaborative relationship. In that regard, Symplectic has moved from serving a single institution in 2003 to being fortunate enough to collaborate with institutions around the world to help them save time for their researchers.

Symplectic’s work is trusted around the world, saving time every day for more than 500,000 academics and administrators in 18 countries. The clients of Symplectic hold more than 8.8m distinct publications sourced from different data sources, saving academic and administrative time every time an article is added to their Symplectic Elements system, full text is deposited, or data is reused in other systems to inform decisions, help annual reviews or advertise the expertise of colleagues to potential partners around the world. With the help of Dimensions, I estimate that:

• Just over 7% of global annual output is recorded by organisations in a Symplectic Elements system in an automated way that minimises the time to rekey research metadata records.
• 23% of global green open access articles are associated with at least one Symplectic Elements instance, saving time for academics to deposit their work into institutional repositories.
• 17.5% of global citations land on articles stored in Symplectic Elements instances, while 15.5% of Nature papers are captured in Elements instances.
• Approximately 64% of articles associated with Symplectic’s clients have an Altmetric mention (compared to a global average of 27%).
• 72.5% of New Zealand’s research article output is captured in a Symplectic Elements system, as well as 74% of funder-acknowledging publications, and almost 81% of New Zealand’s University-produced research.

It has been an honour to work with the Symplectic team over the last 20 years. To see their progress, their dedication, and their spirit. As you see, they have carved out a unique path and make a real impact in the world with the people that they support. Here’s to the next 20! 

And, of course, to borrow a phrase… Vive la Symplectic! 

This post was originally published on the Symplectic website here.

About the Author

Daniel Hook, CEO | Digital Science

Daniel Hook is CEO of Digital Science, co-founder of Symplectic, a research information management provider, and of the Research on Research Institute (RoRI). A theoretical physicist by training, he continues to do research in his spare time, with visiting positions at Imperial College London and Washington University in St Louis.

The post Symplectic at 20: Thoughts from Digital Science’s CEO appeared first on Digital Science.

While the global picture of Open Access remains something of a patchwork (see our recent blog post The Changing Landscape of Open Access Compliance), trends are nevertheless moving in broadly the same direction, with the past decade seeing a move globally from 70% of all publishing being closed access to 54% being open access. 

The White House OSTP’s new memo (aka the Nelson Memo) will see this trend advance rapidly in the United States, stipulating that federally-funded publications and associated datasets should be made publicly available without embargo.

In this blog post, Symplectic‘s Kate Byrne and Figshare‘s Andrew Mckenna-Foster start to unpack what the Nelson Memo means, along with some of the impacts, considerations and challenges that research institutions and librarians will need to consider in the coming months.

Demystifying the Nelson Memo’s recommendations

The focus of the memo is upon ensuring free, immediate, and equitable access to federally funded research. 

The first clause of the memo is focused on working with the funders to ensure that they have policies in place to provide embargo-free, public access to research. 

The second clause encourages the development of transparent procedures to ensure scientific and research integrity is maintained in public access policies. This is a complex and interesting space, which goes beyond the remit of what we would perhaps traditionally think of as ‘Open Access’ to incorporate elements such as transparency of data, conflicts of interest, funding, and reproducibility (the latter of which is of particular interest to our sister company Ripeta, who are dedicated to building trust in science by benchmarking reproducibility in research).  

The third clause recommends that federal agencies coordinate with the OSTP in order to ensure equitable delivery of federally-funded research results in data. While the first clause mentions making supporting data available alongside publications, this clause takes a broader stance toward sharing results. 

What does this mean for institutions and faculty?

The Nelson memo introduces a clear set of challenges for research institutions, research managers, and librarians, who now need to consider how to put in place internal workflows and guidance that will enable faculty to easily identify eligible research and make it openly available, how to support multiple pathways to open access, and how to best engage and incentivize researchers and faculty. 

However, the OSTP has made very clear that this is not in fact a mandate, but rather a non-binding set of recommendations. While this certainly relieves some of the potential immediate pressure and panic around getting systems and processes in place, it is clear that what this move does represent is the direction of travel that has been communicated to federal funders. 

Funders will look at the Nelson Memo when reviewing their own policies, and seek alignment when setting their own policy requirements that drive action for faculty members across the US. So while the memo does not in itself mandate compliance for institutions, universities, and research organizations, it will have a direct impact on the activities faculty are being asked to complete – increasing the need for institutions to offer faculty services and support to help them easily comply with their funders requirements.

How have funders responded so far? 

We are already seeing clear indications that funders are embracing the recommendations and preparing next steps. Rapidly after the announcement, the NIH published a statement of support for the policy, noting that it has “long championed principles of transparency and accessibility in NIH-funded research and supports this important step by the Biden Administration”, and over the coming months will “work with interagency partners and stakeholders to revise its current Public Access Policy to enable researchers, clinicians, students, and the public to access NIH research results immediately upon publication”. 

Similarly, the USDA tweeted their support for the guidance, noting that “rapid public access to federally-funded research & data can drive data-driven decisions & innovation that are critical in our fast-changing world.”

How big could the impact be?

While it will take some time for funders to begin to publish their updated OA Policies, there have been some early studies which seek to assess how many publications could potentially fall under such policies. 

A recent preprint by Eric Schares of Iowa State University [Impact of the 2022 OSTP Memo: A Bibliometric Analysis of U.S. Federally Funded Publications, 20217-2021] used data from Dimensions to identify and analyse publications with federal funding sources. Schares found that: 

• 1.32 million publications in the US were federally funded between 2017-2021, representing 33% of all US research outputs in the same period. 
• 32% of federally funded publications were not openly available to the public in 2021 (compared to 38% of worldwide publications during the same period). 

Schares’ study included 237 federal funding agencies – due to the removal of the $100m threshold, many more funders now fall under the Nelson memo than under the previous 2013 Holdren memo. This makes it likely that disciplines who previously were not impacted will now find themselves grappling with public access requirements.

In Schares’ visualization here, where each dot represents a research institution, we can see that two main groupings emerge. The first is a smaller group made up of the National Laboratories. They publish a smaller number of papers overall, but are heavily federally funded (80-90% of their works). The second group is a much larger cluster, representing Universities across the US. Those organisations have 30–60% of their publications being federally-funded, but building from a much larger base number of publications – meaning that they will likely have a lot of faculty members who will now need support.

Where do faculty members need support?

According to the 2022 State of Open Data Report, institutions and libraries have a particularly essential role to play in meeting new top-down initiatives, not only by providing sufficient infrastructure but also support, training and guidance for researchers. It is clear from the findings of the report that the work of compliance is wearing on researchers, with 35% of respondents citing lack of time as reason for not adhering to data management plans and 52% citing finding time to curate data as the area they need the most help and support with. 72% of researchers indicated they would rely on an internal resource (either colleagues, the Library or the Research Office) were they to require help with managing or making their data openly available.

How to start?

Institutions who invest now in building capacity in these areas to support open access and data sharing for researchers will be better prepared for the OSTP’s 2025 deadline, helping to avoid any last-minute scramble to support their researchers in meeting this guidance.

Beginning to think about enabling open access can be a daunting task, particularly for institutions who don’t yet have internal workflows or appropriate infrastructure set up, so we recommend breaking down your approach into more manageable chunks: 

1. Understand your own Open Access landscape 

• Find out where your researchers are publishing and what OA pathways they are currently using. You can do this by reviewing your scholarly publishing patterns and the OA status of those works.
• Explore the data you have for your own repositories – not only your own existing data sets, but also those from other sources such as data aggregators or tools like Dimensions.
• Begin to overlay publishing data with grants data, to benchmark where you are now and work to identify the kinds of drivers that your researchers are likely to see in the future. 

2. Review your system capabilities

• Is your repository ready for both publications and data?
• Do you have effective monitoring and reporting capabilities that will help you track engagement and identify areas where your community may need more support? Are your systems researcher-friendly; how quickly and easily can a researcher make their work openly available??

3. Consider how you will support your research ecosystem 

• Identify how you plan to support and incentivize researchers, considering how you will provide guidance about compliant ways of making work openly available, as well as practical support where relevant.
• Plan communication points between internal stakeholders (e.g. Research Office, Library, IT) to create a joined-up approach that will provide a shared and seamless experience to your researchers.
• Review institutional policies and procedures relating to publishing and open access, considering where you are at present and where you’d like to get to.

How can Digital Science help? 

Symplectic Elements was the first commercially available research information management system to be “open access aware”, connecting to institutional digital repositories in order to enable frictionless open access deposit for publications and accompanying datasets. Since 2009 through initial integration with DSpace – later expanding our repository support to Figshare, EPrints, Hyrax, and custom home-grown systems – we have partnered with and guided many research institutions around the globe as they work to evolve and mature their approach to open access. We have deep experience in building out tools and processes which will help universities meet mandates set by national governments or funders, report on fulfilment and compliance, and engage researchers in increasing levels of deposit. 

Our sister company Figshare is a leading provider of cloud repository software and has been working for over a decade to make research outputs, of all types, more discoverable and reusable and lower the barriers of access. Meeting and exceeding many of the ‘desirable characteristics’ set out by the OSTP themselves for repositories, Figshare is the repository of choice for over 100 universities and research institutions looking to ensure their researchers are compliant with the rising tide of funder policies.

Below is an example of the type of Open Access dashboard that can be configured and run using the various collated and curated scholarly data held within Symplectic Elements.

In this example, we are using Dimensions as a data source, building on data from Unpaywall about the open access status of works within an institution’s Elements system. Using the data visualizations within this dashboard, you can start to look at open access trends over time, such as the different sorts of open access pathways being used, and how that pattern changes when you look across different publishers or different journals, or for different departments within your organization. By gaining this powerful understanding of where you are today, you can begin to think about how to best prioritise your efforts for tomorrow as you continue to mature your approach to open access. 

You might find yourself at Level 1 right now where you have a publications repository along with some metadata, and you’re able to track a number of deposits and do some basic reporting, but there are a number of ways that you can build this up over time to create a truly integrated OA solution. By bringing together publications and data repositories and integrating them within a research management solution, you can enter a space where you can monitor proactively, with an embedded engagement and compliance strategy across all publications and data. 

For more information or if you’d like to set up time to speak to the Digital Science team about how Symplectic Elements or Figshare for Institutions can support and guide you in your journey to a fully embedded and mature Open Access strategy, please get in touch – we’d love to hear from you.

This blog post was originally published on the Symplectic website.

About the Authors

Kate Byrne, VP Product Management |Symplectic

With a background in libraries, research information management and open access, Kate leads product development and product-related community engagement at Symplectic. She joined the Symplectic team in London in 2016, relocating from Sydney, Australia, where she was responsible for managing Symplectic Elements and the annual research publications collection for the University of New South Wales. Kate is passionate about making research information management easier for all involved. She is Co-Creator of the International Librarians Network (ILN) which provided free peer-mentoring for over 6,000 librarians from around the world.

Andrew Mckenna Foster, Product Specialist |Figshare

Andrew has over 12 years of experience working with research and archival data. For a decade, Andrew oversaw the operations of a small natural history museum and aquarium and directed the related research programs and biological collections. An interest in open science and data management led Andrew to the field of information science and he received a masters of library and information science from the University of Washington in 2020. At Figshare, Andrew focuses on helping researchers and librarians think through their open research and repository needs.

The post White House OSTP public access recommendations: Maturing your institutional Open Access strategy appeared first on Digital Science.

In seeking to define morality and moral actions, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states in paragraph 1753 that, “A good intention (for example, that of helping one’s neighbor) does not make behaviour that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or just. The end does not justify the means.”

Stephen Sammut, PhD

Science, Scientific Method, and Politics 

It is tempting to think of science in the abstract as objective and pure based on rigorous analysis of empirical evidence. Conversely, politics might often appear less structured and more chaotic, based on subjective values and driven by interest groups and compromises. However, both are human endeavours – neither science nor politics functions solely in the abstract. Both are influenced by biases that are often not evident or transparent to the external observer. The scientific method is one mechanism of checks and balances used to curtail undue, inappropriate, or political influence on science. 

The scientific method teaches researchers to be sceptical and revolves around the performance of rigorous experiments, the collection of data, and the unbiased presentation of results in a format with sufficient explanation and transparency that peers may review, question and reproduce the results. In contrast to the platonic ideal of the scientific method, scientific enterprise in practice is more complex and nuanced. It involves many scientists with complex relationships and drivers, research institutions with needs, funding agencies with stakeholders, and publishers with shareholders. All operate according to their incentives and values. And they compete for support and funding within a society shaped by a complex, dynamic, and multi-stakeholder landscape. 

Politics also operates in what often seems like a detached or parallel universe in which decisions are reached via a mix of scientific and economic evidence, the needs of the general population, and sometimes by influential interested individuals, groups, and companies. 

In reality, science and politics have always been intimately connected, and neither works in practice as they do in theory. Science is political, and although politicians and lobbyists may not use the scientific method, they use science. Science may be used politically but what is crucial is to ensure that politics and subjectivity do not interfere with the scientific method.

Peer review is a check within the framework of scientific communication, but it is not the check. It is, however, the one salient to this story.

Existing since the 1700s, peer review provides an opportunity to validate scientific research. Growing to an accepted norm about 50 years ago, peer review ideally operates by having knowledgeable, independent experts review scientific research. Most people reading this article understand the broad workings of peer review. The peer reviewers should be independent of each other and experts in a topic covered in the paper (Fig. 1). The reviewers offer insight into the quality of the subject and the strength of the methods. In theory, all actors should be independent of one another, but in practice, this is rarely the case. ‘Peers’ means there should be some overlap among people and their knowledge – the people taking on the review must have the capacity and capability to form a thoughtful critique of a given piece of work. To that end, the editors, peer reviewers, and authors are often part of the same scientific society or even organisation (Fig. 2). 

Because the peer review process can vary and has not been standardised, the difference between optimising and manipulating the process may not be clear. The first is a grey area of knowing how the system works and fine-tuning the approach for professional gains. The latter refers to understanding how the system works and stepping over community boundaries of acceptable practices. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) offers guidance on peer review. In contrast, the International Committee on Medical Journals Ethics (ICMJE) clearly states: “Reviewers should declare their relationships and activities that might bias their evaluation of a manuscript and recuse themselves from the peer-review process if a conflict exists.” 

See what you think in the following actual case.

Manipulation of Peer Review or Research as Usual?

We take a controversial 2022 research publication as our subject in this case study. However, the nature of the research is not critical to our discussion but rather the scholarly communications process and its integrity – specifically the character of the peer review process. We abstract crucial elements of this case and highlight the most salient and relevant issues. We look at this case without revealing the topic area, as this can be a distraction to the point at hand. 

We identified the current case not via a specific literature search (i.e., a topic-based approach) but rather by studying variances in trust marker signatures (e.g., hypothesis, conflict of interest, funding statements) across a range of literature, being blind to the subject area. This paper fell outside a specified range of norms for several trust markers. For example, the study purpose did not use the drier language typical for research in this area which, combined with the lack of a funding statement, raised an initial suspicion. 

Our chosen case involves three guest editors, four peer reviewers, and a single author, all of whom appear to be closely affiliated either in the community or through their professional affiliations. Three peer reviewers work directly for a single private organisation (“Organisation X”). One of the guest editors, the fourth peer reviewer, and the author are all affiliated with Organisation X. However, only one of the peer reviewers listed an affiliation with Organisation X. The other two guest editors are closely aligned with the principles of organisation X but are leaders in similar organisations. Only one of the peer reviewers originated from a traditional academic research institution. The other peer reviewers did not have affiliations with traditional research institutions. Nuances of peer review are described elsewhere.

Generally, we expect reviewers to have varying and overlapping knowledge and training in related fields for proper peer review. For example, having a topic expert and a statistician in economics would overlap fields with different areas of expertise. Additionally, we expect to see a balance of knowledge and affiliations across editors, peer reviewers, and the author. Affiliations may overlap in narrow fields with small or cutting-edge communities, but the case in question is not a narrow field. Aligned interests raised a flag, though.

In summary, the expertise of guest editors, peer reviewers and the author appears to overlap, as do their perspectives, affiliations, and alignment of interests. (Fig. 3).

Objectively and without specific context, many questions come to mind: When would these overlaps be acceptable while maintaining a robust commitment to research integrity? What other information do you need to know to make that decision? Will the peer reviewers be able to critically and independently evaluate the science within the paper?

The Case: When are commonly held interests too overlapping for peer reviewers? 

The case mentioned above is the recently published (and now retracted) paper in Frontiers in Psychology, “The Turnaway Study: A Case of Self-Correction in Science Upended by Political Motivation and Unvetted Findings” (Coleman, 2022). This paper sought to criticise The Turnaway Study, a landmark study describing “the mental health, physical health, and socioeconomic consequences of receiving an abortion compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term”. The article came to our attention through algorithms where trust markers appear irregular. This alert suggested we search social media and PubPeer, where a corroborating signal was found. In addition, the signal indicated we should look closer at the trust markers within the article to ensure due diligence of scientific processes was followed. Because Frontiers published the names of reviewers and their declared affiliations, this transparency allows researchers to review their associations in the context of the peer review process and assess the potential for insularity. 

Coleman’s article, retracted on 26th December 2022, and described in Retraction Watch, appeared in the journal as part of a research topic (a curated article collection, somewhat like a special issue), Fertility, Pregnancy and Mental Health – a Behavioral and Biomedical Perspective. This research topic was led by three guest editors at Frontiers, while the specific Coleman article had four peer reviewers. All peer reviewers state different affiliations, but three are with the same anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), which states on its website that it is: “the preeminent organisation for science-based pro-life information and research.” Moreover, the editor charged with reviewing this article is affiliated with CLI. However, most associations were not disclosed (see table and Fig. 4).

CLI presented an amicus brief (an expert opinion) to the US Supreme Court on 29th July 2021 in support of overturning the court’s earlier decision to uphold the outcome of Roe vs Wade, which had asserted for the past 50 years that women in the United States have a constitutional right to an abortion. Moreover, one of the peer reviewers for the Coleman article, Robin Perrucci, MD, an associate scholar at CLI, filed a separate amicus brief on 20th July 2020 with the Life Legal Defense Foundation in the Dobbs v. Jackson Health US Supreme Court case. Priscilla K. Coleman directed the World Expert Consortium for Abortion Research and Education (WECARE), where Stephen Sammut was among ten other members. John Thorp’s legal testimonies on abortion have previously come into question, and he has been the medical director of an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centre for over 40 years.

Giving Air to Unethical Practices

We are passing no comment on the area of research involved here since this is a highly emotive area for many. However, this peer review process is of clear interest in research conduct and integrity viewed independently of the underlying research. Furthermore, our simple example highlights the potential for institutes, peer reviewers, or authors to translate aligned political interests into scientific influence.

A decision-making majority of editors and peer reviewers are members or affiliates of organisations with publicly stated aligned interests; this process does not meet the standard of the independent, unbiased scientific method.

Allowing this paper to be published in the scholarly record provides a sense of unwarranted legitimacy to the arguments. We hope that publishers will learn from this experience and take action.

For those responsible for the paper, including its undeclared conflicts of interest, the end goal of having a ‘peer-reviewed’ article does not justify the means used to get there.

Note: Part of this analysis was presented at the eResearch Australasia conference in Brisbane, Australia, October 2022.

About the Author

Dr Leslie McIntosh, Vice President, Research Integrity | Digital Science

Dr Leslie McIntosh PhD, MPH is the VP of Research Integrity at Digital Science and dedicates her work to improving research and investigating and reducing mis- and disinformation in science. As an academic turned entrepreneur, she founded Ripeta in 2017 to improve research quality and integrity. Now part of Digital Science, the Ripeta algorithms lead in detecting trust markers of research manuscripts. Dr McIntosh works around the globe with governments, publishers, institutions, and companies to improve research and scientific decision-making. Dr McIntosh served as the executive director for the Research Data Alliance (RDA) – US region and as the Director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics at Washington University School in St. Louis. She has given hundreds of talks including to the US-NIH, NASA, and World Congress on Research Integrity, and consulted with the US, Canadian, and European governments.

The post A Conflict of Interests – Manipulating Peer Review or Research as Usual? appeared first on Digital Science.

Persistent identifiers – or PIDs – are long-lasting references to digital resources. In other words, they are a unique label to an entity: a person, place, or thing. PIDs work by redirecting the user to the online resource, even if the location of that resource changes. They also have associated metadata which contains information about the entity and also provide links to other PIDs. For example, many scholars already populate their ORCID records, linking themselves to their research outputs through Crossref and DataCite DOIs. As the PID ecosystem matures, to include PIDs for grants (Crossref grant IDs), projects (RAiD), and organisations (ROR), the connections between PIDs form a graph that describes the research landscape. In this post, Phill Jones talks about the work that the MoreBrains cooperative has been doing to show the value of a connected PID-based infrastructure.

Over the past year or so, we at MoreBrains have been working with a number of national-level research supporting organisations to develop national persistent identifier (PID) strategies: Jisc in the UK; the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) and Australian Access Federation (AAF) in Australia; and the Canadian Research Knowledge Network CRKN, Digital Research Alliance of Canada (DRAC), and Canadian Persistent Identifier Advisory Committee (CPIDAC) in Canada. In all three cases, we’ve been investigating the value of developing PID-based research infrastructures, and using data from various sources, including Dimensions, to quantify that value. In our most recent analysis, we found that investing in five priority PIDs could save the Australian research sector as much as 38,000 person days of work per year, equivalent to $24 million (AUD), purely in direct time savings from rekeying of information into institutional research management systems.

Investing in infrastructure makes a lot of sense, whether you’re building roads, railways, or research infrastructure. But wise investors also want evidence that their investment is worthwhile – that the infrastructure is needed, that it will be used, and, ideally, that there will be a return of some kind on their investment. Sometimes, all of this is easy to measure; sometimes, it’s not.

In the case of PID infrastructure, there has long been a sense that investment would be worthwhile. In 2018, in his advice to the UK government, Adam Tickell recommended:

Jisc to lead on selecting and promoting a range of unique identifiers, including ORCID, in collaboration with sector leaders with relevant partner organisations

More recently, in Australia, the Minister for Education, Jason Clare, wrote a letter of expectations to the Australian Research Council in which he stated:

Streamlining the processes undertaken during National Competitive Grant Program funding rounds must be a high priority for the ARC… I ask that the ARC identify ways to minimise administrative burden on researchers

In the same letter, Minister Clare even suggested that preparations for the 2023 ERA be discontinued until a plan to make the process easier has been developed. While he didn’t explicitly mention PIDs in the letter, organisations like ARDC, AAF, and ARC see persistent identifiers as a big part of the solution to this problem.

A problem of chickens and eggs?

With all the modern information technology available to us it seems strange that, in 2022, we’re still hearing calls to develop basic research management infrastructure. Why hasn’t it already been developed? Part of the problem is that very little work has been done to quantify the value of research infrastructure in general, or PID-based infrastructure in particular. Organisations like Crossref, Datacite, and ORCID are clear success stories but, other than some notable exceptions like this, not much has been done to make the benefits of investment clear at a policy level – until now.

It’s very difficult to analyse the costs and benefits of PID adoption without being able to easily measure what’s happening in the scholarly ecosystem. So, in these recent analyses that we were commissioned to do, we asked questions like:

• How many research grants were awarded to institutions within a given country?
• How many articles have been published based on work funded by those grants?
• What proportion of researchers within a given country have ORCID IDs?
• How many research projects are active at any given time?

All these questions proved challenging to answer because, fundamentally, it’s extremely difficult to quantify the scale of research activity and the connections between research entities in the absence of universally adopted PIDs. In other words, we need a well-developed network of PIDs in order to easily quantify the benefits of investing in PIDs in the first place! (see Figure 1.)

Luckily, the story doesn’t end there. Thanks to data donated by Digital Science, and other organisations including ORCID, Crossref, Jisc, ARDC, AAF, and several research institutions in the UK, Canada, and Australia, we were able to piece together estimates for many of our calculations.

Take, for example, the Digital Science Dimensions database, which provided us with the data we needed for our Australian and UK use cases. It uses advanced computation and sophisticated machine learning approaches to build a graph of research entities like people, grants, publications, outputs, institutions etc. While other similar graphs exist, some of which are open and free to use – for example, the DataCite PID graph (accessed through DataCite commons), OpenAlex, and the ResearchGraph foundation – the Dimensions graph is the most complete and accessible so far. It enabled us to estimate total research activity in both the UK and Australia.

However, all our estimates are… estimates, because they involve making an automated best guess of the connections between research entities, where those connections are not already explicit. If the metadata associated with PIDs were complete and freely available in central PID registries, we could easily and accurately answer questions like ‘How many active researchers are there in a given country?’ or ‘How many research articles were based on funding from a specific funder or grant program?’

The five priority PIDs

As a starting point towards making these types of questions easy to answer, we recommend that policy-makers work with funders, institutions, publishers, PID organisations, and other key stakeholders around the world to support the adoption of five priority PIDs:

• DOIs for funding grants
• DOIs for outputs (eg publications, datasets, etc)
• ORCIDs for people
• RAiDs for projects
• ROR for research-performing organisations

We prioritised these PIDs based on research done in 2019, sponsored by Jisc and in response to the Tickell report, to identify the key PIDs needed to support open access workflows in institutions. Since then, thousands of hours of research and validation across a range of countries and research ecosystems have verified that these PIDs are critical not just for open access but also for improving research workflows in general.

Going beyond administrative time savings

In our work, we have focused on direct savings from a reduction in administrative burden because those benefits are the most easily quantifiable; they’re easiest for both researchers and research administrators to relate to, and they align with established policy aims. However, the actual benefits of investing in PID-based infrastructure are likely far greater.

Evidence given to the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee in 2017 stated that every £1 spent on Research and Innovation in the UK results in a total benefit of £7 to the UK economy. The same is likely to be true for other countries, so the benefit to national industrial strategies of increased efficiency in research are potentially huge.

Going a step further, the universal adoption of the five priority PIDs would also enable institutions, companies, funders, and governments to make much better research strategy decisions. At the moment, bibliometric and scientometric analyses to support research strategy decisions are expensive and time-consuming; they rely on piecing together information based on incomplete evidence. By using PIDs for entities like grants, outputs, people, projects, and institutions, and ensuring that the associated metadata links to other PIDs, it’s possible to answer strategically relevant questions by simply extracting and combining data from PID registries.

Final thoughts

According to UNESCO, global spending on R&D has reached US$1.7 trillion per year, and with commitments from countries to address the UN sustainable development goals, that figure is set to increase. Given the size of that investment and the urgency of the problems we face, building and maintaining the research infrastructure makes sound sense. It will enable us to track, account for, and make good strategic decisions about how that money is being spent.

About the Author

Phill Jones, Co-founder, Digital and Technology | MoreBrains Cooperative

Phill is a product innovator, business strategist, and highly qualified research scientist. He is a co-founder of the MoreBrains Cooperative, a consultancy working at the forefront of scholarly infrastructure, and research dissemination. Phill has been the CTO at Emerald Publishing, Director of Publishing Innovation at Digital Science and the Editorial Director at JoVE. In a previous career, he was a bio-physicist at Harvard Medical School and holds a PhD in Physics from Imperial College, London.

The MoreBrains Cooperative is a team of consultants that specialise in and share the values of open research with a focus on scholarly communications, and research information management, policy, and infrastructures. They work with funders, national research supporting organisations, institutions, publishers and startups. Examples of their open reports can be found here: morebrains.coop/repository

The post Why is it so difficult to understand the benefits of research infrastructure? appeared first on Digital Science.