Reuse of scientific data in academic publications

Purpose In recent years, a large number of data repositories have been built and used. However, the extent to which scientific data is reused in academic publications is still unknown. This article explores the functions of re-used scientific data in scholarly publication in different fields. Design/methodology/approach To address these questions, we identified 827 publications citing resources in the Dryad Digital Repository (DDR) indexed by Scopus from 2010 to 2015. Findings The results show that: (i) the number of citations to scientific data increases sharply over the years, but mainly from data-intensive disciplines, such as Agricultural, Biology Science, Environment Science and Medicine; (ii) the majority of citations are from the originating articles; (iii) researchers tend to reuse data produced by their own research groups. Research limitations/implications data may be re-used without being formally cited. Originality/value The conservatism in data sharing suggests that more should be done to encourage researchers to re-use other’s data

Gender and research Publishing in India: Uniformly high inequality?

Gender inequalities have been a persistent feature of all modern societies. Although employment-related gender discrimination in various forms is legally prohibited, prejudice and violence against females have not been eradicated. Moreover, gendered social expectations can constrain the career choices of both males and females. Within academia, continuing gender imbalances have been found in many countries (Larivière, Ni, Gingras, Cronin, & Sugimoto, 2013), and particularly at senior levels (e.g., Ucal, O'Neil, & Toktas, 2015; Weisshaar, 2017; Winchester & Browning, 2015). India was the fifth largest research producer in 2017, according to Scopus, but has the highest United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) gender inequality index of the 30 largest research producers in Scopus (/hdr.undp.org/en/data) and so is an important case for global science. Moreover, the complex web of influences that have led to women being underrepresented in science in India is not well understood (Gupta, 2015). The absence of basic information about gender inequalities is a serious limitation because gender issues in India differ from the better researched case of the USA, due to economic conditions, probably stronger family influences (Vindhya, 2007), greater female safety concerns (Vindhya, 2007), and differing cultural expectations (Chandrakar, 2014)