The State of Trust and Integrity in Research

L’organisation britannique ‘Digital Science’ publie son rapport « The State of Trust & Integrity in Research » qui compare les pratiques de partage de données et de libre accès de cinq principaux organismes de financement (la Fondation Bill et Melinda Gates, la Commission européenne (CE), les National Institutes of Health (NIH) aux États-Unis, le National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) et le ministère fédéral allemand de l’Éducation et de la Recherche (BMBF

The State of Open Data Report 2022

Il s\u27agit de la plus longue enquête longitudinale et analyse des données ouvertes

The value of structural diversity: assessing diversity for a sustainable research base

This report is about structural diversity - the diversity of disciplines, institutions and support mechanisms. Structural diversity is a property of a ‘strong’ research base that not only produces great research today but also has the capacity to address new challenges flexibly and responsively tomorrow. It is distinct from the contribution made by social diversity - the diversity of gender, nationality and ethnicity - to productivity, innovation and social cohesion. We need to assess diversity for future research just as much as we evaluate achievement for past research. Research assessment is usually a retrospective analysis of historical data whether it uses grant income, staff capacity, publication output, or citation impact. This is a very limited perspective for policy and investment. It is a skewed view of what might be important for the future of the research base. Awarding more funds to institutions and teams that did well last year is a safe bet only so long as next year looks similar. But the pace of discovery is accelerating, challenges change, new fields emerge and we lack the foresight to predict where demands and the breakthroughs will come next. The capacity to support excellence and respond to opportunity comes from: • Diversity of research fields: A broader range of disciplines supports exceptional levels of research excellence, fed through a network of institutions of regional and international significance (Evidence, 2002; Evidence, 2003). • Diversity in support which gives flexibility of research support to allow a mix of long and short term responses and includes strategic and responsive awards: Government has consistently argued that diverse funding mechanisms are required to enable curiosity-driven research and evolving, targeted programs of high policy priority or scientific need (Cabinet Office, 1993). • Diversity of research organisations, where mission-led units complement large and small universities with regional as well as international engagement: UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser Bob May showed that research economies with a strong university research base performed consistently better than those committed to narrow, mission-led research institutes (May, 1997). Because of our uncertainty about the future we need an agile and responsive research base. So why is this agility not core to the assessment of research and innovation? Diversity in the structure of the research system has been overlooked and under-researched because it is in practice a tricky concept to turn into a hard definition, and even trickier to quantify

Analysis and Synthesis of Metadata Goals for Scientific Data

The proliferation of discipline-specific metadata schemes contributes to artificial barriers that can impede interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. The authors considered this problem by examining the domains, objectives, and architectures of nine metadata schemes used to document scientific data in the physical, life, and social sciences. They used a mixed-methods content analysis and Greenberg’s (2005) metadata objectives, principles, domains, and architectural layout (MODAL) framework, and derived 22 metadata-related goals from textual content describing each metadata scheme. Relationships are identified between the domains (e.g., scientific discipline and type of data) and the categories of scheme objectives. For each strong correlation (\u3e0.6), a Fisher’s exact test for nonparametric data was used to determine significance (p \u3c .05). Significant relationships were found between the domains and objectives of the schemes. Schemes describing observational data are more likely to have “scheme harmonization” (compatibility and interoperability with related schemes) as an objective; schemes with the objective “abstraction” (a conceptual model exists separate from the technical implementation) also have the objective “sufficiency” (the scheme defines a minimal amount of information to meet the needs of the community); and schemes with the objective “data publication” do not have the objective “element refinement.” The analysis indicates that many metadata-driven goals expressed by communities are independent of scientific discipline or the type of data, although they are constrained by historical community practices and workflows as well as the technological environment at the time of scheme creation. The analysis reveals 11 fundamental metadata goals for metadata documenting scientific data in support of sharing research data across disciplines and domains. The authors report these results and highlight the need for more metadata-related research, particularly in the context of recent funding agency policy changes

Mapping Engineering & Development Research Excellence in the UK: An Analysis of REF2014 Impact Case Studies

For the first time, the UK research evaluation system, known as the Research Excellence Framework, considered ‘measures’ of impact in the 2014 review. Here, we focus on impact case studies that had an engineering and international development orientation. We found that writers of impact case studies commonly chose to employ an ecological modernization (economic, environmental, and social value) discourse to shape value claims. We also found that the type of engineering and international development research that appears in impact case studies tends to be high tech, best-with-best, and exclusive, rather than low tech, humanitarian, and inclusive

Plans that work: improving employment outcomes for young people with learning disabilities

This article offers a critical reflection on the function of education, health and care plans (EHCPs) in pathways to employment for disabled young people. We consider ‘the education plan’ as an artefact of special educational needs systems. We problematise the often taken‐for‐granted assumption that such plans are always and only a ‘good’ thing in the lives of disabled young people seeking pathways to employment. At the same time, we consider the rise in demand for plans that are understood by many as a crucial mechanism for achieving support. Following the recent policy reforms in England, we describe a context in which the funding of education is shrinking and in which the promise of employment for disabled young people has yet to be delivered. We conclude by proposing some changes to policy and practice to enhance employment opportunities for disabled young people

Learning from the UK’s research impact assessment exercise: a case study of a retrospective impact assessment exercise and questions for the future

National governments spend significant amounts of money supporting public research. However, in an era where the international economic climate has led to budget cuts, policymakers increasingly are looking to justify the returns from public investments, including in science and innovation. The so-called ‘impact agenda’ which has emerged in many countries around the world is part of this response; an attempt to understand and articulate for the public what benefits arise from the research that is funded. The United Kingdom is the most progressed in implementing this agenda and in 2014 the national research assessment exercise, the Research Excellence Framework, for the first time included the assessment of research impact as a component. For the first time within a dual funding system, funding would be awarded not only on the basis of the academic quality of research, but also on the wider impacts of that research. In this paper we outline the context and approach taken by the UK government, along with some of the core challenges that exist in implementing such an exercise. We then synthesise, together for the first time, the results of the only two national evaluations of the exercise and offer reflections for future exercises both in the UK and internationally

Metadata matters: access to image data in the real world

Data sharing is important in the biological sciences to prevent duplication of effort, to promote scientific integrity, and to facilitate and disseminate scientific discovery. Sharing requires centralized repositories, and submission to and utility of these resources require common data formats. This is particularly challenging for multidimensional microscopy image data, which are acquired from a variety of platforms with a myriad of proprietary file formats (PFFs). In this paper, we describe an open standard format that we have developed for microscopy image data. We call on the community to use open image data standards and to insist that all imaging platforms support these file formats. This will build the foundation for an open image data repository

Making space for co-produced research ‘impact’: learning from a participatory action research case study

There is growing emphasis in the UK on promoting research that creates a positive impact on society. Research Councils UK, the major national research funding agencies, have recently defined a framework for promoting and measuring this impact. This paper contributes to current debates about this developing agenda and, particularly, the problematic intersection of the impact agenda and co-production research approaches. I argue that processes of negotiating values, aims and power relations are essential to creating relevant, ethical impacts with research participants. In contrast to the emphasis placed on linear and top-down change by the impact agenda, my experience doing participatory action research with a UK community group shows that co-produced research produces different kinds of impacts: co-produced impacts are emergent and non-linear; responsive and relational; and empowering when rooted in reciprocal collaboration with research partners. This paper questions the implicit values the impact framework imposes on academic researchers and community partners, calling for continued critical engagement with the impact agenda to encourage the value-rational reflection, deliberation and collaboration needed for creating socially transformative research