Frédérique Bordignon

ABSTRACT Open repositories were created to enhance access and visibility of scholarly publications, driven by open science ideals emphasising transparency and accessibility. However, they lack mechanisms to update the status of corrected or retracted publications, posing a threat to the integrity of the scholarly record. To explore the scope of the problem, a manually verified corpus was examined: we extracted all the entries in the Crossref × Retraction Watch database for which the publication date of the corrected or retracted document ranged from 2013 to 2023. This corresponded to 24,430 entries with a DOI, which we use to query Unpaywall and identify their possible indexing in HAL, an open repository (second largest institutional repository worldwide). In most cases (91%), HAL does not mention corrections. While the study needs broader scope, it highlights the necessity of improving the role of open repositories in correction processes with better curation practices. We discuss how harvesting operations and the interoperability of platforms can maintain the integrity of the entire scholarly record. Not only will the open repositories avoid damaging its reliability through ambiguous reporting, but on the contrary, they will also strengthen it.

AIM: This survey-based study (982 participants) explores chemistry researchers' practices and motivations in correcting errors in scientific publications. RESULTS: While respondents believe errors should be corrected in principle, practical challenges arise due to scientific, social, and pragmatic factors. These include the perceived seriousness of the error, its scientific impact, the age of the publication, and the time required. Difficulties also stem from criticizing others, especially senior colleagues. Despite these challenges, researchers are motivated to correct errors to limit their spread, contribute to the common good, and advance their own work. Researchers prefer informal error correction through private correspondence, discussions with colleagues, or teaching situations, over formal corrections to the scholarly record. The peer-review stage is crucial for detecting and correcting errors, but it is criticized for its deficiencies, including lack of professionalism among reviewers and editors. Some authors yield to reviewer pressure knowingly introducing changes that are clearly wrong. While the low participation rate (2%) does not allow generalization, the study shows that science correction is complex, involving a continuum of practices. CONCLUSION: To improve science correction, the study suggests that online platforms and repositories can facilitate the transition from off-the-record discussions to on-the-record initiatives, ultimately feeding into the public record.

In scholarly communication, there are several ways to communicate that scientific articles are, or may be, problematic: retractions, expressions of concern, and corrections (sometimes also called errata, corrigenda or addenda). If these notices are to alert the reader, all falls or stands with these notices being visible to the reader. While the visibility and informativity of retraction notices has been widely studied – and criticized, much less is known about corrections. This study investigates: How and to what extent are corrected papers visibly labelled as such in bibliographic databases, repositories, literature tools? Using a set of recently corrected papers with a non-trivial correction (as indicated by two or more PubPeer comments) we investigate to what degree corrected papers are visibly labelled as such in various bibliographic databases, repositories, and literature tools. The visibility of corrections varies a lot, from not notifying the reader at all (Web of Science), to having a clearly visible warning label that links to the correction notice for the majority of the articles (PubMed and Scopus). The labels used for corrections vary widely and are used inconsistently. What could be labelled as a correction notice in one database could be editorial material in another. This was further confused by inconsistent labelling of retractions, not only because retraction notices can get corrected and correction notices can be retracted, but also because articles that are corrected according to Crossref turn out to be retracted. These inconsistencies and lack of clarity call for better correction handling procedures.

We present here a corpus of 505 critical citation contexts, i.e. a set of sentences or propositions that contain at least one citation of a study towards which the author(s) has/have a negative opinion. Those contexts come from other existing annotated corpora, from our readings about critical citation and disagreement in science, and from contexts manually annotated by native speakers of English. We have re-annotated all those contexts in order to be sure that they match our definition of critical citations. This corpus can be helpful to train tools dedicated to the automatic retrieval of critical citations.

To date, the study of hype has become a productive but also eclectic field of research. This introduction provides an overview of the core characteristics of technology hype and distinguishes it from other future-oriented concepts. Further, the authors present promising approaches from various disciplines for studying, critiquing, and dealing with hype. The special issue assembles case studies, methodological and theoretical contributions that analyze tech hypes’ temporality, agency, and institutional dynamics. It provides insights into how hypes are triggered and fostered, but also how they can be deconstructed and anticipated.

To date, the study of hype has become a productive but also eclectic field of research. This introduction provides an overview of the core characteristics of technology hype and distinguishes it from other future-oriented concepts. Further, the authors present promising approaches from various disciplines for studying, critiquing, and dealing with hype. The special issue assembles case studies, methodological and theoretical contributions that analyze tech hypes’ temporality, agency, and institutional dynamics. It provides insights into how hypes are triggered and fostered, but also how they can be deconstructed and anticipated.

Abstract Data is one of the most used terms in scientific vocabulary. This article focuses on the relationship between data and research by analyzing the contexts of occurrence of the word data in a corpus of 72,471 research articles (1980–2012) from two distinct fields (Social sciences, Physical sciences). The aim is to shed light on the issues raised by research on data, namely the difficulty of defining what is considered as data, the transformations that data undergo during the research process, and how they gain value for researchers who hold them. Relying on the distribution of occurrences throughout the texts and over time, it demonstrates that the word data mostly occurs at the beginning and end of research articles. Adjectives and verbs accompanying the noun data turn out to be even more important than data itself in specifying data. The increase in the use of possessive pronouns at the end of the articles reveals that authors tend to claim ownership of their data at the very end of the research process. Our research demonstrates that even if data-handling operations are increasingly frequent, they are still described with imprecise verbs that do not reflect the complexity of these transformations.

ObjectiveWe study how researchers perceive comments pertaining to their papers on the debated post-publication peer review platform PubPeer.MethodsWe surveyed two groups: the commented group were researchers that received a critical comment on their article (10,603 sent, 80 respondents); and the citing group were researchers citing these articles, as a proxy for the wider community (84,325 sent, 720 respondents).ResultsAmong our respondents, the majority of commented authors knew of the PubPeer comment prior to the survey, compared to only a minority of citing authors. In both groups, the majority indicated that the issue raised on PubPeer did not affect the conclusions of their paper. Commented authors most frequently replied on PubPeer and/or contacted journal editors; citing authors largely did not act. Qualitative analysis revealed four types of defences used to minimise consequences: epistemic defence, honest error, contextual defence, and shifting responsibility. Respondents’ opinions about PubPeer varied between positive, negative and ambivalent, and anonymity was the main concern.ConclusionPubPeer's contribution to correcting the scientific record remains indirect, operating through retractions rather than through behavioural change in researchers. A diffusion of responsibility limits its correcting ambition, highlighting the need for complementary post-publication debate venues.

Online Scholarly Communication (SC) is a vast and fragmented landscape difficult to navigate. Traditional core activities of SC, such as registration, certification, archiving, and awareness, have not lost their importance but have changed and been distributed across actors and venues. To bring clarity, we have developed a taxonomy of communication patterns of online venues for SC, i.e. the different ways in which online venues contribute to the core activities of SC for the units of SC they deal with. In this article, we present the taxonomy built on a corpus of 465 venues, and offer examples to illustrate its intended uses and analytical potential. Our taxonomy is a research tool to map the complex reality of SC. When combined with other methods such as analysis of discourse and economic models, it can produce sophisticated analysis of online SC.

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