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.

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.

Abstract As the academic community has become increasingly concerned about the drifts of research evaluation, mostly researchers’ evaluation, because of the overreliance on metrics, many expert groups have made recommendations to improve the way researchers should be evaluated. In this study, we focus on the recommendation to use narrative curriculum vitae (CVs). We review 28 opinion pieces and 7 experiments to better understand what a narrative CV can refer to, and to explore whether the narrative function that is specific to this kind of CV is proving effective in response to the concerns raised by evaluation practices. A close reading of these documents reveals the conceptual basis of the narrative CV and the problems it is intended to solve; we propose five commonly reported features of the narrative CV: avoid lists, contextualize achievements, fight metrics, enlarge the spectrum of contributions taken into consideration and foster diversity and inclusion. But the promoters of the narrative CV pay little to investigate how the narrative feature itself can lead to any benefits. However, the feedback collected from both applicants and evaluators is quite positive. Regardless of whether it is justified or not, the enthusiasm aroused by the implementation of this new type of CV undeniably has the advantage of opening up the debate, raising awareness and calling to question the bad practices and biases that exist in the researchers’ assessment processes. The narrative nature of the CV is, in the end, just a pretext for raising interest and working towards the adoption of good practices.

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.

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A defining feature of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scholarly communication has been the brief and intense surge in the production of preprints. This has had significant impacts on the ways in which new research findings have been reported and communicated more broadly and the role played by abstracts in highlighting the meaning and value of new research. Based on a study of the language deployed in the abstracts of recently published COVID-19 preprints, Frédérique Bordignon, Liana Ermakova and Marianne Noël, argue two defining features of these abstracts are over-promotion and hedging, a deliberate ambiguity that suggests authors should pay greater attention to what they seek to communicate in their abstracts.

Le véhicule autonome dans les discours médiatisés : présentation des méthodes d'analysed'articles de presse et de tweets