Vast amounts of (open) data are increasingly used to make arguments about crisis topics such as climate change and global pandemics. Data visualizations are central to bringing these viewpoints to broader publics. However, visualizations often conceal the many contexts involved in their production, ranging from decisions made in research labs about collecting and sharing data to choices made in editorial rooms about which data stories to tell. In this paper, we examine how data visualizations about climate change and COVID-19 are produced in popular science magazines, using Scientific American, an established English-language popular science magazine, as a case study. To do this, we apply the analytical concept of "data journeys" (Leonelli, 2020) in a mixed methods study that centers on interviews with Scientific American staff and is supplemented by a visualization analysis of selected charts. In particular, we discuss the affordances of working with open data, the role of collaborative data practices, and how the magazine works to counter misinformation and increase transparency. This work provides a theoretical contribution by testing and expanding the concept of data journeys as an analytical framework, as well as practical contributions by providing insight into the data (visualization) practices of science communicators. less

Twitter bots are a controversial element of the platform, and their negative impact is well known. In the field of scientific communication, they have been perceived in a more positive light, and the accounts that serve as feeds alerting about scientific publications are quite common. However, despite being aware of the presence of bots in the dissemination of science, no large-scale estimations have been made nor has it been evaluated if they can truly interfere with altmetrics. Analyzing a dataset of 3,744,231 papers published between 2017 and 2021 and their associated 51,230,936 Twitter mentions, our goal was to determine the volume of publications mentioned by bots and whether they skew altmetrics indicators. Using the BotometerLite API, we categorized Twitter accounts based on their likelihood of being bots. The results showed that 11,073 accounts (0.23% of total users) exhibited automated behavior, contributing to 4.72% of all mentions. A significant bias was observed in the activity of bots. Their presence was particularly pronounced in disciplines such as Mathematics, Physics, and Space Sciences, with some specialties even exceeding 70% of the tweets. However, these are extreme cases, and the impact of this activity on altmetrics varies by speciality, with minimal influence in Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences. This research emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between specialties and disciplines when using Twitter as an altmetric. less

Research methods and procedures are core aspects of the research process. Metadata focused on these components is critical to supporting the FAIR principles, particularly reproducibility. The research reported on in this paper presents a methodological framework for metadata documentation supporting the reproducibility of research producing Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs). The MOF case study involved natural language processing to extract key synthesis experiment information from a corpus of research literature. Following, a classification activity was performed by domain experts to identify entity-relation pairs. Results include: 1) a research framework for metadata design, 2) a metadata schema that includes nine entities and two relationships for reporting MOF synthesis experiments, and 3) a growing database of MOF synthesis reports structured by our metadata scheme. The metadata schema is intended to support discovery and reproducibility of metal-organic framework research and the FAIR principles. The paper provides background information, identifies the research goals and objectives, research design, results, a discussion, and the conclusion. less

An increasing number of CS researchers are employed in academic non-CS departments where publication output is measured in terms of journal impact factors. To foster recognition of publications in peer-reviewed CS conference proceedings, we analyzed more than 40,000 CS publications and computed journal impact factors for 88 top-ranking conferences across a representative range of fields, finding that some conferences have impact factors corresponding to those of high-ranking journals. less

This article proposes an innovative framework to explore large audiovisual archives using Immersive Environments to place users inside a dataset and create an embodied experience. It starts by outlining the need for such a novel interface to meet the needs of archival scholars and the GLAM sector, and discusses issues in the current modes of access, mostly restrained to traditional information retrieval systems based on metadata. The paper presents the concept of ``generous interfaces" as a preliminary approach to address these issues, and argues some of the key reasons why employing Immersive Visual Storytelling might benefit such frameworks. The theory of embodiment is leveraged to justify this claim, showing how a more embodied understanding of a collection can result in a stronger engagement for the public. By placing users as actors in the experience rather than mere spectators, the emergence of narrative is driven by their interactions, with benefits in terms of engagement with the public and understanding of the cultural component. The framework we propose is applied to two existing installations to analyze them in-depth and critique them, highlighting the key directions to pursue for further development. less

Noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) encompasses transcranial stimulation techniques that can influence brain excitability. These techniques have the potential to treat conditions like depression, anxiety, and chronic pain, and to provide insights into brain function. However, a lack of standardized reporting practices limits its reproducibility and full clinical potential. This paper aims to foster interinterdisciplinarity toward adopting Computer Science Semantic reporting methods for the standardized documentation of Neuroscience NIBS studies making them explicitly Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR). In a large-scale systematic review of 600 repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), a subarea of NIBS, dosages, we describe key properties that allow for structured descriptions and comparisons of the studies. This paper showcases the semantic publishing of NIBS in the ecosphere of knowledge-graph-based next-generation scholarly digital libraries. Specifically, the FAIR Semantic Web resource(s)-based publishing paradigm is implemented for the 600 reviewed rTMS studies in the Open Research Knowledge Graph. less

Currently, there is limited research investigating the phenomenon of research data repositories being shut down, and the impact this has on the long-term availability of data. This paper takes an infrastructure perspective on the preservation of research data by using a registry to identify 191 research data repositories that have been closed and presenting information on the shutdown process. The results show that 6.2 % of research data repositories indexed in the registry were shut down. The risks resulting in repository shutdown are varied. The median age of a repository when shutting down is 12 years. Strategies to prevent data loss at the infrastructure level are pursued to varying extent. 44 % of the repositories in the sample migrated data to another repository, and 12 % maintain limited access to their data collection. However, both strategies are not permanent solutions. Finally, the general lack of information on repository shutdown events as well as the effect on the findability of data and the permanence of the scholarly record are discussed. less

We have so many languages to communicate with others as humans. There are approximately 7000 languages in the world, and many are becoming extinct for a variety of reasons. In order to preserve and prevent the extinction of these languages, we need to preserve them. One way of preservation is to have a preservation metadata for languages. Metadata is data about data. Metadata is required for item description, preservation, and retrieval. There are various types of metadata, e.g., descriptive, administrative, structural, preservation, etc. After the literature study, the authors observed that there is a lack of study on the preservation metadata for language. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the need for language preservation metadata. We found some archaeological metadata standards for this purpose, and after applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, we chose three archaeological metadata standards, namely: Archaeon-core, CARARE, and LIDO (Lightweight Information Describing Objects) for mapping metadata. less

We report evidence of an undocumented method to manipulate citation counts involving 'sneaked' references. Sneaked references are registered as metadata for scientific articles in which they do not appear. This manipulation exploits trusted relationships between various actors: publishers, the Crossref metadata registration agency, digital libraries, and bibliometric platforms. By collecting metadata from various sources, we show that extra undue references are actually sneaked in at Digital Object Identifier (DOI) registration time, resulting in artificially inflated citation counts. As a case study, focusing on three journals from a given publisher, we identified at least 9% sneaked references (5,978/65,836) mainly benefiting two authors. Despite not existing in the articles, these sneaked references exist in metadata registries and inappropriately propagate to bibliometric dashboards. Furthermore, we discovered 'lost' references: the studied bibliometric platform failed to index at least 56% (36,939/65,836) of the references listed in the HTML version of the publications. The extent of the sneaked and lost references in the global literature remains unknown and requires further investigations. Bibliometric platforms producing citation counts should identify, quantify, and correct these flaws to provide accurate data to their patrons and prevent further citation gaming. less

The research content hosted by arXiv is not fully accessible to everyone due to disabilities and other barriers. This matters because a significant proportion of people have reading and visual disabilities, it is important to our community that arXiv is as open as possible, and if science is to advance, we need wide and diverse participation. In addition, we have mandates to become accessible, and accessible content benefits everyone. In this paper, we will describe the accessibility problems with research, review current mitigations (and explain why they aren't sufficient), and share the results of our user research with scientists and accessibility experts. Finally, we will present arXiv's proposed next step towards more open science: offering HTML alongside existing PDF and TeX formats. An accessible HTML version of this paper is also available at https://info.arxiv.org/about/accessibility_research_report.html less