Dakota Murray

Scientists have most impact when they’re free to move

An analysis of researchers global mobility reveals that limiting the circulation of scholars will damage the scientific system, say Cassidy R. Sugimoto and colleagues.

Understanding persistent scientific collaboration

Common sense suggests that persistence is key to success. In academia, successful researchers have been found more likely to be persistent in publishing, but little attention has been given to how persistence in maintaining collaborative relationships affects career success. This paper proposes a new bibliometric understanding of persistence that considers the prominent role of collaboration in contemporary science. Using this perspective, we analyze the relationship between persistent collaboration and publication quality along several dimensions: degree of transdisciplinarity, difference in coauthors scientific age and their scientific impact, and research‐team size. Contrary to traditional wisdom, our results show that persistent scientific collaboration does not always result in high‐quality papers. We find that the most persistent transdisciplinary collaboration tends to output high‐impact publications, and that those coauthors with diverse scientific impact or scientific ages benefit from persistent collaboration more than homogeneous compositions. We also find that researchers persistently working in large groups tend to publish lower‐impact papers. These results contradict the colloquial understanding of collaboration in academia and paint a more nuanced picture of how persistent scientific collaboration relates to success, a picture that can provide valuable insights to researchers, funding agencies, policy makers, and mentor–mentee program directors. Moreover, the methodology in this study showcases a feasible approach to measure persistent collaboration.

Gender and international diversity improves equity in peer review

The fairness of scholarly peer review has been challenged by evidence of disparities in publication outcomes based on author demographic characteristics. To assess this, we conducted an exploratory analysis of peer review outcomes of 23,876 initial submissions and 7,192 full submissions that were submitted to the biosciences journal eLife between 2012 and 2017. Women and authors from nations outside of North America and Europe were underrepresented both as gatekeepers (editors and peer reviewers) and authors. We found evidence of a homophilic relationship between the demographics of the gatekeepers and authors and the outcome of peer review; that is, there were higher rates of acceptance in the case of gender and country homophily. The acceptance rate for manuscripts with male last authors was seven percent, or 3.5 percentage points, greater than for female last authors (95% CI = [0.5, 6.4]); this gender inequity was greatest, at nine percent or about 4.8 percentage points (95% CI = [0.3, 9.1]), when the team of reviewers was all male; this difference was smaller and not significantly different for mixed-gender reviewer teams. Homogeny between countries of the gatekeeper and the corresponding author was also associated with higher acceptance rates for many countries. To test for the persistence of these effects after controlling for potentially confounding variables, we conducted a logistic regression including document and author metadata. Disparities in acceptance rates associated with gender and country of affiliation and the homophilic associations remained. We conclude with a discussion of mechanisms that could contribute to this effect, directions for future research, and policy implications. Code and anonymized data have been made available at https://github.com/murrayds/elife-analysisThe robustness of scholarly peer review has been challenged by evidence of disparities in publication outcomes based on author’s gender and nationality. To address this, we examine the peer review outcomes of 23,873 initial submissions and 7,192 full submissions that were submitted to the biosciences journal eLife between 2012 and 2017. Women and authors from nations outside of North America and Europe were underrepresented both as gatekeepers (editors and peer reviewers) and last authors. We found a homophilic interaction between the demographics of the gatekeepers and authors in determining the outcome of peer review; that is, gatekeepers favor manuscripts from authors of the same gender and from the same country, The acceptance rate for manuscripts with male last authors was significantly higher than for female last authors, and this gender inequity was greatest when the team of reviewers was all male; mixed-gender gatekeeper teams lead to more equitable peer review outcomes. Similarly, manuscripts were more likely to be accepted when reviewed by at least one gatekeeper with the same national affiliation as the corresponding author. Our results indicated that homogeneity between author and gatekeeper gender and nationality is associated with the outcomes of scientific peer review. We conclude with a discussion of mechanisms that could contribute to this effect, directions for future research, and policy implications. Code and anonymized data, have been made available at https://github.com/murrayds/elife-analysis. Author summary Peer review, the primary method by which scientific work is evaluated and developed, is ideally a fair and equitable process, in which scientific work is judged solely on its own merit. However, the integrity of peer review has been called into question based on evidence that outcomes often differ between between male and female authors, and between authors in different countries. We investigated such a disparity at the biosciences journal eLife, by analyzing the author and gatekeepers (editors and peer reviewers) demographics and review outcomes of all submissions between 2012 and 2017. We found evidence of disparity in outcomes that disfavored women and those outside of North America and Europe, and that these groups were underrepresented among, authors and gatekeepers. The gender disparity was greatest when reviewers were all male; mixed-gender reviewer teams lead to more equitable outcomes. Similarly, manuscripts were more likely to be accepted when reviewed by at least one gatekeeper from the same country as the corresponding author. Our results indicated that gatekeeper characteristics are associated with the outcomes of scientific peer review. We discuss mechanisms that could contribute to this effect, directions for future research, and policy implications.

Measuring the stability of scientific collaboration

Stability has long been regarded as an important characteristic of many natural and social processes. In regards to scientific collaborations, we define stability to reflect the consistent investment of a certain amount of effort into a relationship. In this paper, we provide an explicit definition of a new indicator of stability, based on the year-to-year publication output of collaborations. We conduct a large-scale analysis of stability among collaborations between authors publishing in the field of computer science. Collaborations with medium–high degree of stability tend to occur most frequently, and on average, have the highest average scientific impact. We explore other “circumstances”, reflecting the composition of collaborators, that may interact with the relationship between stability and impact, and show that (1) Transdisciplinary collaborations with low stability leads to high impact publications; (2) Stable collaboration with the collaborative author pairs showing greater difference in scientific age or career impact can produce high impact publications; and (3) Highly-cited collaborators whose publications have a large number of co-authors do not keep stable collaborations. We also demonstrate how our indicator for stability can be used alongside other similar indicators, such as persistence, to better understand the nature of scientific collaboration, and outline a new taxonomy of collaborations.

Scientific mobility indicators in practice: International mobility profiles at the country level

This paper presents and describes the methodological opportunities offered by bibliometric data to produce indicators of scientific mobility. Large bibliographic datasets of disambiguated authors and their affiliations allow for the possibility of tracking the affiliation changes of scientists. Using the Web of Science as data source, we analyze the distribution of types of mobile scientists for a selection of countries. We explore the possibility of creating profiles of international mobility at the country level, and discuss potential interpretations and caveats. Five countries —Canada, The Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, and the United States- are used as examples. These profiles enable us to characterize these countries in terms of their strongest links with other countries. This type of analysis reveals circulation among and between countries with strong policy implications.

A global comparison of scientific mobility and collaboration according to national scientific capacities

This study compares the flows of mobile researchers and the number of publications in international collaboration within the context of scientific and economic capacities. The goal is to identify the convergence or discrepancy of countries in mobility and collaboration and determine the positions and relative influence of countries in both processes. Using affiliation data from scientific publications, we analyze the distributions and networks of collaboration and mobility and their structural differences. The results show that there is a significant relationship between the flow of mobile researchers and the capacity for publishing with foreign partners in the more prolific countries, although mobility is always lower than collaboration. Size matters and scientific relationship are highly resource-dependent. The Advanced and Proficient countries accumulate the highest proportion of the mobile authors and international publications with an extremely low representation of mobility in Developing and Lagging countries. In addition, the placement of countries is not always consistent in both networks, revealing the distinct roles, with particular instability for lower income countries. The more resources available in a country (both scientific and economic) the greater the likelihood of attracting foreign partners and mobilizing human capital. The policy relevance of these structural differences are described and a brief description of the limitations and future research are provided.

How Celebrities Feed Tweeples with Personal and Promotional Tweets: Celebrity Twitter Use and Audience Engagement

In contemporary U.S. culture celebrities compete for attention and publicize their work using social media tools. Twitter is a popular platform that celebrities use to post a variety of content, however little is known about the potency of these different types of content to draw audience attention and participation. In this paper, we outline a scheme for classifying content created by celebrity users on Twitter and analyze the audience engagement to these diverse types of tweets. We find that different types of content produce different levels of audience engagement and that a celebritys everyday usage of Twitter (selfies, photos of travels, humour, etc.) produces the most engagement, followed by self-endorsement and commentary about society. But we also find that these patterns vary between celebrities, and audiences are not identical in their response to the content. We likewise determine that there is some other source of unexplained variation, likely resulting from Twitters recommendation algorithms or external media coverage. As part of our study, we propose a unique coding scheme which enhances the effectiveness of inter-coder reliability, reducing the time to code.