Nadine Desrochers

Contributorship and division of labor in knowledge production

Scientific authorship has been increasingly complemented with contributorship statements. While such statements are said to ensure more equitable credit and responsibility attribution, they also provide an opportunity to examine the roles and functions that authors play in the construction of knowledge and the relationship between these roles and authorship order. Drawing on a comprehensive and multidisciplinary dataset of 87,002 documents in which contributorship statements are found, this article examines the forms that division of labor takes across disciplines, the relationships between various types of contributions, as well as the relationships between the contribution types and various indicators of authors’ seniority. It shows that scientific work is more highly divided in medical disciplines than in mathematics, physics, and disciplines of the social sciences, and that, with the exception of medicine, the writing of the paper is the task most often associated with authorship. The results suggest a clear distinction between contributions that could be labeled as ‘technical’ and those that could be considered ‘conceptual’: While conceptual tasks are typically associated with authors with higher seniority, technical tasks are more often performed by younger scholars. Finally, results provide evidence of a U-shaped relationship between extent of contribution and author order: In all disciplines, first and last authors typically contribute to more tasks than middle authors. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the results for the reward system of science.

Characterization, description, and considerations for the use of funding acknowledgement data in Web of Science

Funding acknowledgements found in scientific publications have been used to study the impact of funding on research since the 1970s. However, no broad scale indexation of that paratextual element was done until 2008, when Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science started to add funding acknowledgement information to its bibliographic records. As this new information provides a new dimension to bibliometric data that can be systematically exploited, it is important to understand the characteristics of these data and the underlying implications for their use. This paper analyses the presence and distribution of funding acknowledgement data covered in Web of Science. Our results show that prior to 2009 funding acknowledgements coverage is extremely low and therefore not reliable. Since 2008, funding information has been collected mainly for publications indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded; more recently (2015), inclusion of funding texts for publications indexed in the Social Science Citation Index has been implemented. Arts & Humanities Citation Index content is not indexed for funding acknowledgement data. Moreover, English-language publications are the most reliably covered. Finally, not all types of documents are equally covered for funding information indexation and only articles and reviews show consistent coverage. The characterization of the funding acknowledgement information collected by Thomson Reuters can therefore help understand the possibilities offered by the data but also their limitations.

Five decades of gratitude: A meta-synthesis of acknowledgments research

This review of the literature presents an overview of the last 50 years of research on acknowledgments in the context of scholarly communication. Through qualitative coding and bibliometric methods, this meta‐synthesis provides an in‐depth description of acknowledgments research and reveals the five main thematic categories that emerge from this corpus of literature. Adopting a historical approach, this review shows a diversified and scattered research landscape. Despite five decades of analysis putting forward the potential value of acknowledgments as markers of scientific capital, the literature still lacks consensus as to the value and functions of acknowledgments within the reward system of science.

Authorship, patents, citations, acknowledgments, tweets, reader counts and the multifaceted reward system of science

Building upon well‐established paradigms brought forth by such theorists as Robert K. Merton, Pierre Bourdieu, and Blaise Cronin, the panel will span the full cycle of academic production to show, through various bibliometric measures and other quantitative and qualitative analyses, how the reward system of science is evolving. While there is strong evidence to suggest that such forms of dissemination as social media output and blogging are being incorporated into scientific practices, scientific impact still remains principally assessed using measures such as authorship and citations, whilst other elements, such as acknowledgements, have received varying levels of regard at various times. Disciplinary considerations also arise. Using a wide range of approaches, measures, and datasets, the panelists will establish links between their individual research to create an empirically driven picture of the reward system of science and its indicators. Through the use of the Polldaddy application, audience members will answer questions and create an overview of their perception of the reward system of science.

Authorship, citations, acknowledgments and visibility in social media: Symbolic capital in the multifaceted reward system of science:

The reward system of science is undergoing significant changes, as traditional indicators compete with initiatives that offer novel means of disseminating and assessing scholarly impact. This article considers a number of aspects of this reward system, including authorship, citations, acknowledgements and the growing use of social media platforms by academics, with an eye towards identifying contemporary issues relating to scholarly communication practices, as understood through the perspectives of Bourdieu’s symbolic capital and Merton’s recognition framework. The article posits that, while scientific capital remains the foundation upon which the reward system of science is built, this system is revealing itself to be more and more multifaceted, extremely complex, and facing increasing tension between its traditional means of evaluation and the potential of new indicators in the digital era. The article presents an extended literature review, as well as recommendations for further consideration and empirical research. A better understanding of the perceptions of academics would be necessary to properly assess the effects of these new indicators on scholarly communication practices and the reward system of science.

Beyond funding : Acknowledgement patterns in biomedical, natural and social sciences

For the past 50 years, acknowledgments have been studied as important paratextual traces of research practices, collaboration, and infrastructure in science. Since 2008, funding acknowledgments have been indexed by Web of Science, supporting large-scale analyses of research funding. Applying advanced linguistic methods as well as Correspondence Analysis to more than one million acknowledgments from research articles and reviews published in 2015, this paper aims to go beyond funding disclosure and study the main types of contributions found in acknowledgments on a large scale and through disciplinary comparisons. Our analysis shows that technical support is more frequently acknowledged by scholars in Chemistry, Physics and Engineering. Earth and Space, Professional Fields, and Social Sciences are more likely to acknowledge contributions from colleagues, editors, and reviewers, while Biology acknowledgments put more emphasis on logistics and fieldwork-related tasks. Conflicts of interest disclosures (or lack of thereof) are more frequently found in acknowledgments from Clinical Medicine, Health and, to a lesser extent, Psychology. These results demonstrate that acknowledgment practices truly do vary across disciplines and that this can lead to important further research beyond the sole interest in funding.

Illusions of a “Bond”: tagging cultural products across online platforms

Purpose Most studies pertaining to social tagging focus on one platform or platform type, thus limiting the scope of their findings. The purpose of this paper is to explore social tagging practices across four platforms in relation to cultural products associated with the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming. Design/methodology/approach A layered and nested case study approach was used to analyse data from four online platforms: Goodreads, Last.fm, WordPress, and public library social discovery platforms. The top-level case study focuses on the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming and its derivative products. The analysis of tagging practices in each of the four online platforms is nested within the top-level case study. Casino Royale was conceptualized as a cultural product (the book), its derived products (e.g. movies, theme songs), as well as a keyword in blogs. A qualitative, inductive, and context-specific approach was chosen to identify commonalities in tagging practices across platforms whilst taking into account the uniqueness of each platform. Findings The four platforms comprise different communities of users, each platform with its own cultural norms and tagging practices. Traditional access points in the library catalogues focused on the subject, location, and fictitious characters of the book. User-generated content across the four platforms emphasized historical events and periods related to the book, and highlighted more subjective access points, such as recommendations, tone, mood, reaction, and reading experience. Revealing shifts occur in the tags between the original book and its cultural derivatives: Goodreads and library catalogues focus almost exclusively on the book, while Last.fm and WordPress make in addition cross-references to a wider range of different cultural products, including books, movies, and music. The analyses also yield apparent similarities in certain platforms, such as recurring terms, phrasing and composite or multifaceted tags, as well as a strong presence of genre-related terms for the book and music. Originality/value The layered and nested case study approach presents a more comprehensive theoretical viewpoint and methodological framework by which to explore the study of user-generated metadata pertaining to a range of related cultural products across a variety of online platforms.