[Sigmetrics] Call for papers: “Scientific communication in local and/or professional communities”

Tue May 23 19:44:02 EDT 2017

*Call for papers: “Scientific communication in local and/or professional
communities – values and evaluations”*

*A special issue of the journal BiD aims to gather reflections on the
challenges in scientific communication in thematic, geographical, social or
linguistic spaces that are perceived as peripheral or marginal. We invite
contributions that explore how ongoing transformations towards open science
and the re(appraisal) of societal contributions may affect scientific
communication in these local and professional spheres.*

Journal: BiD: textos universitaris de biblioteconomia i documentació
<http://bid.ub.edu/>

Paper length: 4,000 words (max.)

Submission deadline: 15th October 2017

A workshop with some of the papers submitted will be held in Barcelona in
January 2018

*Theme of the special issue*

We are witnessing the birth of a new paradigm in scientific communication,
brought about by factors such as the impact of ICTs, the information
explosion and open science, on the one hand, and by growing demands for
research to be socially responsible and to communicate with professional
spheres in order to contribute to well-being, on the other hand. In other
words, the birth of a new system of scientific communication runs parallel
to the emergence of a new system for the appraisal and assessment of
research.

For the last two decades, concepts such as “excellence” and “international
visibility” have dominated the selection criteria in research publishing
and management (Vessuri et al., 2014). The prevailing idea has been that
both science and scientific journals are organized (like sports
competitions) in ascending strata from less to more quality, in which the
most international journals publish the most important studies.

However, in recent years, this universalist perspective, which associates
international visibility with quality, has come under growing criticism.
First of all, because it is an elitist vision that may favour narrow
disciplinary research and may discriminate against studies that are
important from the viewpoint of socially responsible research (Stilgoe,
2014; Bianco & Sutz, 2014). Second, because it favours topics of interest
in dominant countries and marginalises other types of research, in
languages other than English (Piñeiro & Hicks, 2015; Vessuri et al., 2014).

This special issue aims to collect articles that reflect on how, in an open
science context, local scientific communities develop journals or other
communication tools to address topics with a low coverage in the main
international journals. Contributors are invited to explore how these
journals are rated in the assessment systems – and their possible effects
in downplaying research with a local and social focus (see principles 2 and
3 of the *Leiden Manifesto*; Hicks et al., 2015).

We are particularly interested in exploring the aspects of scientific
communication that target professionals, that is, technologists,
communicators and librarians. These professionals are also knowledge users
and generators, but from the viewpoint of the specific and contextual use
of knowledge (Chavarro et al., 2016). This means that the research that
practitioners find most useful is rarely the most visible internationally.

Finally, we also aim to discuss how systemic transformations in research
data (such as *Figshare*), bibliographical search engines (such as *Google
Scholar*), the proliferation of alternative scientific and technological
indicators (such as *ImpactStory*), and the concentration of renowned
journals in the hands of large publishers (Larivière et al., 2015) may
influence the role of scientific communication in local communities.

Guest editors:

*Ismael Ràfols*, *Ingenio* (CSIC-UPV), Univ. Politècnica de València, and
CWTS, Univ. de Leiden (visiting)

*Llorenç Arguimbau*, Univ. Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Observatori de la
Recerca de l'Institut d'Estudis Catalans (OR-IEC), Barcelona Institute of
Science and Tech. (BIST)

BiD: textos universitaris de biblioteconomia i documentació
<http://bid.ub.edu/> is an open access journal (free of charge) on Library
and Information Science. Articles can be submitted in English, Catalan and
Spanish and are translated and published in these three languages. BiD is
widely indexed (e.g. in Latindex, Web of Science and Scopus, among others,
see http://bid.ub.edu/en/indexed). See author guidelines:
http://bid.ub.edu/en/authors-guidelines

*References*

Bianco, M., & Sutz, J. (2014). Veinte años de políticas de investigación en
la Universidad de la República: aciertos, dudas y aprendizajes
<https://www.colibri.udelar.edu.uy/bitstream/123456789/4149/1/Libro_Veinte_a%C3%B1os_de_pol%C3%ADticas_de_investigaci%C3%B3n_en_la_Universidad_de_la_Rep%C3%BAblica.pdf>.
Ediciones Trilce, Montevideo.

Chavarro, D. A., Tang, P., & Rafols, I. (2016). Why researchers publish in
non-mainstream journals: Training, knowledge bridging, and gap filling
<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2887274>. SPRU Working
Paper Series 2016-22.

Hicks, D., Wouters, P., Waltman, L., De Rijcke, S., & Rafols, I. (2015). The
Leiden Manifesto for research metrics
<http://www.nature.com/news/bibliometrics-the-leiden-manifesto-for-research-metrics-1.17351>
. *Nature*, *520*(7548), 429.

Larivière, V.; Haustein, S.; Mongeon, P. (2015). The Oligopoly of Academic
Publishers in the Digital Era
<http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127502>.
*PLoS
ONE*, June 10, 2015.

Piñeiro, C. L., & Hicks, D. (2015). Reception of Spanish sociology by
domestic and foreign audiences differs and has consequences for evaluation
<https://academic.oup.com/rev/article/24/1/78/1544815/Reception-of-Spanish-sociology-by-domestic-and>
. *Research Evaluation*, *24*(1), 78-89.

Stilgoe, J. (2014) *Against excellence*
<https://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2014/dec/19/against-excellence>
. *The Guardian* blog on science. 19 December 2014.

Vessuri, H., Guédon, J. C., & Cetto, A. M. (2014). Excellence or quality?
Impact of the current competition regime on science and scientific
publishing in Latin America and its implications for development
<http://eprints.rclis.org/23682/1/Current-socio-published-non-Sage-format.pdf>
. *Current Sociology*, *62*(5), 647-665.
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