Search

Background: Collaboration among researchers is crucial for scientific progress. However, academics in developing countries like Nigeria continue to face structural and personal barriers to effectively utilising online collaborative tools. While there is much hope that researchers in this part of the globe will continue to maximise the opportunities presented within the online collaborative space, the effectiveness of these tools in supporting collaborative research activities in poor resource areas lacks significant study focus. Objective: The study investigated the effectiveness of online collaboration tools among researchers in some university communities in Nigeria. Methodology: The research adopted an online survey method to gather data from 312 academics/researchers across some universities in Nigeria who were selected using purposive and chain-referral sampling approaches. Results: Findings showed a high preference for many of the platforms presented to respondents, with Google Scholar being the most frequently used, followed by Mendeley and Zotero. Findings found common challenges that researchers face when using these online collaborative tools: limited access to Internet services, software compatibility issues, training and skill deficiency, data security concerns, absence of institutional support, high cost of software subscription plan, and difficulties using/managing different tools/platforms. In addition, findings revealed that the level of engagement, as defined by heavy use and non-heavy use, impacted the perceived effectiveness of these tools. Specifically, heavy usage had a greater impact on perceived effectiveness than non-heavy usage. Results also showed significant variances across various platform types regarding perceived effectiveness. Specifically, Mendeley was found to be mostly effective compared to other platforms. Finally, a regression analysis showed the influence of user group, age and frequency of using tools on perceived effectiveness. Contribution: The study adds to existing knowledge concerning the utilisation of and barriers to the effectiveness of adopting these online collaborative platforms, particularly within the contexts of Nigerian universities. Conclusion: Overall, the current research highlights the significance of developing evidence-based strategies to address the key barriers to effective online collaborative tool utilisation among Nigerian researchers and in places that share similar challenges with the present context. Recommendation: Specific or customised interventions should be developed to address challenges researchers face in their bid to maximise the huge potential of online collaborative partnerships.

In situations where animal models (AMs) are necessary, as in the field of neuroscience, a strong culture of care must be supported and established. The pivotal question remains: how can we uphold a robust “culture of care”? In the multifaceted domain of neuroscience research, AMs traverse a spectrum shaped by conflicting viewpoints, anthropocentrism and pathocentrism, where established scientific norms intersect with ethical deliberations. Anthropocentrism, representative of conventional scientific approaches, may prioritize scientific goals potentially to the detriment of animal welfare. Conversely, pathocentrism places significant importance on the ethical treatment and well-being of AMs. This divergence of approach prompts the imperative development of a robust culture of care framework within research institutions, advocating for animal welfare, ethical responsibility, and adherence to regulatory standards. In this review, we refer to a European view of animal care, discussing internationally valid concepts that find rebuttal in the current European legislation. This review meticulously analyzes the many facets of the culture of care, particularly for neuroscience studies involving AMs, illustrating the principles, practices, and collaborations critical to overcoming ethical expectations. This commitment increases credibility and builds trust in the public and research spheres, underscoring the critical importance of a culture of care in the ethics of neuroscience research.

The pandemic dramatically accelerated research on vaccine attitudes and uptake, a field which mobilizes researchers from the social sciences and humanities as well as biomedical and public health disciplines. The field has the potential to contribute much more, but the growth in research and the deeper connections between disciplines brings challenges as well as opportunities. This perspective article assesses the recent development of the field, exploring progress whilst emphasizing that not enough attention has been paid to national and local contexts. This lack of contextual attention limits the progress of research and hinders our capacity to learn from the COVID-19 crisis. We suggest three concrete responses: building and recognizing new publishing formats for reporting and synthesizing studies at a country level; establishing country-level interdisciplinary networks to connect research and praxis; and strengthening international comparative survey work by enhancing the focus on local contextual factors.

Abstract Introduction Care Opinion is an online feedback platform supporting patients to author stories about their care. It is not known whether authors would be willing to be involved in improving care through research. The aims of this study were to explore the views and preferences of Care Opinion authors about joining an online research community and to pilot new research community functionality. Methods Five hundred and nine Care Opinion authors were invited to take part in an online survey in June 2019. Survey items included questions about participants' willingness to take part in research and their preferences for supporting processes. Data were analysed descriptively. Authors were invited to consent to join a research community and were asked to participate in three pilot studies. Results One hundred and sixty‐three people consented to take part in the survey (32%). Participants indicated they would like to know the time commitment to the project (146, 90%), details about the organization carrying out the research (124, 76%) and safeguarding information (124, 76%). Over half indicated that they did not know how to get involved in healthcare research (87, 53%). Subsequently, 667 authors were invited to join the research community, 183 (27%) accepted, and three studies were matched to their expressed preferences for project attributes or organization type. Conclusion Many people who leave online feedback about their experiences of healthcare are also willing to join a research community via that platform. They have strong preferences for supporting University and NHS research. Eligibility and acceptance rates to join pilot research studies varied. Further work is needed to grow the research community, increase its diversity, and create relevant and varied opportunities to support research. Patient or Public Contribution Four members of the Safety In Numbers patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) group advised about survey development.

In this research paper, we analyzed the bibliographic data of the research publications issued by the Moroccan Journal of Chemistry between 2013 and 2021. As an open-access country-based research journal with a narrow area of interest and international online exposure, it will be interesting to see how it affects the local chemical research community through the comparison of the characteristics of the research outputs of the journal as retrieved from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) with the features of Moroccan chemical research from 2014 to 2021 in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS). In this context, we generated scientometric networks using Gephi, a tool for large-scale data visualization, to reveal the patterns of the publications in the Moroccan Journal of Chemistry. When performing our analysis, we found a significant alignment between the research topics featured in the Moroccan Journal of Chemistry and the main research areas of the Moroccan chemical scholarly outputs, particularly Multidisciplinary Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, and Analytical Chemistry. We also identified that the Moroccan Journal of Chemistry functions as an incubator for establishing new traditions of research collaboration between Moroccan institutions and target nations such as Asian and African countries. As well, it is clear that the Moroccan Journal of Chemistry is an interesting venue for the most productive chemical researchers in Morocco for sharing preliminary research findings and discussing trendy topics.

Making decisions regarding data and the overall credibility of research constitutes research data governance. In this paper, we present results of an exploratory study of the stakeholders of research data governance. The study was conducted among individuals who work in academic and research institutions in the US, with the goal of understanding what entities are perceived as making decisions regarding data and who researchers believe should be responsible for governing research data. Our results show that there is considerable diversity and complexity across stakeholders, both in terms of who they are and their ideas about data governance. To account for this diversity, we propose to frame research data governance in the context of polycentric governance of a knowledge commons. We argue that approaching research data from the commons perspective will allow for a governance framework that can balance the goals of science and society, allow us to shift the discussion toward protection from enclosure and knowledge resilience, and help to ensure that multiple voices are included in all levels of decision-making.

Cloud and Earth Observation (EO) based services offer the European Research community a wealth of powerful tools. However, for many researchers these tools are currently out of reach. It is difficult to find and select suitable services. Establishing agreements with cloud and EO service providers and ensuring legal and technical compliance requires specialist skills and takes an inordinate amount of time. Equally, service providers find it difficult to reach and meet the needs of the research community in technical, financial and legal areas. The Open Clouds for Research Environments consortium (OCRE) will change this, by putting in place an easy adoption route. In the autumn of 2019, OCRE will run a pan-European tender and establish framework agreements with service providers who meet the requirements of the research community. 10.000 European research and education institutes will be able to directly consume these offerings via the European Open Science Cloud service catalogue, through ready-to-use agreements. They will not have to run a tender of their own. In addition, to stimulate usage, OCRE will make available 9.5 million euro in service credits (vouchers), through adoption funds from the European Commission. OCRE is a pioneer project without precedence, with potentially high impact in the future EO market activities and evolution of service offering, with the objective to burst the usage of EO commercial services by the research environment.

The Global OER Graduate Network (GO-GN) is a global community of researchers in Open education. For this collection we invited papers from GO-GN members (past and present) to highlight the research they are undertaking and the impact of the network. As well as conventional research papers, we encouraged joint papers with other members or external to the network; shorter, work-in-progress papers; case studies or narrative accounts of OEP and suggestions for innovative formats. The collection provides an opportunity for members to showcase their work, gain feedback and demonstrate the value of the network. The GO-GN team also offered to act as mentors on request for any authors who wished to work up their contributions.

Brain research in Europe is a rapidly evolving field, and increasingly at the forefront of science. Although considerable amounts of knowledge and innovative approaches have been generated, the translation into new health interventions is hindered by excessive fragmentation. Effective and efficient collaboration and cooperation among the various initiatives are often identified as a key success factor to achieve brain research full impact. EBRA fully responds to these needs by bringing together the various stakeholders and major brain research initiatives, at European level and beyond. EBRA creates the conditions for real and effective cross fertilisation, dialogue, building consensus and exploiting research potential. On the operational level, EBRA facilitates the emergence of research projects in specific areas in active clusters. A cluster is understood as a research community that can be directed towards basic research, clinical research and/or methodological approaches under a common topic and disease area within brain research. EBRA support clusters to: 1. Consolidate or expand further the research community expand their community, 2. Engage with policy makers and other relevant stakeholders, 3. Build consensus on various issues (research priorities, research roadmap, data sharing, etc.), 4. Promote links with existing research infrastructures, 5. Increase the visibility of the research community through communication and dissemination activities, 6. Coordinate the development of position/consensus papers, white papers, guidelines, meeting reports and/or other cluster outcomes. EBRA currently has 6 existing clusters: EPICLUSTER, Prevention of Severe Mental Disorders (PSMD)-cluster, TRISOMY21-cluster, BRAINFOOD-cluster., PREMOS-cluster and ECIB-cluster.

The academic community frequently engages with OpenStreetMap (OSM) as a data source and research subject, acknowledging its complex and contextual nature. However, existing literature rarely considers the position of academic research in relation to the OSM community. In this paper we explore the extent and nature of engagement between the academic research community and the larger communities in OSM. An analysis of OSM-related publications from 2016 to 2019 and seven interviews conducted with members of one research group engaged in OSM-related research are described. The literature analysis seeks to uncover general engagement patterns while the interviews are used to identify possible causal structures explaining how these patterns may emerge within the context of a specific research group. Results indicate that academic papers generally show few signs of engagement and adopt data-oriented perspectives on the OSM project and product. The interviews expose that more complex perspectives and deeper engagement exist within the research group to which the interviewees belong, e.g., engaging in OSM mapping and direct interactions based on specific points-of-contact in the OSM community. Several conclusions and recommendations emerge, most notably: that every engagement with OSM includes an interpretive act which must be acknowledged and that the academic community should act to triangulate its interpretation of the data and OSM community by diversifying their engagement. This could be achieved through channels such as more direct interactions and inviting members of the OSM community to participate in the design and evaluation of research projects and programmes.

The purpose of this article is to examine the conceptual alignment between the ethical principles of research integrity and open science. Research integrity is represented in this study by four general codes of conduct on responsible conduct of research (RCR), three of them international in scope, and one national. A representative list of ethical principles associated with open science is compiled in order to create categories for assessing the content of the codes. According to the analysis, the current understanding of RCR is too focused on traditional publications and the so called FFP definition of research misconduct to fully support open science. The main gaps include recognising citizen science and societal outreach and supporting open collaboration both among the research community and beyond its traditional borders. Updates for both the content of CoCs as well as the processes of creating such guidelines are suggested.

The 3rd Annual Martial Arts Studies Conference held at Cardiff University (11-13 July, 2017) was an eclectic collection of keynotes, papers, workshops, networking and social events. It connected PhD students, established professors and practitioner-instructors in university lecture rooms, public parks and music halls across three days of academic, social and physical activities. From historical studies of Chinese martial arts to the performance of Indian styles, it brought together scholars, practitioner-researchers and martial artists for a supportive, but also scholarly, gathering – one which was both thematically open but at the same united by an exploration of the communication of embodied research and knowledge. In sum, the conference demonstrated that martial arts studies, as a still young field, shows a wealth of promise, with emerging leaders, topics and debates that will stimulate future research, cross-continental collaboration and intercultural dialogue.

Este artigo pretende explorar uma política pública - a política científica e tecnológica (PCT) - debatendo algumas de suas principais características constitutivas (que a diferenciam significativamente das demais) e procurando evidenciar um de seus aspectos que raramente é explicitado: como política pública elaborada no âmbito do Estado capitalista, a PCT é uma política que favorece às classes dominantes. O artigo procura entender o porquê desse aspecto nem sempre ser reconhecido. E discorre também sobre algumas das principais causas e implicações disso. Para tanto, são abordados conceitos e definições gerais sobre as políticas públicas. Em seguida, são discutidas as principais características e processos associados à política científica e tecnológica. Também são abordadas as particularidades da PCT brasileira, que denunciam, em grande medida, seu caráter de classe. Por fim, são apresentados argumentos que se propõem a explicar o porquê desse caráter ser raramente reconhecido.This paper seeks to examine a public policy - science and technology policy (STP) - by debating some of its main characteristics (that distinguish it significantly from the others) and evidencing some of its less discussed aspects: as any policy elaborated in the sphere of the capitalist state, STP is, evidently, a class-oriented policy. The paper seeks to understand why this aspect is scarcely recognized. It also discusses some of the main causes and consequences of this aspect. In order to accomplish these goals, it explores some general concepts and definitions regarding public policies. It then discusses the main characteristics and processes associated to science and technology policy, as well as the specificities of Brazilian STP that, to a great extent, shows its class orientation. Lastly, it presents some arguments that seek to explain why this class orientation is not commonly recognized.