Purposeful Evaluation of Scholarship in the Open Science Era

Abstract

In most of the world’s countries, scholarship evaluation for tenure and promotion continues to rely on conventional criteria of publications in journals of high impact factor and achievements in securing research funds. Continuing to hire and promote scholars based on these criteria exposes universities to risk because students, directly and indirectly through government funds, are the main source of revenues for academic institutions. At the same time, talented young researchers increasingly look for professors renowned for excellence in mentoring doctoral students and early career researchers. Purposeful scholarship evaluation in the open science era needs to include all three areas of scholarly activity: research, teaching and mentoring, and service to society.

Did You Ask for Citations? An Insight into Preprint Citations en route to Open Science

“…Showing evidence that preprints are now regularly cited in peer reviewed journal articles, books, and conference papers by investigating the citation patterns for preprints published in ChemRxiv, Research Square, and bioRxiv, this study further substantiates the value of open science in relation to citation-based metrics on which the evaluation of scholarship continues to rely on [39]. In brief, gone are the days in which preprints, for example those published in the early years of bioRxiv, were highly read and shared online, but poorly cited [48].…”

“…Making "near instantaneous improvements to ongoing work" possible, preprints allow for reaping the benefits of open science, at the same time enhancing the number of citations and related citation-based metrics that continue to be used for appraising scientists [15,39].…”

Did you Ask for Citations? An Insight into Preprint Citations en route to Open Science

“…In brief, purposeful evaluation of scholarship today includes also the evaluation of preprints [34], and will take into account the number of preprint citations. I also recommend scholars to include next to the number of preprint citations also the value of altmetrics indicators (such as those provided by Altmetric.com, Mendeley and PlumX) which track and report altmetrics data measuring the online impact of the preprint's research [35].…”

“…Together, these interactions illustrate the fundamentally two-way street of new publishing models, which facilitate access without paywalls and allow for near instantaneous improvements to ongoing work." [39] Making possible the aforementioned "two-way street of new publishing models" with nearly immediate "improvements to ongoing work", the preprint allows to reap the benefits of open science enhancing the number of citations and related citation-based metrics which continue to be used for appraising scientists [15,34].…”

Reaping the benefits of open science in scholarly communication

“…Beyond scientific publishing, the practice of open science enhances work and outcomes also in the two additional areas of scholarly activity. How the practice of open science effectively enhances student education and learning and scholarly service to society in the context of new evaluation of scholarship in the open science age, 45 will form the topic of a subsequent study.…”