Analysis of Emerging Reputation and Funding Mechanisms in the Context of Open Science 2.0

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Analysis of Emerging Reputation and Funding Mechanisms in the Context of Open Science 2.0 Analysis of Emerging Reputation and Funding Mechanisms in the Context of Open Science 2.0 Editors: Riina Vuorikari & Yves Punie Authors: Part 1: Dave Nicholas, Eti Herman, Hamid R. Jamali Part 2: David Osimo, Laia Pujol, Federica Porcu 2015 Please replace with an image illustrating your report and align it with the bottom edge of the cover. Make sure the blue JRC footer reaches the bottom of the page. Please remove this text box from your cover. Report EUR 27244 EN European Commission Joint Research Centre Institute for Prospective Technological Studies Contact information Address: Edificio Expo. c/ Inca Garcilaso, 3. E-41092 Seville (Spain) E-mail: [email protected] Tel.: +34 954488318 Fax: +34 954488300 https://ec.europa.eu/jrc https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/institutes/ipts Legal Notice This publication is a Science and Policy Report by the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission’s in-house science service. It aims to provide evidence-based scientific support to the European policy-making process. The scientific output expressed does not imply a policy position of the European Commission. Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission is responsible for the use which might be made of this publication. All images © European Union 2015 JRC94952 EUR 27244 EN ISBN 978-92-79-48248-9 (PDF) ISSN 1831-9424 (online) doi:10.2791/84669 Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2015 © European Union, 2015 Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged. Abstract This report covers the outcomes of two studies funded by JRC IPTS to explore emerging drivers for Open Science 2.0. In general, Open Science 2.0 is associated with themes such as open access to scientific outputs, open data, citizen science and open peer evaluation systems. This study, however, focused on less explored themes, namely on alternative funding mechanisms for scientific research and on emerging reputation mechanisms for scholars resulting from Web 2.0 platforms and applications. It has been demonstrated that both are providing significant new opportunities for researchers to disseminate, share, explore and collaborate with other researchers, but it remains to be seen whether they will be able to bring about more disruptive change in how science and research systems function in the future. They could well do so, especially if related changes being considered by the European Commission on ‘Science 2.0: Science in Transition’ are taken into account. FOREWORD This report covers the outcomes of two JRC-IPTS funded studies, which explore emerging drivers for Open Science 2.0. In general, Open Science 2.0 is associated with themes such as open access to scientific outputs, open data, citizen science and open peer evaluation systems. Our studies focused on less-explored themes, namely on alternative funding mechanisms for scientific research and on emerging reputation systems for scholars. The phrase 'alternative funding mechanisms for scientific research' refers to innovative and new approaches to financing research and development both from governments and private donors, using more open, bottom-up ways of selecting priorities and proposals (e.g. inducement prizes such as X-prizes and Grand Challenges, sandboxes, crowdsourcing). These mechanisms are currently complementing existing funding methods. However, they require scholars to have new skills more like those of entrepreneurs selling their projects to the crowd or to private parties. This, in turn, opens new ways for science to communicate with people in society, among other things. Emerging reputation mechanisms refer to either social networking services or sites that utilise the social media, which offer the opportunity to build, promote and measure reputation. They do this by providing mechanisms for conducting various scholarly activities, typically disseminating research, and enabling the quality or impact of these activities to be measured, demonstrated, compared and - sometimes – rated in the form of scores that can be viewed by the community. Known examples include ResearchGate, Mendeley and Academia.edu. It appears that when building and showcasing scholarly reputation, the large majority of services only consider traditional research activities. Other types of scholarly activities attracted little notice (e.g. teaching). This indicates that dominant practice mainly conforms to the old standards of "Science 1.0". Both alternative funding and emerging Web 2.0 scientific reputation platforms and services are providing significant new opportunities for researchers to disseminate, share, explore and collaborate with other researchers. However, they are still emerging and it remains to be seen whether they will be able to bring about more disruptive change in science and research systems in the future. They could well do so, if we consider related changes in the dynamics of science and research. These changes have been enabled by digital technologies and driven by globalisation and increasing societal demands for science to address the grand challenges of our times. The European Commission held a public consultation on ‘Science 2.0: Science in Transition’ and will run a validation process in 2015 to further consolidate the analysis of changes in the modus operandi of doing research and organising science (http://scienceintransition.eu/). In addition, there is a wider trend towards "opening-up" education which affects teaching and how education is being organised and funded. The European Commission launched a number of initiatives in this area, following the 2013 Communication (COM/2013/0654 final) on "Opening up Education: Innovative teaching and learning for all through new Technologies and Open Educational Resources". The JRC-IPTS "ICT for Learning and Skills" team is studying these changes, which cover the following interrelated research strands across all educational sectors: Open Education and OER, Innovating Learning and Teaching, Key Competences and 21st Century Skills. More than 20 studies have been undertaken on these issues, resulting in more than 50 different publications. All the studies aim to support European policies on the modernisation and innovation of education and training (DG EAC), the and development of key competences and qualifications (DG EMPL) the Digital Agenda for Europe (DG CNECT) and more recently, the Digital Single Market (DSM) initiative under the Juncker Commission. Yves Punie, Team Leader "ICT for Learning and Skills" Riina Vuorikari, research fellow 1 Part I Analysis of Emerging Reputation Mechanisms for Scholars 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS – PART 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................................................ 6 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................................................... 11 2. FINDINGS .................................................................................................................................................................................. 13 2.1 Defining scholarly activities and reputational mechanisms .................................................. 13 2.1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 13 2.1.2 A conceptual framework for scholarly activities ...................................................... 13 2.1.3 Conclusions .................................................................................................................................... 23 2.2 State-of-the-art mapping of reputational platforms ................................................................ 24 2.2.1 Methodology ................................................................................................................................. 24 2.2.2 Population of reputational platforms ............................................................................. 24 2.2.3 Outcomes........................................................................................................................................ 28 2.2.4 Conclusions .................................................................................................................................... 30 2.3 Case studies on scholarly reputation .................................................................................................. 30 2.3.1 Reputational platform case study: Kudos .................................................................... 31 2.3.2 Country case studies ................................................................................................................ 34 2.3.3 Survey of Kudos users ............................................................................................................ 40 3. ANALYSIS OF THE IMPLICATIONS ............................................................................................................................... 43 3.1 So what have we learned?......................................................................................................................... 43 3.2 Should something be done about this state of affairs and what would be the benefits to society and scholarship? .................................................................................................... 45 3.3 The way forward?
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