TRANSPOSE: a database of journal policy records on peer review, coreviewers, & preprinting

[jpolka]

Confused? New to Github? Visit the GitHub help page on our site for more information!

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At a glance

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• Submission Name: TRANSPOSE
• Contact Lead: jessica.polka@gmail.com, @jpolka
• Issue Area: #OpenResearch
• Region: #NorthernAmerica, #Europe
• Issue Type: #Project
• Types of Support Needed: #Advocacy_and_Policy, #Communications, #Community_GrassrootsOrganizing, #Research
• External Site Link (optional - primarily for projects): http://transpose-publishing.github.io

Description

TRANSPOSE is a grassroots initiative to build a crowdsourced database of journal policies. We’re focusing on three areas: open peer review, co-reviewing, and detailed preprinting policies. We welcome contributions from anyone, but seek verification from journals and pubilshers. Our goal is to foster new practices while increasing awareness among authors, editors, and other stakeholders, and we seek to provide resources to assist journals in setting, sharing, and clarifying their policies.

What are we working on during the do-a-thon? What kinds of support do we need?

We'd love people to:

• start new journal records
• reach out to editors they know to ask them to verify existing records
• build visualizations of the data (which could be published as a google sheet)

How can others contribute?

*** To contribute to the database

• Click here to see existing journal records
• Search the page (Ctrl + F) for a journal of interest. This could be any journal - for suggestions, thinking of one you've submitted to, reviewed for, or read a paper in recently
• If a record exists, and it's not journal-verified, please feel free to check it over & add to it
• If a record doesn't exist, please click the link at top right to start one! Follow the instructions on the form.
• Leave a comment here to let everyone know what you've added!

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This post is part of the OpenCon Do-A-Thon. Not sure what's going on? Head here.

[nemobis]

I suppose you know, but folks like @wetneb are also collecting such data in structured form on Wikidata. Maybe add a CC-0 note to the spreadsheet to help future imports? :)

[wetneb]

According to the submission form, "Please note that all original contributions are licensed CC0", so it looks like you have already got it right, fab!

[jpolka]

Awesome - our original plan was actually to propose new properties for journals for Wikidata, but we were concerned about 1) being able to clearly define a schema up front and 2) user friendliness. Would love to learn about and contribute to your effort!

On Mon, Oct 15, 2018, 1:38 PM Antonin Delpeuch notifications@github.com wrote:

According to the submission form, "Please note that all original contributions are licensed CC0", so it looks like you have already got it right, fab!

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/sparcopen/doathon/issues/72#issuecomment-429945668, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAexY_CDPUxsc6bkiDTlMH69xxlmydGaks5ulMgDgaJpZM4XbVft .

[wetneb]

Great! Yes I agree that it generally takes some time to agree on a schema and get properties created. It makes total sense to start collecting data upfront.

Maybe it could be worth presenting the project at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Open_Access to get some feedback.

I might be able to attend the doathon, but not 100% sure as it conflicts with https://freenode.live/ in Bristol that I wanted to attend too.

[jpolka]

Thanks @wetneb - would love to get some feedback from WikiProject Open Access! Is Project Chat the right place for that?

[wetneb]

We generally talk on this talk page: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:WikiProject_Open_Access

[npscience]

For anyone interested in working on this in-person at OpenCon, please check in with me there :)

[npscience]

A relevant piece shared today on Scholarly Kitchen, and authored by the TRANPOSE team, explaining some of the aims behind TRANSPOSE: https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/11/01/guest-post-help-transpose-bring-journal-policies-into-the-open/

[npscience]

More ways to contribute: how would you use this resource?

• Would you find a resource that clarifies journal policies on preprinting (such as licensing requirements, versions you can post, media policies) and peer review (such as co-reviewing and sharing review reports) useful?
• Do the use cases already collated for this resource make sense to you? See https://transpose-publishing.github.io/usecases.html
• How would you use this resource? Do you have a use case to contribute?

Contribute feedback and additions by:

• telling us via this form -- and help us test this survey! Feedback welcome in this issue thread (updated Dec 10: issue moved within TRANSPOSE project, updated link)
• sharing your feedback on TRANSPOSE use cases or contributing a new use case directly in this issue thread. Please @ me to indicate this, I will :+1: when I've acted on this
• if you are comfortable with GitHub, you can submit a pull request to update the use case document

If you would be happy to be named as a contributor, please indicate this consent either in your issue comment here or with the pull request to the repo.

[dpixton]

Naomi, I'm interested in helping with this effort here at OpenCon. I am in the Collaborarium - let's talk when you get a moment.

[npscience]

We have people adding records to TRANSPOSE from table 13 -- thanks @dpixton and @monsauce

Come join us in-person or virtually! We're also thinking about preprints for biology, answering Qs about that and considering ways to increase awareness -- see #90

AND WE HAVE CHOCOLATE (sorry, virtual participants!)

[npscience]

@dpixton has completed records for the Society for Petroleum Engineers (SPE) family of (5) journals 👏

Through the process, he has found:

• looking at one set of docs to cover the whole SPE family took 3.5-4 hours to go through. Could time to complete this info be an approximate measure of how easy it is to find the info and inform which journal policy wordings are easier to find and understand?
• the transpose Gform structure means that a learning process is required to understand which info is needed where, and making it easier to find the whole form structure first (eg link to pdf version of the form from intro to the form?) may help contributors? Concern that one-time contributors won't contribute again if the process is not user-friendly.
• In finding the policies, David found the copyright section had a lot of info (because journal cares about copyright); and that the peer review polices are written with authors in mind as the audience.

Angela @zebraelement has added an issue to the transpose github suggesting contributing her data so far on journal policies on material sharing. She also wonders how/whether journals have/will change their policies as a result of this project -- perhaps an interesting thing to measure?

THANKS FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS ❇️

[npscience]

update on OpenCon community call, Nov 28

• Transpose is a database of journal policy records on peer review, co-reviewers, & preprinting. Preprints are manuscripts shared online before peer review.
• A service called sherpa/Romeo can already tell you in broad strokes whether a journal is ok with you preprinting your work, but actually some of the policies are more intricate than a yes/no answer, with considerations with respect to media reporting and other issues, so TRANSPOSE is an effort to collate a more comprehensive database of these policies.
• Thanks to everyone who contributed on the day (David, Angela and Monica), both by adding journal policies, testing the process to add them, and suggesting new data that could be collected!
• Since OpenCon, the project has moved on a fair bit. We’re now focussed on getting entries direct from journals and helping them to do this in a nice and easy way. We’re also now thinking about how to visualise the data collected, in the most helpful way for people looking up journal policies or trying to find out which journals would be ok for them.
• We’ve no ask on this project right now, except we’re generally on the look out for good designers and UI/UX people, in case anyone is interested or has some contacts. Please feel free to reach out to me, or others on the project (lots of links in the GitHub issue, and you can @npscience or @jpolka in that thread to get my attention)