Attitudes towards open peer review, open data and use of preprints influence scientists’ engagement with those practices. Yet there is a lack of validated questionnaires that measure these attitudes. The goal of our study was to construct and validate such a questionnaire and use it to assess attitudes of Croatian scientists. We first developed a 21-item questionnaire called Attitudes towards Open data sharing, preprinting, and peer-review (ATOPP), which had a reliable four-factor structure, and measured attitudes towards open data, preprint servers, open peer-review and open peer-review in small scientific communities. We then used the ATOPP to explore attitudes of Croatian scientists (n = 541) towards these topics, and to assess the association of their attitudes with their open science practices and demographic information. Overall, Croatian scientists’ attitudes towards these topics were generally neutral, with a median (Md) score of 3.3 out of max 5 on the scale score. We also found no gender (P = 0.995) or field differences (P = 0.523) in their attitudes. However, attitudes of scientist who previously engaged in open peer-review or preprinting were higher than of scientists that did not (Md 3.5 vs. 3.3, P<0.001, and Md 3.6 vs 3.3, P<0.001, respectively). Further research is needed to determine optimal ways of increasing scientists’ attitudes and their open science practices.

The 30 March 1738 earthquake with an epicenter near Čakovec in Međimurje (Croatia) is the largest known earthquake in the low-seismicity area that includes northernmost Croatia, northeastern Slovenia, southeastern Austria, and southwestern Hungary. So far, it has attracted very little attention in the seismological communities of those countries. It is missing or has wrong source parameters in all of the relevant earthquake catalogs (including the Seismic Hazard Harmonization in Europe (SHARE) catalog, Stucchi et al., 2013), which may influence seismic hazard assessment in this part of Europe, most critically in the Međimurje region itself. We present contemporary historical data shedding some light on the effects that the earthquake had on settlements mostly in Međimurje, but also elsewhere in Croatia, Slovenia, and Hungary. We were able to assign intensities to 12 localities surrounding the epicenter and to resolve the confusion about its date of occurrence. The intensity points were inverted for the location of the macroseismic hypocenter and epicentral intensity (I0=7.9 MSK [Medvedev–Sponheuer–Karnik]). The epicenter is found to lie on the hanging wall of the reverse Čakovec fault, about 6 km from its surface trace, and 8 km north-northwest of the town of Čakovec. The rather small felt area for an earthquake of this maximum intensity implies a shallow macroseismic focal depth of 6 km. These values of intensity and depth correspond to a macroseismic magnitude of MLm 5.1.

Attitudes towards open peer review, open data and use of preprints influence scientists’ engagement with those practices. Yet there is a relatively small number of validated questionnaires that measure these attitudes. The goal of our study was to construct and validate such a questionnaire. Using a sample of Croatian scientists (N=541), from a wide range of disciplines, we developed a questionnaire titled Attitudes towards Open data sharing, preprinting, and peer-review (ATOPP). The questionnaire has 21 item with a four-factor structure (attitudes towards: open data, preprint servers, open peer-review and open peer-review in small scientific communities). Based on the questionnaire, the attitudes of Croatian scientists towards these topics were generally neutral, with a median of 3.3 out of 5 of the total attitude score. Croatian scientist attitudes were lowest for open peer-review in small scientific communities (Md 2.0) and highest for open data (Md 3.9).

Analyses of available data (newspaper reports, historical and church chronicles, chronical earthquake overviews, travel books, monographies, research papers, etc.) on effects of the earthquakes that shook the greater Ormož area at the Slovenian-Croatian border in the 1838 and 1839 revealed that one of them, recorded in a number of regional and global catalogues, is in fact a fake - the earthquake of 26 August 1838 never happened. This error creeped into various reports and studies, and then into many relevant catalogues, so this event should by systematically erased from the catalogues used to estimate seismicity rates in the neighbourhoods of north-western Croatia, north-eastern Slovenia, and south-western Hungary.Regarding the earthquake of 31 July 1838, we used important new sources of information that have not been consulted in any previous study. This made inversion of macroseismic parameters more robust. Our estimates of the macroseismic moment magnitude (Mwm = 4.8) is mostly higher than the values reported in the available catalogues. Reliable information on the effects of the smaller event of 22 March 1839 were found for two localities only, so its epicentre was placed into the town of Ormož where the maximum intensity was observed. Its estimated moment magnitude (Mwm) is close to the median of values found in the six consulted catalogues that listed this event.The macroseismic epicentre of the 1838 earthquake lies close to the junction of surface traces of the Donat strike-slip fault and the reverse Čakovec fault. Based on their assumed geometry and the location of the macroseismic hypocentre, we give slight preference to the Donat fault as the seismogenic source.

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