Attitudes and practices of open data, preprinting, and peer-review—A cross sectional study on Croatian scientists

Abstract

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.

Transparency in conducting and reporting research: a survey of authors, reviewers, and editors across scholarly disciplines

“…Furthermore, year when the survey is conducted, wording differences, use of scales versus single questions to assess attitudes, as well as differences in collected sociodemographic data that might be explored as explanatory variables, often don't allow direct comparisons. 16 Nevertheless, a survey of 1,015 authors of observational studies, also conducted in 2018, showed that 63% of respondents used reporting guidelines, and that their attitudes towards, awareness, and use of reporting guidelines are in uenced by journals' endorsements, 17 which was also echoed in earlier studies. 18 Our previous analysis of journals' endorsements, however, showed that only 13% of journals across disciplines recommended the use of reporting guidelines, and only 2% required it.…”

African researchers do not think differently about Open Data

“…The framework can also be viewed within the overall research landscape in Africa as to whether the correct policies, incentives and infrastructures exist to enable positive attitudes toward the advancement of science on the continent and globally. The study on attitudes toward data sharing in Africa can also be viewed in the context of the conclusions from Baždarić et al (2021) that this has to be framed within the broader understanding and appreciation of the principles and practices of Open Science. Kim and Adler (2015) explored data-sharing behaviors on individual motivations, institutional pressures, and pressures using a combination of new institutional theory and the theory of planned behavior to develop a model that explains and predicts data sharing behavior.…”

Development of the Brief Open Research Survey (BORS) to measure awareness and uptake of Open Research practices

“…Meta-research has identified the extent to which researchers engage with Open Research across different disciplines (Cashin et al, 2021;Christensen et al, 2019;Hardwicke et al, 2021;Norris et al, 2021Wallach et al, 2018). There have also been various questionnaire measures developed to assess Open Research behaviours within countries (Baždarić et al, 2021;Pardo Martínez & Poveda, 2018), specific disciplines (Abele-Brehm et al, 2019;Bakker et al, 2022;Bowman et al, 2021;Houtkoop et al, 2018), institutions (University of Glasgow, 2021) or academic status groups (Toribio-Flórez et al, 2021). However, there is no openly available, brief and standardised questionnaire to assess awareness, uptake, and support of Open Research behaviours within and across institutions and countries.…”