Stefano Costa

Tag: open access

  • Peer Community in Archaeology, una peer review migliore per tutti

    Qualche giorno fa ho completato la mia prima peer review per Peer Community in Archaeology. Faccio peer review (o referaggio, come molti dicono in anglo-italico) da una decina d’anni. Per diversi anni sono stato editor del Journal of Open Archaeology Data e ho gestito il processo di peer review, che può essere anche molto estenuante e sempre, rigorosamente, gratuito.

    Quando ho scoperto PCI Archaeology mi è parsa subito una iniziativa con grande potenzialità. La open peer review non è una novità, ma con PCI viene messo a sistema l’utilizzo sistematico dei preprint, che sono pressoché sconosciuti tra gli archeologi e ancora più tra gli archeologi italiani. Tutto il progetto Peer Community in conta al momento 11 comunità specializzate in discipline varie.

    PCI Archaeology è attivo dal 2019, ha un cuore francese, è sostenuto dal CNRS e da molte università, ma anche dal Max Planck Institute, se avete bisogno di farvi convincere dal prestigio. C’è già una lista importante di riviste che ha aderito al progetto, tra cui Quaternary, PLOS One, Internet Archaeology, Open Quaternary e ovviamente Journal of Open Archaeology Data. Tra gli 80 recommenders ci sono diversi italiani, con una maggioranza sul versante preistorico e scientifico. Chi fa parte del comitato editoriale di una rivista dovrebbe dedicare un po’ di tempo a capire come funziona PCI, la via più semplice è candidarsi come reviewer e sperimentare di persona il funzionamento.

    Perché la peer review aperta di PCI Archaeology è migliore per tutti?

    Per gli autori, consente di far circolare la propria ricerca appena pronta per l’invio a una rivista e di sottoporla a un processo trasparente. Il preprint deve essere caricato su un server esterno affidabile, come OSF Preprints o Zenodo, perché la review ha una sua autonomia editoriale. È possibile per i reviewer rimanere anonimi ma nella maggior parte dei casi ci sarà un nome affiancato alla review che riceviamo. Il ruolo del “recommender” è abbastanza originale ed è un po’ come avere un editor su misura per ciascun articolo, che può anche essere suggerito tra quelli attivi al momento (oggi sono 80). Quando la review finisce, il preprint diventa una porzione di un “oggetto editoriale” più esteso che collega le review, la recommendation finale (che può anche essere negativa!) e le risposte degli autori alle review. Tutto è pubblico e pubblicato, archiviato e citabile, e il preprint può a questo punto essere inviato a una rivista tradizionale oppure anche citato così com’è, perché di fatto ha tutte le caratteristiche di un articolo completo: identificativo permanente, archiviazione a lungo termine, peer review.

    Per i reviewer, anzitutto la trasparenza incoraggia a svolgere con maggiore attenzione la revisione, perché tutti potranno leggere i nostri commenti ‒ anche se scegliessimo di rimanere anonimi quella review è comunque opera nostra. Ma l’aspetto più incredibile è la possibilità di leggere gli altri reviewer! L’articolo che ho rivisto ha avuto ben 4 reviewer, è stato incoraggiante vedere che diversi punti delle nostre review erano molto simili ed è ancor più stimolante invece capire quali aspetti mi erano sfuggiti, in che modo posso migliorare la mia comprensione di un articolo e la mia attività futura di ricerca e pubblicazione.

    Per i lettori, credo che una diffusione dei preprint in archeologia possa solo aiutare a far crescere la ricerca, e rendere più brillante la ricerca di buona qualità. Ovviamente i preprint sono una forma di open access, quindi tra i vantaggi c’è anche quello di scansare costosi abbonamenti che ormai nemmeno più le biblioteche specializzate riescono a mantenere. Leggere in dettaglio i commenti fatti da altri ad un articolo è corroborante, per me stimola immediatamente un approccio di curiosità, approfondimento e dibattito. Ovviamente le discussioni avvengono comunque, ma si perdono nell’etere. E comunque il fatto che un articolo venga presentato alla comunità scientifica da una persona terza è una tradizione con radici profonde, che solo la burocratizzazione dell’editoria accademica ha cancellato.

    Allora, la breve lista di suggerimenti per iniziare il 2021:

    • iscriversi come reviewer a PCI Archaeology
    • leggere gli articoli già raccomandati!
    • per la prossima pubblicazione, caricare il preprint e mandarlo a PCI Archaeology

  • I left my role of editor of the Journal of Open Archaeology Data

    After serving for 7 years as the co-editor of the journal together with Victoria Yorke-Edwards, I have chosen to step down from my role as editor, while remaining on the Editorial Board. I had been on the Editorial Board before.

    Recently I have become rather busy with work and family commitments, with only a minor involvement in academic archaeology to guarantee the time and effort that is required for running JOAD. To ensure that JOAD continues to be successful, this decision was necessary. This announcement arrives after one year of transition – we did not abandon the ship and continued publishing open archaeology datasets.

    The new editors, Alessio Palmisano and Carmen Ting, will bring forward the journal’s mission with support from Anastasia Sakellariadi who has taken the very important role of editorial manager for the journal at Ubiquity Press.

    As I look back to the past few years, the global scenario of open research data has changed a lot, becoming both more and more common but also more integrated with other facets of the broader open science movement, in archaeology too.

    I think JOAD has a tremendous potential to improve all archaeological disciplines as an open science good practice. The peer review process is almost always a chance for authors to improve their work and the datasets they are about to publish, thanks to the many reviewers that volunteered to foster our activity. You can register now to become a reviewer in your field of specialization.

    There are now other data journals that, while missing the specificity on archaeology, are geared towards a systematic habit of data sharing via data descriptor papers. This is both a challenge to the idea of a specific journal for each disciplinary field (something that mega-journals partly achieved, in the footsteps of PLOS One) and a big move towards open access publishing for research data, whatever the actual plan we choose to get there. I am convinced that the Journal of Open Archaeology Data will play its role even in this changed environment.

  • Being a journal editor is hard

    Being a journal editor is hard

    I’ve been serving as co-editor of the Journal of Open Archaeology Data (JOAD) for more than one year now, when I joined Victoria Yorke-Edwards in the role. It has been my first time in an editorial role for a journal. I am learning a lot, and the first thing I learned is that being a journal editor is hard and takes time, effort, self-esteem. I’ve been thinking about writing down a few thoughts for months now, and today’s post by Melissa Terras about “un-scholarly peer review practices […] and predatory open access publishing mechanisms” was an unavoidable inspiration (go and read her post).

    Some things are peculiar of JOAD, such as the need to ensure data quality at a technical level: often, though, improvements on the technical side will reflect substantially on the general quality of the data paper. Things that may seem easily understood, like using CSV for tabular data instead of PDF, or describing the physical units of each column / variable. Often, archaeology datasets related to PhD research are not forged in highly standardised database systems, so there may be small inconsistencies in how the same record is referenced in various tables. In my experience so far, reviewers will look at data quality even more than at the paper itself, which is a good sign of assessing the “fitness for reuse” of a dataset.

    The data paper: you have to try authoring one before you get a good understanding of how a good data paper is written and structured. Authors seem to prefer terse and minimal descriptions of the methods used to create their dataset, giving many passages for granted. The JOAD data paper template is a good guide to structuring a data paper and to the minimum metadata that is required, but we have seen authors relying almost exclusively on the default sub-headings. I often point reviewers and authors to some published JOAD papers that I find particularly good, but the advice isn’t always heeded. It’s true, the data paper is a rather new and still unstable concept of the digital publishing era: Internet Archaeology has been publishing some beautiful data papers,and I like to think there is mutual inspiration in this regard. Data papers should be a temporary step towards open archaeology data as default, and continuous open peer review as the norm for improving the global quality of our knowledge, wiki-like. However, data papers without open data are pointless: choose a good license for your data and stick with that.

    Peer review is the most crucial and exhausting activity: as editors, we have to give a first evaluation of the paper based on the journal scope and then proceed to find at least two reviewers. This requires having a broad knowledge of ongoing research in archaeology and related disciplines, including very specific sub-fields of study ‒ our list of available reviewers is quite long now but there’s always some unknown territory to explore, for this asking other colleagues for help and suggestions is vital. Still, there is a sense of inadequacy, a variation on the theme of impostor syndrome, when you have a hard time finding a good reviewer, someone who will provide the authors with positive and constructive criticism, becoming truly part of the editorial process. I am sorry for the fact that our current publication system doesn’t allow for the inclusion of both the reviewers’ names and their commentary  ‒ that’s the best way to provide readers with an immediate overview of the potential of what they are about to read, and a very effective rewarding system for reviewers themselves (I keep a list of all peer reviews I’m doing but that doesn’t seem as satisfying). Peer review at JOAD is not double blind, and I think often it would be ineffective and useless to anonymise a dataset and a paper, in a discipline so territorial that everyone knows who is working where. It is incredibly difficult to get reviews in a timely manner, and while some of our reviewers are perfect machines, others keep us (editors and authors) waiting for weeks after the agreed deadline is over. I understand this, of course, being too often on the other side of the fence. I’m always a little hesitant to send e-mail reminders in such cases, partly because I don’t like receiving them, but being an annoyance is kind of necessary in this case. The reviews are generally remarkable in their quality (at least compared to previous editorial experience I had), quite long and honest: if something isn’t quite right, it has to be pointed out very clearly. As an editor, I have to read the paper, look at the dataset, find reviewers, wait for reviews, solicit reviews, read reviews and sometimes have a conversation with reviewers, if something is their comments are clear and their phrasing/language is acceptable (an adversarial, harsh review must never be accepted, even when formally correct). All this is very time consuming, and since the journal (co)editor is an unpaid role at JOAD and other overlay journals at Ubiquity Press (perhaps obvious, perhaps not!) , usually this means procrastinating: summing the impostor syndrome dose from criticising the review provided by a more experienced colleague with the impostor syndrome dose from being always late on editorial deadlines yields frustration. Lots. Of. Frustration. When you see me tweet about a new data paper published at JOAD, it’s not an act of deluded self-promotion, but rather a liberatory moment of achievement. All this may sound naive to experienced practitioners of peer review, especially to those into academic careers. I know, and I still would like to see a more transparent discussion of how peer review should work (not on StackExchange, preferably).

    JOAD is Open Access. It’s the true Open Access, not to differentiate between gold and green (a dead debate, it seems) but between two radically different outputs. JOAD is openly licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license and we require that all datasets are released under open licenses so readers know that they can download, reuse, incorporate published data in their new research. There is no “freely available only in PDF”, each article is primarily presented as native HTML and can be obtained in other formats (including PDF, EPUB). We could do better, sure ‒ for example, provide the ability to interact directly with the dataset instead of just providing a link to the repository ‒ but I think we will be giving more freedom to authors in the future. Publication costs are covered by Article Processing Charges, 100 £, that will be paid by the authors’ institutions: in case this is not possible, the fee will be waived. Ubiquity Press is involved in some of the most important current Open Access initiatives, such as the Open Library of Humanities and most importantly does a wide range of good things to ensure research integrity from article submission to … many years in the future.

    You may have received an e-mail from me with an invite to contribute to JOAD, either by submitting an article or giving your availability as a reviewer ‒ or you may receive it in the next few weeks. Here, you had a chance to learn what goes on behind the scenes at JOAD.

  • For Aaron Swartz

    For Aaron Swartz

    I didn’t know Aaron Swartz. And yet his tragic end touched me a lot. I saw some friends and colleagues react strongly in the weeks following his death, as strong as you can be in front of a tragedy at least.

    Aaron was only a few years younger than me. He had achieved so much, in so little time. He was an hero. He is an hero.

    I was deeply touched and I am still sad especially because I do the kind of things that Aaron did, although on a much smaller scale. I am not an hero, of course.

    In 2008 I started collecting air pollution data from a local government office. Everyday, one PDF. Later I started writing web scrapers for this dataset and others. I never really got to the point where the data could be of any use. Most of this was done out of frustration.

    In 2009 I got a PhD scholarship from my university and with that came a VPN account that I could use from anywhere to access digital resources for which the university had a subscription (including part of JSTOR). I gave those credentials to several friends who had not the same privilege I had, and I didn’t worry, even though those were the same credentials used for my mailbox. You cannot even try to move your first steps into an academic career without access to this kind of resources.

    I regularly share digital copies of prints, especially the incredibly awful copies made by photographing a book. Every single person I have been working with in the last three years does this regularly: scans, photographs, “pirate” PDFs or even pre-prints, because everything will do when you need a piece of “global” knowledge for your work. I have to break the rules so regularly that it feels normal. And yet, I don’t feel guilty for any of that, except for the fact that I didn’t take the next step with access to knowledge, giving to everyone and not just to a small circle of people.

    Sometimes between 2008 and 2009 I helped making a copy of the entire archive of BIBAR (Biblioteca di Archeologia, mostly about medieval archaeology), hosted at my university. That’s more than 2 GB of academic papers, the same kind of content that Aaron took from JSTOR. Years later, that copy lives as a Torrent download, out of any restriction. It’s a small #pdftribute for Aaron.

  • Joining the Advisory Board of the Journal of Open Archaeology Data

    I’m joining the Advisory Board of the Journal of Open Archaeology Data.

    The Journal of Open Archaeology Data (JOAD ‒ @up_joad) is an open access, peer reviewed journal for data papers describing deposited archaeological datasets. JOAD is published by Ubiquity Press, that has a

    flexible publishing model makes humanities journals affordable, and enables researchers around the world to find and access the information they need, without barriers.

    Ubiquity Press began publishing at University College London (UCL) and is now the largest open access publisher of UCL journals.

    JOAD aims at bridging the gap between standard publishing processes and the dissemination of open data on the Web, by following existing standards (such as DOI) and pushing altogether for a novel approach to the publication of datasets, based on data papers describing the methods used to obtain and create data, the way in which it is structured and its potential for re-use by others.

    As its name implies, JOAD is not a data repository: your dataset should be already deposited with one of the recommended repositories that will take care of its digital preservation. As with most open access journals, it’s the author(s) who pay for the costs involved in the publishing process, not the readers. JOAD aims at being a low-cost and effective way to disseminate your data to a wide audience, without the limitations and slowness of pre-existing publication venues.