Publications, Volume 4, Issue 2 (June 2016) – 10 articles

The dominance of English as the world language of publication has had a decisive impact on the dissemination of information and innovation across cultures, with a resulting tendency to a standardization of scientific conceptualization. This dominance does not only impact scientific and academic discourse, but also the whole range of professional and technical texts representative of various specialized discourses. This paper advocates engaging in the practice of dynamic translation to keep non-English specialized languages alive. Advanced students’ analysis of translation projects yields revealing examples of conflicting views of the world, between English and French, in emerging and controversial fields such as “shadow banking” or “human branding”. The students’ evaluation of alternative solutions to problems of equivalence highlights the cultural gaps which exist within global fields of knowledge and can be interpreted in terms of the intercultural and interlinguistic transfer of specialized metaphor. It is shown that the practice and analysis of translation provide an appropriate approach for a better understanding of languages for specific purposes (LSP) and the development of awareness of domain loss and epistemicide. Full article

In this article we argue that the current endeavors to achieve open access in scientific literature require a discussion about innovation in scholarly publishing and research infrastructure. Drawing on path dependence theory and addressing different open access (OA) models and recent political endeavors, we argue that academia is once again running the risk of outsourcing the organization of its content. Full article

Open science refers to all things open in research and scholarly communication: from publications and research data to code, models and methods as well as quality evaluation based on open peer review. However, getting started with implementing open science might not be as straightforward for all stakeholders. For example, what do research funders expect in terms of open access to publications and/or research data? Where and how to publish research data? How to ensure that research results are reproducible? These are all legitimate questions and, in particular, early career researchers may benefit from additional guidance and training. In this paper we review the activities of the European-funded FOSTER project which organized and supported a wide range of targeted trainings for open science, based on face-to-face events and on a growing suite of e-learning courses. This article reviews the approach and experiences gained from the first two years of the project. Full article

This paper aims to highlight a link between publishing business innovation and how editors manage creativity in the digital era. Examining the changing industrial and historical business context for the U.K. magazine publishing industry, two case studies are analyzed as representatives of different ends of the publishing company spectrum (one a newly launched magazine published by a major, the other an independent ‘magazine’ website start-up). Qualitative data analysis on publishing innovation and managing creativity is presented as a springboard for further research on magazine media management. Full article

Purpose: To assess the assumption that differences exist between the traditional and publication-based PhD routes in terms of the thesis’ length and the scientific publications originating from it. Method: A retrospective comparative study on medical PhD theses offered by an online repository was performed. All free full-text medical PhD theses defended at United Kingdom institutions between 2003 and 2015 were analyzed and assigned to the traditional (TT) or publication based thesis (PBT) group. Several characteristics of theses and thesis-related articles were collected and analyzed. The thesis-related articles were investigated regarding quantity and visibility (citations, impact factor, and journal rank). Results: The theses length proved similar in PBT and TT group. PBT group included significantly more studies than TT group (mean 4.44 vs. 2.67) also reflected in significantly more thesis-related articles. The percentage of articles listed in Web of Science and published in a journal with impact factor proved significantly lower in TT compared with PBT group. On the contrary, article citations were significantly higher for TT. Both groups published similarly in high-ranked journals (Q1 or Q2). Conclusion: The research productivity originating from the PBT group was, as expected, significantly larger but not significantly more visible than those from TT group. Full article

The characteristics of modern science, i.e., data-intensive, multidisciplinary, open, and heavily dependent on Internet technologies, entail the creation of a linked scholarly record that is online and open. Instrumental in making this vision happen is the development of the next generation of Open Cyber-Scholarly Infrastructures (OCIs), i.e., enablers of an open, evolvable, and extensible scholarly ecosystem. The paper delineates the evolving scenario of the modern scholarly record and describes the functionality of future OCIs as well as the radical changes in scholarly practices including new reading, learning, and information-seeking practices enabled by OCIs. Full article

This paper assesses the impact of publishing abstracts in English in the Portuguese Linguistics Association (APL) Proceedings from 2001 to 2010. The study was carried out with a corpus of 137 abstracts, follows a Text Linguistics model inspired by the Interactionnisme Sociodiscoursif and links text features to the social practices and genre repertoires of this community. Quantitative data show signs of a “Portuguese identity” in authors’ voices such as personal forms, move signaling, long sentences, profuse embedding, heavy subjects, and variations in content selection, but also signs of standard academic guideline-indexed choices in impersonal forms, template sentences, coordinated constituents, nominalizations, and conventional text plans. Standard genre models and writing features from “core” academic communities coexist with alternative and traditional ways of writing and of disseminating knowledge, which is typical of a semiperipheral non-native English-speaking community torn between conflicting language and cultural paradigms. These contrasting tendencies are linked to identity changes within the community, as APL authors try to achieve international recognition by publishing abstracts in English as a Foreign Language. Since the APL research topic is the Portuguese language, the process mirrors the authors’ struggle between standard internationalization in English and individual stance in Portuguese. Full article

Reporting guidelines for clinical research designs emerged in the mid-1990s and have influenced various aspects of research articles, including titles, which have also been subject to changing uses with the growth of electronic database searching and efforts to reduce bias in literature searches. We aimed (1) to learn more about titles in clinical medicine today and (2) to develop an efficient, reliable way to study titles over time and on the fly—for quick application by authors, manuscript editors, translators and instructors. We compared content and form in titles from two general medical journals—the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and the British Medical Journal—and two anesthesiology journals (the European Journal of Anaesthesiology and Anesthesiology); we also analyzed the inter-rater reliability of our coding. Significant content differences were found in the frequencies of mentions of methods, results (between general and subspecialty titles), and geographic setting; phrasing differences were found in the prevalence of full-sentence and compound titles (and their punctuation). NEJM titles were significantly shorter, and this journal differed consistently on several features. We conclude that authors must learn to efficiently survey titles for form and content patterns when preparing manuscripts to submit to unfamiliar journals or on resubmitting to a new journal after rejection. Full article

Despite changes in technology that have improved both production and the final product, small local journals still have a low profile and struggle to obtain adequate copy, in terms of both quality and quantity. My experiences as editor of two small journals in Jamaica in the 1990s provided similar problems to those that are encountered by many editors today. Endeavour to persevere, but, if you are not appreciated, be prepared to resign in order to retain your own respect. There will always be more jobs for good editors. Full article

To boost their research productivities, Chinese universities are putting great pressure on their research-active staff to publish in internationally indexed journals. However, the emerging publish-or-perish culture in China has seen little empirical investigation thus far. In the research reported in this article, semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven young researchers in science and engineering disciplines at a research-centered university in central China. The study showed that these young scholars faced great pressure to publish papers in internationally indexed journals. Consequently, the participants were reluctant to spend time on other academic activities, including teaching training. They also reported considerable work time devoted to writing, which resulted in fatigue and negatively affected family relations. The participants admitted that they had to rush to publish, and therefore were less likely to produce papers of better quality or those with novel discoveries. The research contributes to our reflection upon Chinese universities’ increasing use of the number of international publications as a major assessment and incentive measurement of their faculties’ academic performance. Full article