Open Research Europe held a webinar on the 20th of October 2022 to discuss some of the key topics and trends in Medicine and Health Sciences research, joined by some of Open Research Europe’s Scientific Advisory Board members and Platform advisors.
The panel included Prof Mangala Srinivas, Scientific Advisor in the area of Medical and Health sciences, Community Gateway Advisor on Medical Biotechnology, and author; Prof Lisa Ng, Scientific Advisor on Medical and Health sciences; Dr Sudip Das, Guest Advisor on the Collection Immunological Disruptions and Interventions; Prof Clementina Cocuzza, Community Gateway Advisor on Clinical Medicine and author; and Dr Alicia Estacio Gomez, Content Acquisition Editor at Open Research Europe.
Each panellist presented their thoughts on their key topic of choice, followed by an audience Q&A.
Dr Alicia Estacio Gomez provides an outline of the discussions below.
Professor Mangala Srinivas: Changes in Research Assessment
Mangala is a Professor and Head of Cell Biology and Immunology at Wageningen University & Research in The Netherlands. From her involvement in the Young Academy of Europe and in the Wageningen Young Academy, she has participated in many conversations about measuring academic success.
During her presentation, Mangala discussed how, traditionally, there has been a strong focus on the number of publications in high impact factor journals, number of citations, and even author order when assessing recognition and reward for academic researchers, including tenure opportunities.
However, Mangala highlighted that there has been a reassessment of how we measure success in recent years and an increasing recognition of diversity in academic success, leading to a need to focus on different metrics.
John F. Clauser, recognized as one of the most successful scientists in the world after his recent Nobel Prize in Physics win, has a relatively low h-index of 29. However, using this example, Mangala illustrated the need to look beyond traditional metrics like the h-index to acknowledge the value of other research assessment measures.
As a result, these traditional metrics are becoming less and less relevant in reward and recognition assessment. For example, many promotion and grant committees now ask for a narrative CV where researchers must explain what their research is about and their role in it, and don’t allow for the inclusion of traditional metrics in grant proposals. Although this process requires more effort from both the assessors and the assessed, it certainly highlights the broader contributions of a researcher.
Similarly, tenure track criteria has been expanded at many institutions to include non-traditional metrics, as well as become increasingly open and transparent.
Mangala also addressed how open research publishing platforms such as Open Research Europe can help to drive this change in research assessment. With a move away from traditional journals and impact metrics, the focus is on publishing research that is peer-reviewed and reliable in an increasingly discoverable way.
Finally, Mangala concluded with highlighting the importance of controlling unconscious bias when assessing researchers. They proposed including individuals that have been trained in Diversity and Inclusivity on committees, along with the importance of having explicit, clearly defined criteria for reward and recognition that includes a wider spectrum of styles and behaviours.
Professor Lisa Ng: Researcher Empowerment in Asia
Lisa is the Executive Director at A*STAR’s Infectious Diseases Labs in Singapore and a Professor at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Lisa discussed the ongoing growth of research and development in Asia, and how institutions in the region are evolving and applying practices from around the world.
One particular area that Lisa highlighted was the opportunity for collaboration between European and Asian-based laboratories, and the need to empower the next generation of researchers. Lisa stressed the importance of sustainability and implementation of long-term recruitment programmes when nurturing talent, not only to attract researchers from Singapore, but also from abroad.
For example, A*STAR Labs currently have a very active overseas collaboration with Europe, including PhD exchange programmes and other collaborative research initiatives. Lisa highlighted that this has created a very diverse community of researchers that are able to build networks with global Key Opinion Leaders, and recruit and train their own researchers in turn to build up research capability.
Lisa also stressed the importance of researchers understanding the bigger picture of their research, including how it helps to define policy, technology innovation, health outcomes and more, to help empower them to push the limits of current research activity.
Lisa finished her presentation by reflecting on how empowerment needs to be learned, and invited Early Career Researchers to start their own journey of discovery.
Dr Sudip Das: Stringency of pre-publications checks
Sudip is a Research Group Leader at the University Hospital Bern in Switzerland, where he investigates human lung microbiota and its impact on the immune system.
He discussed the difficulties that researchers encounter when publishing their work, following the dreaded practice of “publish or perish”, as well as the historical link between publication costs and robust quality control.
Sudip highlighted that researchers often face a choice between increased publishing costs from choosing a high impact factor journal – which can be an economic barrier for many – or lower costs from choosing a lower impact journal, but facing potentially less stringent pre-publication checks and ultimately participating in poor science. Both options undermine the essence of scientific publishing.
Sudip contrasted this with the publishing model of Open Research Europe, which helps mitigate these pressures and ensures both low cost and robust quality control.
The Open Research Europe publishing process is streamlined to allow scientists to publish their work before peer review for rapid publication, while maintaining a high level of rigor, not only at the pre-publication stage but also during open peer review. It also reduces the cost of publishing as publication is free for European Commission-funded researchers.
Sudip also highlighted how open research initiatives ensure all voices can be heard, helping to publish research from scientists in low and middle-income countries where scientific research continues to advance and evolve, and help these researchers to showcase and develop their talent.
Professor Clementina Cocuzza: Industry Collaboration
Clementina is a Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the Medical School of the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy.
Clementina focused on the ways in which clinical research can have important applications in global health, from disease prevention and management to new therapeutic solutions, but also emphasized the fact that research development in clinical research requires the support of industrial partners to bring innovative solutions into practice, using her own personal experiences as an example.
Clementina’s research group and two small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have worked together under the HPV OncoPredict Horizon 2020-funded grant to develop diagnostic devices that are able to detect Human papillomavirus (HPV) infections, which are responsible for cervical cancer. Her research group has also worked to develop new antibacterial agents to combat antibiotic resistance.
While the research group has successfully identified scientific solutions, industry partners are required to bring them into fruition, including developing diagnostic protypes and undertaking in-vitro and in-vivo studies of patented agents.
She also discussed the importance of these results being widely disseminated following the conclusion of the collaboration – not only among the scientific community, but also to end users, stakeholders, policymakers, and patient groups, and open science processes are key to amplifying these efforts.
You can read the results of her HPV project in the Cancer Collection on Open Research Europe.
Audience Q&A
The webinar concluded with a short audience Q&A with the panellists.
What can authors expect when publishing on the Platform?
“One thing that attracted us as authors was the range of article types available, so not only a typical scientific paper are publishable but also, for example, a Data Note, which we used to link to the scientific article so readers had more access to the paper.
The submission process was really easy and straightforward, and the peer review comments were open and public so we could respond to the comments.
The scope of the platform is broad and there is no editorial board to decide on a paper, so there is much more flexibility as well, and the added benefit of being published in databases such as Scopus. Overall, it was a great experience.”
Professor Mangala Srinivas
“I echo everything that Mangala has said already, but just want to add about the benefit of publishing for free as a European Commission-funded researcher, and the fact that people can already begin finding and looking at your research before it has been peer reviewed.
I would recommend the Platform as a publishing option.”
Professor Clementina Cocuzza
How do you see the changes in research assessment impacting the research enviroment?
“In Switzerland, we are seeing some changes in assessment of researchers.
Many institutions and individuals in Switzerland have signed the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) agreement, and we’re also seeing the shift towards research CVs which is the National Foundation format and similar to the narrative CV that Mangala mentioned earlier, where researchers have to discuss three research achievements and their specific contributions to the scientific community.
While this is harder than just listing publications, it means that even those researchers who haven’t published their own papers yet but who may have contributed to significant breakthroughs can still be recognised.”
Dr Sudip Das
“Just to add to what Sudip discussed, we are also seeing a trend in how metrics are shifting in Asia, as they are becoming more like guidelines rather than the focus. However, article citations, for example, are still viewed as important, and open access helps with citations due to the discoverability of articles.”
Professor Lisa Ng
You can find out more from our discussion by listening to the full recording here.
