Publications

The front pages of newspapers are the main showcase to sell the product. Those first pages are a perfect hook for newspapers to attract readers; thus, it becomes vital to show striking pieces of information, captivating the audience. In the case of the written sport press in Spain, there is a key period in which true information is mingled with half-truths and even rumors: The summer transfer window. This paper shows an analysis of the front-page news appearing in the Spanish sports newspapers Marca, As, Mundo Deportivo, and Sport, over a five-year period (2015–2019), based on a sample of 120 different issues of the newspaper. Many times, the media present information either as something true or as a hypothesis or possibility. After quantitatively analyzing that, it can be noticed that in more than 50% of the cases, the signing or sale of the player referenced on the front page (the main news) does not occur. Similarly, it can be observed that there is a direct link connecting the news referring to Real Madrid with Marca and As, and Fútbol Club Barcelona with Mundo Deportivo and Sport. Finally, almost 100% of this news is showed along with real photographs, using photo montage in just a few cases. Full article

This paper reports on the study of multilingual speakers’ perception of their research writing practices in English and in their local language—Russian—and the publication process in English. It is based on interviews with 18 scholars from social sciences and humanities working in a leading university in Russia. The study discusses social factors influencing multilingual scholars’ choice of languages as well as their personal motivation to choose English as the main language of publication. Special attention is given to their attitude to proofreading as part of the publication process. The interview results suggest that, from the participants’ perspective, the benefits they gain by publishing research in English seem to outweigh costs they experience in the process of writing and publishing. The study contributes to the on-going debate about the position of multilingual scholars in the competition to publish in top-rated journals, suggesting that the traditional doctrine of linguistic injustice, from the participants’ point-of-view, does not seem to be relevant for every multilingual scholar. Full article

One of the core problems of misinformation and post-trust societies is, indeed, trust in communications. The undermining of the credibility of media as the backbone of democratic societies is becoming a serious problem that affects democracy, business and all kinds of public institutions and organizations in society(ies). This paper explores perceptions of trust in key stakeholders involved in communication on behalf of organizations. Findings are considered at the professional (macro), departmental (meso) and individual (micro) level as well as considering the trusted role of non-specialist communicators for organizations including internal and external spokespeople. Data were collected from an online survey of 2883 respondents from 46 countries across Europe. Key findings were at the macro level that: antagonism between management communication professionals and journalists remains. The lowest trust in the profession is felt to be by the general public. At the meso level, top executives are perceived to trust the department the most followed by journalists in second place. External experts such as professors and consultants are perceived to be the most trusted by the general public. Finally, at the micro level individuals are more trusted than organizations or departments and the communication profession more widely. Full article

 In this day and age of challenging post-publication peer review and heightened academic scrutiny, editors serve an increasingly important role in screening submissions and managing the quality of information that is published in scholarly journals. Publishers compete for an intellectual market while commercial publishers compete for a commercial share of the market. The assumption argued in this perspective is that having editorial positions in competing journals or publishers (CJPs) may represent competing intellectual, professional and/or financial interests. Thus, based on this assumption, an editor would be expected to show loyalty to a single entity (journal or publisher). Editorial positions on the editorial boards of CJPs, as well as conflicts, financial or other, should be clearly indicated for all editors on the editorial board page of a journal’s website, for transparency. In science and academia, based on these arguments, the author is of the belief that editors should thus generally not serve on the editorial boards of CJPs, or only under limited and fully transparent conditions, even if they serve as editors voluntarily. The author recognizes that not all academics, including editors, might agree with this perspective, so a wider debate is encouraged. Full article

The exploratory analysis of the differences between preprints and the corresponding peer reviewed journal articles for ten studies first published on ChemRxiv and on Preprints, though statistically non-significant, suggests outcomes of relevance for chemistry researchers and educators. The full transition to open science requires new education of doctoral students and young researchers on scholarly communication in the digital age. The preliminary findings of this study will contribute to inform the curriculum of the aforementioned new courses for young chemists, eventually promoting accelerated innovation in a science that, unique amid all basic sciences, originates a huge industry central to the wealth of nations. Full article

Predatory journals often prey on innocent researchers who are unaware of the threat they pose. This paper discusses what researchers can do if they unintentionally publish a paper in a predatory journal, including measures to take before submission, during peer review, and after the journal has accepted a manuscript. The specific recommendations discussed are pre-registration, pre-submission peer-review, open peer-review, topping up reviewers, post-publication peer review, open recommendation, and treatment as unrefereed. These measures may help to ensure the credibility of the article, even if it is published in a predatory journal. The present article suggests that an open and multi-layered assessment of research content enhances the credibility of all research articles, even those published in non-predatory journals. If applied consistently by researchers in various fields, the suggested measures may enhance reproducibility and promote the advancement of science. Full article

The infodiet of young Spanish adults aged 18 to 25 was analysed to determine their attitude towards fake news. The objectives were: to establish whether they have received any training in fake news; to determine whether they know how to identify fake information; and to investigate whether they spread it. The study employed a descriptive quantitative method consisting of a survey of 500 representative interviews of the Spanish population aged between 18 and 25 through a structured questionnaire. The results indicate that they are aware of the importance of training, although generally they do not know of any course and when they do, they do not tend to enroll on one either due to lack of interest or time. These young adults feel that they know how to identify fake content and, moreover, that they know how to do so very well. However, they do not use the best tools. While they do not always verify information, they mainly suspect the credibility of information when it is meaningless. However, they do not tend to spread fake information. We conclude that media information literacy training (MILT) is necessary in educational centres that focuses on the main issues identified. Full article

The scientific community’s growing interest in green marketing research can be traced through the abundance of published literature on the topic. However, there is still a lack of a comprehensive and systematic research focusing on the evolution of this field. The main objective of this paper was to consolidate the state-of-the-art research on green marketing through a bibliometric study of articles published from 1977 to 2020, and to analyze and present the results from the perspective of growing trends in the field; productive and influential countries, institutions, authors, articles, and research journals; keywords; authorship patterns; and international collaborations. The study results indicate a gradual increase in green marketing research from 1977 to 2020, more so in the last five years. A total of 1025 scholarly documents were published in 634 journals during this period and listed in the Web of Science (WOS). The top 10 most productive countries were then analyzed. A great number of institutions from both developing countries (in terms of article count) and developed countries (in terms of citation scores), were compared. Finally, based on keywords and a three-factor analysis, it was concluded that green marketing, sustainability, sustainable development, environment marketing and sustainable marketing have attracted extensive attention during the past decade as keywords. Full article

Open access (OA) to scientific information is one of the major challenges and objectives of actual public research policy. The purpose of this paper is to assess the degree of openness of scientific articles on bioeconomy, as one of the emergent research fields at the crossroads of several disciplines and with high societal and industrial impact. Based on a Web of Science (WoS) corpus of 2489 articles published between 2015 and 2019, we calculated bibliometric indicators, explored the openness of each article and assessed the share of journals, countries and research areas of these articles. The results show a sharp increase and diversification of articles in the field of bioeconomy, with a beginning long tail distribution. 45.6% of the articles are freely available and the share of OA articles is steadily increasing, from 31% in 2015 to 52% in 2019. Gold is the most important variant of OA. Open access is low in the applied research areas of chemical, agricultural and environmental engineering but higher in the domains of energy and fuels, forestry and green and sustainable science and technology. The UK and the Netherlands have the highest rates of OA articles, followed by Spain and Germany. The funding rate of OA articles is higher than of non-OA articles. This is the first bibliometric study on open access to articles on bioeconomy. The results can be useful for the further development of OA editorial and funding criteria in the field of bioeconomy. Full article

The integration of open science as a key pillar of responsible research and innovation has led it to become a hallmark of responsible research. However, ethical, social and regulatory challenges still remain about the implementation of an internationally- and multi-sector-recognised open science framework. In this Commentary, we discuss one important specific challenge that has received little ethical and sociological attention in the open science literature: the environmental impact of the digital infrastructure that enables open science. We start from the premise that a move towards an environmentally sustainable open science is a shared and valuable goal, and discuss two challenges that we foresee with relation to this. The first relates to questions about how to define what environmentally sustainable open science means and how to change current practices accordingly. The second relates to the infrastructure needed to enact environmentally sustainable open science ethical and social responsibilities through the open science ethics ecosystem. We argue that there are various ethical obstacles regarding how to responsibly balance any environmental impacts against the social value of open science, and how much one should be prioritised over the other. We call for all actors of the open science ethics ecosystem to engage in discussions about how to move towards open data and science initiatives that take into account the environmental impact of data and digital infrastructures. Furthermore, we call for ethics governance frameworks or policy-inscribed standards of practice to assist with this decision-making. Full article

In this paper, data of almost 8 million loans of books recorded for 15 years by the Korea University Library are analyzed by using big data analytic techniques. During this period, book circulation decreased with an average annual rate of decline of 4.4%. The use factor of books in each Dewey decimal classification (DDC) class was evaluated to measure how efficiently books were used by library users. Loan frequencies of books were analyzed and meaningful results regarding loan concentrations and the half-lives of books were obtained. It was observed that 50% of the total loans in each year were for 20% of all borrowed books in that year. This phenomenon will be called the 20/50 loan rule, and the set of the top 20% most borrowed books, whose cumulative loan frequencies reach 50% of total loans, will be called a core collection. The 20/50 loan rule shows the loan concentration of library books. The extent of loan concentration gets stronger if loans for two or more consecutive years are concerned. It was found that with high probability, books in a core collection at a specific year are also categorized as a core collection in next years. Moreover, books categorized as a core collection in consecutive years have longer half-lives compared with all other circulating books. Full article

This article studies the process of demonization, its consequences, and how social media contribute to the formalization of its axiology. The demonization of societies aims to create social subjects that fit into the idea of the “other” by exposing them to compulsory invisibility. This research’s main objective was to examine how demonization is used as a weapon of oppression to devalue specific individuals through the hashtag #StopIslam and Instagram’s role in this process. The methodology used for this purpose has consisted of an empirical and quantitative analysis of the most recent (1 January 2020–31 July 2020) posts on Instagram with #StopIslam, analyzing the images and the content. The study has determined how, through social media manipulation, erroneous ideas are transmitted that prevent the Islamic collective’s integration, especially in European countries. The conclusions will reflect hate speech and how the Islamic world’s demonization results in the Muslim community’s stigmatization, racism, and Islamophobia. Although there are different articles related to demonization and hate speech, there are not many scientific resources that explain these variables on Instagram and how it affects the inclusion of the Muslim community in Europe, significantly when the time spent on the Internet is growing. Full article

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how current research information systems (CRIS) take into account ethical issues, especially in the environment of open science. The analysis is based on a review of the literature on research information management, CRIS, open science and research ethics. The paper provides a framework for the assessment of CRIS on two levels: are CRIS (= their data model, format, functionalities, etc.) compliant with ethical requirements from the research community, funding bodies, government, etc., i.e., can they appropriately process data on research ethics (protocols, misconduct, etc.), and which are the ethical issues of the development, implementation and usage of CRIS? What is the impact of new ethical requirements from the open science movement, such as integrity or transparency? Can CRIS be considered as ethical infrastructures or “infraethics”? Concluding this analysis, the paper proposes an empirical approach for further investigation of this topic. The originality of the paper is that there are very few studies so far that assess the implications of research ethics and open science on the CRIS. Full article

Understanding the evolution of scientific literature is a critical and necessary step for the development and strengthening of a research field. However, an overview of global dinoflagellate research remains unavailable. Herein, global dinoflagellate research output was analyzed based on a scientometric approach using the Scopus data archive. The basic characteristics and worldwide interactions of dinoflagellate research output were analyzed to determine the temporal evolution and new emerging trends. The results confirm that dinoflagellate research output, reflected in the number of publications, is a fast-growing area since the mid-1990s. In total, five research subareas emerged using a bibliometric keywords analysis: (1) “symbiosis with coral reefs”, (2) “phylogeny”, (3) “palynology”, (4) “harmful algal blooms” and (5) “nutrition strategies”. Dinoflagellate publications were modeled by fish production (both aquaculture and fisheries) and economic and social indexes. Finally, directions for future research are proposed and discussed. The presented scientometric analysis confirms that dinoflagellate research is an active and important area with focus on mitigating economic impacts, especially in regard to fish production. Full article

In the context of the 2020 public health crisis that discourages exchanges of physical objects in society, university-led publishing needed to rethink its operations. Worldwide the opening of quality scholarly content proved to be a solution. University presses reacted rapidly and offered books according to the open access model. The present research aimed to map the editorial landscape of Romanian university presses, to identify the main features displayed online by the university presses parented by public universities and to highlight the readiness of these players to further open access academic books, especially in the time of the COVID-19 crisis. The quantitative approach investigated the availability of e-books in the university presses’ portfolios, including the alignment to the open access scholarship movement, the use of social media accounts to promote the presses and the response of the presses to the challenges of the health crisis. Out of the 46 active university presses, only six had open book titles in their portfolios and only one genuinely responded actively to the challenges posed by the need for electronic formats in 2020. Unless Romanian university presses modernize and restructure their modus operandi, they can prove irrelevant in the post-crisis period. Full article

Digital literacy constitutes the basis for citizenship in order to be effective and efficient in the 21st Century in professional and personal lives. The set of skills and competences integrating digital literacy are expected to be guaranteed in higher education. During the lockdown globally imposed for the COVID-19 pandemic, educational systems worldwide had to face many disruptive changes. The aim of this research is to present a comparative study of three countries’ higher education institutions (Spain, Italy, and Ecuador), analyzing how they have faced the global lockdown situation, focusing on the development of digital literacy. The methodological approach followed in this study was quantitative with an exploratory-correlational scope using a questionnaire designed ad hoc and applied in a sample of 376 students. Results point the necessity of enhancing the main aspects such as the teacher’s digital skills, sources for learning that may be adapted, communication between universities and students, and teaching methodologies that should be appropriate to the current context. Conclusions may suggest rethinking higher education learning and reinforcing main issues for this transformation, mainly: communication, teaching, and digital competences. Otherwise, digital literacy is not being guaranteed, which means higher education is not accomplishing one of its main objectives. Full article

Technologies have massively burst into all fields, including Higher Education. The current students have grown up surrounded by technologies, which is reflected in their behavior. For this reason, universities have adapted by integrating digital competence into their training offer, improving learning processes and adjusting to the university profile. The objective of this work is to ascertain how digital skills are used by Spanish higher education (bachelor’s and master’s degree) students, thus verifying whether so-called digital competence is being actively used in higher education. A survey was applied to 324 individuals, highlighting among its results that the university panorama is in a situation where digital tools are very useful for its improvement. These data were collected before the global pandemic, after which the use of online tools intensified. However, the students are still not aware of all of them, or they do not use them. Full article

Criticism about the practical usefulness of academic accounting research produced in university business schools has been growing for some time. Due to accounting being an applied social science, many stakeholders question the relevance and value of research published in accounting journals to the accounting profession, practitioners and society in general. This paper highlights the various areas of criticism and discusses factors which underline the issue. While most of the criticism is anecdotal, this study sets about to empirically explore practitioners’ perception of academia, and research published in academic accounting journals. To better understand the situation in accounting, a comparison of two other applied academic disciplines is undertaken, involving medical and engineering practitioners. The study found that for accounting there were major differences in the sourcing of information, and significant differences between the other two applied fields with respect to the utilisation and the need for academic material. The findings lead to the conclusion that academic accounting researchers are now nearly totally divorced from the real-world profession of accounting. If we were to take a singular view on the purpose of academic accounting research, then the current situation could leave accounting researchers very vulnerable to adverse decisions with respect to the allocation of future government funding. The conclusions of this paper propose a series of thought-provoking questions about the current state of accounting research, in the hope that it will stimulate debate and generate responses from the accounting community and other stakeholders. Full article