Creating a Digital Archive for Research on the Production of Scientific Knowledge

American Sociological Assoc, Bethel Park PA

Investigators

Abstract

Sociologists generate knowledge through research using the methods of science. That knowledge is communicated and preserved through publication in scientific journals that use peer review to judge the merit of the research conducted. There has been increased interest by scientists and the public to understand how this knowledge production process works in practice. Using the methods of science to explore this important social process can make its workings more transparent without undermining the confidentiality that is necessary to peer review. Yet there are few known repositories of documents needed for such scientific study. Because such repositories of documents are rare and generally not available for study, scholars have been unable to fully study the production of scientific knowledge because they only have the research that was published; yet for premier scientific journals only a subset (often as little as 10 to 15 percent) of the works submitted actually appear in journal pages. Why others were not, and what the reviewers? comments and editorial changes were for those that were published is invisible. The ASA proposes to undertake a three-year project in collaboration with the Center for Social Science Research at the George Mason University to develop a digital research archive from 20 years of preserved records made available for scholarly research. The archive will contain a database that includes the digitized manuscripts submitted, the reviews, and the decisions made from 1991 to 2009. Since the early 20th century, the American Sociological Association (ASA) has been a major scholarly publisher in the United States, reviewing, disseminating and preserving sociological knowledge through its eight major scholarly journals. Prior to 1991, like most publishers, ASA destroyed all the journal file documents after publication. For the historically significant period 1991 to 2009, however, ASA retained and stored the original paper copies of all manuscripts submitted for review by its eight premier journals as well as the peer reviews and records of editorial decisions made during this period. The creation of this archive involves scanning paper documents, creating a digital architecture and hierarchical data base for researchers to use, securing permission from authors and reviewers to include their documents in the archive, building a hierarchical data set of manuscripts, authors, and reviewers that is searchable, and fully documenting the archived data set so that researchers can use it. The final product will be one of the most comprehensive data products for evaluating the scientific publishing process from initial submission to final publication.