Cynthia Vitale1, Dr. Leslie McIntosh
1Ripeta, St Louis, USA
Transparent research practices and the sharing of research data, protocols, and code accelerate scientific progress and solve real-world problems in health, the environment, and society. Yet, broad, open, research sharing has revealed issues in trust, particularly with limited checks on scientific integrity. The effects of questionable scientific veracity and spreading of mis- or disinformation have permeated into the publishing industry, institutions, funding agencies, researchers, and the general population. This has developed concomitantly to a growing importance placed on the impact, metrics, or citations, of a research article or output – or to put it another way – an assessment of research that is narrowly ‘attention-based’. As researchers and consumers of research we put significant faith in the article review process and the attention, through citations, that is generated as a result of publication. It has always been dangerous to confuse attention with quality. The peer review system and scholars both are buckling under stress and open access has changed the publishing ecosystem. There is a critical need to assess the trustworthiness of research in a rapidly expanding international system; the need for non-attention-based metrics is of increasing importance – especially to mitigate misinformation and increase research integrity. This presentation will introduce these two concepts to the audience, discuss their intersections, and opportunities to drive change.
Biography:
Dr. Leslie McIntosh, PhD is the founder and CEO of Ripeta, a company formed to improve scientific research quality and reproducibility. Now part of Digital Science, the company leads efforts in rapidly assessing scientific research to make better science easier. She served as the inaugural executive director for the US region of the Research Data Alliance and is still very active with the RDA.
She has experience leading diverse teams to develop and deliver meaningful data to improve scientific decisions. Dr. McIntosh is an accomplished biomedical informatician and data scientist as well as an internationally known consultant, speaker, and trainer who is passionate about mentoring the next generation of data scientists.
She holds a Masters and PhD in Public Health with concentrations in Biostatistics and Epidemiology from Saint Louis University and a Certificate in Women’s Leadership Forum from Washington University Olin’s School of Business.