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

社会学家通过使用科学方法进行研究来获取知识。这些知识通过发表在科学期刊上进行交流和保存，这些期刊使用同行评议来判断所进行研究的价值。科学家和公众越来越有兴趣了解这种知识生产过程在实践中是如何运作的。使用科学的方法来探索这一重要的社会过程可以使其工作更加透明，而不会破坏同行评议所必需的保密性。然而，这种科学研究所需的文献储存库却很少。由于这样的文献库非常罕见，而且通常无法用于研究，学者们无法全面研究科学知识的产生，因为他们只有发表的研究成果；然而，对于一流的科学期刊来说，只有一小部分（通常只有10%到15%）提交的作品真正出现在期刊页面上。为什么其他人没有，评论者是什么？评论和编辑更改对于那些已发布的内容是不可见的。ASA提议与乔治梅森大学社会科学研究中心合作开展一项为期三年的项目，从保存了20年的记录中开发一个数字研究档案，供学术研究使用。该档案将包含一个数据库，其中包括1991年至2009年期间提交的数字化手稿、评论和决策。自20世纪初以来，美国社会学协会（ASA）一直是美国主要的学术出版商，通过其八种主要学术期刊来审查、传播和保存社会学知识。在1991年之前，像大多数出版商一样，ASA在出版后销毁了所有的期刊文件文件。然而，在1991年至2009年这一具有历史意义的时期，ASA保留并存储了所有提交给其八家主要期刊审查的手稿的原始纸质副本，以及这一时期的同行评审和编辑决策记录。该档案的创建包括扫描纸质文档，创建供研究人员使用的数字架构和分层数据库，获得作者和审稿人的许可，将其文档包含在档案中，构建可搜索的手稿，作者和审稿人的分层数据集，并对存档数据集进行完整记录，以便研究人员可以使用它。最终产品将是评估从最初提交到最终出版的科学出版过程的最全面的数据产品之一。

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.