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

社会学家通过使用科学方法的研究产生知识。 这些知识通过在科学期刊上发表来传播和保存，这些期刊利用同行评审来判断所进行的研究的价值。科学家和公众越来越有兴趣了解这一知识生产过程在实践中如何运作。使用科学方法来探索这一重要的社会过程可以使其运作更加透明，而不会破坏同行审查所必需的保密性。然而，很少有这样的科学研究所需的文件库。由于此类文件库很少见，而且通常无法用于研究，学者们无法充分研究科学知识的产生，因为他们只有已发表的研究;然而，对于顶级科学期刊来说，只有一个子集（通常只有10%到15%）提交的作品实际上出现在期刊页面上。 为什么其他人没有，以及评论家是什么？已发表的评论和编辑修改是不可见的。阿萨建议与乔治梅森大学社会科学研究中心合作开展一个为期三年的项目，从20年的保存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年提交的数字化手稿，评论和决定。自世纪初以来，美国社会学协会（阿萨）一直是美国主要的学术出版商，通过其八大学术期刊审查，传播和保存社会学知识。在1991年之前，像大多数出版商一样，阿萨在出版后销毁了所有期刊文件。然而，在具有历史意义的1991年至2009年期间，阿萨保留并保存了其八种主要期刊提交审查的所有手稿的原始纸质副本，以及在此期间进行的同行评审和编辑决策记录。 这个档案的创建涉及扫描纸质文档，创建一个数字架构和分层数据库供研究人员使用，确保作者和审稿人允许将他们的文档纳入档案，建立一个可搜索的手稿，作者和审稿人的分层数据集，最终产品将是评估从最初提交到最终提交的科学出版过程的最全面的数据产品之一。出版物

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.