Instructor Notes
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Intro to SciX and FAIR principles
Instructor Note
This episode has multiple discussion elements. Pick those that you think will be most meaningful and thought provoking to your audience. Skip the rest. Also, gauge the tenor of the discussions to balance not disrupting a productive conversation with keeping the class on time. On the other hand, if conversations are stalled, cutting the time short and moving forward is preferable to letting the group get distracted by other things. The prompts are phrased as “discuss with a friend” but in small cohesive groups, you may just want to have a single discussion. In some circumstances, you may want to insist that learners switch partners between questions.
Instructor Note
Ask for one or two volunteers to share their definitions of open science or to explain the difficulties they experienced in defining the concept.
You may want to ask learners to read the NASA and UNESCO definitions themselves. They can vote by show of hands for one or the other or for both.
Instructor Note
Ask for one or two volunteers to share their positive or negative experiences. If they share a negative experience, ask what solutions they proposed. Then, ask the other learners if they had similar experiences and if they had other solutions to propose.
Instructor Note
Ask for one or two volunteers to share their definitions of open science or to explain the difficulties they experienced in defining the concept.
You may want to ask learners to read the NASA and UNESCO definitions themselves. They can vote by show of hands for one or the other or for both.
Instructor Note
Have groups of students take one set of principles. They should review the principles along with the criteria by which SciX claims to be FAIR and consider an additional system with which they are familiar (another search engine, a repository, a vocabulary, a tool kit, a workflow or process. Do they think these systems are FAIR? Do they think these systems are open? If a group does not have an alternative system for comparison, the Unified Astronomy Thesaurus (UAT) is considered a FAIR vocabulary. The UAT community handbook describes its practices.
Instructor Note
Ask one or two learners to comment on what they thought about the FAIRness of the systems they considered.
Instructor Note
Ask one or two learners to share what they concluded about the relationship between Open Science and FAIR.
Basic Searches in SciX
Instructor Note
You might mention the kinds of searches you commonly perform in SciX (e.g., finding articles in your specialty or checking citation metrics). The guided examples will be more meaningful if you modify them for your discipline or facility. - Who is an author your learners would know? - What is a topic in which your learners would be interested?
Instructor Note
Ask learners: “Can everyone see the SciX homepage on their browser?”
Instructor Note
Learners can just type names and phrases into the search bar. However, they will have greater control over their results if they build structured queries using fields than if they use simple unfielded searches.
Instructor Note
SciX also has an affiliation (aff:) field search that searches the exact affiliation text provided by the author or publisher. The Institution facet uses a SciX standardized abbreviation and is similar to the institution (inst) field search. Some institutions listed in the facet can be opened to identify authors with individual departments. Learners asking detailed questions about this feature should be encouraged to read the SciX blog post about it.
Instructor Note
As time allows, encourage learners to share their expectations and experiences with expanded and exact searches.
Instructor Note
Keyword searches are complicated because publishers use different keyword systems, which can also change over time. The keyword_schema field identifies the system where known. Authors who want their papers to be discovered (and cited) might want to give some additional attention to the keywords they suggest for their papers. The UAT keyword facet is an alternative to the standard keyword facet for astronomy content. SciX is adding UAT keywords to the astronomy collection to provide a uniform set of keywords across time and publishers. The UAT keywords are supplemental and will not replace the original author or publisher provided terms. This feature is generated through machine-learning and is a beta feature while SciX continues to test the quality of the assignments.
Instructor Note
abs is short for “abstract” but an “abstract” only is
also possible as is a full-text search. Both of these are mentioned
briefly later in the module.
Instructor Note
SciX welcomes submission of missing gray literature and dissertations. Learners can use the Missing/Incorrect option on the Feedback dropdown menu to submit articles. SciX considers the dissertation defense a reviewing process. Not everyone would agree on this characterization. SciX evaluates conferences individually to determine whether their abstracts and proceedings should be considered refereed or non-refereed.
Instructor Note
Publication Type refers to the type of document. SciX has a separate field and facet to search and filter by journal or publisher. By now, learners should be comfortable using the main search page ‘all search terms’ dropdown menu to locate the ‘Publication Full Name’ search or use the Publications facet.
Instructor Note
If time permits, encourage the learners to share their searches with the class. Ask why they might search other text fields.
Instructor Note
Most publisher formats for SciX supported disciplines are supported. If we are missing one, custom formats are possible. However, SciX encourages learners to recommend missing formats for inclusion. Zotero uses RIS format, which is available. Mendeley uses RIS, BibTeX, and EndNote, which are all available.
Instructor Note
If time permits, encourage learners to share their experiences with the class.
Literature Exploration in SciX
Instructor Note
Ask learners: “Can everyone see the SciX homepage on their browser?”
Instructor Note
You might mention the kinds of topical searches you commonly perform in SciX (e.g., finding articles for your domain or checking citation metrics). The guided examples will be more meaningful if you modify them for your discipline or facility.
Instructor Note
If time permits, ask one or two learners to describe their experience. If they ran into problems with the operations, be prepared to provide basic support and suggestions.
Instructor Note
If time permits, ask one or two learners to describe their experience. If they ran into problems with the visualizations, be prepared to provide basic support and suggestions.
SciX and ORCiD
Instructor Note
Some learners may have an ISNI (International Standard Name Identifier) rather than an ORCiD. The numbers are formatted similarly; ORCiDs fall within a reserved range of ISNI. However, SciX does not currently support ISNI for research identification and ORCiD provides more robust services to individual researchers. Therefore, learners who have ISNI but not ORCiD should still be encouraged to obtain an ORCiD as well.
Instructor Note
Ask learners: “Can everyone see the SciX homepage on their browser?”
Instructor Note
If time permits, ask one or two learners to share how ORCiDs are being used at their institution.
If any of them mention barriers to adoption, be prepared to discuss it briefly with the class. Would their situation be helped by encouraging additional claims through SciX?
Instructor Note
For your information: Learners transitioning from ADS or who have had some previous SciX experience may have ADS or SciX accounts; the two are interchangeable. If so, they may have entered ORCiD information into their ADS or SciX account. They may also have been encouraged to log into both their ADS or SciX account and their ORCiD account. While that procedure is not wrong, it is also not necessary. In the interest of simplicity, the module only demonstrates logging into the ORCiD account, which is sufficient for all ORCiD-related tasks. If a learner asks about ORCiD and SciX accounts, you can find out more about using them together on the SciX “Claiming papers in ORCID” Help page https://scixplorer.org/scixhelp/orcid-scix/claiming-papers.
Instructor Note
Ask by show of hands whether learners will be able to assist others at their institutions with claiming papers in the future.