GLOSSARY

PPI is a form of engaged research, referring to public involvement and co-production in health and social care research. It is a research practice.

The UK National Institute for Health Research defines PPI as follows: Research carried out ‘with’ or ‘by’ members of the public rather than ‘to’, ‘about’ or ‘for’ them. This may include potential patients, carers and people who use health and social care services as well as people from organizations that represent people who use services.

PPI does NOT include the recruitment of study participants; this is participation of the public rather than involvement. It also does NOT include work aimed at raising awareness of the public around research, such as media publications of research findings, and outreach activities such as open days in research facilities. This is public engagement.

PPI is an ACTIVE partnership with members of the public in the research project and can include, for example: involvement in choice of research topics; assisting in the design; advising on the research project; carrying out the research.

 Resources: 

https://www.nihr.ac.uk/documents/ppi-patient-and-public-involvement-resources-for-applicants-to-nihr-research-programmes/23437

https://recap-preterm.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/A_short_guide_to_successful_patient_involvement_in_EU-funded_healthcare_research_projects_layout.pdf

Peer Review should be seen as process that helps to improve the quality of the research. Peer review can be formal or informal and happens at different levels throughout a project. Traditionally the formal peer review has been associated with publishing a journal article. However, new forms of peer review are emerging in publishing and also beyond in the research landscape. Peer review can be done on many different research outputs, including:

• manuscripts

• software (including code, documentation, and examples)

• datasets

• communication and presentation materials

When most people think of peer review they think of this in the context of reviewing a journal article. Journal articles, as opposed to preprints preprint, have gone through the peer review process- the paper has been peer reviewed and modified by the author in response to the reviewer’s suggestions, so these papers are seen to have added value. However, there are also initiatives to peer review preprints, for example, Peer Community In arranges reviews for manuscripts. 

Traditionally, the review process is designed to be anonymous. However, some reviewers sign their reviews. A non-anonymous review can be seen as an accountability device: by exposing who they are to the authors of the paper, the reviewers set higher standards for themselves. There is also a process called open peer review; in this case, the review is open for everyone viewing the paper. The peer review might blend these features; for example, one might be able to see the review text but not the name of the reviewer who did it, or the name of the reviewer but not the text itself. The design of the peer review process and its transparency varies from journal to journal.

According to the definition provided by the Cambridge dictionary, peer review means the "process of someone reading, checking, and giving his or her opinion about something that has been written by another scientist or expert working in the same subject area, or a piece of work in which this is done".

Before an article can be published in a peer-reviewed journal, it must undego the evaluation by external experts in the same filed, with the appropriate  expertise  to judge someone's else research results. These external experts (peer reviewers) must check the manuscript for accuracy and assess the quality of the work, validity of the research methodology and procedures.

In scientific publishing, four main types of peer reviewing can be distinguished.

Single-blind peer review means that reviewers are aware of who the authors are, but authors do not know who reviewed their manuscript.

Double-blind peer review is one where both reviewers and authors are unaware of each other’s 

Open peer review does not have an element of anonymity. Both the authors and the reviewers are aware of each other’s identities.

Transparent peer review  menas that the readers can access and read the exchange between authors and reviewers. Reviewers are aware of who the authors are, but the authors do not know who reviewed their manuscript unless the reviewer chooses to reveal their identity by signing their report.

Every type of the peer review listed above has certain pros and cons. 

Persistent identifier (PID) is a long-lasting reference to a resource that provides the information required to reliably identify, verify and locate the resource. In a digital environment, PIDs have the form of URLs. When pasted in a browser, they take users to the resource.

Apart from digital resources, PIDs can also relate to researchers (e.g. ORCID, ISNI), institutions (e.g. ROR), grants, instruments and devices, etc. In this case, a PID leads to the record describing a researcher, an institution, etc. in the relevant registry.

Examples of PIDs include DOIs, ORCIDs, ISBN, Handles, etc. 

Plan S is an initiative for Open Access publishing that was launched in September 2018. The plan is supported by cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funding and performing organisations. Plan S requires that, from 2021, scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant Open Access journals or platforms.

Reference: About Plan S

In general terms, the word preprint refers to a pre-publication version of a literary work. In the scientific field, the preprint, also referred as e-prints, as manuscript versions of a scientific production, generally articles, that were not yet peer-reviewed and published. They can be seen as form of open publication that establish precedence of research, enable rapid dissemination of results and provide early recognition and visibility for work.

Despite sounding like a novelty, the dissemination of pre-publication versions is an old practice in several areas of knowledge, but before the internet, it was carried out by sending printed research manuscripts or letters between peers to exchange comments and collaborations. Garvey & Griffith (1972, p.p. 130-131) points that "in 1963, for example, about half of the authors of articles published in major psychology journals distributed an average of 10 preprints".

For early-career researchers preprints are a opportunity to get feedback from peers and senior researchers about their researches before submitting it to peer-reviewed journals.

Related term: Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM)

References:

Garvey, W. D., & Griffith, B. C. (1972). Communication and information processing within scientific disciplines: Empirical findings for Psychology. Information Storage and Retrieval, 8(3), 123–136. https://doi.org/10.1016/0020-0271(72)90041-1

All that’s fit to preprint. (2020). Nature Biotechnology, 38(5), 507–507. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-0536-x

Preprints are drafts of research papers that are shared online prior to peer review.

One of the reasons preprint culture evolved was frustration amongst academics on the length of time it takes for papers to be reviewed and published in traditional journals.

In addition to speed, some other benefits of publishing preprints are:

• Community Feedback (peer-review) which is an option that preprints offer. The research community can access your work and provide feedback either openly (via an online comment) or privately via email. This enables researchers to address any concerns before submitting to a journal.
• Increased visibility for your work - preprints are typically assigned DOIs and are later linked to published articles, increasing visibility, and citations.

Definition: Raw data; original sources of information before it has been analyzed. Original materials on the basis of which further research can be performed. For example, interviews, survey data, notes made by a scientist, including diaries, various manuscripts, fiction, autobiographies, as well as various types of legal documents.

Primary sources allow researchers to get as close as possible to original ideas, events and empirical studies as possible. Such sources may include first hand or contemporary accounts of events, publication of the results of empirical observations or studies,  creative works such as a novel or painting, and other items that may form the basis of further research. Primary sources were created in the time period under study.

Reference: Clark State Community College Library. Management 1000: Primary, Secondary anf Tertiary Sources. https://lib.clarkstate.edu/c.php?g=573958&p=3957821

An internal procedure to be set by the partners of a project in order to better manage open access funders/istitutional request.

Pseudonymisation (pseudo anonymisation) is the processing of personal data in such a way that the data can no longer be related to the data subject without the use of additional information. However, the additional information must be kept separately and subject to technical and organisational measures to ensure that data subjects remain unidentifiable. As opposed to anonymisation, pseudonymisation is a reversible process, which means that data subjects can be re-identified if access to the additional information is enabled.

Source: https://www.openaire.eu/how-to-comply-with-horizon-europe-mandate-for-rdm (Glossary)

A public license allows the licensor to authorise the general public (i.e. everybody) to perform certain uses of his/her work; if such a license is used, it is no longer necessary to grant individual permissions (and e.g. answer dozens of requests per day). From the legal point of view, a public license is an offer to conclude a contract; this offer is then accepted by conduct when a user starts using the licensed work. Therefore, public licenses are still binding contracts which should be respected. When it comes to licensing of research data, public licenses should be used whenever possible.

Standard ‘public’ licenses started to appear in the 1980s in order to simplify the licensing process, avoid interoperability problems and achieve some common goals.

https://www.clarin.eu/content/clic-public-and-open-licenses