Grainger Graduate Assistant STEM Information Literacy Training

STEM research has norms for publication that have evolved since the founding of the Royal Society of London in 1660 (although some norms such as peer review date to Ancient Greek society). Early scientific communication took the form of letters (or Transactions) between individual researchers and the Society, correspondence between two societies to discuss innovations, or through lectures hosted at the scientific societies. Over time, in order to make the correspondence of the societies more accessible, journals were founded. The earliest scientific journal was the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.  The practice of having peer scientists formally review submissions was put into practice for the first time in modern scientific journals in 1831. (Adam 2024) 

Changes in technology, increases in volume of published articles, development of new sub-disciplines, and emerging data and information sharing norms and requirements have lead to the development of a plethora of scientific journals and other publication venues in all STEM disciplines. This session will introduce fundamental concepts of scholarly publishing in order to assist you in finding citations and providing information literacy instruction.  

Resources: Adam, D. (2024). The early days of peer review: five insights from historical reports. Nature v. 634, 761-762 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03287-4

Research Data Lifecycle by LMA Research Data Management Working Group

The research lifecycle follows the process of research from the initial planning stages to the publishing and dissemination of the concluded research. While the stages vary amongst different disciplines as do the lifecycle model diagrams disseminated for each discipline, the key areas of the research lifecycle for STEM researchers are as follows. 

• Plan and Design: The initial stages of the research lifecycle. At this stage, researchers will have just begun their research and should focus on creating plans involving who they're collaborating with and what literature exists on the topic they're researching. This cursory glance will help them establish what existing literature covers, what gaps exist, and where they can innovate in their own research. It is also the stage of the lifecycle where researchers should begin creating plans for data management, including management of the literature. This stage often arises from the consumption of existing scientific information, which triggers hypotheses to be tested, and leads to the development of methodologies to test that hypothesis. For engineers, at this point they will gather constraints for their design using a variety of information seeking practices, including interviews, scholarly research, and industry resources. 
• Collect and Analyze: This stage of the lifecycle sees researchers not only search for  and analyze relevant information, it also begins the process of data collection with which researchers will test their hypothesis via the planned methodologies.This research is in the preliminary stages and for engineers, involves gathering initial data that can be used to create models, develop prototypes, or improve existing processes.  
• Store and Manage: This is a pillar for all stages of the research lifecycle; researchers analyze the data that they have collected, build or use analytical tools to develop new knowledge using the data sets they have created, and identify methods for ensuring that all data collected from their research is stored safely and securely. This includes following their Data Management Plan as developed in the first phase of the research lifecycle, as well as ensuring backups of the collected data are completed. 
• Share and Disseminate: At this stage of the lifecycle, researchers prepare their findings for publication. Researchers identify a publication venue, write the publication, prepare data visualizations and data sets as appropriate, and format it according to the Author Kit for their target journal.  This includes ensuring their data follows data sharing requirements. 
• Publish and Reuse: At this stage of the lifecycle, researchers will be sending their research to journals for peer review and publication. When a publication is accepted, researchers deposit pre-prints to disicplinary and institutional repositories to ensure transparency and equitable access. Published research will be viewed and reused by other researchers in their field. 

Data management and sharing plans (also known as DMPs) are documents that detail how the data collected in a given research project will be handled during and after the research is conducted, including storage, dissemination, sharing and publication. DMPs are an integral part to research, and should be created during the planning stage. This is because they are protocols that facilitate the data collection, storage, and management of research conducted. 

Funding agencies require that a DMP be created and submitted as part of grant applications and annual updates. Following DMPs result in higher quality data sets, enhance the reusability of the resulting data sets, and makes finding the data sets feasible. 

A useful tool to better understand data management planning is the DMP Tool, which allows for customization of DMPs for different research needs. 

In August 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released a memorandum titled "Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research". This called for federal funding agencies to update their funding policies on taxpayer funded research, to ensure that any taxpayer funded research is free to access. This means that if a researcher is being funded by a government agency, they are likely required to publish their research via an open access journal or repository. 

An easy way to find the different data sharing requirements of different government agencies is through SPARC. This tool for finding funding requirements by different government agencies is updated on a frequent basis as the requirements grow and change over time. 

The peer review process is a process of submitting scholarly work or research to be assessed by peers in the same field to ensure quality of the research. The peer review process serves as both a filter to ensure quality research is published as well as improves research submitted to a journal by identifying potential errors or corrections needed. This is done by assessing if a paper meets standards of originality, validity, and significance as defined by the journal's editorial board. Authors whose manuscripts are deemed suitable for publication but need improvements will be given suggestions on how to improve their manuscript, and will be able to resubmit for another review. Those publications that do not match the scope of the journal or that are not deemed to have significant enough originality, validity and significance are returned to the author. The author than may choose to rework and to submit the articles to other journals for peer review. 

Citation: Peer review process. (n.d.). Retrieved August 1, 2025, from https://www.biomedcentral.com/getpublished/peer-review-process

Types of Peer Review

• Single Blind: The reviewers know the name of the authors, but the authors do not know the name of those who reviewed their manuscript.
• Double Blind: The reviewers do not know the name of the authors, and the authors do not know who reviewed their manuscript.
• Transparent Peer Review: The reviewers know the names of the authors but the authors do not know the names of the reviewers unless the reviewers sign the report. If the manuscript is accepted, the anonymous reviewer report will be published alongside the article, as well as the author's response to the reviewer.
• Open Peer Review: The authors and reviewers know who each other are. If the manuscript is accepted, the named reviewer reports will be published along with the article and author's response to the reviewer. 

You can check if a journal is peer reviewed by searching for the journal's "About" page. They will usually state if they are peer reviewed, and what type of peer review is conducted. If you cannot find that, check the Author Kit, which provides in depth information on the publication process for a given journal. 

Open Access research refers to free and publicly available research from journal articles to books, as well as the rights to use these materials. The principle of Open Access research is to ensure that research and outcomes are available to all. For researchers, participating in Open Access research can help strengthen the quality, credibility and reach of research. In addition, some countries are mandating that any research conducted with government funding be Open Access. These mandates will be further discussed in the Federal Mandates section of this page.

As librarians, we assist researchers as they prepare to publish Open Access. Such ways we help researchers include assisting with data management plans; guiding researchers to Open Access repositories; guiding researchers to resources on funding mandates; where they can publish preprints; and research consultations around Open Access publishing. 

In addition to funding requirements, another cost of publishing Open Access includes article processing costs, or APCs. APCs are charges that are cast onto researchers for publishing in journals, seen particularly in Open Access journals or for publishing an Open Access article. Some universities may have deals with different publishers for waivers and other ways to aid in the cost of publishing Open Access research. This will vary from organization to organization. 

The university has a library guide on it's policies and waivers for Open Access publishing that is useful to look at when talking about our policies or waivers to patrons.

Let's quickly go over preprints. Preprints exist as a part of the research lifecycle as a public posting of a research manuscript prior to formal peer review. Researchers will want to publish preprints of their research manuscripts as it offers opportunity to receive feedback; claim priority of a discovery or innovation; and make the research move faster. They are also freely available on preprint servers, making them a valuable and transparent part of Open Access research. 

As scholarly publishing has changed and grown, so have predatory publishers. Predatory publishers are journals and other publishing venues that take advantage of researchers. The importance placed on publishing peer-reviewed publications for promotion and tenure leads to an environment where predatory journals can exploit authors. This commonly involves soliciting authors and charging them exorbitant fees to publish in their journals without providing peer review best practices. Many predatory publishers attempt to appear as legitimate open access publishers in order to entice faculty members and researchers, particularly novice ones, with the promise of a speedy peer-review process that does not actually exist. 

In order to combat predatory publishers, several institutions have developed tools to help faculty members determine whether or not a publisher is predatory.