Preprints with less views are not 'hidden'

[rossmounce]

I'm really struggling with the name of this project.

Preprints with less views are not 'hidden'

Published papers behind a $40 paywall are definitely hidden (via a paywall which only some can legally unlock).

I worry if we start normalising the concept of research that has less views as 'hidden'.

Do less well-funded disciplines and subjects then become de facto 'hidden' disciplines because they don't get the same level of views as biomedical science research?

It's well known that platform-level effects boost views, independent of the quality of the actual content. Hence a typical open access book made available on the JSTOR platform, receives more views than the very same book made available on the original publisher platform. Does this then imply that research on JSTOR is 'visible' and research not on JSTOR is 'hidden'. I don't like these implications and in fact I reject them.

The usage of the words 'hidden' and 'visible' really needs looking at in this project. There are other perhaps better words out there.

Kind regards,

Ross

[nemobis]

My understanding is this means "hidden" as in "hidden gems", i.e. underappreciated. Or maybe just "hidden from the social media buzz". In which case it could be nice to push them out in some way, e.g. with a Mastodon→Twitter bot (with appropriate hashtags), and see what happens.

[rossmounce]

"hidden gem preprints" might be an acceptable resolution. Making it 'hidden gem' rather than just 'hidden' does change the meaning usefully. Thanks

[npscience]

The intention is exactly as @nemobis says. As you rightly point out, the preprints are all accessible, just not very seen relative to their broad research area.

There is a problem with calling them "gems" too -- this may imply that all preprints in the feed are gems, but the tool makes no judgement as to quality or integrity of the research in the feed.

There are no concrete plans for where this might go, but it's useful to consider less confusing naming if it reaches beyond the very specific audience or application it has right now – we left the sprint with the intention to use this as a demo for people to consider how preprints are chosen/highlighted in their own initiatives – so thank you for raising this!

In all, this was a quick name during a 2-day sprint. Other name suggestions for the general concept are very welcome, as are expressions of interest in taking this forward.

[ha0ye]

Ooh, excellent point @rossmounce!

I think it originally did have the name "Hidden Gems" (per @nemobis & @npscience), but I seem to recall we then had trouble nabbing that domain name!! 😅

[vot]

Hi @rossmounce,

Apologies about getting to this conversation this late.

First of all - good to see your feedback here, especially given how strongly you feel about this.

I have been responsible for pushing the current name in order to give the project a more tangible presence in a short amount of time.

The criteria for me were for the domain name to be:

• easy to pronounce and spell (for word of mouth marketing)
• descriptive / giving a brief idea of what to expect
• free of the word "gem"

We've gone through three names effectively:

• started with Equitable Preprints
• during the sprint Hidden Gems came up
• domain search pushed me towards Hidden Preprints

Essentially "gems" is a meaningful word for Ruby programmers so it would be difficult to break through that (in both domain names available as well as SEO). We ended up with a temporary amalgamation.
Personally I have no strong views about whether we rebrand a little if it serves a purpose.

I think we should put branding of the project up for discussion. Any help or suggestions are welcome :)

[nemobis]

Vot Z, 14/01/20 02:39:

I think we should put branding of the project up for discussion. Any help or suggestions are welcome :)

Maybe it would help to depart from the adjective + noun format. Something like "preprints serendipity" would for instance convey what the service does at the moment in my view, but then I don't know how difficult a word that is for people. «We survey the literature on serendipity and creativity to distil the core common themes, which we then use as a conceptual framework. Specifically, we describe five operational dimensions of systems with serendipity potential: perception of a chance event, attention to salient detail, a focus shift achieved by interest, bridge to a problem, and valuation of the result.» https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.0440 Federico