SODAS Data Discussion 4 (Spring 2025)
Copenhagen Center for Social Data Science (SODAS) aspirers to be a resource for all students and researchers at the Faculty of Social Sciences. We therefore invite researchers across the faculty to present ongoing research projects, project applications or just a loose idea that relates to the subject of social data science.
Two researchers will present their work. The rules are simple: Short research presentations of ten minutes are followed by twenty minutes of debate. No papers will be circulated beforehand, and the presentations cannot be longer than five slides.
Discussion 1
Presenter: Ting Xiao
Title: Task division and authorship credit in North-South medical research collaborations
Abstract:
Global North-South disparities persist in science, yet our understanding of the mechanisms sustaining them remain limited. Focusing on North-South research partnerships, this study examines how the division of labor within medical research teams contributes to these disparities. We harvested article metadata from PLOS ONE alongside CRediT contributorship data, and then applied a new TF-IDF-based method to account for variation in the prevalence and distribution of contributor roles across authors. In linear probability models, adjusting for authors’ prior publication output and impact, gender, scientific age, medical specialization and TF-IDF adjusted contributor roles, we find that GS researchers are more likely to assume first authorships but have substantially lower representation in last and corresponding authorships compared to their GN team-mates. Subgroup analyses reveal that this regional disadvantage is most pronounced for researchers from Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, while those from East and South Asia are underrepresented in all lead-authorship roles, including also first authorships. This pattern also holds across national income levels, with clear disparities observed between researchers from lower- and higher-income countries. We also find that while leadership roles generally increase the likelihood of assuming first-, last- or corresponding authorships, GS scientists with such roles remain less likely to obtain last authorships. These findings expose a consistent misalignment between contributions and authorship positions in North-South collaborations and highlight the need for experimental research to clarify the causal pathways through which these imbalances arise.
Discussion 2
Presenter: Valdemar Osted
Title: Making sense of social media data: Lessons from Common Consultancy
Abstract:
Valdemar from Common Consultancy shares hands-on experiences from working with large-scale social media data in a private sector setting. The talk gives a look into how social media data is processed, structured, and turned into insights for clients - with concrete examples of how social media data becomes actionable in everyday consultancy work.