Open Access – Page 10

"The Future of Academic Publishing"

Ultimately, we might be forced to rethink publication. If scientific research is mostly read by machines, the question arises of whether it is relevant to package it into a single coherent narrative that is adapted to the limitations of human cognition. This seems like a lot of busywork for scientists. We could unbundle scientific research from the constraints of journal formatting, as suggested by Neuromatch Open Publishing. In this view, research will be a living compendium of code, datasets, graphs and narrative content remixable and always up to date. Open and freely accessible research will be more valuable and influential because it will be seen by LLMs.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01637-2

"Read Your Open Access Publishing Agreements, Or: How You Might Accidentally Give Elsevier or Wiley the Exclusive Right to Profit from Your OA Article"

Those publishing agreements do provide what many authors want in OA publishing—free online access and broad reuse rights to users. But, if authors select the wrong option, they are also giving away their own residual rights while granting Elsevier or Wiley the exclusive right to commercially exploit their work. That includes the right for those publishers to exclude the author herself from making or authorizing even the most basic of commercial uses, such as posting the article to a for-profit repository like Researchgate or even SSRN. This is not a result I think most authors intend, but it’s hard to spot the problem unless you read these publication agreements carefully.

https://tinyurl.com/mrytecfk

CNRS: "Publication Costs — ‘We Are on the Edge of the Abyss’"

Alain Schuhl, the Deputy CEO for Science at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS):

A recent prospective study in France run by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research reported that France paid almost €30 million in APCs in 2020. The same study suggests that at this rate of increase France could be paying €50 million in APCs by 2030 or even nearly €200 million [about $219,907,000] if all scientific publications have switched to the author-pays model by then. This amount is far higher than the budget of the subscription-based model which is already excessively expensive.

https://tinyurl.com/3xfkz79h

"Open Access Author Contracts and Alignment with the Open Ethos: A Global Study"

Author contracts in scholarly publishing serve to outline the rights and permissions for each party in the use and redistribution of a work throughout the life of its copyright term. Although rights and licensing expectations for open access publishing—the “open access ethos”—have been detailed in the Budapest Declaration, Plan S Principles, and other documentation, studies that explore the implementation of these ideals in contracts between authors and publishers have been limited in focus and scope. This study seeks to initiate a holistic approach toward evaluating open access journal agreements that is not limited by region or discipline, with the aim of discerning best practices as well as delineating common points of deviation. The authors distributed a survey to contacts from journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), including both journals with and without a DOAJ Seal. The results suggest that DOAJ Seal status is central to alignment with the open access ethos and that there is more misunderstanding about the importance of copyright and licensing terms than shown in previous research. This research contributes to discussions pursuing a future of open access publishing that supports authors’ rights as a central tenet.

https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.84.4.605

"Article Processing Charges for Open Access Journal Publishing: A Review"

This paper reviews literature on article processing charges (APCs) that has been published since 2000. Despite praise for diamond OA journals, which charge no fees, most OA articles are published by commercial publishers that charge APCs. Publishers fix APCs depending on the reputation assigned to journals by peers. Evidence shows a relationship between high impact metrics and higher, faster rising APCs. Authors express reluctance about APCs, although this varies by discipline depending on previous experience of paying publication fees and the availability of research grants to cover them. Authors rely on a mix of research grants, library funds and personal assets to pay the charges. Two major concerns have been raised in relation to APCs: the inability of poorly funded authors to publish research and their impact on journal quality. Waivers have not solved the first issue. Research shows little extension of waiver use, unintended side effects on co-author networks and concerns regarding criteria to qualify for them. Bibliometric studies concur that journals that charge APCs have a similar citation impact to journals that rely on other income sources.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1558

Replacing Academic Journals

Replacing traditional journals with a more modern solution is not a new idea. Here, we propose ways to overcome the social dilemma underlying the decades of inaction. Any solution needs to not only resolve the current problems but also be capable of preventing takeover by corporations: it needs to replace traditional journals with a decentralized, resilient, evolvable network that is interconnected by open standards and open-source norms under the governance of the scholarly community. It needs to replace the monopolies connected to journals with a genuine, functioning and well-regulated market. In this new market, substitutable service providers compete and innovate according to the conditions of the scholarly community, avoiding sustained vendor lock-in. Therefore, a standards body needs to form under the governance of the scholarly community to allow the development of open scholarly infrastructures servicing the entire research workflow. We propose a redirection of money from legacy publishers to the new network by funding bodies broadening their minimal infrastructure requirements at recipient institutions to include modern infrastructure components replacing and complementing journal functionalities. Such updated eligibility criteria by funding agencies would help realign the financial incentives for recipient institutions with public and scholarly interest.

Ownership involves socially recognized economic rights, first and foremost the exclusive control over that property, with the self-efficacy it affords. The inability to exert such control over crucial components of their scholarly infrastructure in the face of a generally recognized need for action for over three decades now, evinces the dramatic erosion of real ownership rights for the scholarly community over said infrastructure. Thus, this proposal is motivated not only by the now very urgent need to restore such ownership to the scholarly community, but also by the understanding that through their funding bodies, scholars may have an effective and proven avenue at their disposal to identify game-changing actions and to design a financial incentive structure for recipient institutions that can help realize the restoration of ownership, with the goal to implement open digital infrastructures that are as effective and as invisible as their non-digital counterparts.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5526634

"Exploring Faculty Perspectives on Open Access at a Medium-Sized, American Doctoral University"

Faculty hold widely varying perspectives on the benefits and challenges afforded by open access (OA) publishing. In the United States, conversations on OA models and strategy have been dominated by scholars affiliated with Carnegie R1 institutions. This article reports findings from interviews conducted with faculty at a Carnegie R2 institution, highlighting disciplinary and individual perspectives on the high costs and rich rewards afforded by OA. The results reiterate the persistence of a high degree of skepticism regarding the quality of peer review and business models associated with OA publishing. By exploring scholars’ perceptions of and experiences with OA publishing and their comfort using or sharing unpublished, publicly available content, the authors highlight the degree to which OA approaches must remain flexible, iterative and multifaceted — no single solution can begin to accommodate the rich and varying needs of individual stakeholders.

https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.620

"What Those Responsible for Open Infrastructure in Scholarly Communication Can Do about Possibly Predatory Practices"

This chapter presents a three-phase analysis of the 521 journals that use the open source publishing platform Open Journal Systems (OJS) while appearing on Beall’s list of predatory publishers and journals and/or in Cabells Predatory Reports, both of which purport to identify journals that charge authors article processing fees (APC) to publish in the pretense of a peer-reviewed journal. . . . The first phase involved the researchers reaching out to publishers and editors on Beall’s list using OJS; the second phase involves determining the extent to which journals using OJS appeared on the two predatory lists, and the third reports on a new system, involving trade organizations, such ORCID and Crossref, for authenticating journal practices.

https://tinyurl.com/2xwb94ue

Paywall: The Strategic Marketing of Science, Technology, and Medical Journals: A Business History of a Dynamic Marketplace, 2000–2020

This book analyzes the various economic and marketing strategies utilized by the five major STM commercial scholarly journal publishers since 2000. This period has witnessed tremendous economic, marketing, and technological growth including the migration from a print only to a hybrid publishing format. With this growth, the industry has also seen the rise of open access publishing, copyright challenges by websites such as Sci-Hub, the emergence of sharing platforms such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu, as well as the impact of Plan S on publishers, universities, and authors.. . . Scrutinizing the different managerial, marketing, technology, and economic-financial strategies crafted by scholarly journal publishers between 2000-2020, this book offers a comprehensive assessment of the industry’s attempts to identify, understand, cope with, and minimize or defeat the herculean threats to its business model.

https://tinyurl.com/5n6rd8xy

"The Status of Open Access Repositories in the Field of Technology: Insights from OpenDOAR"

The study found that 125 nations contributed a total of 4,045 repositories in the field of research, with the USA leading the list with the most repositories. Maximum repositories were operated by institutions having multidisciplinary approaches. The DSpace and Eprints were the preferred software types for repositories. The preferred upload content by contributors was "research articles" and "electronic thesis and dissertations."

https://doi.org/10.1108/IDD-11-2022-0119

"Mapping the German Diamond Open Access Journal Landscape"

In the current scientific and political discourse surrounding the transformation of the scientific publication system, significant attention is focused on Diamond Open Access (OA). This article explores the potential and challenges of Diamond OA journals, using Germany as a case study. Two questions are addressed: first, the current role of such journals in the scientific publication system is determined through bibliometric analysis across various disciplines. Second, an investigation is conducted to assess the sustainability of Diamond OA journals and identify associated structural problems or potential breaking points. This investigation includes an in-depth expert interview study involving 20 editors of Diamond OA journals. The empirical results are presented using a landscape map that considers two dimensions: ‘monetized and gift-based completion of tasks’ and ‘journal team size.’ The bibliometric analysis reveals a substantial number of Diamond OA journals in the social sciences and humanities, but limited adoption in other fields. The model proves effective for small to mid-sized journals, but not for larger ones. Additionally, it was found that 23 Diamond OA journals have recently discontinued their operations. The expert interviews demonstrate the usefulness of the two dimensions in understanding key differences. Journals in two of the four quadrants of the map exemplify sustainable conditions, while the other two quadrants raise concerns about long-term stability. These concerns include limited funding leading to a lack of division of labor and an excessive burden on highly committed members. These findings underscore the need for the development of more sustainable funding models to ensure the success of Diamond OA journals.

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2306.13080

Opening Knowledge: Retaining Rights and Open Licensing in Europe

This report investigates the current landscape of non-legislative policy practices affecting researchers and authors in the authors’ rights and licensing domain. It is an outcome of research conducted by Project Retain led by SPARC Europe, as part of the Knowledge Rights 21 programme. The report concludes with a set of recommendations for institutional policymakers, funders and legislators, and publishers. It is accompanied by the study dataset.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8084050

Diamond OA 2023: The World of No-Fee OA Publishing

Diamond OA 2023: The World of No-Fee OA Publishing is now available as an $8 trade paperback or a free PDF ebook.

This new study is based on the no-fee portion of the dataset for Gold Open Access 2017-2022 [GOA8]. A little tentative original added research looks at apparent funding/sponsorship sources for no-fee journals that are not published by universities, societies or government. (Spoiler alert: in about 98% of the cases, that is, those published by traditional and open access publishers, funding appears to be from either universities and academia or from societies and government.)

This book offers overviews and tables by subject and size of journals, but most of the book is "the world"—regional profiles with notes on countries with one to nine diamond journals, and 75 profiles of countries with ten or more such journals.

https://tinyurl.com/3zasrd65

"ResearchGate and Wiley Expand Partnership to Encompass Majority of Publisher’s Open Access Portfolio"

Under the agreement, 519 journal titles, including the entire open access portfolios of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), and all Hindawi titles, will now benefit from an enhanced presence on ResearchGate through its new Journal Home offering.

With Journal Home, all version-of-record content from these titles, including newly published articles, will be syndicated to ResearchGate. Additionally, dedicated journal profiles are activated and made accessible throughout the ResearchGate platform with each journal prominently represented on all its associated article pages and at all other relevant touch points with members.

https://tinyurl.com/54ftv8am

"Springer Nature Group Annual Progress Report 2021 Released"

Data from global research publisher Springer Nature details the visibility and value it’s providing to researchers, authors and editors around the world. Its latest annual progress report, covering 2022, shows:

Springer Nature has now published more than 1.25 million open access articles, and is on track for half of its research article output to be open access by the end of 2024.

Open access research published in its hybrid portfolio within a transformative agreement grew three times faster than that published outside of one.

Product and technology investments grew 13% year-on-year, and reached €370 million over the past three years. Springer Nature’s platforms now support 7.9 million downloads every day — that’s 92 every second.

Average downloads per article are up 80% from 2018 to 2021, and average citations growing more than 40% over the same period, delivering increased impact and value for money.

https://tinyurl.com/2253fpev

Full Report

Paywall: "Comparison of COVID-19 Preprint and Peer-Reviewed Versions of Studies on Therapies for Critically Ill Patients"

One article (4.8%, 95% CI 0.12%-23.8%) had a change in the primary outcome. Seven articles (33.3%, 95% CI 14.6%-57.0%) had a change in the primary outcome’s effect measure. Five studies (23.8%, 95% CI 8.2%-47.2%) had changes in statistical significance of at least one secondary outcome. Four studies (19.0%, 95% CI 5.4%-41.9%) had a change in study conclusion.

https://doi.org/10.1177/08850666231182563

"Perceived Benefits of Open Data Are Improving but Scientists Still Lack Resources, Skills, and Rewards"

Addressing global scientific challenges requires the widespread sharing of consistent and trustworthy research data. Identifying the factors that influence widespread data sharing will help us understand the limitations and potential leverage points. We used two well-known theoretical frameworks, the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Technology Acceptance Model, to analyze three DataONE surveys published in 2011, 2015, and 2020. These surveys aimed to identify individual, social, and organizational influences on data-sharing behavior. In this paper, we report on the application of multiple factor analysis (MFA) on this combined, longitudinal, survey data to determine how these attitudes may have changed over time. The first two dimensions of the MFA were named willingness to share and satisfaction with resources based on the contributing questions and answers. Our results indicated that both dimensions are strongly influenced by individual factors such as perceived benefit, risk, and effort. Satisfaction with resources was significantly influenced by social and organizational factors such as the availability of training and data repositories. Researchers that improved in willingness to share are shown to be operating in domains with a high reliance on shared resources, are reliant on funding from national or federal sources, work in sectors where internal practices are mandated, and live in regions with highly effective communication networks. Significantly, satisfaction with resources was inversely correlated with willingness to share across all regions. We posit that this relationship results from researchers learning what resources they actually need only after engaging with the tools and procedures extensively.

https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01831-7

Open Science Services by Research Libraries: Organisational Perspectives — A LIBER and ADBU Report

Many research libraries in Europe deliver Open Science services in the field of RDM and OA. However, it is estimated that up to half of European research libraries deliver only limited services in these domains. LIBER and ADBU conducted a study to understand the organisational structures and competences needed to create, and sustain, these services.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8060242

Defining Open Scholarly Infrastructure: A Review of Relevant Literature

This report outlines IOI’s initial attempt towards a framework for understanding open infrastructure for research and scholarship. For this report, we examined a body of literature that includes works across the fields of anthropology, scholarly communications, international development studies, science and technology studies, and infrastructure studies.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7064538

Plan S: "Transformative Journals: Analysis from the 2022 Reports"

However, despite these positive developments, it is clearly disappointing that over two thirds (68%) of the journals in the TJ programme failed to meet their OA growth targets. And, as made clear last year, titles which do not meet their targets will be removed from the TJ programme. . . .Looking at the performance of individual publishers, the data shows that some 77% (1329) of titles published by Springer Nature — by far the largest publisher in the programme with some 1721 TJ titles — failed to meet their TJ targets. For Elsevier and the America Chemical Society (ACS) the figures were 63% (115 titles) and 56% (36 titles), respectively.

https://tinyurl.com/yh8rhyex

"Diamonds in the Rough: Societies Shine under Pressure"

Overall, 18% of fully open journals appear to be sponsored [diamond], but their proportion and number have been decreasing. . . . Among society-run journals, sponsored titles account for more than double the market average, for non-society (commercial) journals they account for just under half. Societies’ greater proportion of sponsored titles and their not-for-profit status could therefore place them in a stronger position than their commercial competitors if we see a large scale move by funders to require publication in journals without publisher fees and — as some noises from European funders suggest — which are not for profit.

https://tinyurl.com/yc4k2j9m

"Significant Acceleration of Humanities and Social Sciences Open Access through Taylor & Francis and Jisc Transformative Agreement"

A wealth of additional detail about open access articles supported by the Jisc agreement is presented in the report, including:

432% increase in OA articles between 2020 and 2022.

16.2 million article downloads, including 3.5 million in the US.

Articles published OA via the agreement received an average of 2.18 scholarly citations, whereas non-OA articles by researchers at the same institutions had 1.33 citations.

https://tinyurl.com/39urswyj

What Direct Support Is Available for Open-Access Diamond Journals? Funding Models and Arrangements For Implementation

The author-pays model for open-access journals is increasingly criticised because of the inequalities it generates and its unsustainability due to a lack of cost control. In this context, our study examines the funding models for Diamond journals — academic journals which are published with no direct payment made by the readers (unlike the subscription model) nor by the authors (author pays model). The aim of this work is to test the feasibility, as well as the desirability of a direct or explicit funding model for Diamond journals, something which is almost non-existent at present. We have two objectives here: on one hand, to understand the current Diamond journal funding arrangements and constraints, and on the other hand to propose specific arrangements for funding Diamond journals by research funders.

https://hal.science/hal-04133000v1

"The Value of a Diamond: Understanding Global Coverage of Diamond Open Access Journals in Web of Science, Scopus, and OpenAlex to Support an Open Future"

Diamond OA journals present a publishing model that is free for both authors and readers, but their lack of indexing in major bibliographic databases such as Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus presents challenges in assessing the usage of these journals. This paper provides a global picture of the coverage of diamond OA journals from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) in three data sources. Results show their low coverage in WoS and Scopus and higher coverage in OpenAlex, as well as the generally smaller and local scope of diamond OA journals.

https://tinyurl.com/2mt9sydd

"Open(ing) Access: Top Health Publication Availability to Researchers in Low- and Middle-Income Countries"

Introduction: Improving access to information for health professionals and researchers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is under-prioritized. This study examines publication policies that affect authors and readers from LMICs.

Methods: We used the SHERPA RoMEO database and publicly available publishing protocols to evaluate open access (OA) policies, article processing charges (APCs), subscription costs, and availability of health literature relevant to authors and readers in LMICs. Categorical variables were summarized using frequencies with percentages. Continuous variables were reported with median and interquartile range (IQR). Hypothesis testing procedures were performed using Wilcoxon rank sum tests, Wilcoxon rank sum exact tests, and Kruskal-Wallis test.

Results: A total of 55 journals were included; 6 (11%) were Gold OA (access to readers and large charge for authors), 2 (3.6%) were subscription (charge for readers and small/no charge for authors), 4 (7.3%) were delayed OA (reader access with no charge after embargo), and 43 (78%) were hybrid (author’s choice). There was no significant difference between median APC for life sciences, medical, and surgical journals ($4,850 [$3,500–$8,900] vs. $4,592 [$3,500–$5,000] vs. $3,550 [$3,200–$3,860]; p = 0.054). The median US individual subscription costs (USD/Year) were significantly different for life sciences, medical, and surgical journals ($259 [$209–$282] vs. $365 [$212–$744] vs. $455 [$365–$573]; p = 0.038), and similar for international readers. A total of seventeen journals (42%) had a subscription price that was higher for international readers than for US readers.

Conclusions: Most journals offer hybrid access services. Authors may be forced to choose between high cost with greater reach through OA and low cost with less reach publishing under the subscription model under current policies. International readers face higher costs. Such hindrances may be mitigated by a greater awareness and liberal utilization of OA policies.

https://doi.org/10.5334/aogh.3904