Category: Open Access

"Assessing the Size of the Affordability Problem in Scholarly Publishing"

Alexander Grossmann and Björn Brembs have self-archived "Assessing the Size of the Affordability Problem in Scholarly Publishing."

Here's an excerpt:

For many decades, the hyperinflation of subscription prices for scholarly journals have concerned scholarly institutions. After years of fruitless efforts to solve this "serials crisis", open access has been proposed as the latest potential solution. However, also the prices for open access publishing are high and are rising well beyond inflation. What has been missing from the public discussion so far is a quantitative approach to determine the actual costs of efficiently publishing a scholarly article using state-of-the-art technologies, such that informed decisions can be made as to appropriate price levels. Here we provide a granular, step-by-step calculation of the costs associated with publishing primary research articles, from submission, through peer-review, to publication, indexing and archiving. We find that these costs range from less than US$200 per article in modern, large scale publishing platforms using post-publication peer-review, to about US$1,000 per article in prestigious journals with rejection rates exceeding 90%. The publication costs for a representative scholarly article today come to lie at around US$400. We discuss the additional non-publication items that make up the difference between publication costs and final price.

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UK Open Textbooks Report 2019

The UK Open Textbook Project has released the UK Open Textbooks Report 2019.

Here's an excerpt:

The UK Open Textbooks project was conducted in several stages over the period of March 2017 to May 2019. The project tested two highly successful approaches to increasing engagement with, and use of, open textbooks. . . .

In the report we conclude that the awareness of OER and open textbooks is typically very low in the UK HE sector. However, awareness of open access publications is high, supported by the Finch Report and REF policy on open access deposition. Although existing knowledge of open textbooks was low, once educators were made aware of them, they expressed significant interest in their adoption. This provides an existing conceptual model and set of practices on which to build.

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"Springer Nature Journals Unify Their Policy to Encourage Preprint Sharing"

Springer Nature has released "Springer Nature Journals Unify Their Policy to Encourage Preprint Sharing."

Here's an excerpt:

Recognizing these benefits, we are now pleased to announce an updated policy encouraging preprint sharing for Springer Nature journals. This intends to remove ambiguity on two important points. First, we now make it clear that authors may choose any licence for preprints, including Creative Commons licences. . . .

Second, the updated policy provides more information about our position on author engagement with the media in response to enquiries about preprints. . . .Finally, we stand by our policy supporting citation of preprints in reference lists of submitted and published manuscripts.

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Oxford Open Access Project: "Learned Societies and the Transition to Open Access: Event Report"

Juliet Ralph has published "Learned Societies and the Transition to Open Access: Event Report" in Open Access Oxford.

Here's an excerpt:

As part of last month’s Open Access Oxford week, a distinguished panel of Oxford academics led discussions around learned societies and their transition to Open Access. The event was held in collaboration with Oxford University Press (OUP) and aimed to address issues raised by Plan S. . . .

Prof Freeman closed the event by drawing together the main themes discussed:

  1. Agreement that the move to OA is broadly a good thing, but challenges persist in how we go about it.
  2. The economics of OA remain a major issue, especially around very small societies and publishers. There are opportunities for action within the community of forming consortia to reduce costs and benefit from economies of scale. The matter of ‘not for profits’ making surpluses and where those surpluses are used is a topic for societies to consider. Open Access is not the same as ‘free.’
  3. The sociology, history and structure of disciplines differ, for example in the scale of their funding/grants

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"Meta-Research: Tracking the Popularity and Outcomes of All bioRxiv Preprints"

Richard J Abdill and Ran Blekhman have self-archived "Meta-Research: Tracking the Popularity and Outcomes of All bioRxiv Preprints."

Here's an excerpt:

The growth of preprints in the life sciences has been reported widely and is driving policy changes for journals and funders, but little quantitative information has been published about preprint usage. Here, we report how we collected and analyzed data on all 37,648 preprints uploaded to bioRxiv.org, the largest biology-focused preprint server, in its first five years. The rate of preprint uploads to bioRxiv continues to grow (exceeding 2,100 in October 2018), as does the number of downloads (1.1 million in October 2018). We also find that two-thirds of preprints posted before 2017 were later published in peer-reviewed journals, and find a relationship between the number of downloads a preprint has received and the impact factor of the journal in which it is published. We also describe Rxivist.org, a web application that provides multiple ways to interact with preprint metadata.

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"Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing"

Jonathan P. Tennant et al. have published "Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

The changing world of scholarly communication and the emerging new wave of 'Open Science' or 'Open Research' has brought to light a number of controversial and hotly debated topics. Evidence-based rational debate is regularly drowned out by misinformed or exaggerated rhetoric, which does not benefit the evolving system of scholarly communication. This article aims to provide a baseline evidence framework for ten of the most contested topics, in order to help frame and move forward discussions, practices, and policies. We address issues around preprints and scooping, the practice of copyright transfer, the function of peer review, predatory publishers, and the legitimacy of 'global' databases. These arguments and data will be a powerful tool against misinformation across wider academic research, policy and practice, and will inform changes within the rapidly evolving scholarly publishing system.

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Forum Planning Committee’s Report to UC Council of University Librarians on Choosing Pathways to Open Access

The UC Office of the President has released Forum Planning Committee's Report to UC Council of University Librarians on Choosing Pathways to Open Access.

Here's an excerpt:

On October 16-17, 2018, University of California (UC) libraries hosted a working forum in Berkeley, California entitled "Choosing Pathways to Open Access" ("CP2OA") (see https://cp2oa18.com/). Sponsored by the University of California’s Council of University Librarians ("CoUL"), the forum was designed to enable North American library or consortium leaders and key academic stakeholders to engage in action-focused deliberations about redirecting subscription and other funds toward sustainable open access ("OA") publishing.

This report was prepared by members of the forum's Planning Committee as a way to update CoUL on forum outcomes, and to synthesize these outcomes into recommendations for further collective (UC multi-institutional) action to advance OA. The recommendations reflect the opinions of the report drafters; they are not an official statement by CoUL, nor should publication of this report signify CoUL's endorsement of our recommendations. We (the Planning Committee) instead hope that CoUL will consider the recommendations in due course, particularly as some of them reflect efforts already underway within various UC libraries.

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