Category: Scholarly Journals

"The Fundamental Problem Blocking Open Access and How to Overcome It: The Bitviews Project"

Camillo Lamanna and Manfredi La Mannahave published "The Fundamental Problem Blocking Open Access and How to Overcome It: The Bitviews Project" in Insights.

Here's an excerpt:

In our view the fundamental obstacle to open access (OA) is the lack of any incentive-based mechanism that unbundles authors' accepted manuscripts (AMs) from articles (VoRs). The former can be seen as the public good that ought to be openly accessible, whereas the latter is owned by publishers and rightly paywall-restricted. We propose one such mechanism to overcome this obstacle: BitViews. BitViews is a blockchain-based application that aims to revolutionize the OA publishing ecosystem. Currently, the main academic currency of value is the citation. There have been attempts in the past to create a second currency whose measure is the online usage of research materials (e.g. PIRUS). However, these have failed due to two problems. Firstly, it has been impossible to find a single agency willing to co-ordinate and fund the validation and collation of global online usage data. Secondly, online usage metrics have lacked transparency in how they filter non-human online activity. BitViews is a novel solution which uses blockchain technology to bypass both problems: online AMS usage will be recorded on a public, distributed ledger, obviating the need for a central responsible agency, and the rules governing activity-filtering will be part of the open-source BitViews blockchain application, creating complete transparency. Once online AMS usage has measurable value, researchers will be incentivized to promote and disseminate AMs. This will fundamentally re-orient the academic publishing ecosystem. A key feature of BitViews is that its success (or failure) is wholly and exclusively in the hands of the worldwide community of university and research libraries, as we suggest that it ought to be financed by conditional crowdfunding, whereby the actual financial commitment of each contributing library depends on the total amount raised. If the financing target is not reached, then all contributions are returned in full and if the target is over-fulfilled, then the surplus is returned pro rata.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Open Access: Could Defeat Be Snatched from the Jaws of Victory?

Richard Poynder has released Open Access: Could Defeat Be Snatched from the Jaws of Victory?.

Here's an excerpt:

I have in this document suggested that the goal of achieving universal open access looks today as though it may have been unrealistic. I have suggested that the research community failed to appreciate the costs of online publishing, and I have suggested that we all failed to anticipate the likely outcome of creating a largely unregulated open network. I have also suggested that OA advocates failed to anticipate the unintended consequences of their advocacy. They likewise failed to appreciate that changes in the geopolitical situation could make the aspirations outlined in BOAI moot. And I have questioned whether these aspirations are in any case realisable in the neoliberal environment of the Global North. I have also suggested that were China to offer an alternative route to open access it is unlikely it would lead to a better outcome. And I have noted that there is a desire in the Global South to develop what I referred to as "a third way" but we cannot know how successful that might be. I have also suggested that there must be some doubt as to whether a fair and equitable global system of scholarly communication is even possible in today’s political environment. Finally, I have raised the possibility that, for a number of reasons, we may in any case see a pushback against open access.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Will SUNY “Follow the Lead of UC”?: "Resolution: Support for SUNY Negotiations for a Fair and Reasonable Contract with Elsevier"

https://t.co/2ar7VlxFMD

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that UFS recommends and requests that if Elsevier does not negotiate a contract that is deemed fair and reasonable by SUNY negotiators, the Chancellor direct the SUNY negotiators to follow the lead of UC and the aforementioned European universities and not enter into a new contract with Elsevier, and instead pursue alternative means with campus presidents to access scholarly works that are critical to the learning, teaching, and research of the SUNY community;