Category: Scholarly Journals

"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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"Open Up: A Survey on Open and Non-anonymized Peer Reviewing"

Lonni Besançon et al. have self-archived "Open Up: A Survey on Open and Non-anonymized Peer Reviewing."

Here's an excerpt:

We present a discussion and analysis regarding the benefits and limitations of open and non-anonymized peer review based on literature results and responses to a survey on the reviewing process of alt.chi, a more or less open-review track within the CHI conference, the predominant conference in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). This track currently is the only implementation of an open-peer-review process in the field of HCI while, with the recent increase in interest in open science practices, open review is now being considered and used in other fields. We collected 30 responses from alt.chi authors and reviewers and found that, while the benefits are quite clear and the system is generally well liked by alt.chi participants, they are reluctant to see it used in other venues. This concurs with a number of recent studies that suggest a divergence between support for a more open review process and its practical implementation. The data and scripts are available on https://osf.io/vuw7h/, and the figures and follow-up work on http://tiny.cc/OpenReviews.

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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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EUA Big Deals Survey Report April 2018: The First Mapping of Major Scientific Publishing Contracts in Europe

The European University Association has released EUA Big Deals Survey Report April 2018: The First Mapping of Major Scientific Publishing Contracts in Europe.

Here's an excerpt:

The EUA Big Deals Survey Report: The first mapping of major scientific publishing contracts in Europe presents data from 28 negotiating consortia. The data, which was gathered between July 2016 and June 2017, was anonymous and aggregated, thus respecting the confidential nature of the information provided by respondents. The survey focused on the functions and working process of consortia, as well as on the conditions of contracts for big deals concerning scientific periodicals, databases and e-books. The results of the survey show that consortia broadly represent the interests of relevant stakeholders from the university and library sectors and are largely driven by researchers’ needs.

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"New Penn State Open Access Policy to Expand Reach of University Research"

Pennsylvania State University has released "New Penn State Open Access Policy to Expand Reach of University Research."

Here's an excerpt:

A new open access policy at Penn State, recently endorsed by the University Faculty Senate, will greatly increase public availability of original, peer-reviewed Penn State scholarly research in support of the University’s land-grant mission. . . .

Under the policy—expected to be implemented by Penn State President Eric Barron in the fall 2019 semester—Penn State researchers will remain free to submit their work to scholarly journals of their choice. The policy also will not transfer copyright ownership of scholarly works to Penn State. In addition, a waiver option in the policy guarantees that researchers are able to opt out of open access for each one of their publications on an individual-article basis; these waivers would be automatically approved.

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Transformative Publishing: Requirements for a New Publishing Standard: A Proposal from Springer Nature

Springer Nature has released Transformative Publishing: Requirements for a New Publishing Standard: A Proposal from Springer Nature.

Read background information about this proposal in "A Faster Path to an Open Future" and "Springer Nature Calls on Publishers to Adopt New OA Role."

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"Article Processing Charge Hyperinflation and Price Insensitivity: An Open Access Sequel to the Serials Crisis"

Shaun Yon-Seng Khoo has published "Article Processing Charge Hyperinflation and Price Insensitivity: An Open Access Sequel to the Serials Crisis" in LIBER Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

Open access publishing has frequently been proposed as a solution to the serials crisis, which involved unsustainable budgetary pressures on libraries due to hyperinflation of subscription costs. The majority of open access articles are published in a minority of journals that levy article processing charges (APCs) paid by authors or their institutions upon acceptance. Increases in APCs is proceeding at a rate three times that which would be expected if APCs were indexed according to inflation. As increasingly ambitious funder mandates are proposed, such as Plan S, it is important to evaluate whether authors show signs of price sensitivity in journal selection by avoiding journals that introduce or increase their APCs. Examining journals that introduced an APC 4-5 years after launch or when flipping from a subscription model to immediate open access model showed no evidence that APC introduction reduced article volumes. Multilevel modelling of APC sensitivity across 319 journals published by the four largest APC-funded dedicated commercial open access publishers (BMC, Frontiers, MDPI, and Hindawi) revealed that from 2012 to 2018 higher APCs were actually associated with increased article volumes. These findings indicate that APC hyperinflation is not suppressed through market competition and author choice. Instead, demand for scholarly journal publications may be more similar to demand for necessities, or even prestige goods, which will support APC hyperinflation to the detriment of researchers, institutions, and funders.

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"Whose Research Is It Anyway? Academic Social Networks versus Institutional Repositories"

Nicole C. Eva and Tara A. Wiebe have published "Whose Research Is It Anyway? Academic Social Networks versus Institutional Repositories" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

NTRODUCTION Looking for ways to increase deposits into their institutional repository (IR), researchers at one institution started to mine academic social networks (ASNs) (namely, ResearchGate and Academia.edu) to discover which researchers might already be predisposed to providing open access to their work. METHODS Researchers compared the numbers of institutionally affiliated faculty members appearing in the ASNs to those appearing in their institutional repositories. They also looked at how these numbers compared to overall faculty numbers. RESULTS Faculty were much more likely to have deposited their work in an ASN than in the IR. However, the number of researchers who deposited in both the IR and at least one ASN exceeded that of those who deposited their research solely in an ASN. Unexpected findings occurred as well, such as numerous false or unverified accounts claiming affiliation with the institution. ResearchGate was found to be the favored ASN at this particular institution. DISCUSSION The results of this study confirm earlier studies' findings indicating that those researchers who are willing to make their research open access are more disposed to do so over multiple channels, showing that those who already self-archive elsewhere are prime targets for inclusion in the IR. CONCLUSION Rather than seeing ASNs as a threat to IRs, they may be seen as a potential site of identifying likely contributors to the IR.

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"Jisc and Springer Nature Renew Transformational Deal Securing Open Access for UK Higher Education"

Springer Nature has released "Jisc and Springer Nature Renew Transformational Deal Securing Open Access for UK Higher Education ."

Here's an excerpt:

Jisc and academic publisher Springer Nature have agreed a further 'read and publish' agreement that meets the aims of Plan S and offers researchers a funder compliant route to publishing in hybrid journals. Plan S requires that, from 2020, scientific publications funded by public grants must be published in Open Access journals or platforms.

Building on a previous arrangement, this transformational agreement limits the costs of publishing all UK articles open access (OA) while maintaining access to all of Springer's subscription articles. The deal converts the previous subscription agreement to one based on OA.

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"Using AI to Solve Business Problems in Scholarly Publishing"

Michael Upshall has published "Using AI to Solve Business Problems in Scholarly Publishing" in Insights.

Here's an excerpt:

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are widely used today in many areas, and are now being introduced into scholarly publishing. This article provides a brief overview of present-day AI and machine learning as used for text-based resources such as journal articles and book chapters, and provides an example of its application to identify suitable peer reviewers for manuscript submissions. It describes how one company, UNSILO, has created a tool for this purpose, and the underlying technology used to deliver it. The article also offers a glimpse into a future where AI will profoundly change the way that academic publishing will work.

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