Category: Scholarly Journals

"Marketing via Email Solicitation by Predatory (and Legitimate) Journals: An Evaluation of Quality, Frequency and Relevance"

Warren Burggren et al. have published "Marketing via Email Solicitation by Predatory (and Legitimate) Journals: An Evaluation of Quality, Frequency and Relevance" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

INTRODUCTION Open access (OA) journals have proliferated in recent years. Many journals are highly reputable, delivering on the promise of open access to research as an alternative to traditional, subscription-based journals. Yet some OA journals border on, or clearly fall within, the realm of so-called "predatory journals." Most discussion of such journals has focused on the quality of articles published within them. Considerably less attention has been paid to the marketing practices of predatory journals—primarily their mass e-mailing—and to the impact that this practice may have on recipients' perception of OA journals as a whole. METHODS This study analyzed a subset of the 1,816 e-mails received by a single university biology faculty member during a 24-month period (2015 and 2016) with an update from December 2017 and January 2018. RESULTS Of those e-mails sent in 2015, approximately 37% were copies or near-copies of previous e-mail messages sent to the recipient, less than 25% of e-mails from predatory journals mentioned publication fees, only about 30% of soliciting journals were listed in DOAJ, and only about 4% had an identifiable impact factor. While most e-mails indicated a purported familiarity with, and respect for, the recipient, more than two thirds of the e-mails did not, implying use of mass-e-mailing methodologies. Almost 80% of the e-mail solicitations had grammar and/or spelling mistakes. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, only a staggeringly small 4% of e-mails were judged highly relevant to the recipient's area of expertise. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION In light of the marketing practices of many predatory journals, we advocate specific instructions for librarians, faculty mentors, and administrators of legitimate OA journals as they interact with new researchers, junior faculty, and other professionals learning how to discern the quality of journals that send direct e-mail solicitations.

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"Confused about Copyright? Assessing Researchers’ Comprehension of Copyright Transfer Agreements"

Alexandra Kohn and Jessica Lange have published "Confused about Copyright? Assessing Researchers' Comprehension of Copyright Transfer Agreements" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

INTRODUCTION Academic authors' confusion about copyright and publisher policy is often cited as a challenge to their effective sharing of their own published research, from having a chilling effect on selfarchiving in institutional and subject repositories, to leading to the posting of versions of articles on social networking sites in contravention of publisher policy and beyond. This study seeks to determine the extent to which authors understand the terms of these policies as expressed in publishers' copyright transfer agreements (CTAs), taking into account such factors as the authors' disciplines and publishing experience, as well as the wording and structure of these agreements. METHODS We distributed an online survey experiment to corresponding authors of academic research articles indexed in the Scopus database. Participants were randomly assigned to read one of two copyright transfer agreements and were subsequently asked to answer a series of questions about these agreements to determine their level of comprehension. The survey was sent to 3,154 participants, with 122 responding, representing a 4% response rate. Basic demographic information as well as information about participants' previous publishing experience was also collected. We analyzed the survey data using Ordinary Least Squared (OLS) regressions and probit regressions. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Participants demonstrated a low rate of understanding of the terms of the CTAs they were asked to read. Participants averaged a score of 33% on the survey, indicating a low comprehension level of author rights. This figure did not vary significantly, regardless of the respondents' discipline, time in academia, level of experience with publishing, or whether or not they had published previously with the publisher whose CTA they were administered. Results also indicated that participants did equally poorly on the survey regardless of which of the two CTAs they received. However, academic authors do appear to have a greater chance of understanding a CTA when a specific activity is explicitly outlined in the text of the agreement.

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"On the Value of Preprints: An Early Career Researcher Perspective"

Sarvenaz Sarabipour et al. have published "On the Value of Preprints: An Early Career Researcher Perspective" in PeerJ Preprints.

Here's an excerpt:

Peer-reviewed journal publication is the main means for academic researchers in the life sciences to create a permanent, public record of their work. These publications are also the de facto currency for career progress, with a strong link between journal brand recognition and perceived value. The current peer-review process can lead to long delays between submission and publication, with cycles of rejection, revision and resubmission causing redundant peer review. This situation creates unique challenges for early career researchers (ECRs), who rely heavily on timely publication of their work to gain recognition for their efforts. ECRs face changes in the academic landscape including the increased interdisciplinarity of life sciences research, expansion of the researcher population and consequent shifts in employer and funding demands. The publication of preprints, publicly available scientific manuscripts posted on dedicated preprint servers prior to journal managed peer-review, can play a key role in addressing these ECR challenges. Preprinting benefits include rapid dissemination of academic work, open access, establishing priority or concurrence, receiving feedback and facilitating collaborations. While there is a growing appreciation for and adoption of preprints, a minority of all articles in life sciences and medicine are preprinted. The current low rate of preprint submissions in life sciences and ECR concerns regarding preprinting needs to be addressed. We provide a perspective from an interdisciplinary group of early career researchers on the value of preprints and advocate the wide adoption of preprints to advance knowledge and facilitate career development.

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"Requirements for Transformative Open Access Agreements: Accelerating the Transition to Immediate and Worldwide Open Access"

Jisc has released "Requirements for Transformative Open Access Agreements: Accelerating the Transition to Immediate and Worldwide Open Access."

Here's an excerpt:

These requirements are for 2019 and are for hybrid journal agreements. The requirements may be updated to support changes in research funder policies. Jisc Collections will evaluate agreements against these requirements and make the results of the evaluation publicly available online. This evaluation will also make clear if an agreement is compliant with a research funders' policies and their implementation of Plan S.

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"Plan S and Researchers’ Rights: (Re)Framing Academic Freedom"

Marc Couture and Richard Poynder have published "Plan S and Researchers’ Rights: (Re)Framing Academic Freedom " in Open and Shut?.

Here's an excerpt:

Given the apparent disenchantment with Plan S amongst at least some in the research community, and given that researchers find themselves increasingly subjected to ever more demanding OA policies like it (in which new duties, new restrictions and limitations, and new responsibilities are imposed on them), it is surely time to look again at what academic freedom does and does not mean, and what it should and should not mean in today’s context, and try to redefine and/or refine it for today’s historical situation; or at least to, as Marc Couture puts it in his guest post below, seek to "reframe" it?

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