Open Access – DigitalKoans

"Now You Have to Pay! A Deeper Look At Publishing Practices of Predatory Journals"

In this study, by using Beall’s (Scholarly open-access, 2014; Beall’s list of predatory journals and publishers, 2018) predatory journal lists as well as direct e-mail solicitations from journals, we intentionally submitted a poorly written manuscript to 58 open-access journals using counterfeit names and affiliations. . . . Regarding "positive responses," we point to five common flaws associated with such journals, namely that (1) they lack any interest in the researchers who are submitting manuscripts; (2) they do not judge academic writing in accordance with expected conventions; (3) they appear to be indifferent to scholarship including research design, plagiarism issues, and citation quality; (4) their review process is opaque and overly hasty, and (5) the tone they use in correspondence e-mail messages is highly inappropriate. Based upon the investigation, it is clear that such journals’ primary aim is in securing the article processing fee.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1583

"The Quantification of Open Scholarship — A Mapping Review"

This mapping review addresses scientometric indicators that quantify open scholarship. The goal is to determine what open scholarship metrics are currently being applied and which are discussed, e.g. in policy papers. The paper contributes to a better understanding on how open scholarship is quantitatively recorded in research assessment and where gaps can be identified. The review is based on a search in four databases, each with 22 queries. Out of 3385 hits, we coded 248 documents chosen according to the research questions. The review discusses the open scholarship metrics of the documents as well as the topics addressed in the publications, the disciplines the publications come from and the journals they were published. The results indicate that research and teaching practices are unequally represented regarding open scholarship metrics. Open research material is a central and exhausted topic in publications. Open teaching practices, on the other hand, play a role in the discussion and strategy papers of the review, but open teaching material is not recorded using concrete scientometric indicators. Here, we see a research gap and discuss potentials for further research and investigation.

https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00266

Ebook from SciELO: We So Loved Open Access

In this book, the origins and evolution of the open access movement are explored from the perspective of individuals who actively participated. These pioneers of open access shared their experiences, successes, collaborations, and visions for the future on the occasion of SciELO’s 25th anniversary. The book pays tribute to their pioneering efforts and the crucial role played by SciELO in supporting open access and spotlighting regions of the world that were previously underrepresented in global academic communication. This celebration demonstrates how SciELO firmly placed these regions on the map of global academic communication and contributed to strengthening the open access movement throughout its successful journey.

https://tinyurl.com/4v2f9dzk

"Supporting Open Access for 20 Years: Five Issues That Have Slowed the Transition to Full and Immediate OA"

Current estimates suggest that more than 50% of the world’s research articles are published open access and that there are around 20,000 fully OA journals. Data also indicates that publishing OA is, on average, cheaper than publishing in subscription journals. For example, an analysis by Delta Think shows that around 45% of all scholarly articles were published as paid-for open access in 2021, but this accounted for just under 15% of the total journal publishing revenue.

However, after two decades of discussions, advocacy, policy development and strategy, can this level of OA be considered a success, particularly when half of all research articles published today is hidden behind a paywall? I think not.

https://tinyurl.com/2s396wh7

"ACME-FAIR: a Guide for Research Performing Organisations (RPO)"

The overall purpose of ACME-FAIR is to help those managing and delivering relevant professional services to self-assess how they are enabling researchers and their colleagues to do just that. Each part deals with one of the key issues that Research Performing Organisations (RPO) face in establishing the capabilities to put the FAIR principles into practice. . . . Each of the 7 guides has a thematic introduction, an overview of the relevant capabilities, and a rubric for assessing the levels of maturity and community engagement for each capability.

https://tinyurl.com/yckfdjtd

"How Does Mandated Code-Sharing Change Peer Review?"

At the end of the year-long trial period, code sharing had risen from 53% in 2019 to 87% for 2021 articles submitted after the policy went into effect. Evidence in hand, the journal Editors-in-Chief decided to make code sharing a permanent feature of the journal. Today, the sharing rate is 96%.

https://tinyurl.com/5n9yh9yj

"Umbrella Data Management Plans to Integrate FAIR Data: Lessons From the ISIDORe and BY-COVID Consortia for Pandemic Preparedness"

The Horizon Europe project ISIDORe is dedicated to pandemic preparedness and responsiveness research. It brings together 17 research infrastructures (RIs) and networks to provide a broad range of services to infectious disease researchers. An efficient and structured treatment of data is central to ISIDORe’s aim to furnish seamless access to its multidisciplinary catalogue of services, and to ensure that users’ results are treated FAIRly. ISIDORe therefore requires a data management plan (DMP) covering both access management and research outputs, applicable over a broad range of disciplines, and compatible with the constraints and existing practices of its diverse partners.

Here, we describe how, to achieve that aim, we undertook an iterative, step-by-step, process to build a community-approved living document, identifying good practices and processes, on the basis of use cases, presented as proof of concepts. International fora such as the RDA and EOSC, and primarily the BY-COVID project, furnished registries, tools and online data platforms, as well as standards, and the support of data scientists. Together, these elements provide a path for building an umbrella, FAIR-compliant DMP, aligned as fully as possible with FAIR principles, which could also be applied as a framework for data management harmonisation in other large-scale, challenge-driven projects. Finally, we discuss how data management and reuse can be further improved through the use of knowledge models when writing DMPs and, how, in the future, an inter-RI network of data stewards could contribute to the establishment of a community of practice, to be integrated subsequently into planned trans-RI competence centres.

https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2023-035

"The Impact of Open Access Mandates on Scientific Research and Technological Development in the U.S."

Scientific articles subject to the mandate were utilized on average 42% more in patents
Articles subject to the mandate were not cited more frequently by other academic papers
Small firms were the primary beneficiaries of the increased knowledge diffusion
Scientific articles subject to the mandate were utilized on average 42% more in patents
Articles subject to the mandate were not cited more frequently by other academic papers
Small firms were the primary beneficiaries of the increased knowledge diffusion

https://tinyurl.com/bdekuf2j

Knowledge Exchange Report: "Alternative Publishing Platforms. What Have We Learnt?"

From our sample, no pattern emerged of any discipline appearing to be more innovative than any others, and indeed most alternative platforms seemed to be open to use by all fields.

Most platforms within this survey were replacing the function of existing publishers in publishing research articles, books and conference proceedings. There was some innovation around peer review. Considering both of these aspects, only a small group of fewer than 10 of the 45 platforms should probably be described as truly exploring "alternative ways" of doing things.

Only 11 of the platforms said that they solely concentrated on the methodological quality of the work, 2 solely on the impact of the work. Most said it was up to the editors to decide on criteria for assessment — the platforms themselves were agnostic. This is an area where further work might help elucidate the philosophies of different platforms when it comes to research assessment.

https://tinyurl.com/59eknvy6

"Penn State Leads Big Ten Academic Alliance Project on Open Homework Systems"

"Open Homework Systems: Planning and Piloting Library Support" involves a project team of librarians and staff from three Big Ten universities — Penn State, the University of Minnesota and Northwestern University — and consists of three phases over a two-year period. The first phase encompasses an environmental scan of homework systems used by member institutions as well as an investigation of possible homework systems available. Next, the core project team will identify three or four instructors at each institution to evaluate both OER and a homework system appropriate for their courses. Both instructors and their students will provide feedback through interviews, discussions, surveys, focus groups and other mechanisms.

https://tinyurl.com/3ds2y3m8

"Promoting Open Access in Research-Performing Organizations: Spheres of Activity, Challenges, and Future Action Areas "

Open access (OA) has become a critical issue in science policy and affects a wide range of activities in universities and research labs. Research-performing organizations (RPOs), defined as publicly funded universities and research institutions, face significant challenges in shaping the OA transformation. This article examines the spheres of activity available to RPOs for shaping the OA transformation, using a categorization of 22 spheres of activity related to OA. These spheres of activity include strategy and communication, services and infrastructures, business relationships with publishers, and collaborations. Current challenges and future action areas in promoting OA are also described, providing support for RPOs in handling OA and highlighting key issues. The categorization can serve as a tool for systematically assessing OA activities at RPOs and shows that OA is a cross-cutting issue in these organizations. Collaboration on OA activities, both within and beyond organizations, presents a challenge. To effectively promote OA, it is crucial to strengthen the interaction between funding agencies and RPOs. Libraries are critical stakeholders, playing a vital role in advancing OA at the local, national, and international levels in partnership with RPO management and other partners in faculty, administration, and information technology.

https://tinyurl.com/s3xepnhh

"Collaborating to Support the Use and Development of Open Educational Resources: A White Rose Libraries Research Project"

Interest in open educational resources (OER) has grown recently due to many external factors, including the restrictive, unsustainable and expensive business models for teaching materials that are being used by some publishers. In February 2021, the libraries of the UK White Rose University Consortium (White Rose Libraries) initiated a research project to explore the potential of OER and to create guidance in the form of an OER toolkit that could be used across all three institutions, and more widely. The project also aimed to seek improvements in the discovery of OER in the Ex Libris Primo discovery service which is used by all three libraries. This article outlines the methodology used to ascertain the needs of the libraries’ user groups to inform the development of the toolkit. A survey of academic staff across all three institutions was conducted, followed by user experience interviews. The survey findings established that more than half of respondents knew little or nothing about OER, and over half also said that they would be likely or extremely likely to consider using or adapting OER, clearly demonstrating the need for more awareness raising and guidance. The survey interview findings were then used to develop and refine the toolkit.

https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.622

Ithaka S+R: Print Revenue and Open Access Monographs: A University Press Study

Key Insights

OA titles can generate significant print revenue. While there may be some tradeoff between OA editions and print sales, publishers can produce print sales revenue from their OA lists. Publishers may wish to take such revenue into account in considering business models for OA publication today.

OA titles can generate meaningful digital revenue. When made available through consumer channels such as Kindle, ebooks that are available openly on other platforms can in parallel generate meaningful consumer sales. Publishers may benefit from giving focused consideration specific to OA monographs to their pricing and windowing tactics for such channels.

Outliers are essential. A small number of OA titles sell particularly well, just as is historically the case in traditional monograph sales models. Publishers bearing this in mind will be thinking in terms of the sustainability and growth of their lists overall rather than each title individually.

Titles with both hard and soft cover formats generate the most revenue. This may be the result of format choices publishers based on market forecasting, so from our data we cannot be sure that there is a causal relationship. Still, publishers may wish to give additional attention to their format strategy for OA books.

Sales vary widely by field. History, arts, and humanities saw lower unit sales while social sciences saw higher unit sales and STEM fields saw the greatest. Publishers may need to pursue different sustainability models for OA books based on their field.

An opportunity to increase print sales? There is currently significant friction for users in navigating from digital to print editions. Publishers and digital distribution platforms should work together to create a more seamless reader experience from digital discoverability of and engagement with the OA version to potential print sales.

https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.319642

"Guest Post — Reputation and Publication Volume at MDPI and Frontiers"

Until recently, MDPI and Frontiers were known for their meteoric rise. At one point, powered by the Guest Editor model, the two publishers combined for about 500,000 papers (annualized), which translated into nearly USD $1,000,000,000 annual revenue. Their growth was extraordinary, but so has been their contraction. MDPI has declined by 27% and Frontiers by 36% in comparison to their peak.

https://tinyurl.com/ysn26san

"ACS, Elsevier, and Researchgate Resolve Litigation, with Solution to Support Researchers"

ACS and Elsevier, members of the Coalition for Responsible Sharing, have agreed to a legal settlement with ResearchGate that ensures copyright-compliant sharing of research articles published with ACS or Elsevier on the ResearchGate site. The lawsuits pending against ResearchGate in Germany and the United States are now resolved. The specific terms of the parties’ settlement are confidential.

Background: "Munich Court Ruling Sides with Elsevier, ACS over ResearchGate."

https://tinyurl.com/mrr9xywj

"Understanding Barriers Affecting the Adoption and Usage of Open Access Data in the Context of Organizations"

Although the benefits of organizational adoption are significant, most OAD-related projects fail because of organizational barriers and resistance to adoption. This study first aims to find these organizational barriers to adopting OAD to raise awareness of the obstacles organizations must overcome. Towards this aim, after conducting a systematic literature review (SLR) and an expert panel, a research model based on the Technology – Organization – Environment (TOE) framework is proposed in this study. As a result of SLR, 97 barriers were identified from ten primary studies. After critically examining these barriers, a research model classifying 22 crucial barriers to organizational OAD adoption based on the TOE framework is proposed.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dim.2023.100049

Paywall: "Images as Metadata: A New Perspective for Describing Research Data"

Abstract Through studies and work developed over the last few years, we propose a new approach to description, where images can have a preponderant role in the description of data, assuming the role of metadata. We present several pieces of evidence, point out their challenges and determine the opportunities this new perspective can have in the research. Images have specific characteristics that can be leveraged in improving data description. Historical evidence establish that images have always been used and produced in research, yet their representational ability has never been harnessed to describe data and give more context to the scientific process.

https://doi.org/10.1080/19386389.2023.2252722

"Tracing Data: A Survey Investigating Disciplinary Differences in Data Citation"

Data citations, or citations in reference lists to data, are increasingly seen as an important means to trace data reuse and incentivize data sharing. Although disciplinary differences in data citation practices have been well documented via scientometric approaches, we do not yet know how representative these practices are within disciplines. Nor do we yet have insight into researchers’ motivations for citing — or not citing — data in their academic work. Here, we present the results of the largest known survey (n = 2,492) to explicitly investigate data citation practices, preferences, and motivations, using a representative sample of academic authors by discipline, as represented in the Web of Science (WoS). We present findings about researchers’ current practices and motivations for reusing and citing data and also examine their preferences for how they would like their own data to be cited. We conclude by discussing disciplinary patterns in two broad clusters, focusing on patterns in the social sciences and humanities, and consider the implications of our results for tracing and rewarding data sharing and reuse.

https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00264

"USC Press and University Libraries Launch Open-Access Publishing Platform"

The University of South Carolina Press and University Libraries are embarking on a new collaborative venture: Open Carolina, an open-access publishing platform. . . .

Many ventures into open scholarly resources are planned as temporary pilot operations because they are funded by time-limited grant pools. Thanks to consistent funding from the Libraries, Open Carolina has a sustainable model that will allow scholars with limited publishing funds to share their research via the platform, partially or totally foregoing associated fees. In its inaugural year, the Libraries aim to fund four full-length books and support is in place to make the program sustainable for years to come and allow Open Carolina to grow steadily.

Open Carolina will offer opportunities to a wide range of scholars and researchers regardless of university affiliation.

https://tinyurl.com/yn7zd3ta

"Expanding the Data Ark: An Attempt to Make the Data from Highly Cited Social Science Papers Publicly Available"

Access to scientific data can enable independent reuse and verification; however, most data are not available and become increasingly irrecoverable over time. This study aimed to retrieve and preserve important datasets from 160 of the most highly-cited social science articles published between 2008-2013 and 2015-2018. We asked authors if they would share data in a public repository — the Data Ark — or provide reasons if data could not be shared. Of the 160 articles, data for 117 (73%, 95% CI [67% – 80%]) were not available and data for 7 (4%, 95% CI [0% – 12%]) were available with restrictions. Data for 36 (22%, 95% CI [16% – 30%]) articles were available in unrestricted form: 29 of these datasets were already available and 7 datasets were made available in the Data Ark. Most authors did not respond to our data requests and a minority shared reasons for not sharing, such as legal or ethical constraints. These findings highlight an unresolved need to preserve important scientific datasets and increase their accessibility to the scientific community.

https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/w9crz

"Never Mind Predatory Publishers… What about "Grey" Publishers?"

The Harbingers project, which studied the working lives and scholarly communication behaviour of early career researchers (ECRs) over 6 years, found evidence of changing attitudes to questionable (grey) publishing. Thus, whilst predatory publishers have come to be treated with equanimity, as a problem easily dealt with, there was growing concern with the high volume of low-grade research being generated, some of which by "grey" open access publishers for want of a better name (questionable and non-standard have also been used). With the recent announcement (2023) that the government of Malaysia (a Harbinger case country) is not providing Article Processing Charges (APCs) for articles published by MDPI, Frontiers and Hindawi on quality and cost grounds, we set out to see what lay behind this decision and whether other countries exhibited similar concerns. Information was obtained by asking Harbinger country leads, mostly embedded in research universities, from Australia, China, France, Israel, Malaysia, Poland, Spain, UK, and the US to conduct desk research to establish what is happening. It was found that countries, like ECRs, appear to have formed into two different camps, with China, Poland, France, and Spain joining Malaysia in the camp of those who felt concerned about these publishers and the UK, US, Israel, and Australia belonging to the camp of the unconcerned. Explanations for the split are furnished and whether the Malaysian position will prevail elsewhere is considered. Finally, in this paper, we have aired issues/concerns, rather than provided robust, systematic data. For a systematic study we shall have to wait for the fuller study we are hoping to conduct.

https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2023.sep.09

"Transforming Scholarly Communications: The Part Played by the Pandemic and the Contribution of Early Career Researchers"

Investigates whether junior researchers believe that the scholarly communication system is changing in a significant way, whether they have contributed to the changes they envisaged, whether the pandemic has fast-forwarded change and what they thought a transformed system might look like. The data are drawn from the Harbingers-2 project, which investigated the impact of the pandemic on the scholarly communications attitudes and behaviours of early career researchers (ECRs). . . . A majority of ECRs thought that there had been significant changes in the scholarly system, and a large minority thought that the pandemic was responsible. Most of them wanted a system that was more open in terms of open access and open data, with a third taking personal action to bring about change.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1576

"The State of Scientific PDF Accessibility in Repositories: A Survey in Switzerland"

This survey analyzes the quality of the portable document format (PDF) documents in online repositories in Switzerland, examining their accessibility for people with visual impairments. Two minimal accessibility features were analysed: the PDFs had to have tags and a hierarchical heading structure. The survey also includes interviews with the managers or heads of multiple Swiss universities’ repositories . . . An analysis of interviewee responses indicates an overall lack of awareness of PDF accessibility, and shows that online repositories currently have no concrete plans to address the issue. This paper concludes by presenting a set of recommendations for online repositories to improve the accessibility of their PDF documents.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1581

"PreprintResolver: Improving Citation Quality by Resolving Published Versions of ArXiv Preprints using Literature Databases"

The growing impact of preprint servers enables the rapid sharing of time-sensitive research. Likewise, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish high-quality, peer-reviewed research from preprints. Although preprints are often later published in peer-reviewed journals, this information is often missing from preprint servers. To overcome this problem, the PreprintResolver was developed, which uses four literature databases (DBLP, SemanticScholar, OpenAlex, and CrossRef / CrossCite) to identify preprint-publication pairs for the arXiv preprint server. . . . Experiments were performed on a sample of 1,000 arXiv-preprints from the research field of computer science and without any publication information. . . . The results show that the PreprintResolver was able to resolve 603 out of 1,000 (60.3 %) arXiv-preprints from the research field of computer science and without any publication information. . . . In conclusion the PreprintResolver is suitable for individual, manually reviewed requests, but less suitable for bulk requests. The PreprintResolver tool (this https URL, Available from 2023-08-01) and source code (this https URL, Accessed: 2023-07-19) is available online.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.01373

"Survey of Open Science Practices and Attitudes in the Social Sciences"

Since September of 2019, a task group within the European Open Science Cloud – EOSC Nordic Project, work-package 5 (T5.3.2), has focused its attention on machine-actionable Data Management Plans (maDMPs). A delivery working-paper from the group (Hasan et al. 2021) concluded in summary that extracting useful information from traditional free-text based DMPs is problematic. While maDMPs are generally more FAIR compliant, and as such accessible to both humans and machines, more interoperable with other systems, and serving different stakeholders for processing, sharing, evaluation and reuse. Different DMP tools and templates have developed independently, to a varying degree, allowing for the creation of genuinely machine actionable DMPs. Here we will describe the first three tools or projects for creating maDMPs that were central parts of the original task group mission. We will get into a more detailed account of one of these, specifically the Stockholm University — EOSC Nordic maDMP project using the DMP Online tool, as described by Philipson (2021). We will also briefly touch upon some other current tools and projects for creating maDMPs that are compliant with the RDA DMP Common Standard (RDCS), aiming for integration with other research information systems or research data repositories. A possible conclusion from this overview is that the development of tools for maDMPs is progressing fast and seems to converge towards a common standard. Nonetheless, there remains an immense amount of work to get there.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41111-1