Category: Open Access

"Guest Post — Scholarly Publishing as a Global Endeavor: Leveraging Open Source Software for Bibliodiversity "


The headline numbers for OJS [Open Journal Systems] in 2021 indicate that 1.46m articles were published by 34,071 active journals on approximately 12,000 publisher and institutional installations. To give context to these numbers, Elsevier’s portfolio published ~600,000 articles in ~2,700 journals in the same year. These past few years have seen a significant acceleration in the proliferation of the number of journals and the number of articles published on open source software.

bit.ly/3XAvduC

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Rethinking Data and Rebalancing Digital Power


This report highlights and contextualises four cross-cutting interventions with a strong potential to reshape the digital ecosystem:

  • Transforming infrastructure into open and interoperable ecosystems.
  • Reclaiming control of data from dominant companies.
  • Rebalancing the centres of power with new (non-commercial) institutions.
  • Ensuring public participation as an essential component of technology policymaking.

http://bit.ly/40WNbKA

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"The Role of Open Data in Digital Society: The Analysis of Scientific Trending Topics through a Bibliometric Approach"


The analysis of contemporary society, characterized by technological, economic, political, social, and cultural changes, has become more challenging due to the development of the internet and information and communication technologies, which provide a vast and increasingly valuable source of information, knowledge, and data. Within this context, so-called open data—that is, data that are made public, especially by public administrations, through an open governance model (transparent and accessible to citizens) are assuming a significant role. This is a topic of growing importance that scientific research is addressing in an attempt to discern the multiplicity of social, educational, legal, technological, statistical, and methodological issues that underlie the creation and use of such data. This article aims to provide insights into understanding scientific trends on the topic of open data through a bibliometric approach. Specifically, a total of 3,110 publications related to the disciplinary fields of the social sciences and humanities published from 2013 to 2022 were collected. The data was then analyzed using network and factorial analysis techniques to detect the conceptual structure to identify the trends of topics and perspectives of research that characterize open data studies.

bit.ly/40Xgahi

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"Wiley Extends Open Access Agreement with Big Ten Academic Alliance "


Wiley, one of the world’s largest publishers and a global leader in research and education, today announced a three-year extension of its landmark open publishing agreement with the libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, which serve universities across the midwestern and eastern United States.

This landmark agreement is "all open access," with no fees to Big Ten Academic Alliance faculty and researchers for publishing in all journals under the Wiley umbrella, including Hindawi’s gold open access portfolio. The agreement, active as of January 1, 2023, grants 14 participating flagship universities and 17 affiliated campuses access to read and publish in Wiley’s full portfolio of journals. Lead authors at all campuses covered by the agreement can publish their articles as open access, ensuring that their research will be immediately open and available to the public and that they will retain rights in their own work.

bit.ly/3Eaov7G

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"Data Archive for the BRAIN Initiative (DABI)"


Data sharing is becoming ubiquitous and can be advantageous for most biomedical research. However, some data are inherently more amenable to sharing than others. For example, human intracranial neurophysiology recordings and associated multimodal data have unique features that warrant special considerations. The associated data are heterogeneous, difficult to compare, highly specific, and collected from small cohorts with treatment resistant conditions, posing additional complications when attempting to perform generalizable analyses across projects. We present the Data Archive for the BRAIN Initiative (DABI) and describe features of the platform that are designed to overcome these and other challenges. DABI is a data repository and portal for BRAIN Initiative projects that collect human and animal intracranial recordings, and it allows users to search, visualize, and analyze multimodal data from these projects. The data providers maintain full control of data sharing privileges and can organize and manage their data with a user-friendly and intuitive interface. We discuss data privacy and security concerns, example analyses from two DABI datasets, and future goals for DABI.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-01972-z

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Paywall: Open Educational Resources in Higher Education A Global Perspective


This book engages with intersections between open educational resources, social justice and equality, as well as policy in terms of open educational resources. Numerous examples of open praxis are also included, ranging from open educational resources courses to the affordances of artificial intelligence, data-driven learning, and open textbooks in this context. Furthermore, chapters range from providing a broad overview of open educational resources international and regional initiatives in Africa, to cases of work done in the United States, New Zealand, Israel, and Hong Kong.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8590-4

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"Digging into shift+OPEN: A Conversation with MIT Press"


Supported by a gift from the Arcadia Fund, shift+OPEN will provide a platform for subscription journals that wish to move to a diamond (i.e., institutionally subsidized, with no reader or author fees) open-access (OA) publishing model. . . . [Nick Lindsay] We have enough support to underwrite a modest-sized journal that is publishing on a quarterly basis and has a traditional set up. There’s a range of possibilities that we can consider inside those parameters and we plan to examine the operations of the selected journal very closely to make sure that it can reasonably fit within our financial constraints.

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"Open Access: A Journey from Impossible to Probable, but Still Uncertain"


An overview of the evolution of open access (OA) to scientific publications over the last 20 years is presented. This retrospective look allows us to make two observations that seem to overlap: on the one hand, how close the initial objective seems to be to what initially seemed utopian and, on the other, the unanticipated and solid obstacles that open access has encountered along the way, as well as the unexpected and diverse solutions that are emerging to overcome them. The overall assessment of OA is positive, and it underscores that open access is (or is becoming) possible, that it is good, and that it is necessary. However, this overall positive evolution has come up against two major obstacles that are slowing its progress: the double payments generated by hybrid journals (subscription and article processing charges [APCs]) and the unchecked growth in APCs. In addition, this intensive use of APCs is creating a publishing gap between publishers that charge fees to authors and those that do not, and ultimately, it is causing dissension regarding the (previously shared) strategy toward open access. There are no immediate, one-off solutions to overcome the aforementioned dysfunctions, although three actions that, in the medium term, can remedy them can be mentioned: changing the approach to the evaluation of science, adopting measures to regulate APCs, and promoting alternative publication models. Finally, it should be noted that OA has acted as the vanguard and spearhead of a broader movement: that of open science.

https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2023.ene.13

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"Are Papers Published in Predatory Journals Worthless? A Geopolitical Dimension Revealed by Content-Based Analysis of Citations"


This study uses content-based citation analysis to move beyond the simplified classification of predatory journals. We present that, when we analyze papers not only in terms of the quantity of their citations but also the content of these citations, we are able to show the various roles played by papers published in journals accused of being predatory. To accomplish this, we analyzed the content of 9,995 citances (i.e., citation sentences) from 6,706 papers indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection, which cites papers published in so-called "predatory" (or questionable) journals. The analysis revealed that the vast majority of such citances are neutral (97.3%), and negative citations of articles published in the analyzed journals are almost completely nonexistent (0.8%). Moreover, the analysis revealed that the most frequently mentioned countries in the citances are India, Pakistan, and Iran, with mentions of Western countries being rare. This highlights a geopolitical bias and shows the usefulness of looking at such journals as mislocated centers of scholarly communication. The analyzed journals provide regional data prevalent for mainstream scholarly discussions, and the idea of predatory publishing hides geopolitical inequalities in global scholarly publishing. Our findings also contribute to the further development of content-based citation analysis.

https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00242

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"Data Sharing and Reuse Practices: Disciplinary Differences and Improvements Needed"


This study investigates differences and commonalities in data production, sharing and reuse across the widest range of disciplines yet and identifies types of improvements needed to promote data sharing and reuse. . . .From the 3,257 survey responses, data sharing and reuse are still increasing but not ubiquitous in any subject area and are more common among experienced researchers.

https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-08-2021-0423

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"Analysis of U.S. Federal Funding Agency Data Sharing Policies: 2020 Highlights and Key Observations "


Federal funding agencies in the United States (U.S.) continue to work towards implementing their plans to increase public access to funded research and comply with the 2013 Office of Science and Technology memo Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research. In this article we report on an analysis of research data sharing policy documents from 17 U.S. federal funding agencies as of February 2021. Our analysis is guided by two questions: 1.) What do the findings suggest about the current state of and trends in U.S. federal funding agency data sharing requirements? 2.) In what ways are universities, institutions, associations, and researchers affected by and responding to these policies? Over the past five years, policy updates were common among these agencies and several themes have been thoroughly developed in that time; however, uncertainty remains around how funded researchers are expected to satisfy these policy requirements.

http://www.ijdc.net/article/view/791

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Clarivate: "The Preprint Citation Index: Linking Preprints to the Trusted Web of Science Ecosystem"


After many months of planning, we are launching the Preprint Citation Index, a multidisciplinary collection of preprints from leading repositories that helps researchers stay current with the newest research while maintaining confidence in the resources they rely on. . . . The Preprint Citation Index currently provides nearly two million preprints from arXiv, bioRxiv, chemRxiv, medRxiv and Preprints.org. We plan to add preprints from a dozen additional repositories as well as display open peer reviews on Preprint Citation Index throughout 2023.

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Forthcoming: Discoverability in Digital Repositories: Systems, Perspectives, and User Studies


It examines discoverability in digital repositories from both user and system perspectives by exploring how users access content (including their search patterns and habits, need for digital content, effects of outreach, or integration with Wikipedia and other web-based tools) and how systems support or prevent discoverability through the structure or quality of metadata, system interfaces, exposure to search engines or lack thereof, and integration with library discovery tools.

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"Beyond Web of Science and Scopus There Is Already an Open Bibliodiverse World of Research — We Ignore It at Our Peril"


Discussing their analysis of a new dataset of journals published via the Open Journals Systems publishing platform, Saurabh Khanna, Jon Ball, Juan Pablo Alperin and John Willinsky argue that rather than being an aspiration an open, regional and bibliodiverse publishing ecosystem is already in existence.

bit.ly/3XlXK6J

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"Outside the Library: Early Career Researchers and Use of Alternative Information Sources in Pandemic Times"


Presents findings from a study into the attitudes and practices of pandemic-era early career researchers (ECRs) in regard to obtaining access to the formally published scholarly literature, which focused on alternative providers, notably ResearchGate and Sci-Hub. . . . Findings show that alternative providers, as represented by ResearchGate and Sci-Hub, have become established and appear to be gaining ground. However, there are considerable country- and discipline-associated differences.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1522

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"Cluster Analysis of Open Research Data: A Case for Replication Metadata"


Research data are often released upon journal publication to enable result verification and reproducibility. For that reason, research dissemination infrastructures typically support diverse datasets coming from numerous disciplines, from tabular data and program code to audio-visual files. Metadata, or data about data, is critical to making research outputs adequately documented and FAIR. Aiming to contribute to the discussions on the development of metadata for research outputs, I conducted an exploratory analysis to determine how research datasets cluster based on what researchers organically deposit together. I use the content of over 40,000 datasets from the Harvard Dataverse research data repository as my sample for the cluster analysis. I find that the majority of the clusters are formed by single-type datasets, while in the rest of the sample, no meaningful clusters can be identified. For the result interpretation, I use the metadata standard employed by DataCite, a leading organization for documenting a scholarly record, and map existing resource types to my results. About 65% of the sample can be described with a single-type metadata (such as Dataset, Software orReport), while the rest would require aggregate metadata types. Though DataCite supports an aggregate type such as a Collection, I argue that a significant number of datasets, in particular those containing both data and code files (about 20% of the sample), would be more accurately described as a Replication resource metadata type. Such resource type would be particularly useful in facilitating research reproducibility.

http://www.ijdc.net/article/view/833

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"Influence of Research on Open Science in the Public Policy Sphere"


This paper analyses the scientific activity related to open science in Spain and its influence on public policy from a bibliometric perspective. For this purpose, Spanish centres’ projects and publications on open science from 2010 to 2020 are studied. Subsequently, policy documents using papers related to open science are analysed to study their influence on policymaking. A total of 142 projects and 1491 publications are analysed, 15% of which are mentioned in policy documents.The publications cited in policy documents display high proportions of international collaboration, open access publication and publication in first-quartile journals. The findings underline governments’ leading role in the implementation of open science policies and the funding of open science research. The same government agencies that promote and fund open science research are shown to use that research in their institutional reports, a process known as knowledge flow feedback. Other non-academic actors are also observed to make use of the knowledge produced by open science research, showing how the open science movement has crossed the boundaries of academia.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04645-1

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"Long-Term Preservation and Reusability of Open Access Scholar-Led Press Monographs"


This brief report outlines some initial findings and challenges identified by the Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project when looking to archive and preserve open access books produced by small, scholar-led presses. This paper is based on the research conducted by Work Package 7 in COPIM, which has a focus on the preservation and archiving of open access monographs in all their complexity, along with any accompanying materials.

http://www.ijdc.net/article/view/826

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"Research Productivity Among Scholarly Communication Librarians"


Introduction: A growing number of academic libraries have specialized their support for scholarly communication by creating new positions or by expanding units with a focus on providing relevant services. This study was undertaken to explore the extent to which librarians with scholarly communication responsibilities produce research and scholarship, their motivations for doing so, the nature of that productivity, and the perceived impact of that activity on their professional responsibilities. Methods: The authors administered a survey of librarians who identified as having their primary job responsibilities in scholarly communication. Results: Almost all study participants produced their own scholarly work. However, a high percentage indicated that they received no relevant training in their library degree programs, and the majority experienced imposter syndrome pertaining to their own scholarship. Although most respondents were motivated to produce research by institutional expectations for promotion and tenure, greater percentages were driven by personal or professional interests. In addition, participants indicated a strong correlation between producing their own scholarship and their ability to effectively carry out their professional responsibilities. Discussion: There may be an emerging convention for scholarly communication librarianship, i.e., one that includes open education services. Findings suggest a need for scholarly communication training to be more prominent in library degree programs. They also point to the utility of making research production a job requirement, regardless of institutional expectations for professional advancement. Conclusion: The authors argue for adjustments in library education curricula and the inclusion of research production in the portfolios of scholarly communication librarians. Future research directions are proposed.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.15621

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"One Size Does Not Fit All: Self-Archiving Personas Based on Federally Funded Researchers at a Mid-Sized Private Institution"


Introduction: This mixed-method study analyzes the self-archiving behaviors and underlying motivations of researchers at an institution very recently recategorized by the Carnegie Classification system from "Doctoral– High Research Activity (R2)" to "Doctoral–Very High Research Activity (R1)." Methods: A quantitative analysis of data provided by CHORUS, a multi-institutional open access (OA) infrastructure project designed to minimize the administrative costs of complying with federal public access mandates, was followed by semi-structured qualitative interviews with researchers to determine the underlying motivations for self-archiving research papers resulting from federal grant support. Results: Fifty-one authors with federal research funding published 71 journal articles; 139 OA versions of these 71 articles were intentionally made available by researchers across nine types of platforms, including and in addition to those provided by publishers. Interviews with 11 investigators revealed motivators such as a dedication to public access to knowledge, learned behaviors in specific disciplines, and enlightened self-interest. Challenges included concern regarding confidentiality, confusion about intellectual property and funder requirements, administrative overhead, and integrity of the scholarly record. Discussion: Despite concerns and a lack of an OA mandate and other drivers more commonly present at larger, more research-intensive universities, several researchers interviewed actively engaged in self-archiving article versions, not always with clear motivations. These findings have implications for both scholarly communications and collection development services. Conclusion: These quantitative and qualitative data informed the creation of three distinct personas intended to help librarians at similar universities design services in a manner that aligns with investigator motivations.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.13886

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"From Knowledge Curator to Knowledge Creator: Academic Libraries and Open Access Textbook Publishing"


Introduction: Access to learning resources is not always affordable or equitable for students in higher education, and high-cost resources, which are commonly prescribed in course reading lists, create barriers for learning. Incorporating open access textbooks in reading lists responds to these issues. Academic librarians’ expertise in curating, organizing, and disseminating knowledge coupled with a long-held passion for open access means that they are well positioned to drive partnerships with academic colleagues that prioritize the use and creation of open educational resources resulting in resources that are accessible, high quality, flexible, and appropriate to support learning in all modes (online, blended, face-to-face). Description of program/service: At La Trobe University Library, a commitment to openness provided a starting point for rethinking the role of the library as a publisher of open educational resources. The La Trobe eBureau is an Australian academic library publishing initiative designed to produce high-quality, peer-reviewed open textbooks by La Trobe University authors for La Trobe University courses. Situating the library as an open textbook publisher in partnership with academics improves the affordability of course resources, the student online learning experience, and the visibility of academic outputs and, importantly, has impact and value across higher education institutions. Next steps: This article shares reflections and challenges from the perspective of eBureau authors and library staff. The Library will continue to build on the success of eBureau collaborations and look more broadly to enact the future role of academic libraries in sustainable open textbook publishing within La Trobe University and across the higher education sector.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.14074

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"Toward Equitable Open Research: Stakeholder Co-created Recommendations for Research Institutions, Funders and Researchers"


Open Research aims to make research more accessible, transparent, reproducible, shared and collaborative. Doing so is meant to democratize and diversify access to knowledge and knowledge production, and ensure that research is useful outside of academic contexts. Increasing equity is therefore a key aim of the Open Research movement, yet mounting evidence demonstrates that the practices of Open Research are implemented in ways that undermine this. In response, we convened a diverse community of researchers, research managers and funders to co-create actionable recommendations for supporting the equitable implementation of Open Research. Using a co-creative modified Delphi method, we generated consensus-driven recommendations that address three key problem areas: the resource-intensive nature of Open Research, the high cost of article processing charges, and obstructive reward and recognition practices at funders and research institutions that undermine the implementation of Open Research. In this paper, we provide an overview of these issues, a detailed description of the co-creative process, and present the recommendations and the debates that surrounded them. We discuss these recommendations in relation to other recently published ones and conclude that implementing ours requires ‘global thinking’ to ensure that a systemic and inclusive approach to change is taken.

https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.221460

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"Open Educational Resources through the European Lens: Pedagogical Opportunities and Copyright Constraints"


The article examines the potential and constraints of OERs from both a pedagogical and legal perspective. It demonstrates how this type of resources are fit for purpose to achieve diversity, knowledge co-creation, and students’ agency in the educational ecosystems. It also flags points of weakness of the EU copyright legal framework, such as the lack of harmonization of rules on co-authorship and adaptation, that need to be tackled to fully enable OER-enabled pedagogies across the Union.

https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4343475

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"The MIT Press Announces New Initiative to Flip Existing Subscription-Based Journals to a Diamond Open Access Publishing Model"


In keeping with its mission and longstanding commitment to increase access to scholarship, the MIT Press is pleased to announce shift+OPEN. This new initiative is designed to flip existing subscription-based journals to a diamond open access publishing model. Shift+OPEN is generously supported by the Arcadia Fund.

The MIT Press welcomes submissions for English-language journals in any field and from any part of the world. Intended for existing titles, shift+OPEN will cover the expenses of transitioning a journal to open access model for a three-year term, provide the Press’s full suite of publishing services, and support the development of a sustainable funding model for the future. The deadline for applications is March 31, 2023.

bit.ly/3JBN7cM

"A Free Toolkit to Foster Open Access Agreements"


In November 2021, with the support of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) and cOAlition S, four ‘task and finish’ working groups were established. The authors facilitated and supported these groups. Each group was responsible for producing tools that will enable library consortia and small independent publishers to negotiate transformative agreements, which is to say, agreements that will enable the publisher to fully transition to open access. The first task and finish group developed shared principles for transformative agreements. The second developed a data template to enable smaller independent publishers to reach agreements with library consortia and libraries, while the third developed example licence agreements. These groups recognized that the implementation of a transformative agreement crosses a complex ecosystem of technology, processes, policies, automated functions and manual functions that relate to contract management, article submission and peer review, content hosting and dissemination as well as financial management. For this reason, a fourth group produced a workflow framework that describes the process in all its phases. The members of these four groups were volunteers from stakeholder communities including libraries, library consortia, smaller independent publishers and intermediaries. This article explains why these tools are needed and the process behind their creation. The authors have combined these tools into a freely available toolkit, available under a CC BY licence.

http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.585

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