Category: Open Access

"Open Access Policies of Leading Medical Journals: A Cross-Sectional Study"

Tim S. Ellison et al. have published "Open Access Policies of Leading Medical Journals: A Cross-Sectional Study" in BMJ Open (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Here's an excerpt:

Objectives Academical and not-for-profit research funders are increasingly requiring that the research they fund must be published open access, with some insisting on publishing with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to allow the broadest possible use. We aimed to clarify the open access variants provided by leading medical journals and record the availability of the CC BY licence for commercially funded research.

Methods We identified medical journals with a 2015 impact factor of =15.0 on 24 May 2017, then excluded from the analysis journals that only publish review articles. Between 29 June 2017 and 26 July 2017, we collected information about each journal's open access policies from their websites and/or by email contact. We contacted the journals by email again between 6 December 2017 and 2 January 2018 to confirm our findings.

Results Thirty-five medical journals publishing original research from 13 publishers were included in the analysis. All 35 journals offered some form of open access allowing articles to be free-to-read, either immediately on publication or after a delay of up to 12 months. Of these journals, 21 (60%) provided immediate open access with a CC BY licence under certain circumstances (eg, to specific research funders). Of these 21, 20 only offered a CC BY licence to authors funded by non-commercial organisations and one offered this option to any funder who required it.

Conclusions Most leading medical journals do not offer to authors reporting commercially funded research an open access licence that allows unrestricted sharing and adaptation of the published material. The journals' policies are therefore not aligned with open access declarations and guidelines. Commercial research funders lag behind academical funders in the development of mandatory open access policies, and it is time for them to work with publishers to advance the dissemination of the research they fund.

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"The Majority of Authors Agree That All Future Scholarly Books Should Be OA": The Future of Open Access Books: Findings from a Global Survey of Academic Book Authors

Springer Nature has released The Future of Open Access Books: Findings from a Global Survey of Academic Book Authors .

Here's an excerpt:

A global Springer Nature survey of more than 2,500 academic book authors provides in-depth insights into attitudes towards open access.

The survey looks at researchers' motivations for publishing a book, and analyses the parameters and key drivers which influence academics to publish OA or not. The white paper also identifies the major obstacles to OA publication which book authors still face: from a lack of awareness of OA publishing options and low funding, to concerns about how OA books are perceived.

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"Assessing the Size of the Affordability Problem in Scholarly Publishing"

Alexander Grossmann and Björn Brembs have self-archived "Assessing the Size of the Affordability Problem in Scholarly Publishing."

Here's an excerpt:

For many decades, the hyperinflation of subscription prices for scholarly journals have concerned scholarly institutions. After years of fruitless efforts to solve this "serials crisis", open access has been proposed as the latest potential solution. However, also the prices for open access publishing are high and are rising well beyond inflation. What has been missing from the public discussion so far is a quantitative approach to determine the actual costs of efficiently publishing a scholarly article using state-of-the-art technologies, such that informed decisions can be made as to appropriate price levels. Here we provide a granular, step-by-step calculation of the costs associated with publishing primary research articles, from submission, through peer-review, to publication, indexing and archiving. We find that these costs range from less than US$200 per article in modern, large scale publishing platforms using post-publication peer-review, to about US$1,000 per article in prestigious journals with rejection rates exceeding 90%. The publication costs for a representative scholarly article today come to lie at around US$400. We discuss the additional non-publication items that make up the difference between publication costs and final price.

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UK Open Textbooks Report 2019

The UK Open Textbook Project has released the UK Open Textbooks Report 2019.

Here's an excerpt:

The UK Open Textbooks project was conducted in several stages over the period of March 2017 to May 2019. The project tested two highly successful approaches to increasing engagement with, and use of, open textbooks. . . .

In the report we conclude that the awareness of OER and open textbooks is typically very low in the UK HE sector. However, awareness of open access publications is high, supported by the Finch Report and REF policy on open access deposition. Although existing knowledge of open textbooks was low, once educators were made aware of them, they expressed significant interest in their adoption. This provides an existing conceptual model and set of practices on which to build.

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"Springer Nature Journals Unify Their Policy to Encourage Preprint Sharing"

Springer Nature has released "Springer Nature Journals Unify Their Policy to Encourage Preprint Sharing."

Here's an excerpt:

Recognizing these benefits, we are now pleased to announce an updated policy encouraging preprint sharing for Springer Nature journals. This intends to remove ambiguity on two important points. First, we now make it clear that authors may choose any licence for preprints, including Creative Commons licences. . . .

Second, the updated policy provides more information about our position on author engagement with the media in response to enquiries about preprints. . . .Finally, we stand by our policy supporting citation of preprints in reference lists of submitted and published manuscripts.

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