Open Access – Page 7 – DigitalKoans

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Ends APC Support and Requires Preprints

For over a decade, our foundation has championed transparency, access, and equity in scholarly publishing by working with publishers and journals to develop more open and accessible research publishing practices. But our quest for a truly equitable and inclusive scholarly publishing ecosystem remains incomplete. Today, we’re announcing a refreshed policy for our grantees that we hope will help foundation-supported breakthroughs reach the field in the fastest and fairest way possible.

At its core, the policy will:

End the foundation’s payment of individual article publishing fees such as APCs—paving the way for more equitable publishing models

Require grantees to share preprints of their articles—breaking free from journal constraints while prioritizing access to research and preserving grantee publishing choices

https://tinyurl.com/mtba833c

"On the Fast Track to Full Gold Open Access"

The world of scientific publishing is changing; the days of an old type of subscription-based earnings for publishers seem over, and we are entering a new era. It seems as if an ever-increasing number of journals from disparate publishers are going Gold, Open Access that is, yet have we rigorously ascertained the issue in its entirety, or are we touting the strengths and forgetting about constructive criticism and careful weighing of evidence? We will therefore present the current state of the art, in a compact review/bibliometrics style, of this more relevant than ever hot topic and suggest solutions that are most likely to be acceptable to all parties–while the performed analysis also shows there seems to be a link between trends in scientific publishing and tumultuous world events, which in turn has a special significance for the publishing environment in the current world stage.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.08313

"Guest Post — Making Sense of Open Access Business Models "

As part of my work to help not-for-profit publishers with their open access (OA) transitions, I have developed a classification system for OA business models. Considering the different models as broad groups with shared attributes enables us to have more effective discussions about what types of model are the best fit for each publisher, taking into consideration the discipline in which they publish, the geographic diversity of their authors, existing institutional and funder relationships and mandates, and of course the types of content they publish. . . .In the rest of this blog post I’ll give you a short summary of each category and describe what I consider to be the archetypal business model within each of them.

https://tinyurl.com/6cdda452

"Training in Open Access for Doctoral Students: Results of a Survey of Current and Recent Students and Supervisors"

The large majority of current and recent doctoral students and supervisors indicated there was no mandatory open access training at their institutions. More than half of respondents thought they had good or excellent understanding of open access, with those who had completed training more likely to highly rate their understanding. Only 27% of respondents felt the level of training offered was sufficient.

https://doi.org/10.47989/ir291679

"We Need to Rethink the Way We Identify Diamond Open Access Journals in Quantitative Science Studies"

With the announcement of several new diamond open access (OA) related initiatives, such as the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access, the DIAMAS and CRAFT-OA projects, and the recent creation of the Global Summit on Diamond Open Access, it is clear that diamond OA is now at the forefront of the OA movement. Diamond OA is a publishing model that is free for both authors and readers, with the publishing costs generally assumed by grants, governments, subsidies, or a community. However, while working on our recent Quantitative Science Studies publication and dataset, we noticed that temporarily waiving APCs was a commonly used strategy by the Big 5 for-profit publishers for some of their journals. This letter discusses the need for more cautiousness when doing research about diamond OA and APCs, as well as the need for more transparency in the costs for publishing.

https://doi.org/10.1590/SciELOPreprints.8272

"Publicly Shared Data: A Gap Analysis of Researcher Actions and Institutional Support throughout the Data Life Cycle"

[This report] examines research data management and sharing practices at six research-intensive academic institutions: Cornell University, Duke University, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Virginia Tech, and Washington University in St. Louis. Sponsored by the US National Science Foundation (grant #2135874) and part of ARL’s Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative, this report highlights where service gaps may exist between researchers’ needs and the services and support provided by institutions.

https://tinyurl.com/mtdjvecu

"Collaboratively Seeking Better Solutions for Monitoring Open Science"

Research by PLOS and Research Consulting has found there is a growing need for Open Science Indicators (Open Science monitoring solutions) among some funders and institutions but implementation of monitoring solutions may be limited unless Open Science practices are a strategic priority for organisations. Research data sharing, and code and software sharing, are among the most important Open Science practices to monitor but organisations need information that is compatible with their own structure and nomenclature to be usable, which is not available currently. In the future Open Science Indicators need to monitor not just prevalence but also the effects or qualities of Open Science practices.

https://tinyurl.com/das6dbax

D3.2 Extensible Quality Standard in Institutional Publishing (EQSIP) V2.0 for Diamond Open Access

The objective of EQSIP for Diamond Open Access is to set a common quality standard for IPs that publish scholarly journals, based on the seven core components of scholarly publishing outlined in the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access[3] (Ancion et al. 2022, 4), which were subsequently revised and modified by the DIAMAS project team. These are:

Funding

Legal ownership, mission and governance

Open Science

Editorial management, editorial quality and research integrity

Technical service efficiency

Visibility, communication, marketing, and impact

Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (EDIB), multilingualism and gender equity

EQSIP for Diamond Open Access applies to scholarly journals. EQSIP’s underlying goal is to set a common quality standard for publishing as a public good, i.e. defined and controlled by the public through expert communities, thus guaranteeing that academic contributions in scholarly journals are also a public good.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10726732

"Support for OSF Preprint Infrastructure and Community Servers"

Numerous Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation (IPLC) partner institutions* will provide three years of financial support for the Center for Open Science’s OSF Preprints, an open source platform and infrastructure that enables the facilitation and discovery of scholarship. COS notes that submission and consumption of preprints continues to grow with "~150,000 preprints hosted across all of the current and prior preprint communities, and 1.7 million views on preprint pages since September 2023."

https://tinyurl.com/yn9nntvu

Paywall: "Starting In-House Copyright Education Programs: Commonalities and Conclusions from Two Southeastern Us Academic Libraries"

This case study introduces two copyright education programs and summarizes the state of copyright education within library and information science (LIS) and academic libraries. . . . The following themes within the two copyright education programs were identified through a case study: the complexity of copyright, the engagement (or lack thereof) across a college or university, the necessity of including copyright in information literacy instruction and the calls for professional development with copyright.

https://doi.org/10.1108/RSR-09-2023-0069

"The Challenges of Open Data Sharing for Qualitative Researchers"

"Open Science" advocates for open access to scientific research, as well as sharing data, analysis plans and code in order to enable replication of results. However, these requirements typically fail to account for methodological differences between quantitative and qualitative research, and serious ethical problems are raised by the suggestion that full qualitative datasets can or should be published alongside qualitative research papers. Aside from important ethical concerns, the idea of sharing qualitative data in order to enable replication is conceptually at odds with the underpinnings on most qualitative methodologies, which highlight the importance of the unique interpretative function of the researcher. The question of whether secondary analysis of qualitative data is acceptable is key, and in this commentary we argue that there are good conceptual, ethical and economic reasons to consider how funders, researchers and publishers can make better use of existing data.

https://doi.org/10.1177/13591053241237620

Paywall: "Applying Librarian-Created Evaluation Tools to Determine Quality and Credibility of Open Access Library Science Journals"

The researchers investigate quality and credibility attributes of forty-eight peer-reviewed library science journals with open access components using two evaluative tools developed and published by librarians. The results identify common positive and negative attributes of library science journals, compare the results of the two evaluation tools, and discuss their ease of use and limitations.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/916990

Open Data: From Theory to Practice: Case Studies and Commentary from Libraries, Publishers, Funders and Industry

From theory to practice is the first time in the nine-year history of The State of Open Data that a supplementary publication has expanded upon the main report’s years of survey results about open data, involving tens of thousands of researchers globally.

Each case study and commentary is told from the perspective of a research stakeholder group:

Funding bodies: The NIH Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative: meeting community needs for FAIR data sharing and discovery

Scholarly Publishers: Operationalize data policies through collaborative approaches – the momentum is now

University Libraries: One size does not fit all: an investigation into how institutional libraries are tailoring support to their researchers’ needs

Industry: How Open Pharma supports responsible data sharing for pharma research publications.

https://tinyurl.com/ytcxprn7

"Plan S and Open Access (OA) in Quebec: What Does the Revised FRQ OA Policy Mean for Researchers?"

Our article examines the effects of Quebec’s provincial funding agency (FRQ)’s revised 2022 OA policy on researchers. Following FRQ’s participation as a cOAlition S funding agency, which involves endorsing Plan S principles, we provide an overview of the OA options for researchers. We examine these options under the FRQ 2019 and FRQ 2022 policy years, account for the effect of transformative agreements (TA) on OA publishing options, as well as the financial implications for researchers under the revised policy.

https://tinyurl.com/2wvt5bhj

"Evaluating an Instructional Intervention for Research Data Management Training "

At a large research university in Canada, a research data management (RDM) specialist and two liaison librarians partnered to evaluate the effectiveness of an active learning component of their newly developed RDM training program. . . . This study relies on a pre- and post-test quasi-experimental intervention during introductory RDM workshops offered 12 times between February 2022 and January 2023. . . . Comparing the overall average scores for each participant pre- and post-instruction intervention, we find that workshop participants, in general, improved in proficiency. The results of a Wilcoxon signed-rank test demonstrate that the difference between the pre- and post-test observations is statistically significant with a high effect size.

https://tinyurl.com/2wvt5bhj

"OurResearch Receives $7.5M grant from Arcadia to Establish OpenAlex, a Milestone Development for Open Science"

OurResearch is proud to announce a $7.5M grant from Arcadia, to establish a sustainable and completely open index of the world’s research ecosystem. With this 5-year grant, OurResearch expands their open science ambitions to replace paywalled knowledge graphs with OpenAlex. . . .

OpenAlex indexes more than twice as many scholarly works as the leading proprietary products and the entirety of the knowledge graph and its source code are openly licensed and freely available through data snapshots, an easy to use API, and a nascent user interface. . . .

Development of OpenAlex started only two years ago and it already serves 115M API calls per month; underlies a major university ranking; is displacing proprietary products at Universities; and has established partnerships with national governments. We are excited by these early successes of OpenAlex and its promise to revolutionize scholarly communication and democratize the world’s research.

You can use OpenAlex‘s Author Profile Change Request Form, to correct certain types of errors about your publications, such as "My work has been incorrectly attributed to another author."

There is also a Submit a Request form, but it is not clear if this can be used to correct citation count or other types of errors not covered by the above form.

https://tinyurl.com/3396s27m

The Research Data Services Landscape at US and Canadian Higher Education Institutions

The following are our high-level findings:

While there are wide divergences in the number and variety of services offered both within and across Carnegie Classifications, R1 institutions offer approximately three times the number of services offered by R2s, and more than nine times the number offered by liberal arts colleges.

General research data services are the most common type offered regardless of institution type. Statistical services, geospatial services, and visualization services are also common at research universities, which typically offer a much wider range of specialized services than liberal arts colleges.

Libraries remain the largest provider of research data services at US and Canadian research universities, but IT and units associated with the research office play important collaborative roles, especially with specialized services.

Bioinformatics services are offered almost exclusively through the interdisciplinary units associated with the research office or core facilities associated with medical schools.

Consulting services are the most common mode of service provision, comprising almost three quarters of all data services.

https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.320420

"The Cost of Open Access: Comparing Public Projects’ Budgets and Article Processing Charges Expenditure"

Thus, this research tries to estimate the percentage of the budget of the projects funded by the Spanish State Plan for the Generation of Knowledge and Scientific and Technological Strengthening of the R&D&I, Spain’s two main public project funding calls in Spain. The period studied is 2013-2019. Additionally, we study the relationships between publication intensity, funding attraction, and the availability of OA journals with APC expenditure at the area level. The results show that €43.67 million were spent on APCs, with most projects spending 3-8% of their budgets. However, numerous outliers with rates over 10% suggest further study on the role of APCs in the financial performance of the research activity.

https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/98j5p

"To Preprint or Not to Preprint: A Global Researcher Survey"

Open science is receiving widespread attention globally, and preprinting offers an important way to implement open science practices in scholarly publishing. To develop a systematic understanding of researchers’ adoption of and attitudes toward preprinting, we conducted a survey of authors of research papers published in 2021 and early 2022. Our survey results show that the United States and Europe led the way in the adoption of preprinting. The United States and European respondents reported a higher familiarity with and a stronger commitment to preprinting than their colleagues elsewhere in the world. The adoption of preprinting is much stronger in physics and astronomy as well as mathematics and computer science than in other research areas. Respondents identified free accessibility of preprints and acceleration of research communication as the most important benefits of preprinting. Low reliability and credibility of preprints, sharing results before peer review and premature media coverage are the most significant concerns about preprinting, emphasized in particular by respondents in the life and health sciences. According to respondents, the most crucial strategies to encourage preprinting are integrating preprinting into journal submission workflows and providing recognition for posting preprints.

https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24880

Advancing Ireland’s Open Repository Landscape: A Strategic Roadmap

This report presents an in-depth analysis and strategic roadmap for advancing the open repository landscape in Ireland. Drawing on comprehensive data from interviews, surveys, self-assessments, and both national and international initiatives, the document outlines the current status, challenges, and future prospects for open repositories in Ireland. Key findings highlight significant advancements in open access adherence. Despite these successes, persistent challenges such as metadata quality, resource limitations, and sustainability issues underscore the need for concerted effort and strategic planning.

The report proposes a forward-looking roadmap spanning from 2025 to 2030 and beyond, prioritising the enhancement of repository infrastructures, metadata quality improvement, open mandates promotion, technological advancements, capacity building, and fostering collaborative partnerships. This strategic vision aims to develop and encourage Ireland’s transition to open research, leveraging innovative practices and collaborative efforts to facilitate a more open, inclusive, and sustainable research environment. By addressing current limitations and embracing future opportunities, the roadmap sets the stage for a transformative shift in Ireland’s scholarly communication landscape, with potential significant impacts on researchers, institutions, and society at large.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10810233

"Supporting Open Access Monographs: Penn State University Libraries’ Participation in the TOME Initiative"

In 2017, Penn State pledged to participate in the then newly established Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME) Initiative. TOME was launched by the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) as a five-year pilot with two main types of participants: colleges and universities and university presses. Penn State was one of the first universities to commit funds to participate in TOME, which was designed to support peer-reviewed, open access monographs in the humanities and social sciences. Each participating university committed $225,000 total for the five-year pilot, split out into $45,000 per academic year to support three grants of $15,000 per monograph. This number was established based on the recommendation from the Ithaka S+R Report "The Costs of Publishing Monographs."

https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.85.3.66

"The ‘Must Stock’ Challenge in Academic Publishing: Pricing Implications of Transformative Agreements"

While several contract designs exist, the ‘publish-and-read’ (PAR) scheme is the one that comes closest to the ideal of an entirely open access environment: Publishers are paid a fixed case-by-case rate for each publication, which includes a fee for their extensive libraries. In turn, all subscription payments are waived. I theoretically derive that this contract design benefits the included publishers regardless of whether the number of publications in these publishers’ journals grows or declines. Consequently, widespread PAR contracts are likely to raise entry barriers for new (open-access) competitors even further.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.03597

"Wiley Sees Light at the End of the Tunnel"

The Research group had more mixed results. Revenue rose 1%, to $256 million, but EBITDA fell 1% due to higher editorial and marketing costs and the continuing impact of the reorganization of its Hindawi unit. (Last year, Wiley suspended Hindawi’s open access publishing operations after its discovered a number of "compromised" articles; the company is in the processing of “sunsetting” the Hindawi brand and merging its operations into other Wiley groups).

https://tinyurl.com/mwkzw4xa

"CACM [Communications of the ACM] Is Now Open Access"

For almost 65 years, the contents of CACM have been exclusively accessible to ACM members and individuals affiliated with institutions that subscribe to either CACM or the ACM Digital Library. In 2020, ACM announced its intention to transition to a fully Open Access publisher within a roughly five-year timeframe (January 2026) under a financially sustainable model. The transition is going well: By the end of 2023, approximately 40% of the ~26,000 articles ACM publishes annually were being published Open Access utilizing the ACM Open model. As ACM has progressed toward this goal, it has increasingly opened large parts of the ACM Digital Library, including more than 100,000 articles published between 1951–2000. It is ACM’s plan to open its entire archive of over 600,000 articles when the transition to full Open Access is complete.

https://tinyurl.com/yuph6ec3

"Innovative Open Research Publisher PeerJ Joins Taylor & Francis"

PeerJ is best known for its multidisciplinary flagship title PeerJ Life & Environment serving the Biological, Medical and Environmental Sciences and PeerJ Computer Science (covering all areas of computer science, including AI, quantum, and robotics). In addition, PeerJ offers five titles in the Chemical Sciences, meaning that in total Taylor & Francis will welcome 7 new journals to its open research program.

All PeerJ journals offer high-quality peer review and rapid publication, supported by PeerJ’s own submission and peer review platform, and dedicated contributor support. Articles are selected on scientific value and methodological soundness, providing a forum for world-class research addressing many of the globe’s current challenges. PeerJ also hosts a digital hub for the International Association for Biological Oceanography, promoting the advancement of knowledge of the biology of the sea.

https://tinyurl.com/ms2unw2b