In total, we have 1.8M preprint records in Scopus (as of June 2023) from the following seven preprint servers:
- arXiv
- ChemRxiv
- bioRxiv
- medRxiv
- SSRN
- TechRxiv
- Research Square
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Scientists are increasingly overwhelmed by the volume of articles being published. Total articles indexed in Scopus and Web of Science have grown exponentially in recent years; in 2022 the article total was 47% higher than in 2016, which has outpaced the limited growth, if any, in the number of practising scientists. Thus, publication workload per scientist (writing, reviewing, editing) has increased dramatically. We define this problem as the strain on scientific publishing. To analyse this strain, we present five data-driven metrics showing publisher growth, processing times, and citation behaviours. We draw these data from web scrapes, requests for data from publishers, and material that is freely available through publisher websites. Our findings are based on millions of papers produced by leading academic publishers. We find specific groups have disproportionately grown in their articles published per year, contributing to this strain. Some publishers enabled this growth by adopting a strategy of hosting special issues, which publish articles with reduced turnaround times. Given pressures on researchers to publish or perish to be competitive for funding applications, this strain was likely amplified by these offers to publish more articles. We also observed widespread year-over-year inflation of journal impact factors coinciding with this strain, which risks confusing quality signals. Such exponential growth cannot be sustained. The metrics we define here should enable this evolving conversation to reach actionable solutions to address the strain on scientific publishing.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.15884
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Non-human-centered design tools, such as ChatGPT, have shown potential as effective aids in academic article design. This study conducts a comparative evaluation of ChatGPT-3.5 and ChatGPT-4, examining their capabilities and limitations in supporting the academic article design process. The study aims to demonstrate the utility of ChatGPT as a writing tool and investigate its applicability and efficacy in the context of academic paper design. The author interacted with both versions of ChatGPT, providing prompts and analyzing the generated responses. In addition, a different expert academic was consulted to assess the appropriateness of the ChatGPT responses. The findings suggest that ChatGPT, despite its limitations, could serve as a useful tool for academic writing, particularly in the design of academic articles. Despite the limitations of both GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, GPT-3.5 offers a broader perspective, whereas GPT-4 provides a more in-depth and detailed approach to the design of articles. ChatGPT exhibits capabilities in aiding the design process, generating ideas aligned with the overall purpose and focus of the paper, producing consistent and contextually relevant responses to various natural language inputs, partially assisting in literature reviews, supporting paper design in terms of both content and format, and providing reasonable editing and proofreading for articles. However, limitations were identified, including reduced critical thinking, potential for plagiarism, risk of misinformation, lack of originality and innovation, and limited access to literature.
https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2023.sep.12
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With the arrival of ChatGPT, the academic community has expressed concerns about how generative artificial intelligence will be used by students and researchers alike. After consulting policies from other journals and discussing among the editorial team, we have created a policy on the use of AI on submissions to JMLA. This editorial provides a brief background on these concerns and introduces our policy.
https://doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2023.1826
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Launched as a pilot in January 2023, Path to Open is a delayed open access model where new books are made available to supporting libraries upon publication and become open access after three years. Thirty-seven university presses have joined the initiative along with over sixty academic libraries, including consortia like the Big Ten Academic Alliance who are looking to develop sustainable open access solutions. . . .
JSTOR recently released forty-three of the first 100 Path to Open titles. These books, all peer-reviewed, were selected by the participating university presses and JSTOR, and explore topics in thirty-six subjects like Public Health, Religion, Education, Communications, Literature, Conflict Resolution, and Film Studies.
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The book consists of three parts. Part I offers definitions of scholarly communication and scholarly communication librarianship and provides an introduction to the social, economic, technological, and policy/legal pressures that underpin and shape scholarly communication work in libraries. These pressures, which have framed ACRL’s understanding of scholarly communication for the better part of the past two decades, have unsettled many foundational assumptions and practices in the field, removing core pillars of scholarly communication as it was practiced in the twentieth century. These pressures have also cleared fresh ground, and scholarly communication practitioners have begun to seed the space with values and practices designed to renew and often improve the field. Part II begins with an introduction to "open," the core response to the pressures described in part I. This part offers a general overview of the idea of openness in scholarly communication followed by chapters on different permutations and practices of open, each edited by a recognized expert of these areas with authors of their selection. Amy Buckland edited chapter 2.1, "Open Access." Brianna Marshall edited chapter 2.2, "Open Data." Lillian Hogendoorn edited chapter 2.3, "Open Education." Micah Vandegrift edited chapter 2.4, "Open Science and Infrastructure." Each of them brought on incredible expertise through contributors whom they identified, through both original contributions and repurposing existing openly licensed work, which is something we want to model where possible. Part III consists of twenty-four concise perspectives, intersections, and case studies from practicing librarians and closely related stakeholders, which we hope will stimulate discussion and reflection on theory and implications for practice. In every single case, we’re really excited by the editors and authors and the ideas they bring to the whole. Each contribution features light pedagogical apparatuses like suggested further reading, discussion or reflection prompts, and potential activities. It’s all available for free and openly licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC) license, so anyone is encouraged to grab whatever parts are useful and to adapt and repurpose and improve them to meet specific course goals and student needs within the confines of the license.
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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
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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
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Academic publishers have quickly responded to the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) tools on authorship and academic integrity. However, there remains a lack of understanding about AI authorship policies and the attitude of academic journals towards these tools. This study aims to address this gap by examining the AI authorship policies of 300 top academic journals during the period of late-spring 2023. Over half of the journals examined have an AI authorship policy and guidelines for acknowledging AI usage in manuscript preparation. These acknowledgments are typically made in the methods or acknowledgement sections, although some journals have introduced a new, special section on AI usage. The study also found that AI authorship policies may differ depending on the publisher and discipline of the journal. Many publishers have adopted uniform AI authorship policies that are implemented across all journals that they publish.
https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1582
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- Submissions are steady, and the proportion of papers sent for review is similar in the two models.
- Reviewed Preprints are visible earlier than traditionally peer-reviewed articles, which provides a middle ground between unreviewed preprints and published VORs.
- Author demographics have not changed significantly with regard to discipline or geography.
- Authors, Senior Editors, and Reviewing Editors are reporting largely favorable experiences with the new model, with some concerns about quality and suggestions regarding process being voiced.
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Recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) systems, including large language models like ChatGPT, offer promise and peril for scholarly peer review. On the one hand, AI can enhance efficiency by addressing issues like long publication delays. On the other hand, it brings ethical and social concerns that could compromise the integrity of the peer review process and outcomes. However, human peer review systems are also fraught with related problems, such as biases, abuses, and a lack of transparency, which already diminish credibility. While there is increasing attention to the use of AI in peer review, discussions revolve mainly around plagiarism and authorship in academic journal publishing, ignoring the broader epistemic, social, cultural, and societal epistemic in which peer review is positioned. . . . The discussion here emphasizes the need to critically assess the legitimacy of AI-driven peer review, addressing the benefits and downsides relative to the broader epistemic, social, ethical, and regulatory factors that sculpt its implementation and impact.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.12356
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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.
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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.
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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%.
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- 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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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."
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Most publications are created with the input from multiple co-authors. Traditional citation metrics give each co-author the same citation impact, even though the actual contribution of each researcher will not have been even. . . .
We have now added a new feature to capture the following authorship positions or types:
- First author: The first author mentioned in the publication
- Last author: The last author mentioned in the publication
- Corresponding author: An author is marked as the corresponding author in the publication. Since June 2020, newly released documents in Scopus can contain more than one corresponding author. . .
- Co-author: For documents with more than one author, co-authors are any author that is not a first, last or corresponding author
- Single author: An author is the only author of a publication
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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
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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
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One model of open peer review that aligns well with the work of information professionals, particularly those with information literacy instruction duties, is an open peer review podcast. This type of podcast, recorded before a manuscript is submitted for publication, brings an informal peer review process into the open as a host facilitates critical discussion of a research output between the researcher and a reviewer. This approach fosters a supportive community with shared values while utilizing the affordances of podcasting to make invisible labor visible and bring whole personhood into scholarship and scholarly communication.
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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
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