Publishing – Page 2 – DigitalKoans

"How Balanced Is Multilingualism in Scholarly Journals? A Global Analysis Using the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) Database"

The concept of balanced multilingualism aims to establish “instruments for documenting and measuring the use of language for all the different purposes in research, thereby providing the basis for the monitoring of further globalization of research in a more responsible direction” (Sivertsen, 2018, p. 2). However, an analysis of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the largest database of fully open access journals produced in 130 countries, does not show balanced multilingualism in the global landscape. The DOAJ promotes linguistic diversity by indexing journals in 80 languages, including dialectal variations, indigenous languages, and languages spoken by less than 50,000 speakers (eg, Aragonese). In this article, we present the main trends related to the languages in which journals publish their full-text contributions to respond to this unbalanced landscape. We conducted a descriptive analysis of the 17,564 journals listed in the DOAJ (July 2023). Our findings show that 65% (11,331) of the journals listed publish only in one language, and 35% (6,234) publish in two, three, and up to 16 languages. Our research also shows that 50% of the multilingual journals are based in Asia, Southern and Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.6448

"’Does It Feel like a Scientific Paper?’: A Qualitative Analysis of Preprint Servers’ Moderation and Quality Assurance Processes"

In recent years, preprints—i.e., scholarly manuscripts that have not been peer reviewed or published in a journal—have emerged as a major source of research communication and a critical component of open science. However, concerns have been raised about preprints’ potential to facilitate the spread of flawed or misleading research due to the lack of quality control performed by preprint servers. Yet, there is limited knowledge of how servers currently vet incoming content and how this impacts the openness and diversity of scholarly content. In this paper, we examine preprint servers’ moderation processes, the intentions underpinning them, and their potential effects through a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with 14 key preprint server personnel. We find a wide range of moderation processes, which vary depending on specific server contexts and needs and are motivated by a desire to prevent the spread of misinformation and protect trust in preprints and servers. Participants repeatedly emphasized the difference between their moderation processes and peer review, but in practice often applied similar criteria for delineating scientific from unscientific content. Moreover, moderation processes often relied on trust cues, such as article formats or author affiliations, as proxies for research quality, potentially introducing similar biases as have been found in traditional journal peer review. We discuss implications for the diversity of preprint content and authors, as well as the future of preprint servers within an evolving scholarly communication ecosystem.

https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/mp6ky

"New Open Access Agreement Between the University of California and Taylor & Francis"

The University of California (UC) and Taylor & Francis today announced a memorandum of understanding for a four-year read and publish agreement that will make it easier and more affordable for UC researchers to publish open access (OA) articles in nearly 2,500 Taylor & Francis journals. . . .

Under the agreement, the UC Libraries will automatically cover the OA fees in full for any UC corresponding author who chooses to publish OA in Taylor & Francis and Routledge journals. Authors of articles accepted for publication in a hybrid or full OA title will have the opportunity to choose OA at no cost to them. . . .

To maximize the number of UC researchers who can benefit from the newly signed agreement, authors of qualifying articles published since January 1, 2024, will be given the opportunity to retrospectively convert their article to open access, with the OA fees fully covered. Authors who have already published OA since January 1 will be offered refunds for OA fees already paid.

https://tinyurl.com/y8zutk9m

"Clarivate Launches Generative AI-Powered Primo Research Assistant"

Key features include:

Semantic search and natural language queries: Users can interact with the system using everyday language, making the search process more intuitive.

AI-powered answers with references to sources used: The tool provides immediate answers based on the top five abstracts, with links to the full text and the complete result list.

Search suggestions: The assistant offers suggestions to help users expand their topics and delve deeper into their research.

Non-English query support: Users can ask questions and receive answers in multiple non-English languages.

https://tinyurl.com/bdcnbku3

Plan S: "New Tool to Assess Equity in Scholarly Communication Models"

The tool [https://tinyurl.com/2crwwhes], which was inspired by the “How Open Is It?” framework, is targeted at institutions, library consortia, funders and publishers, i.e. the stakeholders either investing or receiving funds for publishing services. It offers users the opportunity to rate scholarly communication models and arrangements across seven criteria:

Access to Read

Publishing immediate Open Access

Maximizing participation

Re-use rights

Pricing and fee transparency

Promoting and encouraging open research practices: data and code

Promoting and encouraging open research practices: preprints and open peer review

https://tinyurl.com/ycwmp3nk

"Resistance and Collaboration Within the Panoptivarsity: Differing Views of ORCID in Ireland"

The results demonstrate a clear difference in perceptions concerning ORCID, with library staff being very positive and uncritical, even arguing for mandatory adoption. Although some academics were using ORCID IDs in a performative manner, most were suspicious of, or resigned to their use. Concerns about ORCID ranged across various issues including employer surveillance, a lack of institutional autonomy and its inappropriateness for the sector.

https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-07-2024-0184

"CDL Decision Round Two: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Why There is Still Hope OR The Reports of CDL’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated"

Let me be unequivocal: libraries do not need a license to loan books, whether physical or digital. Lending legally acquired books is not illegal. Libraries are entitled to share these works, with no obligation to enter into licensing agreements or contracts beforehand. Furthermore, libraries—and their patrons—are legally permitted to make various uses of these works, including interlibrary loan, reserves, preservation, and fair use, all without needing permission from rightsholders.

This is because various exceptions in the law, including Section 108 for Libraries and Archives, ad Section 109 known as the first sale doctrine. We know that Section 109 preserves the balance between rightsholders and libraries. When a library purchases a book, it has the right to loan that work freely, without requiring additional permissions or payments to the copyright holder. A digitized version of a legally acquired book simply replaces the physical copy, not an unpurchased one in the marketplace. Any “market harm” is already factored into the initial sale, for which both the authors and publishers have been compensated.

https://tinyurl.com/3exh96bu

"Open Access Is Shaping Scientific Communication"

It seems likely that OA and traditional reader-pay journals will coexist in the immediate future, and probably should in the long run. In this context, the OSTP OA mandate will neither undermine the gatekeeping role of scientific journals nor much perturb the future evolution of scientific communication. The widespread adoption of TAs was already underway; if anything, the mandate reinforces that path. In an environment where both readers pay and OA journals operate alongside preprint platforms, it is natural to ask whether preprints might constrain subscription prices and APCs. If preprints and their peer-reviewed counterparts were close substitutes, then APCs for most OA journals would decline considerably.

https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adp8882

"The Living Library: A Process-Based Tool for Open Literature Review, Probing the Boundaries of Open Science"

In this paper, we present a new tool for open science research, the Living Library. The Living Library provides an online platform and methodological framework for open, continuous literature reviewing. As a research medium, it explores what openness means in light of the human dimension and interpretive nature of engaging with societal questions. As a tool, the Living Library allows researchers to collectively sort, dynamically interpret and openly discuss the evolving literature on a topic of interest. The interface is built around a timeline along which articles can be filtered, themes with which articles are coded, and an open researcher logbook that documents the development of the library. The first rendition of a Living Library can be found via this link: https://eduvision-living-library.web.app/, and the code to develop your own Living Library can be found via this link: https://github.com/Simon-Dirks/living-library.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-024-00964-z

6 Major Academic Publishes Sued: "Academic Journal Publishers Antitrust Litigation"

On September 12, 2024, Lieff Cabraser and co-counsel at Justice Catalyst Law filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against six commercial publishers of academic journals, including Elsevier B.V., John Wiley & Sons, Wolters Kluwer NV, and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), on behalf of a putative class of scientists and scholars who allege that these six world’s-largest for-profit publishers of peer-reviewed scholarly journals conspired to unlawfully appropriate billions of dollars that would otherwise have funded scientific research.

https://tinyurl.com/mv5r5nba

Filed Complaint

Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein

"Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats: A Comprehensive SWOT Analysis of AI and Human Expertise in Peer Review"

Instead of casting blame [about peer review failures], we must ask ourselves the critical questions: Are we equipping our peer reviewers with the right tools to succeed in an increasingly complex landscape? How can AI be harnessed not as a burden, but as a true ally in maintaining the integrity of research? Are we prepared to re-think the roles within peer review? Can we stop viewing AI as a threat or as a problem and instead embrace it as a partner—one that enhances human judgment rather than complicates it?

https://tinyurl.com/4p5pr6k6

"eBooks, Interlibrary Loan and an Uncertain Future"

Important advancements are underway, but ILL for ebooks is hampered by restrictive licensing models, resource sharing systems, and current practices. This study provides an environmental scan of the current acquisitions and ILL practices of academic libraries. This paper guides academic libraries through these conversations so that they can support the borrowing and lending of ebooks into the future.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2024.2391735

"Is Open Access Disrupting the Journal Business? A Perspective from Comparing Full Adopters, Partial Adopters, and Non-adopters"

This study employs the concept of disruptive innovation to develop a more systematic perspective on the impact of OA. It compares the market power of full-OA adopters with that of partial adopters and non-adopters. Using Lerner’s definition of market power, a series of mean difference tests and regressions were conducted using Lerner’s definition of market power. The findings reveal that both full-OA adopters and partial adopters exhibit greater market power than non-adopters. However, full adopters do not have more market power than partial adopters, even when compared to the subscription options of hybrid journals. This suggests that OA disrupts the market power of both incumbents and traditional businesses. Nevertheless, the situation changes once incumbents integrate an OA option into their publishing repertoire and transition to a hybrid model.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2024.101574

Scholarly Publishing in the Humanities, 2000-2024: Marketing and Communications Challenges and Opportunities

This book explores the recent history and future directions of scholarly publishing in the humanities in the United States from a marketing and communications perspective. The study draws on statistical surveys and data from a multidude of sources in order to analyze the major challenges confronting the humanities in higher education as well as the opportunities for print and digital publication since 2000. Chapters cover all types of publishing from university to trade presses, libraries, national programs, and self publishing, and focuses on changes in higher education funding, the impact of disruptive technologies such as AI, and the importance of global markets in disseminating new research in the humanities.

https://tinyurl.com/25m3abwu

"Tweeting and Retweeting Scientific Articles: Implications for Altmetrics"

Despite differences in extent of engagement of users, original tweets and retweets to scientific publications are considered as equal events. Current research investigates quantifiable differences between tweets and retweets from an altmetric point of view. Twitter users, text, and media content of two datasets, one containing 742 randomly selected tweets and retweets (371 each) and another with 5898 tweets and retweets (about 3000 each), all linking to scientific articles published on PLoS ONE, were manually categorized. Results from analyzing the proportions of tweets and retweets indicated that academic and individual accounts produce majority of original tweets (34% and 55%, respectively) and posted significantly larger proportion of retweets (41.5 and 81%). Bot accounts, on the other hand, had posted significantly more original tweets (20%) than retweets (2%). Natural communication sentences prevailed in retweets and tweets (63% vs. 45%) as well as images (41.5% vs. 23%), both showing a significant rise in usage overtime. Overall, the findings suggest that the attention scientific articles receive on Twitter may have more to do with human interaction and inclusion of visual content in the tweets, than the significance of or genuine interest towards the research results.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-05127-8

"Interview: Deciphering the Law: Hachette v. Internet Archive Pt. 1 (2023) with Dave Hansen"

This is the first in a series of interviews with those closely tied to the Hachette v. Internet Archive lawsuit. In March 2023, the court ruled against the Internet Archive and its use of the Emergency Lending Library causing a ripple throughout the library and education fields. Below, find the answers to some of the questions that the case elicited by JCEL contributors and copyright scholars Dave Hansen, Michelle Wu, and Kyle Courtney.

https://doi.org/10.17161/jcel.v7i2.21337

"Summary of User Rights Network Symposium: Protecting Copyright User Rights from Contractual Override "

In this paper, Benson, Blumenthal, and Klosek summarize the proceedings of the public symposium on the “Protection of Copyright User Rights from Contractual Override.” The American Library Association (ALA) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL)—together, the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA)—sponsored the symposium in partnership with the American University Washington College of Law Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP). The paper includes summaries of each panel, questions that were discussed, and takeaways for the library community to consider.

https://doi.org/10.17161/jcel.v7i2.20856

"An Analysis of the Impact of Gold Open Access Publications in Computer Science"

There has been some concern about the impact of predatory publishers on scientific research for some time. Recently, publishers that might previously have been considered `predatory’ have established their bona fides, at least to the extent that they are included in citation impact scores such as the field-weighted citation impact (FWCI). These are sometimes called ‘grey’ publishers (MDPI, Frontiers, Hindawi). In this paper, we show that the citation landscape for these grey publications is significantly different from the mainstream landscape and that affording publications in these venues the same status as publications in mainstream journals may significantly distort metrics such as the FWCI.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10262

"Determinants of Downloads as Demand for Hybrid Journals "

Although Big Deal contracts that provide access rights to all electronic journals published by the publisher initially gained favor with university libraries, some libraries have terminated these contracts owing to increased charges since the 2010s. Consequently, they are faced with the problem of selecting journals for purchase within their limited budgets. This study investigates the factors affecting the number of downloads, representing journal demand, to provide libraries with guidance on journal selection. The download equation for 1485 hybrid journals published by Springer Nature is formulated using ordinary least squares. The results found that 5% and 50% of the 1485 journals generated approximately 30% and 85% of the downloads in 2022, respectively. Downloads are concentrated in fewer journals, although the Pareto principle does not apply to hybrid journals. Demand concentration implies that libraries do not need to maintain access rights to all journals. Recently, a few leading publishers have provided access rights to almost all electronic journals based on transformative agreements aiming to promote open access. Therefore, this study’s findings raise the issue of the rationale for bundling electronic journals in transformative agreements, which is similar to Big Deal. Moreover, the results of the download estimation reveal that hybrid journals with more open access articles, larger citation scores, and longer histories acquire more downloads. These findings indicate that open access accelerates the dissemination of research.

https://doi.org/10.53377/lq.18689

"The PubPeer Conundrum: Administrative Challenges in Research Misconduct Proceedings"

The founders of PubPeer envisioned their website as an online form of a “journal club” that would facilitate post-publication peer review. Recently, PubPeer comments have led to a significant number of research misconduct proceedings – a development that could not have been anticipated when the current federal research misconduct regulations were developed two decades ago. Yet the number, frequency, and velocity of PubPeer comments identifying data integrity concerns, and institutional and government practices that treat all such comments as potential research misconduct allegations, have overwhelmed institutions and threaten to divert attention and resources away from other research integrity initiatives. Recent, high profile research misconduct cases accentuate the increasing public interest in research integrity and make it inevitable that the use of platforms such as PubPeer to challenge research findings will intensify. This article examines the origins of PubPeer and its central role in the modern era of online-based scouring of scientific publications for potential problems and outlines the challenges that institutions must manage in addressing issues identified on PubPeer. In conclusion, we discuss some potential enhancements to the investigatory process specified under federal regulations that could, if implemented, allow institutions to manage some of these challenges more efficiently.

https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2024.2390007

"Lawmakers Raise New Licensing Concerns over White House Open Access Mandate"

While Republican appropriators in the House have previously tried to entirely block the White House’s open access policy, now appropriators in both chambers of Congress have advanced legislation that would block federal agencies from limiting authors’ ability to choose how to license their work. . . .

This language used in the House report and Senate report regarding researcher choice is identical, though the House goes further by advising federal agencies not to “exert broad ‘federal purpose’ authority over peer reviewed articles” or “otherwise force use of an open license.”

House Republicans also propose that the White House be prohibited from using any funding to implement the policy, as they attempted in last year’s legislation.

https://tinyurl.com/46y42ecr

"’Academic Publishing is a Business Interest’: Reconciling Faculty Serials Needs and Economic Realities at a Carnegie R2 University"

Introduction: This article explores faculty conceptions of academic publishers, their willingness to circumvent paywalls and share content, and their understanding of who holds the responsibility to pay for this body of scholarly work to which they all contribute.

Methods: The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 faculty at their Carnegie R2 university to explore scholars’ perspectives with respect to the costs of serials and the responsibilities of the University and library in support of scholarly publishing.

Results: Participants reported a broad spectrum of perspectives with respect to circumventing publisher paywalls and offered nuanced practices for interacting with paywalled content. They explained which library services work well and offered suggestions on how best to support faculty needs for serial literature. Although most participants agree that the University has the responsibility of making academic literature available to the community, they differ in their conceptions of academic publishers as good-faith partners in the knowledge enterprise.

Discussion: The results suggest a great deal of ambiguity and diversity of beliefs among faculty: some would support boycotting all commercial publishers; some understand academic publishers to be integral to the dissemination of their work, not to mention tenure and promotion processes; and many acknowledge a variety of tensions in what feels to them an exploitative and fraught relationship. These findings have implications for library services in acquisitions, collection management, scholarly communication, discovery, and access.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.16232

"Cost, Advocacy, and a Mechanism for Transformation: The Proposed Power of Open Access Funds"

As paid open access becomes a mainstream academic practice, stakeholders must evaluate their role in the system. While open access advocates develop new ways to support the publication process and funding structure, commercial publishers continue to pivot to maintain their profit, relevance, and power in the publication system. This article provides the details of Montana State University’s Open Access Author Fund as an evaluation of the service and its impact on the local publishing ecosystem. As stewards of publicly funded knowledge, it is essential to critically analyze each new publishing route before adopting and supporting it. Especially when models claim to transform the system, librarians need to understand how an action changes the system, for whom, and at what cost.

https://tinyurl.com/524sp3tz

"A Publishing Platform That Places Code Front and Centre"

Last month, the Microscopy Society of America (MSA) quietly launched a journal that its creators hope will lead academic publishing in the future. Elemental Microscopy, a publication focused on reviews and methods tutorials, leverages an authoring and publishing platform called Curvenote to create rich, interactive, digital papers with coding and data analysis at their heart. By allowing readers to explore data and recreate results in the publication, the firm behind the platform, also called Curvenote, and its growing list of clients seek to ease science’s long-standing reproducibility crisis and modernize the scientific literature.

https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02577-1

"Wiley and Oxford University Press Confirm AI Partnerships as Cambridge University Press Offers ‘Opt-In’"

Wiley and Oxford University Press (OUP) told The Bookseller they have confirmed AI partnerships, with the availability of opt-ins and remuneration for authors appearing to vary. . . .

Meanwhile, Cambridge University Press has said it is talking to authors about opt ins along with ‘fair remuneration’ before making any deals.

Hachette, HarperCollins, and Pan Macmillan have not made AI deals.

https://tinyurl.com/bdzax5sk