Category: Publishing

"Open Up: A Survey on Open and Non-anonymized Peer Reviewing"

Lonni Besançon et al. have self-archived "Open Up: A Survey on Open and Non-anonymized Peer Reviewing."

Here's an excerpt:

We present a discussion and analysis regarding the benefits and limitations of open and non-anonymized peer review based on literature results and responses to a survey on the reviewing process of alt.chi, a more or less open-review track within the CHI conference, the predominant conference in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). This track currently is the only implementation of an open-peer-review process in the field of HCI while, with the recent increase in interest in open science practices, open review is now being considered and used in other fields. We collected 30 responses from alt.chi authors and reviewers and found that, while the benefits are quite clear and the system is generally well liked by alt.chi participants, they are reluctant to see it used in other venues. This concurs with a number of recent studies that suggest a divergence between support for a more open review process and its practical implementation.

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"cOAlition S Appoints Johan Rooryck as Open Access Champion"

cOAlition S has released "cOAlition S Appoints Johan Rooryck as Open Access Champion."

Here's an excerpt:

In his role as Open Access Champion, Rooryck will represent cOAlition S in meetings with external stakeholders including funders, researchers, librarians, and publishers. He will present Plan S, listen to concerns, and develop plans to help participants adapt to a changing publishing landscape. He will also advise cOAlition S on the ways to implement the transition to full and immediate Open Access as smoothly as possible. . . .

He is Professor of French Linguistics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. . . .

He has over 20 years' experience as an editor, first as the Executive Editor of Lingua (Elsevier) and since 2015 as the founder and Editor in Chief of the Fair Open Access journal Glossa: a journal of general linguistics. He is President of the Quality Open Access Market (QOAM), founding member and President of the Fair Open Access Alliance (FOAA), founding member of Mathematics in Open Access (MathOA) and Psychology in Open Access (PsyOA), founding member and President of Linguistics in Open Access (LingOA), and Member of the Academia Europaea.

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"Citation Advantage for Open Access Articles in European Radiology"

Rayan H. M. Alkhawtani et al. have published "Citation Advantage for Open Access Articles in European Radiology" in .

Here's an excerpt:

The results of our study show that open access articles in European Radiology are significantly and independently more frequently cited than subscription access articles. This can be explained by the facts that open access by definition does not require a journal subscription or payment of a fee to read the article, open access offers potentially faster and easier article access even to subscribers because there is no need to login, and open access articles are also published in PubMed Central, which improves article visibility. Altogether, this may increase the number of article reads and subsequent citations.

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"A Crisis in "Open Access": Should Communication Scholarly Outputs Take 77 Years to Become Open Access?"

Abbas Ghanbari Baghestan et al. have published ";A Crisis in "Open Access": Should Communication Scholarly Outputs Take 77 Years to Become Open Access?" in SAGE Open.

Here's an excerpt:

This study diachronically investigates the trend of the "open access" in the Web of Science (WoS) category of "communication." To evaluate the trend, data were collected from 184 categories of WoS from 1980 to 2017. A total of 87,997,893 documents were obtained, of which 95,304 (0.10%) were in the category of "communication." In average, 4.24% of the documents in all 184 categories were open access. While in communication, it was 3.29%, which ranked communication 116 out of 184. An Open Access Index (OAI) was developed to predict the trend of open access in communication. Based on the OAI, communication needs 77 years to fully reach open access, which undeniably can be considered as “crisis in scientific publishing” in this field. Given this stunning information, it is the time for a global call for "open access" by communication scholars across the world. Future research should investigate whether the current business models of publications in communication scholarships are encouraging open access or pose unnecessary restrictions on knowledge development.

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"Ten Years of Research on ResearchGate, a Scoping Review Using Google Scholar 2008-2017"

Juan Jose Prieto-Gutierrez has self-archived "Ten Years of Research on ResearchGate, a Scoping Review Using Google Scholar 2008-2017."

Here's an excerpt:

Objective. To analyse quantitatively the articles published during 2008_2017 about the academic social networking site ResearchGate. Methods. A scoping bibliometric review of documents retrieved using Google Scholar was conducted, limited to publications that contained the word "ResearchGate" in their title and were published from 2008 to 2017. Results. The search yielded 159 documents, once a preliminary list of 386 documents retrieved from Google Scholar was filtered, which eliminated about 60% of the results that were bibliographic citations and not documents. Papers in journals were the most numerous type of documents (n 73; 46%), followed by conference papers (n 31; 19.5 %). Contributing eight publications, two Spanish scholars (Delgado Lopez-Cozar and Orduna Malea, who were coauthors in each case) were the most prolific authors writing on this topic during the ten-year period. The keywords most used in the documents were "ResearchGate" and "Altmetrics". The publications were cited frequently since 2014 (more than 90% of the total cites fell in that period), and those with more than one author were the most cited ones. The authors of the documents were mainly librarians and information science professionals, who wrote primarily as co-authors with colleagues from their own institutions, mostly published in English. Conclusions. Interest in ResearchGate has grown since 2015, as evident from the number of articles published and the citations they received.

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"Decentralising Scientific Publishing: Can the Blockchain Improve Science Communication?"

Flávio Codeço Coelho and Adeilton Brandão have published "Decentralising Scientific Publishing: Can the Blockchain Improve Science Communication?" in Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz.

Here's an excerpt:

We present a decentralised solution for managing scientific communication, based on distributed ledger technologies, also called blockchains. The proposed system aims to solve incentive problems displayed by traditional systems in scientific communication and publication. A minimal working model is presented, defining roles, processes, and expected results from the novel system. The proposed solution is viable, given the current status of blockchain technology, and should lead to a rethinking of current practices and their consequences for scientific communication.

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"Is Scholarly Publishing Like Rock and Roll?"

David W. Lewis has self-archived "Is Scholarly Publishing Like Rock and Roll?"

Here's an excerpt:

This article uses Alan B. Krueger's analysis of the music industry in his book Rockonomics: A Backstage Tour of What the Music Industry Can Teach Us About Economics and Life as a lens to consider the structure of scholarly publishing and what could happen to scholarly publishing going forward. Both the music industry and scholarly publishing are facing disruption as their products become digital. Digital content provides opportunities to a create a better product at lower prices and in the music industry this has happened. Scholarly publishing has not yet done so. Similarities and differences between the music industry and scholarly publishing will be considered. Like music, scholarly publishing appears to be a superstar industry. Both music and scholarly publishing are subject to piracy, which threatens revenue, though Napster was a greater disrupter than Sci-Hub seems to be. It also appears that for a variety of reasons market forces are not effective in driving changes in business models and practices in scholarly publishing, at least not at the rate we would expect given the changes in technology. After reviewing similarities and differences, the prospects for the future of scholarly publishing will be considered.

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"Fitting the Mould—What the European Commission’s Second Tender for an Open Research Publishing Platform Tells Us about the Future of Scholarly Communication"

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2019/08/20/fitting-the-mould-what-the-european-commissions-second-tender-for-an-open-research-publishing-platform-tells-us-about-the-future-of-scholarly-communication/

"medRxiv to PLOS: Direct Preprint Transfers"

PLOS has released "medRxiv to PLOS: Direct Preprint Transfers."

Here's an excerpt:

Authors with preprints on the new health sciences preprint server medRxiv now have the option to transfer their manuscripts for publication consideration at relevant PLOS journals in the topic area, PLOS Medicine, PLOS NTDs, or PLOS ONE. PLOS is excited to be among the first publishers to offer direct transfer service from the new server.

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"Projekt Deal and Springer Nature Reach Understanding on World´s Largest Transformative Open Access Agreement"

The German Rectors' Conference (HRK) has released "Projekt Deal and Springer Nature Reach Understanding on World´s Largest Transformative Open Access Agreement."

Here's an excerpt:

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed today between MPDL Services, on behalf of Projekt DEAL, and Springer Nature sets the scene for the world’s most comprehensive open access (OA) agreement to be finalised later this year. . . .

The transformative two-part agreement will encompass a fully OA element and a Publish and Read (PAR) element. This will enable eligible authors to publish OA in both Springer Nature’s fully OA journals, the largest OA portfolio in the world with over 600 titles, and Springer Nature’s collection of 1,900 hybrid journals, which collectively already publish one in four of all OA articles. In addition, the model provides the academic community of the participating institutions with permanent reading access to content in Springer, Palgrave, Adis, and Macmillan academic journals published during the term of the contract.

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The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, an Open Access Journal, Was Launched 30 Years Ago This August

On 8/16/1989, the University of Houston Libraries launched The Public-Access Computer Systems Review (PACS Review). Its first issue was published in January 1990.

What were some of the distinguishing characteristics of this early digital journal?

  • It was a born-digital journal. Major journal publishers, such as Elsevier, would experiment with providing access to born-print journals in university settings starting in the mid-1990's.
  • It was peer reviewed by a distinguished international editorial board with members from Canada, the USA and the UK.
  • It was officially published by an research library.
  • It was a library and information science journal with librarians primarily acting as editors and editorial board members.
  • It allowed authors to retain copyright.
  • It had special copyright provisions for noncommercial use.
  • It was freely available.
  • It adopted an accelerated publication schedule to publish articles as quickly as possible.
  • It published articles by influential authors, such as Stevan Harnad, John Kunze, John Price Wilkin, Ann Okerson, Vicky Reich, and John Unsworth.
  • It allowed authors to publish updated versions of their articles.
  • It was issued an ISSN number in 1990.
  • It was indexed by three major index and abstracting services.

Below is a description of the journal. For information about other early digital publishing projects by libraries, see the Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography.

History of the Journal

After being authorized by Robin N. Downes, the University of Houston Libraries' visionary Director, the journal was announced on the PACS-L discussion list on August 16, 1989. A call for papers was issued on October 16, 1989. The publication of the first issue was announced on January 3, 1990. The journal was cataloged on OCLC and assigned an ISSN number (1048-6542) by the Library of Congress National Serials Data Program on February 1, 1990.

Initially, the journal published scholarly papers (Communications section), columns, and reviews. Papers in the Communications section were selected by the Editor-in-Chief and the Associate Editor, Communications. A private mailing list was utilized for communication with editorial staff and Editorial Board members. Most communication with authors was done via e-mail, including paper submission.

The PACS Review was published three times a year. New issue announcements were distributed as e-mail messages on the PACS-L discussion list, and users retrieved the ASCII article files from the University of Houston's LISTSERV via e-mail. (LISTSERV distribution was suspended in 1999.)

Authors retained the copyright to PACS Review articles, and they gave the University of Houston the nonexclusive right to publish the articles in the journal and in future publications. Authors could republish their articles elsewhere, but they agreed to mention prior publication of the articles in the PACS Review within these works. Copying of PACS Review articles was permitted for educational, noncommercial use by academic computer centers, individual scholars, and libraries.

On October 29, 1991, the journal adopted a more flexible publication schedule that reduced article publication time.

A Refereed Articles section of the journal was announced on November 11, 1991, and a call for papers was issued on February 6, 1992. The Refereed Articles section included papers that were peer reviewed by Editorial Board members using a double-blind review procedure, which was usually conducted via e-mail. The publication of the first refereed paper was announced on April 6, 1992.

Between 1992 and 1996, the first five volumes of The Public-Access Computer Systems Review were also published in book form by the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA). Walt Crawford prepared the camera-ready copy for these volumes and Charles W. Bailey, Jr. provided editorial support.

Starting on April 6, 1992, PACS Review issue publication announcements were also distributed on the PACS-P list.

On January 29, 1994, the distribution of the journal via University of Houston Libraries' Gopher server was announced. (Gopher distribution was suspended in 1998.) The journal ceased publishing reviews in 1994.

On March 9, 1995, the distribution of the journal via University of Houston Libraries' Web server was announced.

Starting with the first issue of volume six (March 21, 1995), the PACS Review: (1) published articles in both ASCII and HTML formats, (2) offered HTML articles with both internal and external links, and (3) gave authors the option of updating the HTML version of their articles. The first updated article was "Network-Based Electronic Publishing of Scholarly Works: A Selective Bibliography" by Charles W. Bailey, Jr., which was updated 25 times.

At the end of 1996, Mr. Bailey stepped down as Editor-in-Chief.

Pat Ensor and Thomas C. Wilson became Editors-in-Chief in January 1997. They edited volumes eight (1997) and nine (1998). Publication of the last issue was announced on June 18, 1998. Papers were under consideration for publication until August 2000, when the journal ceased operation.

During its nine years of publication, the PACS Review published 42 issues that included 112 articles, columns, reviews, and editorials.

The PACS Review was indexed in Current Index to Journals in Education, Information Science Abstracts, and Library Literature.

The journal is archived on the Internet Archive and the Texas Digital Library.

Editorial Staff

Editors-in-Chief

  • Charles W. Bailey, Jr., 1989-1996
  • Pat Ensor, 1997-2000
  • Thomas C. Wilson, 1997-2000

Associate and Copy Editors

  • Leslie Dillon, Associate Editor (1990) and Associate Editor, Columns (1991-1997)
  • Elizabeth A. Dupuis, Associate Editor, Columns (1997-2000)
  • John E. Fadell, Copy Editor (1998-2000)
  • Andrea Bean Hough, Associate Editor, Communications (1997-2000)
  • Mike Ridley, Associate Editor (1989-1990) and Associate Editor, Reviews (1991)
  • Dana Rooks, Associate Editor, Communications (1991-1997)
  • Robert Spragg, Associate Editor, Technical Support (1996-2000)
  • Roy Tennant, Associate Editor, Reviews (1992-1993)
  • Ann Thornton, Associate Editor, Production (1995-2000)

Editorial Board Members

  • Ralph Alberico (1992-2000)
  • George H. Brett II (1992-2000)
  • Priscilla Caplan (1994-2000)
  • Steve Cisler (1992-2000)
  • Walt Crawford (1989-2000)
  • Lorcan Dempsey (1992-2000)
  • Pat Ensor (1994-1996)
  • Nancy Evans (1989-2000)
  • Stephen Harter (1997-2000)
  • Charles Hildreth (1992-2000)
  • Ronald Larsen (1992-2000)
  • Clifford Lynch (1992-2000)
  • David R. McDonald (1989-2000)
  • R. Bruce Miller (1989-2000)
  • Ann Okerson (1997-2000)
  • Paul Evan Peters (1989-1996)
  • Mike Ridley (1992-2000)
  • Peggy Seiden (1995-2000)
  • Peter Stone (1989-2000)
  • John E. Ulmschneider (1992-2000)

Columnists

  • Priscilla Caplan (1992-1998)
  • Walt Crawford (1989-1995)
  • Martin Halbert (1990-1993)

Use Statistics

Only partial use statistics are available for the journal. LISTSERV use statistics were not tallied. From 1994 through 1996, the journal received over 81,000 Gopher requests. From March 1995 through 2006, the journal received over 4.2 million Web file requests.

Articles About the Journal

Speech about the Journal

Reviews of the Journal

A Look Back at 30 Years as an Open Access Publisher | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap