Category: Publishing

"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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"What Happens When Books Enter the Public Domain? Testing Copyright’s Underuse Hypothesis Across Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada"

Rebecca Giblin has self-archived "What Happens When Books Enter the Public Domain? Testing Copyright's Underuse Hypothesis Across Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

We find that books are actually less available where they are under copyright than where they are in the public domain, and that commercial publishers seem undeterred from investing in works even where others are competing to supply the same titles. We also find that exclusive rights do not appear to trigger investment in works that have low commercial demand, with books from 59% of the 'culturally valuable' authors we sampled unavailable in any jurisdiction, regardless of copyright status.

SSRN requires user registration or CAPTCHA verification for PDF access.

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Louisiana State University Drops the Big Deal: "Elsevier Changes: Message from the Provost"

Louisiana State University has released "Elsevier Changes: Message from the Provost."

Here's an excerpt:

During the Faculty Senate's final meeting of the spring semester, senators approved a resolution recommending the cancellation of the subscription package of Elsevier journals. Going forward, the Libraries will subscribe to Elsevier journals on a title-by-title basis, retaining the most highly used journals by the LSU community. The resolution further called for the creation of expedited document delivery to provide fast, unmediated access to articles in journals not on subscription.

The LSU administration supports this course of action. Once the current contract with Elsevier expires at the end of 2019, LSU will break away from the package agreement, and expects to spend $1 million on Elsevier titles, subscribing to fewer journals and providing access to all previously available material through alternate sources.

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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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Oxford Open Access Project: "Learned Societies and the Transition to Open Access: Event Report"

Juliet Ralph has published "Learned Societies and the Transition to Open Access: Event Report" in Open Access Oxford.

Here's an excerpt:

As part of last month’s Open Access Oxford week, a distinguished panel of Oxford academics led discussions around learned societies and their transition to Open Access. The event was held in collaboration with Oxford University Press (OUP) and aimed to address issues raised by Plan S. . . .

Prof Freeman closed the event by drawing together the main themes discussed:

  1. Agreement that the move to OA is broadly a good thing, but challenges persist in how we go about it.
  2. The economics of OA remain a major issue, especially around very small societies and publishers. There are opportunities for action within the community of forming consortia to reduce costs and benefit from economies of scale. The matter of ‘not for profits’ making surpluses and where those surpluses are used is a topic for societies to consider. Open Access is not the same as ‘free.’
  3. The sociology, history and structure of disciplines differ, for example in the scale of their funding/grants

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