Category: Publishing

"French Publishing Attitudes in the Open Access Era: The Case of Mathematics, Biology, and Computer Science: French Publishing Attitudes"

Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri et al. have published "French Publishing Attitudes in the Open Access Era: The Case of Mathematics, Biology, and Computer Science: French Publishing Attitudes" in Learned Publishing (e-print).

Here's an excerpt:

This study investigates the extent to which open access (OA) publishing models affect French researchers' attitudes. Research questions were: What place does OA have in attitudes of French researchers in mathematics, biology, and computer science? Are French researchers aware of new publishing models? Do they publish in these new outlets? What funds do they use? What kind of feedback and satisfaction can we observe?

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STM Report: An Overview of Scientific and Scholarly Publishing

The International Association of STM Publishers has released the STM Report: An Overview of Scientific and Scholarly Publishing.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The report provides authoritative coverage of all aspects of journal publishing, including market size and statistics, peer review, Open Access and new technology and market developments.

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"Measuring Open Access Policy Compliance: Results of a Survey"

Shannon Kipphut-Smith et al. have published "Measuring Open Access Policy Compliance: Results of a Survey" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

INTRODUCTION In the last decade, a significant number of institutions have adopted open access (OA) policies. Many of those working with OA policies are tasked with measuring policy compliance. This article reports on a survey of Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI) members designed to better understand the methods currently used for measuring and communicating OA policy success. METHODS This electronic survey was distributed to the COAPI member listserv, inviting both institutions who have passed an implemented policies and those who are still developing policies to participate. RESULTS The results to a number of questions related to topics such as policy workflows, quantitative and qualitative measurement activities and related tools, and challenges showed a wide range of responses, which are shared here. DISCUSSION It is clear that a number of COAPI members struggle with identifying what should be measured and what tools and methods are appropriate. The survey illustrates how each institution measures compliance differently, making it difficult to benchmark against peer institutions. CONCLUSION As a result of this survey, we recommend that institutions working with OA policies be as transparent as possible about their data sources and methods when calculating deposit rates and other quantitative measures. It is hoped that this transparency will result in the development of a set of qualitative and quantitative best practices for assessing OA policies that standardizes assessment terminology and articulates why institutions may want to measure policies.

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ARL: "Press and Library Directors Summit Report and Slides Available"

ARL has released "Press and Library Directors Summit Report and Slides Available."

Here's an excerpt:

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) hosted the second meeting of press and library directors with reporting relationships (P2L2) in San Francisco, California, on June 20, 2018. The P2L2 Summit focused on shared practices, projects, shared opportunities and challenges, open access sustainability, and the provosts’ value of the P2L relationship.

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"How Can Bibliometric and Altmetric Suppliers Improve? Messages from the End-User Community"

Elizabeth Gadd and Ian Rowlands have published "How Can Bibliometric and Altmetric Suppliers Improve? Messages from the End-User Community" in Insights.

Here's an excerpt:

This article reports on a 2018 survey of bibliometric and altmetric practitioners—'Three things you want your metrics supplier to know'—that was undertaken to better understand the practitioners' usage of existing tools and services and to invite them to suggest ways in which they would like to see these improve. In total, 149 suggestions were made by 42 respondents, mainly UK librarians. Responses could be categorized into four main themes: A) Improve and share your data; B) Be more responsible; C) Improve your tools; D) Improve your indicators. The findings of the survey are discussed and sample comments shared. Based on these findings, and expanding on the four themes, the article makes a number of practical recommendations to metrics suppliers for ways in which their services could better serve the need of the community for robust and responsible bibliometric and altmetric evaluation.

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European Commission’s OA Plan S: "Academic Freedom and Responsibility: Why Plan S Is Not Unethical"

Stephen Curry, has published "Academic Freedom and Responsibility: Why Plan S Is Not Unethical" in Reciprocal Space.

Here's an excerpt:

Since its announcement on 4th September the European Commission's plan to make a radical shift towards open access (OA) has caused quite a stir. Backed by eleven* national funding agencies, the plan aims to make the research that they support free to read as soon as it is published. This is a major challenge to the status quo, since the funders are effectively placing subscription journals off limits for their researchers, even if the journals allow green OA (publication of the author-accepted manuscript) after an embargo period; Plan S also specifically excludes hybrid open access except in cases where journals have an agreed schedule for flipping to OA. The plan has been welcomed as "admirably strong" by OA advocate Peter Suber, though he has also offered cautionary notes on some aspects. Others have been less enthusiastic. A central charge, from some publishers and some academics is that Plan S is an infringement of academic freedom to choose how and where your work is published and it therefore unethical.

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"Over-Optimization of Academic Publishing Metrics: Observing Goodhart’s Law in Action"

Michael Fire and Carlos Guestrin have self-archived "Over-Optimization of Academic Publishing Metrics: Observing Goodhart's Law in Action."

Here's an excerpt:

In this study, we analyzed over 120 million papers to examine how the academic publishing world has evolved over the last century. Our study shows that the validity of citation-based measures is being compromised and their usefulness is lessening. In particular, the number of publications has ceased to be a good metric as a result of longer author lists, shorter papers, and surging publication numbers. Citation-based metrics, such citation number and h-index, are likewise affected by the flood of papers, self-citations, and lengthy reference lists. Measures such as a journal's impact factor have also ceased to be good metrics due to the soaring numbers of papers that are published in top journals, particularly from the same pool of authors.

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The CASE Act (H.R. 3945): "Copyright and Speech Should Not Be Treated Like Traffic Tickets"

Katharine Trendacosta has published "Copyright and Speech Should Not Be Treated Like Traffic Tickets" in DeepLinks.

Here's an excerpt:

On Thursday, August 27, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the CASE Act (H.R. 3945). The CASE Act would create a “small claims” system for copyright, but not within the courts. Instead, cases would be heard by “Claims Officers” at the Copyright Office in Washington, D.C. And the Copyright Office has a history of presuming the interests of copyright holders are more valid than other legal rights and policy concerns, including the free expression values protected by fair use.

Basically every concern we had about the CASE Act last year remains: Turning over quasi-judicial power, which would include issuing damages awards of up to $15,000 per work infringed or $30,000 per proceeding, and agreements which boil down to binding injunctions, to a body with this history is unwise.

See also: Text of the bill.

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"APCs—Mirroring the Impact Factor or Legacy of the Subscription-Based Model?"

Nina Schönfelder has self-archived "APCs—Mirroring the Impact Factor or Legacy of the Subscription-Based Model."

Here's an excerpt:

With the ongoing open-access transformation, article processing charges (APCs) are gaining importance as the dominant business model for scientific open-access journals. This paper analyzes which factors determine the level of an APC by means of multivariate linear regression. With data from OpenAPC, APCs actually paid are explained by the following variables: (1) the "source normalized impact per paper" (SNIP), (2) whether the journal is open access or hybrid, (3) the publisher of the journal, (4) the subject area of the journal, and (5) the year. The results show that the journal's impact and the hybrid status are the most important factors for the level of APCs. However, the relationship between APC and SNIP is different for open-access journals and hybrid journals. The journal's impact is crucial for the level of APCs in open-access journals, whereas it little alters APCs for publications in hybrid-journals. This paper contributes to the emerging literature initiated by the "Pay It Forward"-study conducted at the University of California Libraries. It sets the foundations for the assessment whether the large-scale open-access transformation of scientific journals is a financially viable way for each research institution in general and universities in particular.

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"Monographs on the Move?: A View on ‘Decoupling’ and Other Prospects"

Andrew Lockett has published "Monographs on the Move?: A View on 'Decoupling' and Other Prospects" in Insights.

Here's an excerpt:

In the context of the recent debate about the movement towards a monographs mandate for the UK, this opinion piece considers the logic of ‘decoupling’ that underlies it. It also looks at the real opportunities to improve on the current extraordinarily durable high-price system for publishing long-form research. Thinking around decoupled monograph publishing has positioned academic authors as the individual consumers of diverse publishing services (a wide array of which are fast emerging) in the face of significant scholarly caution. Furthermore, a danger of renewed market dominance by price-makers in an open access environment remains, with the risk of inequitable outcomes that may mirror problems that have arisen in journals. Opportunities may also arise for new local initiatives, especially collective and community-based publishing, with academic libraries likely to be in the middle of a fast-changing and contested environment for publishing monographs.

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"The Open Access Citation Advantage: Does It Exist and What Does It Mean for Libraries?"

Colby Lil Lewis has published "The Open Access Citation Advantage: Does It Exist and What Does It Mean for Libraries?" in Information Technology and Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

The last literature review of research on the existence of an Open Access Citation Advantage (OACA) was published in 2011 by Philip M. Davis and William H. Walters. This paper reexamines the conclusions reached by Davis and Walters by providing a critical review of OACA literature that has been published 2011, and explores how increases in OA publication trends could serve as a leveraging tool for libraries against the high costs of journal subscriptions.

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