Category: Publishing

"Open Data, [Open] Access: Linking Data Sharing and Article Sharing in the Earth Sciences"

Samantha Teplitzky has published "Open Data, [Open] Access: Linking Data Sharing and Article Sharing in the Earth Science" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

INTRODUCTION The norms of a research community influence practice, and norms of openness and sharing can be shaped to encourage researchers who share in one aspect of their research cycle to share in another. Different sets of mandates have evolved to require that research data be made public, but not necessarily articles resulting from that collected data. In this paper, I ask to what extent publications in the Earth Sciences are more likely to be open access (in all of its definitions) when researchers open their data through the Pangaea repository. METHODS Citations from Pangaea data sets were studied to determine the level of open access for each article. RESULTS This study finds that the proportion of gold open access articles linked to the repository increased 25% from 2010 to 2015 and 75% of articles were available from multiple open sources.

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"What Constitutes Peer Review of Data: A Survey of Published Peer Review Guidelines"

Todd A. Carpenter has self-archived "What Constitutes Peer Review of Data: A Survey of Published Peer Review Guidelines."

Here's an excerpt:

Since a number of journals specifically focus on the review and publication of data sets, reviewing their policies seems an appropriate place to start in assessing what existing practice looks like in the 'real world' of reviewing and publishing data. This article outlines a study of the publicly available peer review policies of 39 scientific publications that publish data papers to discern which criteria are most and least frequently referenced. It also compares current practice with proposed criteria published in 2012.

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"Looking into Pandora’s Box: The Content of Sci-Hub and Its Usage"

Bastian Greshake has self-archived "Looking into Pandora's Box: The Content of Sci-Hub and Its Usage."

Here's an excerpt:

By utilizing the recently released corpus of Sci-Hub and comparing it to the data of ~28 million downloads done through the service, this study tries to address some of these questions. The comparative analysis shows that both the usage and complete corpus is largely made up of recently published articles, with users disproportionately favoring newer articles and 35% of downloaded articles being published after 2013. These results hint that embargo periods before publications become Open Access are frequently circumnavigated using Guerilla Open Access approaches like Sci-Hub.

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"Transitioning from a Conventional to a’‘Mega’ Journal: A Bibliometric Case Study of the Journal Medicine"

Simon Wakeling et al. have published "Transitioning from a Conventional to a'‘Mega' Journal: A Bibliometric Case Study of the Journal Medicine" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

This study compares the bibliometric profile of the journal Medicine before and after its transition to the OAMJ model. Three standard modes of bibliometric analysis are employed, based on data from Web of Science: journal output volume, author characteristics, and citation analysis. The journal’s article output is seen to have grown hugely since its conversion to an OAMJ, a rise driven in large part by authors from China. Articles published since 2015 have fewer citations, and are cited by lower impact journals than articles published before the OAMJ transition.

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Open Data: The Researcher Perspective

Elsevier and the Centre for Science and Technology Studies have released Open Data: The Researcher Perspective .

Here's an excerpt:

Combining information from a bibliometric analysis, a survey and case studies, this report examines how researchers share data, the attitudes of researchers toward sharing data, and why researchers might be reticent to share data.

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"Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) Launches with Early Success"

ARL has released "Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) Launches with Early Success."

Here's an excerpt:

Six organizations today announced the establishment of the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC): OpenCitations, the Wikimedia Foundation, PLOS, eLife, DataCite, and the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University. The Association of Research Libraries is among 33 stakeholder projects and organizations—including the California Digital Library, the Center for Open Science, the Internet Archive, Mozilla, and the Wellcome Trust—that have formally put their names behind I4OC in support of openly accessible citations.

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"European Commission Considering Leap into Open-Access Publishing"

Martin Enserink has published "European Commission Considering Leap into Open-Access Publishing" in Science.

Here's an excerpt:

The European Commission, which spends more than £10 billion annually on research, may follow two other big league funders, the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and set up a “publishing platform” for the scientists it funds, in an attempt to accelerate the transition to open-access publishing in Europe.

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Towards a Competitive and Sustainable Open Access Publishing Market in Europe

OpenAIRE has released Towards a Competitive and Sustainable Open Access Publishing Market in Europe.

Here's an excerpt:

Without intervention, immediate OA to just half of Europe's scientific publications will not be achieved until 2025 or later. Readers in academia have greater access, to more content, than ever before. Despite this, the majority of publications arising from public investments in research remain in accessible to the public, and the growth of OA appears to be slowing.

This study considers the economic factors contributing to the current state of the open access publishing market, and evaluates the potential for European policymakers to enhance market competition and sustainability in parallel to increasing access.

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"Emerging Trends In Peer Review—A Survey"

Richard Walkerand Pascal Rocha da Silva have published "Emerging Trends In Peer Review—A Survey" in Frontiers in Neuroscience.

Here's an excerpt:

"Classical peer review" has been subject to intense criticism for slowing down the publication process, bias against specific categories of paper and author, unreliability, inability to detect errors and fraud, unethical practices, and the lack of recognition for unpaid reviewers. This paper surveys innovative forms of peer review that attempt to address these issues. Based on an initial literature review, we construct a sample of 82 channels of scientific communication covering all forms of review identified by the survey, and analyze the review mechanisms used by each channel. We identify two major trends: the rapidly expanding role of preprint servers (e.g., ArXiv) that dispense with traditional peer review altogether, and the growth of "non-selective review," focusing on papers' scientific quality rather than their perceived importance and novelty. Other potentially important developments include forms of "open review," which remove reviewer anonymity, and interactive review, as well as new mechanisms for post-publication review and out-of-channel reader commentary, especially critical commentary targeting high profile papers.

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Call for Proposals: Digital Edition Publishing Cooperatives (July 6, 2017 Deadline)

The NHPRC and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation have issued a call for proposals for Digital Edition Publishing Cooperatives.

Here's an excerpt:

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation invite proposals for Digital Edition Publishing Cooperatives. Working together, the Cooperatives will develop technical and human infrastructures to support the digital publication of documentary and scholarly editions and to provide for their long-term preservation, discovery, and use. This initiative responds to the urgent need of scholars and documentary editors for reliable, sustainable, authoritative, and field-driven outlets for publication and discovery of digital editions. At the same time, we hope to investigate the possibility of creating a federated system or systems for publishing and sustaining digital editions.

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PubMed Launches LinkOut to Institutional Repository Full-Text Publications and Other Resources

PubMed has launched LinkOut.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

PubMed users can now see the icon that links to the full text deposited at an institutional repository (IR) using LinkOut. The LinkOut service allows you to link to full text, library holdings, and other relevant external resources from PubMed and other NCBI databases.

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"An Exploration of Faculty Experiences with Open Access Journal Publishing at Two Canadian Comprehensive Universities"

has published "An Exploration of Faculty Experiences with Open Access Journal Publishing at Two Canadian Comprehensive Universities" in Partnership The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research.

Here's an excerpt:

This exploratory study was intended to shed light on Canadian academics’ participation in, knowledge of and attitudes towards Open Access (OA) journal publishing. The primary aim of the study was to inform the authors’ schools’ educational and outreach efforts to faculty regarding OA publishing. The survey was conducted at two Canadian comprehensive universities: Brock University (St. Catharines, Ontario) and Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Ontario) in 2014.

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"What Makes Papers Visible on Social Media? An Analysis of Various Document Characteristics"

Zohreh Zahedi et al. have self-archived "What Makes Papers Visible on Social Media? An Analysis of Various Document Characteristics."

Here's an excerpt:

In this study we have investigated the relationship between different document characteristics and the number of Mendeley readership counts, tweets, Facebook posts, mentions in blogs and mainstream media for 1.3 million papers published in journals covered by the Web of Science (WoS). It aims to demonstrate that how factors affecting various social media-based indicators differ from those influencing citations and which document types are more popular across different platforms. Our results highlight the heterogeneous nature of altmetrics, which encompasses different types of uses and user groups engaging with research on social media.

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"The Coverage of Microsoft Academic: Analyzing the Publication Output of a University"

Sven E. Hug and Martin P. Braendle have self-archived "The Coverage of Microsoft Academic: Analyzing the Publication Output of a University."

Here's an excerpt:

This is the first in-depth study on the coverage of Microsoft Academic (MA). The coverage of a verified publication list of a university was analyzed on the level of individual publications in MA, Scopus, and Web of Science (WoS). Citation counts were analyzed and issues related to data retrieval and data quality were examined. . . . MA surpasses Scopus and WoS clearly with respect to book-related document types and conference items but falls slightly behind Scopus with regard to journal articles. MA shows the same biases as Scopus and WoS with regard to the coverage of the social sciences and humanities, non-English publications, and open-access publications. Rank correlations of citation counts are high between MA and the benchmark databases. . . .Given the fast and ongoing development of MA, we conclude that MA is on the verge of becoming a bibliometric superpower. However, comprehensive studies on the quality of MA data are still lacking.

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"Who Support Open Access Publishing? Gender, Discipline, Seniority and Other Factors Associated with Academics’ OA Practice"

Yimei Zhu has published "Who Support Open Access Publishing? Gender, Discipline, Seniority and Other Factors Associated with Academics' OA Practice" in Scientometrics.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper presents the findings from a survey study of UK academics and their publishing behaviour. . . . The results are based on a survey study of academics at 12 Russell Group universities, and reflect responses from over 1800 researchers. . . . The results suggest that there were differences in the extent of OA practice between different universities, academic disciplines, age and seniorities. Academics’ use in OA publishing was also related to their awareness of OA policy and OA repositories, their attitudes towards the importance of OA publishing and their belief in OA citation advantage.

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AAU, ARL, and AAUP Will Launch Open Access Monograph Publishing Initiative

AAU, ARL, and AAUP will launch the Open Access Monograph Publishing Initiative this spring.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The universities and colleges directly participating in this initiative will incorporate three components into their digital monograph publishing projects: provide a baseline university publishing grant of $15,000 to support the publication of an open access, digital monograph of 90,000 words or less (with additional funding for works of greater length or complexity to be negotiated by the author, institution, and publisher); set a target of awarding at least three publishing grants per year; and commit to participating in this initiative for five years.

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"Open Access to Scientific Information in Emerging Countries"

Joachim Schöpfel has published "Open Access to Scientific Information in Emerging Countries" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

Access to information plays a critical role in supporting development. Open access to scientific information is one solution. Up to now, the open access movement has been most successful in the Western hemisphere. The demand for open access is great in the developing world as it can contribute to solving problems related to access gaps. Five emerging countries, called BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — play a specific and leading role with a significant influence on regional and global affairs because of their large and fast-growing national economies, their demography and geographic situation. In order to better understand open access in each of the five countries, in this paper we take a look at specific conditions in each country, relying on data from information professionals and scientists from BRICS, with an empirical approach focused on country-specific characteristics and challenges. The paper is an updated and enriched synthesis of a recent work on open access in the BRICS countries published by Litwin, Sacramento CA.

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"’Just Google It’—The Scope of Freely Available Information Sources for Doctoral Thesis Writing"

Vincas Grigas et al. have published "'Just Google It'—The Scope of Freely Available Information Sources for Doctoral Thesis Writing" in Information Research.

Here's an excerpt:

Library collections and subscribed databases could cover up to 80 per cent of all information resources used in doctoral theses. Among the most significant findings to emerge from this study is the fact that on average more than half (57 per cent) of all utilised information resources were freely available or were accessed without library support. We may presume that the library as a direct intermediator for information users is potentially important and irreplaceable only in four out of ten attempts of PhD students to seek information.

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"Open-Access Mega-Journals: The Future of Scholarly Communication or Academic Dumping Ground? A Review"

Valerie Spezi, et al. have published "Open-Access Mega-Journals: The Future of Scholarly Communication or Academic Dumping Ground? A Review" in the Journal of Documentation.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper represents the first comprehensive review of the mega-journal phenomenon, drawing not only on the published academic literature, but also grey, professional and informal sources. The paper advances a number of ways in which the role of OAMJs in the scholarly communication environment can be conceptualised.

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"Copyright Compliance and Infringement in ResearchGate Full-Text Journal Articles"

Hamid R. Jamali has self-archived "Copyright Compliance and Infringement in ResearchGate Full-Text Journal Articles."

Here's an excerpt:

This study aims to investigate the extent to which ResearchGate members as authors of journal articles comply with publishers' copyright policies when they self-archive full-text of their articles on ResearchGate. . . . The key finding was that 201 (51.3%) out of 392 non-OA articles infringed the copyright and were non-compliant with publishers' policy. While 88.3% of journals allowed some form of self-archiving (SHERPA/RoMEO green, blue or yellow journals), the majority of non-compliant cases (97.5%) occurred when authors self-archived publishers' PDF files (final published version).

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"Public Funding and Open Access to Research: A Review of Canadian Multiple Sclerosis Research"

Caitlin Bakker et al. have published "Public Funding and Open Access to Research: A Review of Canadian Multiple Sclerosis Research" in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Here's an excerpt:

Objective: The goal of the study was to determine the open access (OA) cost implications and repository policies of journals frequently used by a sample of MS researchers. This study benchmarked current publishing preferences by MS Society of Canada researchers by examining the OA full-text availability of journal articles written by researchers funded between 2009 and 2014. . . .

Results: There were 758 articles analyzed in this study, of which 288 (38.0%) were OA articles. The majority of authors were still relying on journal policies for deposit in PubMed Central or availability on publisher websites for OA. Gold OA journals accounted for 10.2% of the journals in this study and were associated with significantly lower APCs (US $1900) than in hybrid journals (US $3000). Review of the journal self-archiving options highlighted the complexity of stipulations that authors would have to navigate to legally deposit a version of their article.

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"A ‘Gold-Centric’ Implementation of Open Access: Hybrid Journals, the ‘Total Cost Of Publication,’ and Policy Development in the UK and Beyond"

Stephen Pinfield, Jennifer Salter, and Peter A. Bath have published "A 'Gold-Centric' Implementation of Open Access: Hybrid Journals, the 'Total Cost Of Publication,' and Policy Development in the UK and Beyond" in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper reports analysis of data from higher education institutions in the UK on their experience of the open-access (OA) publishing market working within a policy environment favoring "Gold" OA (OA publishing in journals). It models the "total cost of publication"—comprising costs of journal subscriptions, OA article-processing charges (APCs), and new administrative costs—for a sample of 24 institutions. APCs are shown to constitute 12% of the "total cost of publication," APC administration, 1%, and subscriptions, 87% (for a sample of seven publishers). APC expenditure in institutions rose between 2012 and 2014 at the same time as rising subscription costs.

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Emory University Gets $1.2 million Grant for Open Access Humanities Publishing Program

Emory University has received a $1.2 million grant for an open access humanities publishing program.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Emory College of Arts and Sciences has launched a $1.2 million effort that positions it to be a national leader in the future of scholarly publishing. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is funding the multiyear initiative to support long-form, open-access publications in the humanities in partnership with university presses. . . .

Led by the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, the endeavor will bring together efforts in Emory College, Emory Libraries, the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence and the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship.

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"Supply, Demand, and the Subscription Model in Scholarly Publishing—An Analysis"

Kent Anderson has published "Supply, Demand, and the Subscription Model in Scholarly Publishing—An Analysis" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

5. Denials (turn-aways) to archival content remain high. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the dataset comes with the percentage of denials to the backfile, which represented 60% of all denials (turn-aways). Even looking at content 10 years old or older, denials represented 49% of the total, dropping to 37% for content 20 years old or older. Archives and backfiles are still sought after, as these data and the abstract usage combined to illustrate.

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Indiana University Bloomington Faculty Unanimously Adopt Open Access Policy

The Indiana University Bloomington faculty have unanimously adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Scholarly Communication staff will be available to help authors deposit their work—usually the final version of an article that has gone through peer review—in IUScholarWorks or another repository for archival purposes. Indeed, as Nazareth Pantaloni, Copyright Librarian for the IU Libraries, observed: "The Indiana University Libraries are delighted that the Bloomington Faculty Council has joined the over 300 U.S. colleges and universities who have decided to make their faculty’s scholarship more freely available under an Open Access policy. We look forward to working with them to accomplish that goal." Faculty members may also contact us to opt-out of the policy, a process that will be incorporated into a one-click form once the policy is fully implemented.

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