Category: Publishing

"Tweets as Impact Indicators: Examining the Implications of Automated Bot Accounts on Twitter"

Stefanie Haustein et al. have self-archived "Tweets as Impact Indicators: Examining the Implications of Automated Bot Accounts on Twitter."

Here's an excerpt:

This brief communication presents preliminary findings on automated Twitter accounts distributing links to scientific papers deposited on the preprint repository arXiv. It discusses the implication of the presence of such bots from the perspective of social media metrics (altmetrics), where mentions of scholarly documents on Twitter have been suggested as a means of measuring impact that is both broader and timelier than citations. We present preliminary findings that automated Twitter accounts create a considerable amount of tweets to scientific papers and that they behave differently than common social bots, which has critical implications for the use of raw tweet counts in research evaluation and assessment. We discuss some definitions of Twitter cyborgs and bots in scholarly communication and propose differentiating between different levels of engagement from tweeting only bibliographic information to discussing or commenting on the content of a paper.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Freedom of Information Requests Uncover the Lack of Transparency in Journal Subscription Costs"

Stuart Lawson and Ben Meghreblian have published "Freedom of Information Requests Uncover the Lack of Transparency in Journal Subscription Costs" in The LSE's Daily Blog on American Politics and Policy.

Here's an excerpt:

Making use of the UK's Freedom of Information (FOI) law we sent FOI requests to over 100 higher education institutions via the website whatdotheyknow.com asking them to release their data. Using this website has the dual benefit of making the process simple to scale up when sending multiple requests and also ensuring that the responses are in the public domain.

In two rounds of requests we asked for the amount of money that these institutions had paid to six of the largest academic publishers—Wiley, Springer, Taylor & Francis, Sage, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press—over a period of five years. The results have been collated and over £80m of subscription expenditure has been openly released. This process was for the most part straightforward and just required a lot of persistence and a little knowledge of library processes, which allowed us to know how to phrase the request and how to respond to any queries from the institutions.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Exposing the Predators: Methods to Stop Predatory Journals"

Margot Wehrmeijer has self-archived "Exposing the Predators: Methods to Stop Predatory Journals."

Here's an excerpt:

This thesis looks at three possible methods to stop predatory journals: black-and white-lists, open peer review systems and new metrics. Black- and white-lists have set up rules and regulations that credible publishers and journals should follow. Open peer review systems should make it harder for predatory publishers to make false claims about their peer review process. Metrics should measure more aspects of research impact and become less liable to gaming. The question is, which of these three methods is the best candidate to stop predatory journals.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Wall Street Analysts Say Open Access Has Failed Due to Lack of Focus, but Their Analysis Might Help It Succeed"

Curt Rice has published "Wall Street Analysts Say Open Access Has Failed Due to Lack of Focus, but Their Analysis Might Help It Succeed" in The LSE's Daily Blog on American Politics and Policy.

Here's an excerpt:

The absence of clear leadership at the helm of the open access movement is made painfully clear in a recent report about Elsevier's value as a company, entitled Goodbye to Berlin—The Fading Threat of Open Access. Why could the authors of this report at Bernstein Research let go of their earlier concerns and now upgrade their predictions about Elsevier's stock? "The rise of OA," they write, "has inflicted little or no damage on the leading subscription publishers."

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Journals and ‘Journals’: Taking a Deeper Look"

Walt Crawford has published "Journals and 'Journals': Taking a Deeper Look" in Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This essay builds on the July 2014 Cites & Insights investigation by including full article counts for the thousands of OA journals in Beall's lists (that is, those that actually publish articles!) and those published by OASPA members, extending the article counts back to 2011, and modifying the groups of journals to be more meaningful.

It also introduces the rough numbers for the new set of Gold OA journals that will form the heart of Part 2 of this two-part essay (the December 2014 C&I), namely more than three thousand journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals as of May 7, 2014 that aren't in one of the other two sets, that do have enough English in the interface for me to analyze them and that are not on biology-related or human medicine-related topics.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Codifying Collegiality: Recent Developments in Data Sharing Policy in the Life Sciences "

Genevieve Pham-Kanter et al. have published "Codifying Collegiality: Recent Developments in Data Sharing Policy in the Life Sciences " in PLOS ONE.

Over the last decade, there have been significant changes in data sharing policies and in the data sharing environment faced by life science researchers. Using data from a 2013 survey of over 1600 life science researchers, we analyze the effects of sharing policies of funding agencies and journals. We also examine the effects of new sharing infrastructure and tools (i.e., third party repositories and online supplements). We find that recently enacted data sharing policies and new sharing infrastructure and tools have had a sizable effect on encouraging data sharing. In particular, third party repositories and online supplements as well as data sharing requirements of funding agencies, particularly the NIH and the National Human Genome Research Institute, were perceived by scientists to have had a large effect on facilitating data sharing. In addition, we found a high degree of compliance with these new policies, although noncompliance resulted in few formal or informal sanctions. Despite the overall effectiveness of data sharing policies, some significant gaps remain: about one third of grant reviewers placed no weight on data sharing plans in their reviews, and a similar percentage ignored the requirements of material transfer agreements. These patterns suggest that although most of these new policies have been effective, there is still room for policy improvement.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"The Imperative for Open Altmetrics"

Stacy Konkiel, Heather Piwowar, and Jason Priem have published "The Imperative for Open Altmetrics" in The Journal of Electronic Publishing.

Here's an excerpt:

If scholarly communication is broken, how will we fix it? At Impactstory—a non-profit devoted to helping scholars gather and share evidence of their research impact by tracking online usage of scholarship via blogs, Wikipedia, Mendeley, and more—we believe that incentivizing web-native research via altmetrics is the place to start. In this article, we describe the current state of the art in altmetrics and its effects on publishing, we share Impactstory's plan to build an open infrastructure for altmetrics, and describe our company's ethos and actions.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"The Research Data Alliance: Globally Co-Ordinated Action against Barriers to Data Publishing and Sharing"

Andrew Treloar has published "The Research Data Alliance: Globally Co-Ordinated Action against Barriers to Data Publishing and Sharing" in a special issue of Learned Publishing on data publishing.

Here's an excerpt:

This article discusses the drivers behind the formation of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), its current state, the lessons learned from its first full year of operation, and its anticipated impact on data publishing and sharing. One of the pressing challenges in data infrastructure (taken here to include issues relating to hardware, software and content format, as well as human actors) is how best to enable data interoperability across boundaries. This is particularly critical as the world deals with bigger and more complex problems that require data and insights from a range of disciplines. The RDA has been set up to enable more data to be shared across barriers to address these challenges. It does this through focused Working Groups and Interest Groups, formed of experts from around the world, and drawing from the academic, industry, and government sectors.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Nature Communications Goes Full Open Access

Formerly a born-digital hybrid journal, Nature Communications will now be an open access only journal.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Nature Communications is to become the first Nature-branded open access only journal. The number one open access journal in multidisciplinary sciences, Nature Communications is Nature Publishing Group's (NPG) flagship open access title. Nature Communications will only accept open access research submissions from 20th October 2014. . . .

NPG is also making further policy moves with this development. Nature Communications now offers the CC BY 4.0 license as default, with other Creative Commons (CC) licenses available upon request. There is no price difference for the choice of CC license. APC waivers will be available for HINARI countries, and to others on a case-by-case basis.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

CERN and APS Announce Open Access Partnership

American Physical Society and The European Organization for Nuclear Research have formed a partnership to make CERN-authored articles published in APS journals open access.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Articles in APS' Physical Review Letters, Physical Review D, and Physical Review C in 2015 and 2016 will be covered by this agreement.

Thanks to this partnership, articles will be available free of charge for everyone to read. Copyright will remain with the authors and permissive Creative Commons CC-BY licences will allow re-use of the information (e.g. in books, review articles, conference proceedings and teaching material) as well as text- and data-mining applications.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Open Access Infrastructure: Where We Are and Where We Need to Go"

Cynthia Hodgson has published "Open Access Infrastructure: Where We Are and Where We Need to Go" in Information Standards Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

There's no doubt that open access is here to stay, but the underlying infrastructure needed to support and sustain OA publishing is still very much in its development stages. This article, through a series of interviews with experts in the OA arena, highlights some of the major areas of infrastructure that are needed including institutional policies, compliance tracking and reporting, publishing tools, new economic models and licensing, and sustainability.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"The Need for Research Data Inventories and the Vision for SHARE"

Clifford Lynch has published "The Need for Research Data Inventories and the Vision for SHARE" in Information Standards Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

There is a major movement calling for public access to the results of funded research, both in the US and globally. In parallel with these developments has been a growing focus on the importance of research data management across all fields of scholarship- essentially the idea that appropriate stewardship of data used in or arising from research is essential to preserving, communicating, and replicating scholarship. SHARE (Shared Access Research Ecosystem) is a joint project of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the two key higher education presidential associations, the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU); ARL, with generous grant funding from the Alfred P. Sloan foundation and the US Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), is leading the implementation effort. This article briefly summarize the potential role of SHARE in the overall scheme of managing research data, with some emphasis on the importance of standards (both existing and to be developed) for making this vision a reality.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"A Scalable and Sustainable Approach to Open Access"

Alexis Seeley et al. have published "A Scalable and Sustainable Approach to Open Access" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

Funded by tertiary institutions rather than individual researchers, this new model seeks to provide open access not just to traditional academic publications but to all forms of scholarly output.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"How Many Citations Are There in the Data Citation Index?"

Daniel Torres-Salinas et al. have self-archived "How Many Citations Are There in the Data Citation Index?."

Here's an excerpt:

Descriptive analysis on the citation distribution of the Thomson Reuters' Data Citation Index by publication type and four broad areas: Science, Engineering & Technology, Humanities & Arts and Social Sciences.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Google Settles American Society of Media Photographers, Inc. et al. v. Google Inc.

Google has settled the American Society of Media Photographers, Inc. et al. v. Google Inc. lawsuit. The agreement is confidential.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The agreement resolves a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Google in April, 2010, bringing to an end more than four years of litigation. It does not involve any admission of liability by Google. As the settlement is between the parties to the litigation, the court is not required to approve its terms.

This settlement does not affect Google's current litigation with the Authors Guild or otherwise address the underlying questions in that suit.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Who Publishes in Top-Tier Library Science Journals? An Analysis by Faculty Status and Tenure"

Quinn Galbraith, Elizabeth Smart, Sara D. Smith and Megan Reed have published "Who Publishes in Top-Tier Library Science Journals? An Analysis by Faculty Status and Tenure" in College & Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

This study analyzes the status and background of authors publishing in high-impact library science journals. Twenty-three high-impact journals were selected in this study by both quantitative and qualitative measures, while the analysis of author background focuses on whether the author holds a faculty status position with a tenure track. This study finds that 76 percent of academic librarians have faculty status.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Faster and Cheaper: Can a Digital-Centric Workflow Transform the Book Review?

Ithaka S+R has released Faster and Cheaper: Can a Digital-Centric Workflow Transform the Book Review?.

Here's an excerpt:

In July 2014, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) received funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's Digital Information Technology Program to help underwrite the development of a new digital prototype for book reviews. This prototype will be a website that supports a digital workflow from the publisher's electronic files all the way through to online publication of the review.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"A Review of the Characteristics of 108 Author-Level Bibliometric Indicators"

Lorna Wildgaard, Jesper W. Schneider, and Birger Larsen have self-archived "A Review of the Characteristics of 108 Author-Level Bibliometric Indicators."

Here's an excerpt:

An increasing demand for bibliometric assessment of individuals has led to a growth of new bibliometric indicators as well as new variants or combinations of established ones. The aim of this review is to contribute with objective facts about the usefulness of bibliometric indicators of the effects of publication activity at the individual level. This paper reviews 108 indicators that can potentially be used to measure performance on the individual author level, and examines the complexity of their calculations in relation to what they are supposed to reflect and ease of end-user application.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"The Big Picture: Scholarly Publishing Trends 2014"

Pippa Smart has published "The Big Picture: Scholarly Publishing Trends 2014" in Science Editing.

Here's an excerpt:

Technical solutions have attempted to address the growth in research but have sometimes added to the tsunami of information and increased the need to manage quality. To this end experiments with the traditional quality control and dissemination systems have been attempted, but news of improvements are frequently overshadowed by alarms about ethical problems. There is particular concern about some of the new publishers who are not adhering to established quality control and ethical practices. Within a potentially fragmenting system, however, there are also emerging collaborative projects helping to knit together the different elements of the publishing landscape to improve quality, linkages and access.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"STM’s New Publishing Licenses Raise Antitrust Concerns Amid Wider Efforts to Pollute Open Access Standards"

Ariel Katz has published "STM's New Publishing Licenses Raise Antitrust Concerns Amid Wider Efforts to Pollute Open Access Standards" in LSE Impact of Social Sciences.

Here's an excerpt:

For antitrust purposes, when a group of publishers adopts a set of uniform licenses, or when it recommends that its members adopt them, they tread in the area of antitrust law's core concern: "price fixing". In antitrust lingo the term price fixing is not limited to coordinating on price, but applies to any coordination that affects the quantity, quality, or any other feature of the product. Indeed, "[t]erms of use are no less a part of 'the product,'"[1] and competition between publishers is supposed to ensure optimal license terms just as it is expected to guarantee competitive prices. Therefore, when a group of publishers coordinates license terms, their concerted action is not conceptually different for antitrust purposes from a decision to coordinate subscription fees (downstream) or submission fees (upstream), and when the group represents the leading publishers and affects the majority of publications, antitrust concerns are further heightened.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Digital Legal Deposit, An IPA Special Report

The International Publishers Association has released Digital Legal Deposit, An IPA Special Report.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

A new IPA report reveals how policies and processes are being developed and implemented which allow digital content, whether in the form of e-books, journals, blogs or website content, to be collected and archived. It contains in-depth analysis of schemes in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, France and Italy, as well as details from Japan, China, Brazil, the United States, Australia and Canada.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

U.S. Department of Energy Public Access Plan

U.S. Department of Energy has released its Public Access Plan.

Here's an excerpt:

The Department proposes to host, a portal and a search interface tool, the Public Access Gateway for Energy and Science (PAGES), to enhance the discoverability of unclassified and otherwise unrestricted scholarly publications resulting from DOE funding. PAGES will provide metadata and abstracts for such publications in a way that is open, readable, and available for bulk download. The PAGES metadata catalog will be included in the Department's Enterprise Data Inventory and Public Data Listing. PAGES will also link to the full text VoR hosted by the publisher when the article is available on the publisher's site openly and without charge. In instances where this is not the case, PAGES will link to a full-text version of the accepted manuscript twelve months from the article publication date and then link to the VoR when and if it becomes available. Metadata accompanying the accepted manuscript, e.g., author name, journal title, and digital object identifier (DOI) for the VoR, ensures that attribution to authors, journals, and original publishers will be maintained.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

eLife Research Advances Allows Authors to Update Their Papers

eLife has announced Research Advances, which allows authors to update their papers.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The new article format, which we have named Research Advances, is for new results that build on previously published Research Articles or Short Reports in an important way. Authors will therefore be able to report progress in their research programs rapidly and efficiently when it is judged to be a substantial addition to the original work. These contributions might use a new technique or a different experimental design to generate results that strengthen, refine or even challenge the conclusions of the original research paper.

On a historical note, the University of Houston Libraries' e-journal The Public-Access Computer Systems Review began to offer authors the option of updating articles in 1995. For example, the 1995 "The Heinz Electronic Library Interactive Online System (HELIOS): Building a Digital Archive Using Imaging, OCR, and Natural Language Processing Technologies" and the 1998 "The Heinz Electronic Library Interactive Online System (HELIOS): An Update."

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"Technology and Digital Scholarship"

Robert Harington has published "Technology and Digital Scholarship" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

According to The Guardian, 90% of all the data in the world has been generated over the last two years, but less than 1% of this information has been analyzed. The question for academic publishers and societies is one of comprehension. How do we assimilate these data?

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"