Category: Scholarly Communication

"British Ecological Society Launches Large-Scale Study to Test Whether ‘Blinding’ Reduces Bias in Science Publishing"

The British Ecological Society has released "British Ecological Society Launches Large-Scale Study to Test Whether 'Blinding' Reduces Bias in Science Publishing."

Here's an excerpt:

A two-year randomised controlled trial in the British Ecological Society journal Functional Ecology will be the largest of its kind to date to assess whether hiding author details during peer review reduces bias against underrepresented groups in the science publishing process.

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"Open Science and Modified Funding Lotteries Can Impede the Natural Selection of Bad Science"

Paul E. Smaldino et al. have published "Open Science and Modified Funding Lotteries Can Impede the Natural Selection of Bad Science" in Royal Society Open Science.

Here's an excerpt:

Assessing scientists using exploitable metrics can lead to the degradation of research methods even without any strategic behaviour on the part of individuals, via 'the natural selection of bad science.' Institutional incentives to maximize metrics like publication quantity and impact drive this dynamic. Removing these incentives is necessary, but institutional change is slow. However, recent developments suggest possible solutions with more rapid onsets. These include what we call open science improvements, which can reduce publication bias and improve the efficacy of peer review. In addition, there have been increasing calls for funders to move away from prestige- or innovation-based approaches in favour of lotteries. We investigated whether such changes are likely to improve the reproducibility of science even in the presence of persistent incentives for publication quantity through computational modelling. We found that modified lotteries, which allocate funding randomly among proposals that pass a threshold for methodological rigour, effectively reduce the rate of false discoveries, particularly when paired with open science improvements that increase the publication of negative results and improve the quality of peer review. In the absence of funding that targets rigour, open science improvements can still reduce false discoveries in the published literature but are less likely to improve the overall culture of research practices that underlie those publications.

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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

"Roles and Jobs in the Open Research Scholarly Communications Environment: Analysing Job Descriptions to Predict Future Trends"

Nancy Pontika has published "Roles and Jobs in the Open Research Scholarly Communications Environment: Analysing Job Descriptions to Predict Future Trends" in LIBER Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

During the past two-decades academic libraries updated current staff job responsibilities or created brand new roles. This allowed them to adapt to scholarly communication developments and consequently enabled them to offer efficient services to their users. The global calls for openly accessible research results has shifted the institutional, national and international focus and their constant evolvement has required the creation of new research positions in academic libraries. This study reports on the findings of an analysis of job descriptions in the open research services as advertised by UK academic libraries.

METHOD: From March 2015 to March 2017, job advertisements relating to open access, repositories and research data management were collected.

RESULTS: The analysis of the data showed that the primary responsibilities of the open research support staff were: to ensure and facilitate compliance with funders’ open access policies, maintain the tools that enable compliance, create reports and collect statistics that measure compliance rates and commit to continuous liaising activities with research stakeholders.

DISCUSSION: It is clear that the open research services is a complex environment, requiring a variety of general and subject specific skill sets, while often a role may involve more than one area of expertise.

CONCLUSION: The results of this study could benefit prospective employees and universities that wish to embed open research skills in their curriculum.

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"Academic Review Promotion and Tenure Documents Promote a View of Open Access That Is at Odds with the Wider Academic Community"

Juan Pablo Alperin, Esteban Morales and Erin McKiernan have published "Academic Review Promotion and Tenure Documents Promote a View of Open Access That Is at Odds with the Wider Academic Community" in the LSE Impact of Social Sciences Blog.

Here's an excerpt:

In a recent study, analysing documents related to the review, promotion, and tenure (RPT) process at a representative set of 129 universities from the United States and Canada, only 5% of institutions mentioned Open Access. Just as fascinating as this lack of interest and support for making research OA, however, were the misconceptions we found surrounding the term itself. For example one document cautioned faculty against "publishing in journals that are widely considered to be predatory open access journals". Others equated OA with materials that are "self-published, inadequately refereed, open-access writing."

Given that the documents that govern the RPT process embed these misconceptions and false associations, we wanted to know how faculty themselves thought about OA. Do faculty commonly associate OA with low-quality, non-refereed, predatory content?

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"Bringing Transparent Peer Review to the Physical Sciences and Beyond"

Clarivate Analytics has released "Bringing Transparent Peer Review to the Physical Sciences and Beyond."

Here's an excerpt:

Publons and ScholarOne, both part of the Web of Science Group (a Clarivate Analytics company), have entered into a new partnership with IOP Publishing to introduce the industry's first cross-publisher, scalable transparent peer review workflows across some of their leading journals in the physical sciences and beyond. . . .

The new workflows ensure that, alongside the published article, readers can access a comprehensive peer review history, including reviewer reports, editor decision letters and authors' responses. Each of these elements is assigned its own digital object identifier (DOI), which helps readers easily reference and cite the peer review content. Transparency may increase the quality of the peer review process, and can also aid teaching of best practice in peer review.

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"Peer Review: Further Results from a Trial at eLife"

eLife has released "Peer Review: Further Results from a Trial at eLife."

Here's an excerpt:

In January, we described some initial results (see Peer review: First results from a trial at eLife). Of the 313 submissions, 70 (22.4%) were encouraged for in-depth peer review. We noted that this "encouragement rate" was higher for late-career researchers compared to their early- and mid-career colleagues. We also observed that encouragement rates were similar for male and female last authors in the trial process.

We will now summarise some re-analysis of the initial decision step, and the results of the peer-review process itself for the 70 trial papers sent for in-depth review and for 162 papers that went through the regular review process during the same period. We are planning to present the final outcomes of the trial at a later date.

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University Librarian and Dean of Libraries at University of Minnesota Minneapolis–St. Paul

The University of Minnesota Minneapolis–St. Paul is recruiting a University Librarian and Dean of Libraries.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Reporting to the Executive Vice President and Provost, the University Librarian and Dean of Libraries will lead a critically acclaimed library system; develop a strategic vision and plan that builds on a record of excellence; steward a rich and growing collection of materials; advance diversity, equity, and inclusion as integral to mission and excellence; and position the Libraries for effective and efficient service to faculty, students, and staff amid a rapidly evolving academic and research environment. The University Librarian and Dean will astutely manage the UMN Libraries' resources and bolster them through direct fundraising efforts.

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Version 10 of the Research Data Curation Bibliography

Digital Scholarship has released Version 10 of the Research Data Curation Bibliography. This selective bibliography includes over 750 English-language articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding the curation of digital research data in academic and other research institutions.

The Research Data Curation Bibliography covers topics such as research data creation, acquisition, metadata, provenance, repositories, management, policies, support services, funding agency requirements, peer review, publication, citation, sharing, reuse, and preservation.

Most sources have been published from January 2009 through December 2018; however, a limited number of earlier key sources are also included. The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works. If such versions are unavailable, links to the publishers' descriptions are provided.

Abstracts are included in this bibliography if a work is under a Creative Commons Attribution License (BY and national/international variations), a Creative Commons public domain dedication (CC0), or a Creative Commons Public Domain Mark and this is clearly indicated in the work.

The Research Data Curation Bibliography is under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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The PACS-L LISTSERV List Was Established 30 Years Ago Tomorrow

Imagine the Internet without the Web. Imagine that there is no Google or similar search engine. Imagine that the cutting edge Internet applications are e-mail, LISTSERV, FTP, and Telnet. Imagine that the "Internet" is made up of a number of different noncommercial networks, and that the connections between them are not always transparent. Imagine that Microsoft only shipped one million copies of the second version of Windows last year, and you are using MS-DOS without a graphical interface. Imagine that no established publisher has even experimented with an e-journal.

That was the situation on June 29, 1989 when I launched PACS-L, a LISTSERV mailing list. PACS-L was one of the first library-oriented mailing lists, and it was unusual in that it had a broad subject focus (public-access computer systems in libraries). Although PACS-L's greatest contribution may have been in raising librarians' awareness of the importance and potential of the then fledgling Internet, it was also the platform on which my soon-to-follow open access journal, The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, was based.

In Remembering PACS-L, Roy Tennant said:

For quite a while this list was where everything new in librarianship was happening. Despite its name, topics well beyond public access computer systems were discussed and debated. It was, in a nutshell, an essential place to hear and be heard. Its like was never to be again, as since then online communication channels have burgeoned and diversified. But for a little while, at least, there was a single place to be. And it was PACS-L.

In its heyday, it became one of the largest LISTSERV lists as Walt Crawford recounts in "Talking about Public Access—PACS-L's First Decade":

PACS-L kept growing, reaching 4,000 subscribers in June 1992; 5,000 subscribers that December; 6,000 by April 1993; and 7,000 that October. The 8,000 mark was reached by March 1994, 9,000 by February 1995, and 10,000 by February 1996. The list itself never reached 11,000 subscribers, and by 1996 many other specialized library lists had joined the fairly general PACS-L.

PACS-L was a collaborative effort that involved a number of staff from the University of Houston Libraries, including these list moderators:

  • Nicole Abbott
  • Amelia Abreu
  • Charles W. Bailey, Jr.
  • Marianne Stowell Bracke
  • Nancy Buchanan
  • Diane Gwamanda
  • Jill M. Hackenberg
  • Jack Hall
  • Gretchen McCord Hoffmann
  • Sara Holland
  • Rafal Kasprowski
  • Anne Mitchell
  • Joan O'Connor
  • J. Michael Thompson
  • Linda Thompson
  • Dana C. Rooks

PACS-L ceased operation at the end of 2013.

You can find out more about the list at "PACS-L (The Public-Access Computer Systems Forum)."

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Educopia Institute: Mapping the Scholarly Communication Landscape—2019 Census

The Educopia Institute has released Mapping the Scholarly Communication Landscape—2019 Census.

Here's an excerpt:

This report documents the design, methods, results, and recommendations of the 2019 Census of Scholarly Communication Infrastructure Providers (SCIP), a Census produced by the "Mapping the Scholarly Communication Infrastructure" project team (Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Middlebury College, 2018-19). The SCIP Census was created to document key components comprising the organizational, business, and technical apparatuses of a broad range of Scholarly Communication Resources (SCRs)—the tools, services, and systems that are instrumental to the publishing and distribution of the scholarly record.

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Senior Program Officer, Scholarly Communications at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is recruiting a Senior Program Officer, Scholarly Communications.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

In this role, the successful candidate will shape and direct the Foundation's grantmaking in what is now known as Scholarly Communications while participating as a senior member of the Foundation’s program leadership team and serving as a source of information and expertise about developments and opportunities in this broad domain. The SPO will supervise a small team of colleagues and, given that the Foundation is the nation's largest funder in the arts and humanities, will oversee and manage a large and complex budget in partnership with Foundation leadership.

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"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. The data and scripts are available on https://osf.io/vuw7h/, and the figures and follow-up work on http://tiny.cc/OpenReviews.

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"Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing"

Jonathan P. Tennant et al. have published "Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

The changing world of scholarly communication and the emerging new wave of 'Open Science' or 'Open Research' has brought to light a number of controversial and hotly debated topics. Evidence-based rational debate is regularly drowned out by misinformed or exaggerated rhetoric, which does not benefit the evolving system of scholarly communication. This article aims to provide a baseline evidence framework for ten of the most contested topics, in order to help frame and move forward discussions, practices, and policies. We address issues around preprints and scooping, the practice of copyright transfer, the function of peer review, predatory publishers, and the legitimacy of 'global' databases. These arguments and data will be a powerful tool against misinformation across wider academic research, policy and practice, and will inform changes within the rapidly evolving scholarly publishing system.

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"Same Question, Different World: Replicating an Open Access Research Impact Study"

Julie Arendt, Bettina Peacemaker, and Hillary Miller have published "Same Question, Different World: Replicating an Open Access Research Impact Study" in College & Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

To examine changes in the open access landscape over time, this study partially replicated Kristin Antelman's 2004 study of open access citation advantage. Results indicated open access articles still have a citation advantage. For three of the four disciplines examined, the most common sites hosting freely available articles were independent sites, such as academic social networks or article sharing sites. For the same three disciplines, more than 70% of the open access copies were publishers' PDFs. The major difference from Antelman's is the increase in the number of freely available articles that appear to be in violation of publisher policies.

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"COCI, the OpenCitations Index of Crossref Open DOI-to-DOI Citations"

Ivan Heibi et al. have self-archived "COCI, the OpenCitations Index of Crossref Open DOI-to-DOI Citations."

Here's an excerpt:

In this paper, we present COCI, the OpenCitations Index of Crossref open DOI-to-DOI citations (this http URL). COCI is the first open citation index created by OpenCitations, in which we have applied the concept of citations as first-class data entities, and it contains more than 445 million DOI-to-DOI citation links derived from the data available in Crossref. . . . We introduce the workflow we have developed for creating these data, and also show the additional services that facilitate the access to and querying of these data by means of different access points: a SPARQL endpoint, a REST API, bulk downloads, Web interfaces, and direct access to the citations via HTTP content negotiation. Finally, we present statistics regarding the use of COCI citation data, and we introduce several projects that have already started to use COCI data for different purposes.

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"The ‘Invisible Hand’ of Peer Review: The Implications of Author-Referee Networks on Peer Review in a Scholarly Journal"

Pierpaolo Dondio et al. have published "The 'Invisible Hand' of Peer Review: The Implications of Author-Referee Networks on Peer Review in a Scholarly Journal" in the Journal of Informetrics.

Here's an excerpt:

Peer review is not only a quality screening mechanism for scholarly journals. It also connects authors and referees either directly or indirectly. This means that their positions in the network structure of the community could influence the process, while peer review could in turn influence subsequent networking and collaboration. . . . By reconstructing temporal co-authorship networks, we found that referees tended to recommend more positively submissions by authors who were within three steps in their collaboration network. We also found that co-authorship network positions changed after peer review, with the distances between network neighbours decreasing more rapidly than could have been expected had the changes been random. This suggests that peer review could not only reflect but also create and accelerate scientific collaboration.

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