Category: Scholarly Journals

"Can an Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Be the Author of a Scholarly Article?"


At the end of 2022, the appearance of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot with amazing writing ability, caused a great sensation in academia. The chatbot turned out to be very capable, but also capable of deception, and the news broke that several researchers had listed the chatbot (including its earlier version) as co-authors of their academic papers. In response, Nature and Science expressed their position that this chatbot cannot be listed as an author in the papers they publish. Since an AI chatbot is not a human being, in the current legal system, the text automatically generated by an AI chatbot cannot be a copyrighted work; thus, an AI chatbot cannot be an author of a copyrighted work. Current AI chatbots such as ChatGPT are much more advanced than search engines in that they produce original text, but they still remain at the level of a search engine in that they cannot take responsibility for their writing. For this reason, they also cannot be authors from the perspective of research ethics.

https://doi.org/10.6087/kcse.292

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"How Open Access Diamond Journals Comply with Industry Standards Exemplified by Plan S Technical Requirements"


Purpose:

This study investigated how well current open access (OA) diamond journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and a survey conform to Plan S requirements, including licenses, peer review, author copyright, unique article identifiers, digital archiving, and machine-readable licenses.

Method:

Data obtained from DOAJ journals and surveyed journals from mid-June to mid-July 2020 were analyzed for a variety of Plan S requirements. The results were presented using descriptive statistics.

Results:

Out of 1,465 journals that answered, 1,137 (77.0%) reported compliance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) principles. The peer review types used by OA diamond journals were double-blind (6,339), blind (2,070), peer review (not otherwise specified, 1,879), open peer review (42), and editorial review (118) out of 10,449 DOAJ journals. An author copyright retention policy was adopted by 5,090 out of 10,448 OA diamond journals (48.7%) in DOAJ. Of the unique article identifiers, 5,702 (54.6%) were digital object identifiers, 58 (0.6%) were handles, and 14 (0.1%) were uniform resource names, while 4,675 (44.7%) used none. Out of 1,619 surveyed journals, the archiving solutions were national libraries (n=170, 10.5%), Portico (n=67, 4.1%), PubMed Central (n=15, 0.9%), PKP PN (n=91, 5.6%), LOCKSS (n=136, 8.4%), CLOCKSS (n=87, 5.4%), the National Computing Center for Higher Education (n=6, 0.3%), others (n=69, 4.3%), no policy (n=855, 52.8%), and no reply (n=123, 7.6%). Article-level metadata deposition was done by 8,145 out of 10,449 OA diamond journals (78.0%) in DOAJ.

Conclusion:

OA diamond journals’ compliance with industry standards exemplified by the Plan S technical requirements was insufficient, except for the peer review type.

https://doi.org/10.6087/kcse.295

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"Impact and Perceived Value of the Revolutionary Advent of Artificial Intelligence in Research and Publishing among Researchers: A Survey-Based Descriptive Study"


Purpose:

This study was conducted to understand the perceptions and awareness of artificial intelligence (AI) in the academic publishing landscape.

Method:

We conducted a global survey entitled "Role and impact of AI on the future of academic publishing" to understand the impact of the AI wave in the scholarly publishing domain. This English-language survey was open to all researchers, authors, editors, publishers, and other stakeholders in the scholarly community. Conducted between August and October 2021, the survey received responses from around 212 universities across 54 countries.

Results:

Out of 365 respondents, about 93% belonged to the age groups of 18–34 and 35–54 years. While 50% of the respondents selected plagiarism detection as the most widely known AI-based application, image recognition (42%), data analytics (40%), and language enhancement (39%) were some other known applications of AI. The respondents also expressed the opinion that the academic publishing landscape will significantly benefit from AI. However, the major challenges restraining the large-scale adoption of AI, as expressed by 93% of the respondents, were limited knowledge and expertise, as well as difficulties in integrating AI-based solutions into existing IT infrastructure.

Conclusion:

The survey responses reflected the necessity of AI in research and publishing. This study suggests possible ways to support a smooth transition. This can be best achieved by educating and creating awareness to ease possible fears and hesitation, and to actualize the promising benefits of AI.

https://doi.org/10.6087/kcse.294

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"Guest Post — Scholarly Publishing as a Global Endeavor: Leveraging Open Source Software for Bibliodiversity "


The headline numbers for OJS [Open Journal Systems] in 2021 indicate that 1.46m articles were published by 34,071 active journals on approximately 12,000 publisher and institutional installations. To give context to these numbers, Elsevier’s portfolio published ~600,000 articles in ~2,700 journals in the same year. These past few years have seen a significant acceleration in the proliferation of the number of journals and the number of articles published on open source software.

bit.ly/3XAvduC

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"Wiley Extends Open Access Agreement with Big Ten Academic Alliance "


Wiley, one of the world’s largest publishers and a global leader in research and education, today announced a three-year extension of its landmark open publishing agreement with the libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, which serve universities across the midwestern and eastern United States.

This landmark agreement is "all open access," with no fees to Big Ten Academic Alliance faculty and researchers for publishing in all journals under the Wiley umbrella, including Hindawi’s gold open access portfolio. The agreement, active as of January 1, 2023, grants 14 participating flagship universities and 17 affiliated campuses access to read and publish in Wiley’s full portfolio of journals. Lead authors at all campuses covered by the agreement can publish their articles as open access, ensuring that their research will be immediately open and available to the public and that they will retain rights in their own work.

bit.ly/3Eaov7G

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"Digging into shift+OPEN: A Conversation with MIT Press"


Supported by a gift from the Arcadia Fund, shift+OPEN will provide a platform for subscription journals that wish to move to a diamond (i.e., institutionally subsidized, with no reader or author fees) open-access (OA) publishing model. . . . [Nick Lindsay] We have enough support to underwrite a modest-sized journal that is publishing on a quarterly basis and has a traditional set up. There’s a range of possibilities that we can consider inside those parameters and we plan to examine the operations of the selected journal very closely to make sure that it can reasonably fit within our financial constraints.

bit.ly/3Yv6Kbn

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"Open Access: A Journey from Impossible to Probable, but Still Uncertain"


An overview of the evolution of open access (OA) to scientific publications over the last 20 years is presented. This retrospective look allows us to make two observations that seem to overlap: on the one hand, how close the initial objective seems to be to what initially seemed utopian and, on the other, the unanticipated and solid obstacles that open access has encountered along the way, as well as the unexpected and diverse solutions that are emerging to overcome them. The overall assessment of OA is positive, and it underscores that open access is (or is becoming) possible, that it is good, and that it is necessary. However, this overall positive evolution has come up against two major obstacles that are slowing its progress: the double payments generated by hybrid journals (subscription and article processing charges [APCs]) and the unchecked growth in APCs. In addition, this intensive use of APCs is creating a publishing gap between publishers that charge fees to authors and those that do not, and ultimately, it is causing dissension regarding the (previously shared) strategy toward open access. There are no immediate, one-off solutions to overcome the aforementioned dysfunctions, although three actions that, in the medium term, can remedy them can be mentioned: changing the approach to the evaluation of science, adopting measures to regulate APCs, and promoting alternative publication models. Finally, it should be noted that OA has acted as the vanguard and spearhead of a broader movement: that of open science.

https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2023.ene.13

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"Are Papers Published in Predatory Journals Worthless? A Geopolitical Dimension Revealed by Content-Based Analysis of Citations"


This study uses content-based citation analysis to move beyond the simplified classification of predatory journals. We present that, when we analyze papers not only in terms of the quantity of their citations but also the content of these citations, we are able to show the various roles played by papers published in journals accused of being predatory. To accomplish this, we analyzed the content of 9,995 citances (i.e., citation sentences) from 6,706 papers indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection, which cites papers published in so-called "predatory" (or questionable) journals. The analysis revealed that the vast majority of such citances are neutral (97.3%), and negative citations of articles published in the analyzed journals are almost completely nonexistent (0.8%). Moreover, the analysis revealed that the most frequently mentioned countries in the citances are India, Pakistan, and Iran, with mentions of Western countries being rare. This highlights a geopolitical bias and shows the usefulness of looking at such journals as mislocated centers of scholarly communication. The analyzed journals provide regional data prevalent for mainstream scholarly discussions, and the idea of predatory publishing hides geopolitical inequalities in global scholarly publishing. Our findings also contribute to the further development of content-based citation analysis.

https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00242

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"Data Sharing and Reuse Practices: Disciplinary Differences and Improvements Needed"


This study investigates differences and commonalities in data production, sharing and reuse across the widest range of disciplines yet and identifies types of improvements needed to promote data sharing and reuse. . . .From the 3,257 survey responses, data sharing and reuse are still increasing but not ubiquitous in any subject area and are more common among experienced researchers.

https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-08-2021-0423

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"Beyond Web of Science and Scopus There Is Already an Open Bibliodiverse World of Research — We Ignore It at Our Peril"


Discussing their analysis of a new dataset of journals published via the Open Journals Systems publishing platform, Saurabh Khanna, Jon Ball, Juan Pablo Alperin and John Willinsky argue that rather than being an aspiration an open, regional and bibliodiverse publishing ecosystem is already in existence.

bit.ly/3XlXK6J

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"Outside the Library: Early Career Researchers and Use of Alternative Information Sources in Pandemic Times"


Presents findings from a study into the attitudes and practices of pandemic-era early career researchers (ECRs) in regard to obtaining access to the formally published scholarly literature, which focused on alternative providers, notably ResearchGate and Sci-Hub. . . . Findings show that alternative providers, as represented by ResearchGate and Sci-Hub, have become established and appear to be gaining ground. However, there are considerable country- and discipline-associated differences.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1522

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"Persistent Identifiers — Risks and Trust Related Issues Explored with New Knowledge Exchange Report and Case Studies"


As part of the work around Risks and Trust in pursuit of a well-functioning PID infrastructure for research, this Knowledge Exchange report examines the complex PID landscape within its six partner countries and beyond. The benefits of an efficient PID infrastructure and how this is a precondition for research communities impending research agendas, are explained. The report provides an in-depth look at what can go wrong with an unreliable PID service.

https://www.knowledge-exchange.info/news/articles/2-2-23

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"One Size Does Not Fit All: Self-Archiving Personas Based on Federally Funded Researchers at a Mid-Sized Private Institution"


Introduction: This mixed-method study analyzes the self-archiving behaviors and underlying motivations of researchers at an institution very recently recategorized by the Carnegie Classification system from "Doctoral– High Research Activity (R2)" to "Doctoral–Very High Research Activity (R1)." Methods: A quantitative analysis of data provided by CHORUS, a multi-institutional open access (OA) infrastructure project designed to minimize the administrative costs of complying with federal public access mandates, was followed by semi-structured qualitative interviews with researchers to determine the underlying motivations for self-archiving research papers resulting from federal grant support. Results: Fifty-one authors with federal research funding published 71 journal articles; 139 OA versions of these 71 articles were intentionally made available by researchers across nine types of platforms, including and in addition to those provided by publishers. Interviews with 11 investigators revealed motivators such as a dedication to public access to knowledge, learned behaviors in specific disciplines, and enlightened self-interest. Challenges included concern regarding confidentiality, confusion about intellectual property and funder requirements, administrative overhead, and integrity of the scholarly record. Discussion: Despite concerns and a lack of an OA mandate and other drivers more commonly present at larger, more research-intensive universities, several researchers interviewed actively engaged in self-archiving article versions, not always with clear motivations. These findings have implications for both scholarly communications and collection development services. Conclusion: These quantitative and qualitative data informed the creation of three distinct personas intended to help librarians at similar universities design services in a manner that aligns with investigator motivations.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.13886

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"Toward Equitable Open Research: Stakeholder Co-created Recommendations for Research Institutions, Funders and Researchers"


Open Research aims to make research more accessible, transparent, reproducible, shared and collaborative. Doing so is meant to democratize and diversify access to knowledge and knowledge production, and ensure that research is useful outside of academic contexts. Increasing equity is therefore a key aim of the Open Research movement, yet mounting evidence demonstrates that the practices of Open Research are implemented in ways that undermine this. In response, we convened a diverse community of researchers, research managers and funders to co-create actionable recommendations for supporting the equitable implementation of Open Research. Using a co-creative modified Delphi method, we generated consensus-driven recommendations that address three key problem areas: the resource-intensive nature of Open Research, the high cost of article processing charges, and obstructive reward and recognition practices at funders and research institutions that undermine the implementation of Open Research. In this paper, we provide an overview of these issues, a detailed description of the co-creative process, and present the recommendations and the debates that surrounded them. We discuss these recommendations in relation to other recently published ones and conclude that implementing ours requires ‘global thinking’ to ensure that a systemic and inclusive approach to change is taken.

https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.221460

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"The MIT Press Announces New Initiative to Flip Existing Subscription-Based Journals to a Diamond Open Access Publishing Model"


In keeping with its mission and longstanding commitment to increase access to scholarship, the MIT Press is pleased to announce shift+OPEN. This new initiative is designed to flip existing subscription-based journals to a diamond open access publishing model. Shift+OPEN is generously supported by the Arcadia Fund.

The MIT Press welcomes submissions for English-language journals in any field and from any part of the world. Intended for existing titles, shift+OPEN will cover the expenses of transitioning a journal to open access model for a three-year term, provide the Press’s full suite of publishing services, and support the development of a sustainable funding model for the future. The deadline for applications is March 31, 2023.

bit.ly/3JBN7cM

"A Free Toolkit to Foster Open Access Agreements"


In November 2021, with the support of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) and cOAlition S, four ‘task and finish’ working groups were established. The authors facilitated and supported these groups. Each group was responsible for producing tools that will enable library consortia and small independent publishers to negotiate transformative agreements, which is to say, agreements that will enable the publisher to fully transition to open access. The first task and finish group developed shared principles for transformative agreements. The second developed a data template to enable smaller independent publishers to reach agreements with library consortia and libraries, while the third developed example licence agreements. These groups recognized that the implementation of a transformative agreement crosses a complex ecosystem of technology, processes, policies, automated functions and manual functions that relate to contract management, article submission and peer review, content hosting and dissemination as well as financial management. For this reason, a fourth group produced a workflow framework that describes the process in all its phases. The members of these four groups were volunteers from stakeholder communities including libraries, library consortia, smaller independent publishers and intermediaries. This article explains why these tools are needed and the process behind their creation. The authors have combined these tools into a freely available toolkit, available under a CC BY licence.

http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.585

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"Core’s Library Resources & Technical Services Journal Goes Fully Open Access"


Previously, the most recent six issues of LRTS were embargoed behind a login for subscribers and Core members, which has been removed. This change makes the complete contents of the journal from 1996 to the present freely available on the LRTS site.

bit.ly/3DqHwSK

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"Science Journals Ban Listing of ChatGPT as Co-author on Papers"


The publishers of thousands of scientific journals have banned or restricted contributors’ use of an advanced AI-driven chatbot amid concerns that it could pepper academic literature with flawed and even fabricated research.

https://cutt.ly/r9E9vr9

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"cOAlition S Confirms the End of Its Financial Support for Open Access Publishing under Transformative Arrangements after 2024"


Plan S was launched in 2018. At that time, cOAlition S recognised that transformative arrangements would provide a useful means to repurpose funds for journal subscriptions to publication fees, thus supporting legacy publishers in transforming paywalled to Open Access publication models. It was, however, also clear that the transformation would have to be completed at a definite point in time, by the end of 2024 at the latest. We maintain this timeline. We believe that the strategy of providing financial support for these arrangements—endorsed by many cOAlition S members—beyond 2024 would significantly increase the risk that these arrangements will become permanent and perpetuate hybrid Open Access, which cOAlition S has always firmly opposed.

bit.ly/3Y2l8He

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"Community Consensus on Core Open Science Practices to Monitor in Biomedicine"


The state of open science needs to be monitored to track changes over time and identify areas to create interventions to drive improvements. In order to monitor open science practices, they first need to be well defined and operationalized. To reach consensus on what open science practices to monitor at biomedical research institutions, we conducted a modified 3-round Delphi study. Participants were research administrators, researchers, specialists in dedicated open science roles, and librarians. In rounds 1 and 2, participants completed an online survey evaluating a set of potential open science practices, and for round 3, we hosted two half-day virtual meetings to discuss and vote on items that had not reached consensus. Ultimately, participants reached consensus on 19 open science practices. This core set of open science practices will form the foundation for institutional dashboards and may also be of value for the development of policy, education, and interventions.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001949

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New Tools Validate Compliance with OA Funder’s Rules : "Confused by Open-Access Policies? These Tools Can Help"


Funding-agency policies mandating that scientific papers and data are made publicly available have helped to drive the adoption of preprints, open-access publishing and data repositories. But agencies often struggle to measure how closely grant recipients comply with the funding policies. Awardees, and the institutes that employ them, can struggle to ensure they are following the rules. Now, digital tools are cropping up to help both sides of the funding equation stick to the regulations.

https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00175-1

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"Faculty Perceptions of Open Access Publishing: Investigating Faculty Publishing Habits to Evaluate Library Collection Alignment"


Introduction: This investigation, originally conceived as a method for informing Albertsons Library on creative solutions to the collections budget shortfall, sought to determine an institution’s faculty perceptions of publishing and/or using open access (OA) materials, as well as to identify future mechanisms that would shift perceptions of OA publishing to a more favorable light, thereby fostering adoption of OA materials in faculty research and teaching. Methods: The study used an anonymous electronic survey of 468 faculty members, with a response rate of nearly 34%. Results and Discussion: Respondents indicated a mixed set of adoption, with equal distribution in willingness to engage with OA journals and publications. Quality of OA publications, combined with concerns for tenure and promotion, holds faculty back from utilizing OA journals and publications in their own research and in the classroom. Conclusion: The data collected through the course of this perceptions survey provide important insight into the perceptions of faculty at this point in time, laying the groundwork for future surveys to evaluate growth in engagement with OA publishing. Though the data provided do not immediately alleviate collections budget constraints at Albertsons Library, the survey contributed to a more holistic understanding of faculty publishing behavior in OA journals.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.13216

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"Model(s) of the Future? Overlay Journals as an Overlooked and Emerging Trend in Scholarly Communication"


Overlay journals, a potentially overlooked model of scholarly communication, have seen a resurgence due to the increasing number of preprint repositories and preprints on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) related topics. Overlay journals at various stages of maturity were examined for unique characteristics, including whether the authors submitted their article to the journal, whether the peer reviews of the article were published by the overlay journal, and whether the overlay journals took advantage of opportunities for increased discovery. As librarians and researchers seek new, futuristic models for publishing, overlay journals are emerging as an important contribution to scholarly communication.

https://doi.org/10.5206/cjils-rcsib.v45i2.14730

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"European Commission Grants Substantial Funding to Improve Institutional Publishing for Science"


The project "Creating a Robust Accessible Federated Technology for Open Access (CRAFT-OA), carried out by 23 experienced partners from 14 European countries, coordinated by the University of Gättingen, Germany will start in January 2023 and run for 36 months. . . . The project focuses on four strands of action to improve the Diamond OA model: (1) Provide technical improvements for journal platforms and journal software (2) Build communities of practice to foster overall infrastructure improvement (3) Increase visibility, discoverability and recognition for Diamond OA publishing (4) Integrate Diamond OA publishing with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and other large-scale data aggregators.

https://operas.hypotheses.org/6016

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"Jumping over the Paywall: Strategies and Motivations for Scholarly Piracy and Other Alternatives"


Despite the advance of the Open Access (OA) movement, most scholarly production can only be accessed through a paywall. We conduct an international survey among researchers (N=3,304) to measure the willingness and motivations to use (or not use) scholarly piracy sites, and other alternatives to overcome a paywall such as paying with their own money, institutional loans, just reading the abstract, asking the corresponding author for a copy of the document, asking a colleague to get the document for them, or searching for an OA version of the paper. We also explore differences in terms of age, professional position, country income level, discipline, and commitment to OA. The results show that researchers most frequently look for OA versions of the documents. However, more than 50% of the participants have used a scholarly piracy site at least once. This is less common in high-income countries, and among older and better-established scholars. Regarding disciplines, such services were less used in Life & Health Sciences and Social Sciences. Those who have never used a pirate library highlighted ethical and legal objections or pointed out that they were not aware of the existence of such libraries.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.05965

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