Scholarly Journals – Page 2

“Tracking Transformative Agreements through Open Metadata: Method and Validation Using Dutch Research Council NWO Funded Papers”

Transformative agreements have become an important strategy in the transition to open access, with almost 1,200 such agreements registered by 2025. Despite their prevalence, these agreements suffer from important transparency limitations, most notably article-level metadata indicating which articles are covered by these agreements. Typically, this data is available to libraries but not openly shared, making it difficult to study the impact of these agreements. In this paper, we present a novel, open, replicable method for analyzing transformative agreements using open metadata, specifically the Journal Checker tool provided by cOAlition S and OpenAlex. To demonstrate its potential, we apply our approach to a subset of publications funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and its health research counterpart ZonMw. In addition, the results of this open method are compared with the actual publisher data reported to the Dutch university library consortium UKB. This validation shows that this open method accurately identified 89% of the publications covered by transformative agreements, while the 11% false positives shed an interesting light on the limitations of this method. In the absence of hard, openly available article-level data on transformative agreements, we provide researchers and institutions with a powerful tool to critically track and evaluate the impact of these agreements.

https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/tz6be_v1

“News & Views Special Edition: How Much Scholarly Publishing Is Affected by Us Presidential Executive Orders?”

If federal agencies are being instructed to withhold or withdraw submissions, then, to quantify what this might mean to publishers, we have estimated the volume of output from a few key federal agencies? . . . .

The data span the previous 5 years.

The US accounted for around 15% of global output.

The CDC accounted for a tiny share: 0.1% of global output and 0.6% of US output.

The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), of which the CDC is a part, accounted for just under 6% of global output, but just over 40% of US output.

The NIH produces around 95% of DHHS output.

https://tinyurl.com/yr44kt7k

“Hurdles to Open Access Publishing Faced by Authors: A Scoping Literature Review from 2004 to 2023”

Over the past two decades, numerous widespread efforts and individual contributions to shift scientific publishing to open access (OA) faced a number of obstacles. Due to the complexity of knowledge production dimension and knowledge dissemination, the challenges encountered by researchers, publishers, and readers differ. While examples of such barriers exist across multiple parties, no attempt has been made to synthesize these for active researchers. Thus, this scoping review explores the barriers documented in the scientific literature that researchers encounter in their pursuit of publishing open access. After screening 1,280 relevant sources, 113 papers were included in the review. A total of 82 distinct barriers were identified and grouped into four subclusters: Practical Barriers, Lack of Competency, Sentiment, and Policy & Governance. The largest cluster in terms of barriers assigned was Sentiment, accounting for 51.2% (n=42) of all barriers identified, suggesting that perceived barriers are the strongest determinants of publishing OA, while the most frequently occurring barrier was “high article processing charges”, reported in 88 papers. Furthermore, burdens faced specifically due to the location of the researcher were identified. Understanding and acknowledging these barriers is essential for their effective elimination or mitigation.

https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/vzefj_v1

“Wiley Launches Pilot Pricing Framework to Support Equitable OA Publishing for Researchers in Latin America”

The pilot program, which began on January 21, 2025, supports authors across 33 countries in Latin America, including in Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean, to publish research in Wiley’s portfolio of nearly 600 gold open access journals. Discounts on Article Publication Charges (APCs) are applied in direct relationship to the Purchasing Power Index (PPI) value of each participating country, informed by data from the World Bank International Comparison Program. The anticipated timeline for the pilot is 12 months, with a mid-term review to inform future actions.

https://tinyurl.com/3t8kkyfv

“Staffing of Library Publishing Programs in the United States and Canada: A Data-Driven Analysis”

Introduction: Using the Library Publishing Coalition’s (LPC) Research Dataset, this paper focuses on the staffing of library publishing programs at colleges, universities, and consortia in the United States and Canada from 2014 to 2022.

Methods: In order to transform the data into a consistent format and write it into a single table as a commaseparated values (CSV) file, we created a program written in C# and executed on Windows 10. We narrowed the data set to focus on just library publishing programs from the United States and Canada, as well as to those that responded to the survey in early and later years. We also analyzed the data by enrollment and compared the staffing of library publishing programs to the staffing of academic libraries in general using the annual Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Library Trends and Statistics Annual Survey data.

Results: The average library publishing program relies largely on professional staff, has shown the most growth in paraprofessional staff, and has lost staff overall since 2019 while still showing growth overall since data collection began. Discussion: Compared with staffing of ACRL libraries in general, library publishing programs lost staff members at about a four-times higher rate from 2014 to 2021.

Conclusion: From 2014 to 2022, the number of library publishing staff did not grow at the same rate as the number of staff in libraries did as a whole. Also, although there are certainly general conclusions or trends, there are also opportunities for additional quantitative and qualitative research to be done in this area.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.17755

“Librarians at the Center of Peer Review Training: Increasing Collaboration among Scholarly Communication Stakeholders”

Librarians can organise peer review training, such as the six-part peer review series ‘Peer Review in Scholarly Journals: History, People, and Models’ delivered at UIUC, and build networks with key stakeholders to improve them.

Knowledge of peer review processes is still lacking for academic authors at all career levels.

Peer review training initiatives should be tailored to the information needs of researchers.

By partnering with other scholarly communication stakeholders, librarians are uniquely equipped to effectively deliver programs and services which can increase awareness of and interest in scholarly communication.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1657

“Moving Open Repositories out of the Blind Spot of Initiatives to Correct the Scholarly Record”

Open repositories were created to enhance access and visibility of scholarly publications, driven by open science ideals emphasising transparency and accessibility. However, they lack mechanisms to update the status of corrected or retracted publications, posing a threat to the integrity of the scholarly record. To explore the scope of the problem, a manually verified corpus was examined: we extracted all the entries in the Crossref × Retraction Watch database for which the publication date of the corrected or retracted document ranged from 2013 to 2023. This corresponded to 24,430 entries with a DOI, which we use to query Unpaywall and identify their possible indexing in HAL, an open repository (second largest institutional repository worldwide). In most cases (91%), HAL does not mention corrections. While the study needs broader scope, it highlights the necessity of improving the role of open repositories in correction processes with better curation practices. We discuss how harvesting operations and the interoperability of platforms can maintain the integrity of the entire scholarly record. Not only will the open repositories avoid damaging its reliability through ambiguous reporting, but on the contrary, they will also strengthen it.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1655

OASPA: “Fully OA Journals Output Shrank in 2023, But Hybrid OA Made Up the Lost Ground”

The OASPA dataset shows that members collectively published almost 1.2m articles in 2023. But 2023 output grew by only 4% over 2022, which is one quarter of the previous year’s growth, and one tenth of the long-term average. . . .

Reported numbers of articles in fully OA journals [published by OASPA members] shrank for the first time in 2023. OA articles in hybrid journals continue to grow strongly, making up for the lost ground in fully OA and so total output grew overall. In 2023, the volume of articles in fully OA journals shrank by two thirds of a percent, compared with a growth of 14% the previous year. Hybrid OA articles grew by 22% in the same period, down slightly from 24% the previous year. Output grew by 4% overall, compared with 16% the previous year. . . .

In fully OA journals [published by OASPA members], the proportion of CC BY (just over 80% of output) and CC BY-NC-ND (around 10%) has been steady since 2018. CC BY fell back slightly in 2023, and that of CC BY-NC-ND grew slightly – but both by just 1 percentage point, so it’s too soon to tell if this represents a change to long-term trends. The proportion of CC BY-NC-ND licenses grew slightly: from 10% in 2021 and 2022 to 12% in 2023.

Licenses with some restrictions are significantly more prevalent in hybrid journals, although this trend is showing signs of reversing. Historically, more restrictive licenses were displacing the proportion of CC BY, which had fallen from around 75% of hybrid OA in 2014 to around 51% in 2019. However, in 2020 CC BY licenses recovered ground and now account for around 67% of Hybrid licenses (up from 62% the year before). CC BY appears to be displacing the other two Creative Commons licenses in hybrid OA. In 2023, the proportion of CC BY-NC-ND was down slightly to 23%, and CC BY-NC up slightly to 10%. CC BY now accounts for over two thirds of hybrid OA output, up from half in 2019.

https://tinyurl.com/55u5b8ue

Paywall: “OA Journals in Subscription-Based Full-Text Databases in 2024: An Analysis of EBSCO’s Academic Search Complete”

Two sets of samples from all the 3,481 peer-reviewed non-embargoed full-text journals in ASC were examined. One set is 10% random samples, and the other set is journals from major publishers excluding gold OA publishers. Both sets have similar results that over 70% are OA journals.

https://tinyurl.com/4t8u25yy

"Math and Aftermath: Impacts of Unbundling a Large Journal Package on Researcher Perceptions and Behavior"

This study seeks to understand the effects on researchers’ work at a large research university in the wake of the university library’s shift from a near-comprehensive journals package with a single, large publisher to a selective list of individual journal subscriptions. Analyzing historical journal usage, along with turnaway and interlibrary loan trends from the years following the changes, the authors made use of structured interviews with local researchers to bring context and meaning to the quantitative data. The interviews highlighted researchers’ strategies for gaining access to literature in their fields to which the library does not subscribe, and revealed assumptions about timeliness of access, as well as relationships between library subscriptions and local researchers’ publishing behavior.

https://doi.org/10.5860/lrts.69n1.8170

"Assessing Opt-In Rates for Transformative Agreements"

With increasing requirements for open access (OA) by funders, academic libraries have begun piloting so-called “transformative agreements” with publishers. One type of agreement gives researchers at an institution read access to all content while also allowing them to publish articles OA in hybrid (and sometimes gold) OA journals without payment of an Article Processing Charge (APC). Such models often give corresponding authors from an institution the ability to opt in or out of making their article OA for hybrid journals. This article provides an assessment of two pilot transformative agreements at one large research institution that participated as a member of a consortium. It provides insight into opt-in rates overall for each publisher as well as breakdowns by disciplinary affiliation and rank of the researchers, as well as the combined impact of the agreement and other mechanisms on the overall OA availability of research at these publishers with researchers at the institution regardless of corresponding author status. The discussion includes a review of lessons learned and the overall benefits and challenges of working with such agreements.

https://doi.org/10.5860/lrts.69n1.8184

"A Decade of Open Access Policy at the Gates Foundation Based on Experimentation, Evidence and Evolution"

This article provides an in-depth look at the Gates Foundation’s open access (OA) policy journey as 2025 marks a decade of OA policy for the foundation. There have been two iterations of the policy – the original version that was launched in 2015 with a focus on gold OA, and which was then adapted in 2021 to reflect the Plan S principles, including limitations for publisher payments based on journal type and repository deposits. Now, in response to the ever-evolving needs of the scholarly ecosystem, the foundation is updating its policy again to strive for broader impact and to support practices that drive greater inclusion of scientists around the world, particularly those from low- and middle-income countries. This article will provide a deep dive into the decisions and data used to define a more equitable approach to dissemination of the research funded by the foundation.

https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.690

"Clarivate Identifies Top 50 Universities Powering Global Innovation"

Drawing on a host of Clarivate data – from the Web of Science to Derwent World Patent Index, and Derwent Patents Citation Index – the report highlights how knowledge flows between academia and industry across countries and regions, underscoring the global nature of innovation. The study identifies the top 50 universities named on the academic papers that received the highest number of citations from patents granted to the companies and organizations on the Top 100 Global Innovators 2024 list.

Key findings include:

The top 50 universities powering global innovation are distributed across eleven countries or regions – from Canada to South Korea

U.S. universities such as Harvard, Stanford, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) dominate. Harvard leads with its high volume of research outputs, but MIT’s smaller, yet highly impactful publications highlight its exceptional ability to translate research into groundbreaking innovations

Strong regional citation patterns emerge, with companies in Eastern Asia and Europe heavily relying on local academic research, while U.S. research is the most globally cited

The United Kingdom demonstrates particularly diverse international influence, with its research often serving as a bridge across regions.

Five organizations – Roche, Johnson & Johnson, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Samsung Electronics, and Siemens – account for over half (51%) of citations from top innovations to academic research

https://tinyurl.com/yc4nea6k

"Preparing Institutions for the Transition: Consortial Cost-Sharing Models in Transformative Agreements in Austria"

Over the past ten years, the member institutions of the Austrian Academic Library Consortium (KEMÖ) have gradually opened up their researchers’ publications to the world, one publisher at a time. By pulling their resources together, KEMÖ members have successfully converted their subscription-only agreements, for the most part, to read and publish deals in a cost-neutral manner, which include an article allocation comfortably covering the consortium’s publishing needs. However, the new business models disrupted the pre-transition status quo: the existing distribution of costs, based predominantly on institutional subscription spending, differed from the emerging institutional-level output and potential associated costs. While moving to fully article-based pricing was felt premature, the consortium decided to explore ways to make the internal cost distribution more equitable. This article presents the various cost-sharing models reviewed and the process leading to the models ultimately introduced for several transformative agreements.

https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.671

Paywall: "After the Big Deal: Data-Informed Management of Unbundled Journal Packages in a Consortial Environment"

Facing increasing costs for their Elsevier ScienceDirect bundled subscription, the 60 libraries of the State University of New York (SUNY) System restructured their large package in favor of a smaller curated list of titles and adopted a data informed approach to assess the new package. . . . Based on the experience of other consortia, the authors expected an increase in usage of subscription alternatives such as open access content, interlibrary loan, post-termination access requests, and individual article purchases. Preliminary review showed usage of Elsevier content initially dropped 50% after unbundling and then increased annually at a marginal rate. While consortia staff attempted to use a data-informed approach to evaluate titles for yearly subscription reviews and yearly package adjustments, this approach was not sustainable post-unbundling.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2024.2435429

"Paris Declaration Calls for Data-Driven Forensics to Spearhead the Fight Against Fake Science"

Supporters of research integrity have signed a new declaration calling for data-driven forensics – known as Forensic Scientometrics (FoSci) – to lead the charge in detecting, exposing and even preventing fake science. . . .

The event involved researchers, experts, and professionals from around the world who are committed to upholding research integrity, many well-known sleuths among them. Attendees signed the declaration over the following weekend. . . .

The FoSci Paris Declaration has made the following key commitments:

Advocate for transformation

Open a dialogue with policymakers to design de-incentivizing strategies to tackle the mass production of problematic papers

Advocate for reform of institutions involved in scientific research based on the group’s findings

Develop expertise and share knowledge

Facilitate training for researchers and professionals exploring these questions

Share and provide research and data in the FoSci community

Establish a regular cycle of professional meetings

Improve the tools and methods of forensic scientometrics

Improve the group’s ability to communicate its findings

Inform editorial boards, publishers, research institutions, governments and all relevant involved parties about the group’s work

Participate in building software and tools to enable the reproducibility of their forensics findings

Establish points of contact between FoSci members and concerned organizations

https://tinyurl.com/mrywc3ch

"How Has the Field Changed in the Last 10 Years? An Excerpt from the 2024 Library Publishing Directory"

In this year’s edition of the Directory, we received responses from 179 publishers in 18 countries, and 167 long-form responses are featured in the Directory. The number of respondents has grown gradually since the first Library Publishing Directory in 2014, when 116 library publishers completed the survey. We also see a much higher number in the unique institutions that have participated in the last decade: in the Directory‘s lifetime 383 library programs have responded to the call for entries. Most respondents (92%) represent academic libraries, which is consistent with previous years. Of the remaining respondents, 5% identified their institution type as consortia, 1% as member organizations, and 2% as other.

https://tinyurl.com/kf8w3fp5

2024 NIH Public Access Policy

This document is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on 12/18/2024 and available online at https://federalregister.gov/d/2024-29929, and on https://govinfo.gov. . . .

The Policy includes relevant language about NIH’s rights to make Author Accepted Manuscripts available in PubMed Central without embargo upon the Official Date of Publication. NIH reiterates that this does not mean that NIH has rights to the Final Published Article, as defined in the Policy, but only to the Author Accepted Manuscript, as defined in the Policy.

The Policy also requires that those depositing Author Accepted Manuscripts in PubMed Central agree to a revised Manuscript Submission Statement reiterating NIH’s right to post such Author Accepted Manuscripts without embargo upon the Official Date of Publication. The language for this statement, as included in the Guidance on Government Use License and Rights, has been modified from the Draft Public Access Policy to remove the phrase “create derivative works.” Because NIH had not intended the language to convey what comments suggested regarding the potential to compromise scientific integrity, NIH has removed the phrase. NIH will, however, continue using features, existing or to-be-developed, that ensure accessibility and usability. NIH also reserves the right to, in the future, reasonably interpret statutory and/or regulatory language to permit uses of content that are consistent with copyright law, that provide value to users, and that are considered to be in line with practices of the time.

Regarding comments that proposed NIH should provide the public with full reuse rights through explicit language about reuse of the work for any purpose with attribution, NIH notes that such language is akin to authors providing NIH with a particular license. As stated in the NIH Draft Public Access Policy, NIH does not believe that a particular license is needed to achieve the Policy’s goals.

Finally, NIH clarifies that the Policy does not prevent authors from depositing their Author Accepted Manuscripts into institutional repositories, as long as Author Accepted Manuscripts are also deposited in PubMed Central per the Policy.

https://tinyurl.com/5948sv6n

"What Have We Learned from Subscribe to Open?"

As we enter the 2025 renewal season, which marks the sixth year since the first S2O journals were launched, we come together here as two early S2O publishers to share our different applications of and experiences with the model: In 2020, Berghahn, of which Vivian is managing director, followed in Annual Reviews’ footsteps to become the second publisher to implement the Subscribe to Open model with their Berghahn Open Anthro initiative. EDP Sciences, of which Charlotte is director of marketing and communications, was another early adopter of the model in 2021 for several of their journals across astronomy, mathematics, and radioprotection. . . .

As of 2024, thanks to the Subscribe to Open model, over 180 journals have been able to publish entire volumes in open access, which would never have been possible otherwise because of the shortcomings of the APC models for these journals and their respective disciplines. The S2O model continues to grow, with more publishers set to launch their S2O offerings in 2025. The model is supported by a thriving cross-stakeholder S2O Community of Practice (CoP) that was formed in August 2020 by Annual Reviews and some of the earliest S2O publishers (including Berghahn and EDP Sciences), supporting libraries, funders, subscription agents, and other interested stakeholders. The CoP now has nearly 100 members (individuals and organizations alike) and meets on a monthly basis to discuss experiences, achievements, and concerns, share advice, and pool feedback.

https://tinyurl.com/mvavvvw3

"From Black Open Access to Open Access of Color: Accepting the Diversity of Approaches towards Free Science"

The aim of this article is to shed some light on ‘black open access’ model, that still remains poorly understood and largely neglected in the literature, despite being widely adopted in practice. I give an overview of the historical development of black OA and its most important projects: Sci-Hub and Library Genesis. Arguments are provided for why the term ‘black OA’ is misleading and the term ‘RGB OA’ (red, green and blue) would better describe a diverse landscape of open access projects that emerged after 2001. While practical approaches towards OA evolved dramatically in the past 20 years, theoretical discussion is still operating the same two-color scheme of ‘green’ and ‘gold’ open access from BOAI declaration of 2001: novel approaches are either not recognized as OA at all or are neglected as ‘black’. A new and more inclusive OA declaration might be needed to account for greater diversity of approaches.

https://tinyurl.com/nha7tsxd

"Intelligent Summaries: Will Artificial Intelligence Mark the Finale for Biomedical Literature Reviews?"

Manuscripts that only flatly summarize knowledge in a field could become superfluous, as AI-powered systems will become better and better at generating more comprehensive and updated summaries automatically. Furthermore, the use of A.I. technologies in data analysis and synthesis will greatly reduce human tasks, enabling more efficient and timely production of preliminary findings. What kind of reviews will still find room in an academic journal? It is reasonable to believe that reviews that provide critical analysis, unique interpretations of existing literature, which connect different areas, shed novel light on available data, that are aware of their human partiality, will continue to be valuable in academic journals.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1648

"PLOS Receives $3.3M Grant to Support Open Access Publishing & Business Model Transformation"

PLOS has been awarded a $3.3million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, underscoring its commitment to pioneer a shift away from traditional publishing models. The 3-year funding package from the Gates Foundation will support PLOS’ transition towards APC-free publishing by enabling authors, funded by the foundation, to publish with PLOS without facing APC barriers, and to contribute to open access publishing options for authors who do not have access to funding. This 3-year grant offers support while PLOS is actively working on new publishing models grounded in open science starting with an ongoing research & design project.

The grant will also support improvements to enhance the capture and dissemination of funding metadata and to experiment with the posting of peer reviews alongside preprints during the evaluation process, promoting greater transparency in scholarly communication.

https://tinyurl.com/3a79595s

"Publishers are Selling Papers to Train AIs — and Making Millions of Dollars"

[Roger] Schonfeld [VP of Ithaka S+R] and his colleagues launched the Generative AI Licensing Agreement Tracker in October. It includes information about licensing deals — confirmed and forthcoming — between technology companies and six major academic publishers, including Wiley, Sage and Taylor & Francis. Schonfeld says that the list documents only public agreements, and that there are probably several others that remain undisclosed. . . .

Some scholars have been apprehensive about deals being made without their knowledge on content they produced. To address this issue, a few publishers have taken steps to involve authors in the process.

https://tinyurl.com/56zwe54p

India: "One Nation One Subscription: Boon and Bane?"

A single-window purchasing entity, INFLIBNET, has been tasked with negotiating with the top 30 publishers out of a pool of 70+ originally identified publishers. The balance 40+ are expected to be closed in due course. . .

In Phase1, approximately 6,300 institutions and 18 million students will gain access to all the resources of the 30 publishers, at no cost. . . .

There is a budgetary allocation of around US$ 750 million for three years.

https://tinyurl.com/376k2dsa

See also: “Can ONOS Transform Indian Research?“

"Cancelling the ‘Big Deal’ at a Public University: A Discussion of STEM Faculty Perceptions of Cancellation and Post-Cancellation Usage Data "

This article discusses how faculty, staff, and students at the University at Buffalo (UB), a public Carnegie R1 university, were impacted by the cancellation of the Elsevier ScienceDirect Big Deal package. After the cancellation, UB participated in a multi-site study which included interviewing faculty about the effect of the cancellation on their research and teaching. In general, the faculty were supportive of the cancellation. There was frustration expressed with the current structure of the publishing industry, particularly with the exorbitant pricing of journal subscriptions. Later analysis of usage data at UB post-cancellation was conducted; unsurprisingly, the data showed a decrease in usage on the ScienceDirect platform and increase in requests for unavailable articles. Although the cancellation of the ScienceDirect Big Deal package had a direct impact on UB, the initial outcome was not exceedingly harmful and could be addressed through mitigating measures such as the quick fulfilment of requests for unavailable articles.

https://tinyurl.com/4duy8k8f