"The Prehistory of Biology Preprints: A Forgotten Experiment from the 1960s"

Matthew Cobb has self-archived "The Prehistory of Biology Preprints: A Forgotten Experiment from the 1960s."

Here's an excerpt:

In 1961, the NIH began to circulate biological preprints in a forgotten experiment called the Information Exchange Groups (IEGs). This system eventually attracted over 3600 participants and saw the production of over 2,500 different documents, but by 1967 it was effectively shut down by journal publishers’ refusal to accept articles that had been circulated as preprints. This article charts the rise and fall of the IEGs and explores the parallels with the 1990s and the biomedical preprint movement of today.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"We Can Shift Academic Culture through Publishing Choices" (Version 2)

Corina J Logan has published "We Can Shift Academic Culture through Publishing Choices" (Version 2) in F1000Research.

Here's an excerpt:

Researchers give papers for free (and often actually pay) to exploitative publishers who make millions off of our articles by locking them behind paywalls. This discriminates not only against the public (who are usually the ones that paid for the research in the first place), but also against the academics from institutions that cannot afford to pay for journal subscriptions and the ‘scholarly poor’. I explain exploitative and ethical publishing practices, highlighting choices researchers can make right now to stop exploiting ourselves and discriminating against others.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Prevalence and Citation Advantage of Gold Open Access n the Subject Areas of the Scopus Database"

Pablo Dorta-González and Yolanda Santana-Jiménez have self-archived "Prevalence and Citation Advantage of Gold Open Access n the Subject Areas of the Scopus Database."

Here's an excerpt:

In the present paper, an analysis of gold OA from across all areas of research -the 27 subject areas of the Scopus database- is realized. As a novel contribution, this paper takes a journal-level approach to assessing the OA citation advantage, whereas many others take a paper-level approach. Data were obtained from Scimago Lab, sorted using Scopus database, and tagged as OA/non-OA using the DOAJ list. Jointly with the OA citation advantage, the OA prevalence as well as the differences between access types (OA vs. non-OA) in production and referencing are tested. A total of 3,737 OA journals (16.8%) and 18,485 non-OA journals (83.2%) published in 2015 are considered. As the main conclusion, there is no generalizable gold OA citation advantage at journal level.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Sustainable Open Access Publishing: Preconditions, Dialog, and Continuous Adaptation: The Stockholm University Press Case"

Birgitta Hellmark Lindgren has published "Sustainable Open Access Publishing: Preconditions, Dialog, and Continuous Adaptation: The Stockholm University Press Case" in the Journal of Electronic Publishing..

Here's an excerpt:

Given the demand for open access publishing in the context of expensive article processing charges and acquisition costs scholarly publishing needs to be transformed. I believe that university libraries are in a good position to contribute to this change. I begin with describing what Stockholm University Press is, what we do and how. I continue with describing why we do it and for whom. I conclude by pointing out some lessons learned.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Red Light, Green Light: Aligning the Library to Support Licensing

Ithaka S+R has released Red Light, Green Light: Aligning the Library to Support Licensing.

Here's an excerpt:

There is widespread frustration within the academic library community with the seemingly uncontrollable price increases of e-resources, especially of licensed bundles of scholarly journals. The scholarly communications movement has vastly expanded academic and indeed public access to scholarly content. Yet prices for certain scholarly resources continue to outpace budget increases, and librarians do not feel in control of budgets and pricing. What if libraries found ways to bring together the whole library behind the objective of stabilizing or reducing what they pay?

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Who is Actually Harmed by Predatory Publishers?"

Martin Paul Eve and Ernesto Priego have published "Who is Actually Harmed by Predatory Publishers?" in tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique.

Here's an excerpt:

Predatory publishing refers to conditions under which gold open access academic publishers claim to conduct peer review and charge for their publishing services but do not, in fact, actually perform such reviews. Most prominently exposed in recent years by Jeffrey Beall, the phenomenon garners much media attention. In this article, we acknowledge that such practices are deceptive but then examine, across a variety of stakeholder groups, what the harm is from such actions to each group of actors. We find that established publishers have a strong motivation to hype claims of predation as damaging to the scholarly and scientific endeavour while noting that, in fact, systems of peer review are themselves already acknowledged as deeply flawed.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

ACS Launches ChemRxiv

ACS has launched ChemRxiv.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

ChemRxiv, a new chemistry preprint server for the global chemistry community, is now available in a fully functioning Beta version for use and feedback by researchers. The Beta launch has been undertaken with initial strategic input from the American Chemical Society (ACS), Royal Society of Chemistry, German Chemical Society and other not-for profit organizations, as well as other scientific publishers and preprint services. The free-of-charge service, originally announced late last year, is managed on behalf of the chemical science community by ACS and is powered by Figshare, an online digital repository for academic research.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Practicing What You Preach: Evaluating Access of Open Access Research"

Teresa Auch Schultz has self-archived "Practicing What You Preach: Evaluating Access of Open Access Research."

Here's an excerpt:

The open access movement seeks to encourage all researchers to make their works openly available and free of paywalls so more people can access their knowledge. Yet some researchers who study open access (OA) continue to publish their work in paywalled journals and fail to make it open. This project set out to study just how many published research articles about OA fall into this category, how many are being made open (whether by being published in a gold OA or hybrid journal or through open deposit), and how library and information science authors compare to other disciplines researching this field. Because of the growth of tools available to help researchers find open versions of articles, this study also sought to compare how these new tools compare to Google Scholar in their ability to disseminating OA research. From a sample collected from Web of Science of articles published since 2010, the study found that although a majority of research articles about OA are open in some form, a little more than a quarter are not. A smaller rate of library science researchers made their work open compared to non-library science researchers. In looking at the copyright of these articles published in hybrid and open journals, authors were more likely to retain copyright ownership if they printed in an open journal compared to authors in hybrid journals. Articles were more likely to be published with a Creative Commons license if published in an open journal compared to those published in hybrid journals.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"The State of OA: A Large-Scale Analysis of the Prevalence and Impact of Open Access Articles"

Heather Piwowar et al. have self-archived "The State of OA: A Large-Scale Analysis of the Prevalence and Impact of Open Access Articles."

Here's an excerpt:

We estimate that at least 28% of the scholarly literature is OA (19M in total) and that this proportion is growing, driven particularly by growth in Gold and Hybrid. The most recent year analyzed (2015) also has the highest percentage of OA (45%). Because of this growth, and the fact that readers disproportionately access newer articles, we find that Unpaywall users encounter OA quite frequently: 47% of articles they view are OA. Notably, the most common mechanism for OA is not Gold, Green, or Hybrid OA, but rather an under-discussed category we dub Bronze: articles made free-to-read on the publisher website, without an explicit Open license.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"The Surge in New University Presses and Academic-Led Publishing: An Overview of a Changing Publishing Ecology in the UK"

Janneke Adema and Graham Stone have published "The Surge in New University Presses and Academic-Led Publishing: An Overview of a Changing Publishing Ecology in the UK" in LIBER Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

This article outlines the rise and development of New University Presses and Academic-Led Presses in the UK or publishing for the UK market. Based on the Jisc research project, Changing publishing ecologies: a landscape study of new university presses and academic-led publishing, commonalities between these two types of presses are identified to better assess their future needs and requirements. Based on this analysis, the article argues for the development of a publishing toolkit, for further research into the creation of a typology of presses and publishing initiatives, and for support with community building to help these initiatives grow and develop further, whilst promoting a more diverse publishing ecology.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Sci-Hub Provides Access to Nearly All Scholarly Literature"

Daniel S Himmelstein et al. have published "Sci-Hub Provides Access to Nearly All Scholarly Literature" in PeerJ.

Here's an excerpt:

Since its creation in 2011, Sci-Hub has grown rapidly in popularity. However, until now, the extent of Sci-Hub's coverage was unclear. As of March 2017, we find that Sci-Hub's database contains 68.9% of all 81.6 million scholarly articles, which rises to 85.2% for those published in closed access journals. Furthermore, Sci-Hub contains 77.0% of the 5.2 million articles published by inactive journals. Coverage varies by discipline, with 92.8% coverage of articles in chemistry journals compared to 76.3% for computer science. Coverage also varies by publisher, with the coverage of the largest publisher, Elsevier, at 97.3%.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Changing Publishing Ecologies: A Landscape Study of New University Presses and Academic-Led Publishing

Jisc has released Changing Publishing Ecologies: A Landscape Study of New University Presses and Academic-Led Publishing.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In 2016 we commissioned a research project focused on institutional publishing initiatives which includes academic-led publishing ventures (ALPs) as well as new university presses and library-led initiatives (NUPs). We are pleased to announce the publication of the report 'Changing Publishing Ecologies. A Landscape Study of New University Presses and Academic-led Publishing', which charts the outcomes of this research. . . .

The NUP and ALP strands of the research study were co-ordinated and run in tandem by [Janneke] [Graham] Stone and Adema. This study was informed by a desk top review of current library publishing ventures in the US, Europe and Australia and an overview of international academic-led initiatives and their existing and future directions. The NUP strand consisted of a survey, which collected 43 responses, where the ALP strand was informed by interviews with 14 scholar-led presses. Taking different approaches for these two types of press, the report captures the take-up, reasoning and characteristics of these initiatives, as well as their future plans.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"EU Research Committee Wants to Gift Publishers New Rights to Restrict Access to Scientific Research"

COMMUNIA has released "EU Research Committee Wants to Gift Publishers New Rights to Restrict Access to Scientific Research."

Here's an excerpt:

Last week the Culture and Education Committee (CULT) and the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) voted on their final opinions on the Commission’s Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. . . .

The introduction of a new right for press publishers (aka the “link tax”) to extract fees from search engines for incorporating short snippets of—or even linking to—their content in article 11 is one of the most controversial issues of the proposed directive. Adopting this type of ancillary right at the EU level would have a strong negative impact on all stakeholders, including publishers, authors, journalists, researchers, online service providers, and readers. . . .

In the votes last week in the CULT and ITRE committees, the press publishers right was also carried through – and even expanded. Both of the recent opinions remove the restriction that the right applies to digital uses only, meaning that if adopted it would cover all uses—both digital and in print. Even worse, ITRE—the committee responsible for policy relating to the promotion of research—voted to extend the press publishers right to cover scientific publications.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"On Sponsorship, Transparency, Scholarly Publishing, and Open Access"

Richard Poynder has published "On Sponsorship, Transparency, Scholarly Publishing, and Open Access" in Open & Shut?

Here's an excerpt:

Sponsorship and lobbying (which often amount to the same thing), for instance, have assisted legacy publishers to co-opt open access. This has seen the triumph of the pay-to-publish model, which has been introduced in a way that has enabled publishers to adapt OA to their needs, and to ringfence and port their excessive profits to the new OA environment. Those researchers who do not have the wherewithal to pay article-process charges (APCs), however, are finding themselves increasingly disenfranchised.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Open Access Publishing Models and How OA Can Work in the Humanities"

Martin Paul Eve has published "Open Access Publishing Models and How OA Can Work in the Humanities" in the Bulletin of the Association for Information Science and Technology.

Here's an excerpt:

Open access (OA) has been shaping and benefiting the scientific community for years now, but this new wave of disseminating research freely has not quite taken hold in the field of humanities. Though humanities publishers could also benefit from an OA model, many have been resistant, citing possible issues with plagiarism or appropriation of an author's work for less than ideal uses. There are also challenges with the cost of publishing OA content, which for humanities could be much higher than in the scientific community due to the length of works produced.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Availability of Open Reference Data Nears 50% as Major Societies and Influential Publishers Endorse the Initiative for Open Citations"

eLife has released "Availability of Open Reference Data Nears 50% as Major Societies and Influential Publishers Endorse the Initiative for Open Citations."

Here's an excerpt:

Among the 20 publishers who contribute the largest amount of citation data, those who are making their citation data freely available now include: AIP Publishing, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the American Physical Society, De Gruyter, Emerald, and SciELO. They join Wiley, SAGE, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis and many others who made their reference data available prior to, or as part of, the launch of I4OC. Out of the 20 largest contributors, 13 publishers have now moved their reference data into the public domain, and discussions are ongoing with several other publishers.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS): Design And First-Year Review"

Arfon M. Smith et al. have self-archived "Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS): Design And First-Year Review."

Here's an excerpt:

This article describes the motivation, design, and progress of the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS). JOSS is a free and open-access journal that publishes articles describing research software. . . . JOSS publishes articles that encapsulate scholarship contained in the software itself, and its rigorous peer review targets the software components: functionality, documentation, tests, continuous integration, and the license. A JOSS article contains an abstract describing the purpose and functionality of the software, references, and a link to the software archive. The article is the entry point of a JOSS submission, which encompasses the full set of software artifacts. Submission and review proceed in the open, on GitHub. Editors, reviewers, and authors work collaboratively and openly. Unlike other journals, JOSS does not reject articles requiring major revision; while not yet accepted, articles remain visible and under review until the authors make adequate changes (or withdraw, if unable to meet requirements). Once an article is accepted, JOSS gives it a DOI, deposits its metadata in Crossref, and the article can begin collecting citations on indexers like Google Scholar and other services. Authors retain copyright of their JOSS article, releasing it under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"The Changing Role of Research Publishing: A Case Study from Springer Nature"

Steven Inchcoombe has published "The Changing Role of Research Publishing: A Case Study from Springer Nature" in Insights: the UKSG Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Using Springer Nature as a case study this article explores the future of research publishing, with the guiding objective of identifying how such organizations can better serve the needs of researchers and those that support researchers (particularly academic institutions, institutional libraries, research funding bodies and academic societies) as we work together to help advance discovery for the benefit of all. Progress in four key areas is described: improving the publishing process, innovating across science communication, driving the growth and development of open research and adding value beyond publishing. The aim of this article is thus to set out a clear vision of what research publishers can achieve if they especially focus on addressing researchers’ needs and apply their considerable resources and expertise accordingly.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Economics and Access 2017"

Walt Crawford has published "Economics and Access 2017" in Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt:

Now here we are—and it’s time to catch up with a variety of thoughts on economics and access. Most items cited come from 2016 and 2015. As usual, the groupings are somewhat arbitrary and items within a group are usually chronological.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"American Chemical Society Files Suit against Sci-Hub"

The American Chemical Society has released "American Chemical Society Files Suit against Sci-Hub."

Here's an excerpt:

On June 23, 2017, the American Chemical Society (ACS) filed suit in the United States District Court Eastern District of Virginia against unnamed confederates of Sci-Hub, a self-proclaimed web pirate organization that steals and then illegally reproduces and disseminates copyrighted scientific research articles on the internet. The suit asserts infringement of the professional Society’s copyrights, as well as counterfeiting and infringement of its trademarks.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"What I Learned from Predatory Publishers"

Jeffrey Beall has published "What I Learned from Predatory Publishers" in Biochemia Medica.

Here's an excerpt:

This article is a first-hand account of the author’s work identifying and listing predatory publishers from 2012 to 2017. Predatory publishers use the gold (author pays) open access model and aim to generate as much revenue as possible, often foregoing a proper peer review. The paper details how predatory publishers came to exist and shows how they were largely enabled and condoned by the open-access social movement, the scholarly publishing industry, and academic librarians. The author describes tactics predatory publishers used to attempt to be removed from his lists, details the damage predatory journals cause to science, and comments on the future of scholarly publishing.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Data Sharing Statements for Clinical Trials—A Requirement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors"

Darren B. Taichman et al. have published "Data Sharing Statements for Clinical Trials—A Requirement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors" in PLOS Medicine.

Here's an excerpt:

Therefore, ICMJE will require the following as conditions of consideration for publication of a clinical trial report in our member journals:

  1. As of July 1, 2018 manuscripts submitted to ICMJE journals that report the results of clinical trials must contain a data sharing statement as described below.
  2. Clinical trials that begin enrolling participants on or after January 1, 2019 must include a data sharing plan in the trial’s registration. The ICMJE's policy regarding trial registration is explained at www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html. If the data sharing plan changes after registration this should be reflected in the statement submitted and published with the manuscript, and updated in the registry record.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Are Open Access Journals Immune from Piracy?"

Angela Cochran has published "Are Open Access Journals Immune from Piracy?" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

Even though Sci-Hub is billed as providing access to paywalled content, there appear to be thousands of open access articles in the host database. Sci-Hub provided usage of their services from 2015 to Science news writer John Bohannon with the full data set. Reviewing just the data from December 2015, I found that over 200 users accessed PLOS ONE content, over 450 users accessed Hindawi content, and a whopping 2,145 users accessed BioMed Central content.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Detours and Diversions—Do Open Access Publishers Face New Barriers?"

Kent Anderson has published "Detours and Diversions—Do Open Access Publishers Face New Barriers?" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

Analyzing their [Altmetric's] Top 100 articles for 2016 (data available here), 70% of the Top 100 articles were published behind paywalls. Given the preponderance of paywalled journals, it may be tempting to interpret a 30% rate of non-paywalled articles in the data as an indication that OA journals are punching above their weight, as they comprise only 18% of papers currently, according the best available estimate. Drilling into the data, however, tells a different story. Fully 1/3 of the articles in the Top 100 categorized by Altmetric as OA come from Gold OA journals from for-profit publishers (mainly Elsevier and SpringerNature), which suggests that for-profit publishers’ promotional practices may benefit the prominence of the content they publish.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Steady Growth of Articles in Fully OA Journals Using a CC-BY License"

OASPA has released "Steady Growth of Articles in Fully OA Journals Using a CC-BY License."

Here's an excerpt:

A total of 905,687 articles were published with the CC BY license in open access-only journals by members of OASPA during the period shown above [2000-2016], with 189,529 of those being published in 2016.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap