Category: Scholarly Journals

"Small Steps Matter: FASTR Passes Senate Committee Hurdle"

SPARC has released Small Steps Matter: FASTR Passes Senate Committee Hurdle by Heather Joseph.

Here's an excerpt:

With its action today, the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) advanced the cause of public access to publicly funded research articles another crucial step. In a unanimous voice vote, the Committee approved S. 779, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act which now positions the legislation to be considered by the full Senate.

This marks the first time that a U.S. Senate Committee has acted on a government-wide policy ensuring public access to the results of publicly funded research and signals that there is deep support for the ideal that taxpayers have the right to access to the research that their tax dollars fund. This action continues the steady march towards enabling fast, barrier-free access to research articles that got its start with the establishment of a voluntary NIH policy in 2005, and slowly progressed with legislation shifting that policy to mandatory in 2008, again in 2010 with the America COMPETES Act and most recently with the 2013 White House OSTP Directive on public access. . . .

Today's progress on FASTR is another step in this long march. Under the leadership of Senator Cornyn (R-TX) and Senator Wyden (D-OR), FASTR provides the statutory framework needed codify the White House OSTP Directive, which was issued with the goal of accelerating scientific discovery and fueling innovation. While 13 federal agencies and departments have released their initial plans, the reality is that the OSTP Directive is not law, and can be easily overturned by a subsequent Administration. Should FASTR continue on course and be passed by both chambers of Congress, free, fair public access to research articles will become the law of the land – and not just the preference a President.

See also: "Cornyn Bill To Improve Access To Taxpayer-Funded Research Passes Committee Unanimously."

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Take Action: Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act Being Marked Up

The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act is being marked up.

Here's an excerpt from the SPARC announcement:

After a month of intense conversations and negotiations, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) will bring the "Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act" up for mark-up on Wednesday, July 29th. The language that will be considered is an amended version of FASTR, officially known as the 'Johnson-Carper Substitute Amendment,' which was officially filed by the HSGAC leadership late on Friday afternoon, per committee rules.

There are two major changes from the original bill language to be particularly aware of. Specifically, the amendment

  • Replaces the six month embargo period with "no later than 12 months, but preferably sooner," as anticipated; and
  • Provides a mechanism for stakeholders to petition federal agencies to 'adjust' the embargo period if the 12 months does not serve "the public, industries, and the scientific community."

To support the bill and communicate your concerns, see: "Help Move FASTR" "Secure Open Access to Taxpayer-Funded Research"

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"’Total Cost of Ownership’ of Scholarly Communication: Managing Subscription and APC Payments Together"

Stuart Lawson has self-archived "'Total Cost of Ownership' of Scholarly Communication: Managing Subscription and APC Payments Together."

Here's an excerpt:

Managing subscription journals and open access charges together has created challenges which may in part be dealt with by offsetting the two revenue streams against each other. In order to do this, it is necessary to have reliable financial data about the extent of the two interacting markets. Jisc Collections has been undertaking data collection regarding universities' article publication charge (APC) expenditure. This process is difficult without a standardized way of recording data, so Jisc Collections has developed a standard data collection template and is helping institutions to release data openly. If available data become more comprehensive and transparent, then all parties (libraries, publishers, research funders, and intermediaries) will have better knowledge of the APC market and can more accurately predict the effects of offsetting.

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"Journal Subscription Expenditure of UK Higher Education Institutions, Version 3″

Stuart Lawson and Ben Meghreblian have published "Journal Subscription Expenditure of UK Higher Education Institutions, Version 3." in F1000Research.

Here's an excerpt:

The academic libraries of higher education institutions (HEIs) pay significant amounts of money each year for access to academic journals. The amounts paid are often not transparent especially when it comes to knowing how much is paid to specific publishers. Therefore data on journal subscription expenditure were obtained for UK HEIs using a series of Freedom of Information requests. Data were obtained for 153 HEIs' expenditure with ten publishers over a five-year period. The majority of institutions have provided figures but some are still outstanding. The data will be of interest to those who wish to understand the economics of scholarly communication and see the scale of payments flowing within the system. Further research could replicate the data collection in other jurisdictions.

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"SHARE Community Stakeholders Convene Working Meeting in Washington, DC"

SHARE has released "SHARE Community Stakeholders Convene Working Meeting in Washington, DC."

Here's an excerpt:

Accomplishments since the first SHARE Community Meeting in October 2014 include the DuraSpace webinar series, launch of the share-research.org website and the SHARE Notify beta, and surpassing the milestone of one million research release events included in SHARE Notify. Currently in the works are partnerships with IRIS [http://iris.isr.umich.edu/] and ORCID and a pending grant proposal to fund Phase II of SHARE.

See also: "SHARE Community Meeting, Summer 2015."

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"Emerald Group Publishing Tests ZEN, Increases Prices: What Does It Mean?"

Richard Poynder has published "Emerald Group Publishing Tests ZEN, Increases Prices: What Does It Mean?" in Open and Shut?

Here's an excerpt:

So why has Emerald chosen to trial ZEN [Zero Embargo Now] with some of it library journals, what role did the LAG play in the decision, and what do members of the LAG feel about the associated 70% increase in the APCs of 32 engineering and technology journals?

In the hope of finding out I emailed Emerald and asked where I could find a list of advisory group members. It turns out that these are not publicly available.

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Scopus Will Include Open Access Indicator for Indexed Journals

As of July 29, Scopus will include an open access indicator for indexed journals.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Out of the +21,000 active journals indexed in Scopus, 3,785 are currently (June 2015) registered as Open Access (OA) journals. . . .

In Scopus, journals are registered as being OA journals only if they are registered as Gold OA or Subsidized OA at one or both of the following sources: Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources (ROAD).

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"Accelerating Scientific Publication in Biology"

Ronald D Vale has self-archived "Accelerating Scientific Publication in Biology."

Here's an excerpt:

Our analysis suggests that publication practices have changed considerably in the life sciences over the past thirty years. Considerably more experimental data is now required for publication, and the average time required for graduate students to publish their first paper has increased and is approaching the desirable duration of Ph.D. training. Since publication is generally a requirement for career progression, schemes to reduce the time of graduate student and postdoctoral training may be difficult to implement without also considering new mechanisms for accelerating communication of their work. The increasing time to publication also delays potential catalytic effects that ensue when many scientists have access to new information. The time has come for the life scientists, funding agencies, and publishers to discuss how to communicate new findings in a way that best serves the interests of the public and scientific community.

See also: "Thoughts on Ron Vale's 'Accelerating Scientific Publication in Biology'" by Michael Eisen.

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Who Needs Open Access? Greek Academic Libraries Do

The Hellenic Academic Libraries Link (HEAL-Link) has ended its contracts with all e-journal publishers due to the financial crisis.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement (news item link scrolls on banner):

HEAL-Link informs you of the termination of the agreements with all publishers as of 01.07.2015 due to the inability to collect the remaining half of the budget for the current year, despite the efforts that have been made and are continued, in cooperation with the Board of Rectors and the Ministry of Education. A

See also: "Greek Scientists Lose Access to Digital Journals."

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Emerald Announces Zero Embargo Trial for Library and Information Science Journals

Emerald has announced a zero embargo trial for library and information science journals.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Emerald Group Publishing, global publisher linking research and practice, today announces the launch of its Green Open Access, Zero Embargo trial, applicable for all mandated articles submitted to the company's Library and Information Science (LIS) and selected Information and Knowledge Management journals.

This change allows authors to deposit the post-print version of the article into their respective institutional repository immediately upon official publication, rather than after Emerald's 24 month embargo period for mandated articles. . . .

The evaluation of this trial will help to inform future Emerald Open Access initiatives. Emerald will work with its Librarian Advisory Group to assess the impact of the trial, by monitoring the quality and volume of submissions, feedback from authors, and readership figures from both the Emerald platform and institutional repositories.

See also: "Emerald and Open Access."

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"Dutch Universities Start Elsevier Boycott—Will This Be a Game Changer or Will Publisher Profits Remain Unaffected?"

LSE Impact of Social Sciences has released "Dutch Universities Start Elsevier Boycott—Will This Be a Game Changer or Will Publisher Profits Remain Unaffected?."

Here's an excerpt:

Led by vice chancellors, Dutch universities have recently announced plans for a country-wide boycott of the academic publisher Elsevier. This boycott has the potential to be a significant game changer in the relationship between the research community and the world's largest academic publisher. But how will it affect open access momentum in the UK and around the world? Here we have brought together two expert views on the subject. Danny Kingsley, the Head of Scholarly Communication at University of Cambridge and Steven Harnad, longtime advocate for open access, share their views on what the Dutch boycott can hope to achieve.

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"Dutch Boycott of Elsevier—A Game Changer?"

Danny Kingsley has published "Dutch Boycott of Elsevier—A Game Changer?" in Unlocking Research.

Here's an excerpt:

A long running dispute between Dutch universities and Elsevier has taken an interesting turn. Yesterday Koen Becking, chairman of the Executive Board of Tilburg University who has been negotiating with scientific publishers about an open access policy on behalf of Dutch universities with his colleague Gerard Meijer, announced a plan to start boycotting Elsevier.

As a first step in boycotting the publisher, the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) has asked all scientists that are editor in chief of a journal published by Elsevier to give up their post. If this way of putting pressure on the publishers does not work, the next step would be to ask reviewers to stop working for Elsevier. After that, scientists could be asked to stop publishing in Elsevier journals. . . .

The 2015 Dutch boycott is significant. Typically negotiations with publishers occur at an institutional level and with representatives from the university libraries. This makes sense as libraries have long standing relationships with publishers and understand the minutiae of the licencing processes . However the Dutch negotiations have been led by the Vice Chancellors of the universities. It is a country-wide negotiation at the highest level. And Vice Chancellors have the ability to request behaviour change of their research communities.

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Public Knowledge Project Announces Open Access Publishing Cooperative Study

Public Knowledge Project has announced its Open Access Publishing Cooperative Study.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Public Knowledge Project is pleased to announce the launch of the Open Access Publishing Cooperative Study. This two-year initiative, in collaboration with the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and other important stakeholders, will explore the feasibility of establishing publishing cooperatives that bring together libraries, journals, scholarly societies, presses, and others as a financially sustainable open access model for peer-reviewed scholarly publishing. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is providing a grant of $460,000 to support the project.

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"The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era"

Vincent Larivière et al. have published "The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era" in PLOS ONE.

Here's an excerpt:

The consolidation of the scientific publishing industry has been the topic of much debate within and outside the scientific community, especially in relation to major publishers' high profit margins. However, the share of scientific output published in the journals of these major publishers, as well as its evolution over time and across various disciplines, has not yet been analyzed. This paper provides such analysis, based on 45 million documents indexed in the Web of Science over the period 1973-2013. It shows that in both natural and medical sciences (NMS) and social sciences and humanities (SSH), Reed-Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, and Taylor & Francis increased their share of the published output, especially since the advent of the digital era (mid-1990s). Combined, the top five most prolific publishers account for more than 50% of all papers published in 2013. Disciplines of the social sciences have the highest level of concentration (70% of papers from the top five publishers), while the humanities have remained relatively independent (20% from top five publishers). NMS disciplines are in between, mainly because of the strength of their scientific societies, such as the ACS in chemistry or APS in physics. The paper also examines the migration of journals between small and big publishing houses and explores the effect of publisher change on citation impact. It concludes with a discussion on the economics of scholarly publishing.

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"The Impact of Open Access on Collection Management"

Adelia Grabowsky has published "The Impact of Open Access on Collection Management" in Virginia Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

This article examines if and how the integration of OA materials has changed collection and/or access management activities within academic libraries.

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DSpace@MIT Tops 3 Million Downloads

MIT's DSpace@MIT repository has had over 3 million downloads as of the end of April.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Open Access Articles Collection in DSpace@MIT now contains over 16,600 articles, which collectively were downloaded over 90,000 times in April.

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"The OA Landscape in Summary Form: Act Now!"

Walt Crawford has published "The OA Landscape in Summary Form: Act Now!" in Walt at Random.

Here's an excerpt:

The full set of 29 subject discussions that extend this summer's Library Technology Report issue "The State of Open Access Journals: Idealism and Opportunism" has been posted, and will appear on Fridays from now through September 11, 2015. (Oops: The actual title is Open Access Journals: Idealism and Opportunism.)

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23 Groups Oppose Elsevier’s New Sharing and Hosting Policy

SPARC has released "New Policy from Elsevier Impedes Open Access and Sharing."

Here's an excerpt:

[Statement]

On April 30, 2015, Elsevier announced a new sharing and hosting policy for Elsevier journal articles. This policy represents a significant obstacle to the dissemination and use of research knowledge, and creates unnecessary barriers for Elsevier published authors in complying with funders' open access policies. In addition, the policy has been adopted without any evidence that immediate sharing of articles has a negative impact on publishers' subscriptions.

Despite the claim by Elsevier that the policy advances sharing, it actually does the opposite. The policy imposes unacceptably long embargo periods of up to 48 months for some journals. It also requires authors to apply a "non-commercial and no derivative works" license for each article deposited into a repository, greatly inhibiting the re-use value of these articles. Any delay in the open availability of research articles curtails scientific progress and places unnecessary constraints on delivering the benefits of research back to the public.

Furthermore, the policy applies to "all articles previously published and those published in the future" making it even more punitive for both authors and institutions. This may also lead to articles that are currently available being suddenly embargoed and inaccessible to readers.

As organizations committed to the principle that access to information advances discovery, accelerates innovation and improves education, we support the adoption of policies and practices that enable the immediate, barrier free access to and reuse of scholarly articles. This policy is in direct conflict with the global trend towards open access and serves only to dilute the benefits of openly sharing research results.

We strongly urge Elsevier to reconsider this policy and we encourage other organizations and individuals to express their opinions.

The statement is available here and we welcome others to show their support by also endorsing it.

The statement has been signed by the following groups:

COAR: Confederation of Open Access Repositories
SPARC: Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
ACRL: Association of College and Research Libraries
ALA: American Library Association
ARL: Association of Research Libraries
Association of Southeastern Research Libraries
Australian Open Access Support Group
IBICT: Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology
CARL: Canadian Association of Research Libraries
CLACSO: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales
COAPI: Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions
Creative Commons
Creative Commons (USA)
EIFL
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Greater Western Library Alliance
LIBER: European Research Library Association
National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences
OpenAIRE
Open Data Hong Kong
Research Libraries UK
SANLiC: South African National Licensing Consortium
University of St Andrews Library

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University of Windsor Senate Adopts Open Access Policy

The University of Windsor Senate has adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In recognition of the importance of providing open access to Windsor research, and building on the momentum of the Tri-Council Open Access Policy (CIHR, NSERC, SSHRC), University Senate passed the University of Windsor's own open access policy (OA), Friday May 8. . . .

In Canada, the recent release of the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications requires grant recipients, as of May 2015, to take steps to ensure that peer-reviewed journal publications arising from supported research are made freely accessible within 12 months of publication.

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University of Colorado Boulder Adopts Open Access Policy

The University of Colorado Boulder has adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

"We are delighted that the Chancellor's Executive Committee has approved an Open Access policy for the campus that was endorsed by the Boulder Faculty Assembly, the Council of Deans, and the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor," said University of Colorado Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano. "CU-Boulder proudly joins the ranks of other campuses in higher education that have created such policies in the interest of openly sharing their published intellectual assets."

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"Weighing Up Anonymity and Openness in Publication Peer Review"

Hilda Bastian has published "Weighing Up Anonymity and Openness in Publication Peer Review" in Absolutely Maybe.

Here's an excerpt:

There are some consequences that flow inevitably from the choice of anonymity or naming, like workload for journals, or the ability for peer reviewer conflicts of interests unknown to editors to be revealed. I'll come back to that later. But first, what evidence do we have that masking the identities of authors and peer reviewers achieves what it is meant to? . . .

So I've taken a deep dive into this literature. I found 17 relevant comparative studies, 12 of which are controlled trials. The quality of these studies varies greatly, especially the ability to control for variables. Some are in hypothetical situations. But there are some very good, decent-sized trials.

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"The Open Access Interviews: John Willinsky"

Richard Poynder has published "The Open Access Interviews: John Willinsky" in Open and Shut?.

Here's an excerpt:

I was fortunate enough to draw together a wonderful team, led by the Associate University Librarian Brian Owen and technical wonder Alec Smecher at Simon Fraser University Library, who, through the research and development funds we were able to raise, created open source systems for scholarly workflow management and publishing. Together, we created Open Journal Systems (OJS) beginning in 2002, to answer the question of what will it cost to put a journal online. . . .

Over the course of the next decade, the use of OJS has spread across the globe to the point where—with 8,000 journals actively using it in 2013—we now feel a considerable responsibility at PKP for ensuring that this system provides a high-quality editorial workflow and publishing environment, and all the more so with roughly half of those journals in the Global South.

So in terms of your question on what PKP has developed into, I would say that it has become primarily but not entirely an open source software development and community support project in a global scale.

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"When Is an Article Actually Published? An Analysis of Online Availability, Publication, and Indexation Dates"

Stefanie Haustein et al. have self-archived "When Is an Article Actually Published? An Analysis of Online Availability, Publication, and Indexation Dates."

Here's an excerpt:

With the acceleration of scholarly communication in the digital era, the publication year is no longer a sufficient level of time aggregation for bibliometric and social media indicators. Papers are increasingly cited before they have been officially published in a journal issue and mentioned on Twitter within days of online availability. In order to find a suitable proxy for the day of online publication allowing for the computation of more accurate benchmarks and fine-grained citation and social media event windows, various dates are compared for a set of 58,896 papers published by Nature Publishing Group, PLOS, Springer and Wiley-Blackwell in 2012. Dates include the online date provided by the publishers, the month of the journal issue, the Web of Science indexing date, the date of the first tweet mentioning the paper as well as the Altmetric.com publication and first-seen dates. Comparing these dates, the analysis reveals that large differences exist between publishers, leading to the conclusion that more transparency and standardization is needed in the reporting of publication dates. The date on which the fixed journal article (Version of Record) is first made available on the publisher's website is proposed as a consistent definition of the online date.

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"Who Needs Open Access, Anyway?"

Walt Crawford has published "Who Needs Open Access, Anyway?" in Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt:

That title is not my own opinion or question—but it feels like the appropriate title for this odd roundup, covering several dozen items I've tagged over the last two years (or so) as " oa-anti. " The tag doesn't necessarily mean the item was a flat-out attack on open access (even with the typical "some of my best friends are OA, but… " nonsense that's usually now phrased as "I am/this publisher is/a big proponent of OA, however… "). It means that, in skimming the item initially, it seemed to register as something that either seemed to undermine OA or could be used as an attack on OA—or, in some cases, it's discussing somebody else attempting to undermine OA. At the end of this mostly-unsorted set of items, I note a handful of " oa-pro " items for a little balance.

You can help support Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large and Crawford's open access research by donating as little as $2 per month via PayPal.

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