Kevin L. Smith has published "Can Libraries Help Stop this Madness?" in Library Journal.
Here's an excerpt:
If university presses can make a successful transition to less-expensive digital publishing, we should support that transition as fully as we can, but we should withhold funds where the digital product reflects the high prices and other inefficiencies mandated by print.
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Caroline S. Wagner and Dae Joong Kim have published "The Price of Big Science: Saturation or Abundance in Scientific Publishing?" in Policy and Complex Systems.
Here's an excerpt:
The rate of production of scientific publications appears to be continuing on an exponential growth curve against the prediction of Derek de Solla Price. (This article examines only publications, but it has been noted that scientific data (Borgman, Wallis, and Enyedy 2007) and e-Science (Hey and Trefethen 2005) are also growing phenomena, as well.) The growth of scientific publications has many possible causes, but the system itself appears to be operating efficiently. The networked nature of global science (Wagner and Leydesdorff 2005), the expansion of source materials and venues, the expansion of the practice of science to new places, the application of science to new problems (such as climate change), and the rise of China as a scientific power all may be contributing to the very rapid growth in output, increasing the complexity of the system.
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Henk F. Moed and Gali Halevi have self-archived "The Multidimensional Assessment of Scholarly Research Impact."
Here's an excerpt:
This article introduces the Multidimensional Research Assessment Matrix of scientific output. Its base notion holds that the choice of metrics to be applied in a research assessment process depends upon the unit of assessment, the research dimension to be assessed, and the purposes and policy context of the assessment. An indicator may by highly useful within one assessment process, but less so in another. For instance, publication counts are useful tools to help discriminating between those staff members who are research active, and those who are not, but are of little value if active scientists are to be compared one another according to their research performance. This paper gives a systematic account of the potential usefulness and limitations of a set of 10 important metrics including altmetrics, applied at the level of individual articles, individual researchers, research groups and institutions. It presents a typology of research impact dimensions, and indicates which metrics are the most appropriate to measure each dimension. It introduces the concept of a meta-analysis of the units under assessment in which metrics are not used as tools to evaluate individual units, but to reach policy inferences regarding the objectives and general setup of an assessment process.
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Julie Kelly has published "Liberating the Publications of a Distinguished Scholar: A Pilot Project" in Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship.
Here's an excerpt:
Many distinguished scholars published the primary corpus of their work before the advent of online journals, which makes it more challenging to access. Upon being approached by a distinguished Emeritus Professor seeking advice about getting his work posted online, librarians at the University of Minnesota worked to gain copyright permissions to scan and upload older works to the University's Digital Conservancy (UDC). This project then uniquely took the process one step further, using the sharing option of RefWorks to make these works accessible to the widest possible audience while concurrently offering the sophisticated functionality of a citation manager. With open access repositories gaining acceptance as an authoritative long-term venue for making resources available online, including older content that can be digitized, the methods developed in this pilot project could easily be followed by others, thus greatly increasing access to older literature from distinguished scholars.
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Theodore C. Bergstrom et al. have published "Evaluating Big Deal Journal Bundles" in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. An open access eprint is not available.
Read more about it at "How Much Did Your University Pay for Your Journals?" and "Universities 'Get Poor Value' from Academic Journal-Publishing Firms."
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Paul Sturges et al. have self-archived "Research Data Sharing: Developing a Stakeholder-Driven Model for Journal Policies."
Here's an excerpt:
The Journal Research Data (JoRD) Project was a JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) funded feasibility study on the possible shape of a central service on journal research data policies. The objectives of the study included, amongst other considerations: to identify the current state of journal data sharing policies and to investigate the views and practices of stakeholders to data sharing. The project confirmed that a large percentage of journals do not have a policy on data sharing, and that there are inconsistencies between the traceable journal data sharing policies. Such a state leaves authors unsure of whether they should deposit data relating to articles and where and how to share that data. In the absence of a consolidated infrastructure for the easy sharing of data, a journal data sharing model policy was developed. The model policy was developed from comparing the quantitative information gathered from analysing existing journal data policies with qualitative data collected from the stakeholders concerned. This article summarises the information gathered, outlines the process by which the model was developed and presents the model journal data sharing policy in full.
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Emma Ganley has published "PLOS Data Policy: Catalyst for a Better Research Process" in College & Research Libraries News.
Here's an excerpt:
PLOS is seeking to ensure the ongoing utility of research, as making a paper openly accessible is enhanced enormously if that paper is linked seamlessly to the data from which it was constructed. In a time when post-publication peer review is more prevalent and data frequently come under intense public scrutiny, with whistle-blowers, blogs, and websites dedicated to investigating the validity and veracity of scientific publications, requiring access to the relevant data leads to a more rigorous scientific record.
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Christian Schlögl et al. have published "A Comparison of Citations, Downloads And Readership Data for an Information Systems Journal" in a special issue on altmetrics of Research Trends.
Here's an excerpt:
In our analysis we identified a high (though not a perfect) correlation between citations and downloads which was slightly lower between downloads and readership frequencies and again between citations and readership counts. This is mainly due to the fact that the used data (sources) are related either to research or at least to teaching in higher education institutions.
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Walt Crawford has published Beyond the Damage: Circulation, Coverage and Staffing.
Here's an excerpt from chapter one:
Big-Deal Serials Purchasing: Tracking the Damage looks almost entirely at four aspects of library spending and changes in that spending: total spending, current serials, "books" (all other acquisitions) and the remainder”what's left over for staff, automation, preservation, etc.
This book looks at some other aspects of academic libraries and how they have changed from 2002 through 2012: circulation, coverage and staffing. It's designed to complement the LTR report. Indeed, I assume that readers will have access to the report, as it includes details on which academic libraries are included and excluded. This book uses exactly the same universe of libraries (2,594 in all) as the report. I believe this book (and the supplementary PDF) will provide useful additional insights into what's happened in academic libraries over a decade in which Big Deals supposedly improved serials pricing problems”but still had serials spending taking more and more of a sometimes-shrinking overall pie…
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EDP Open has released Learned Society Attitudes towards Open Access: Report on Survey Results.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
Key findings include:
- Learned societies overwhelmingly agree that Open Access will inevitably place some learned societies' journals into financial jeopardy.
- Competing with large Open Access specialist publishers was also considered a significant challenge for learned societies.
- Gold Open Access is the Open Access method that is least offered by learned society journals, however nearly two-thirds of learned societies indicated that they would like to be offering this option.
- More than ever before, with so many journals being published Open Access of dubious origin, learned societies should look to endorse content with a stamp of quality and authority.
- Collaboration between learned societies could help in the transition to Open Access, by pooling resources and sharing complex tasks.
- Two-thirds of all learned societies are also looking for support on best approach to OA, and compliance with funder mandates.
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Lutz Bornmann has self-archived "Inter-Rater Reliability and Convergent Validity of F1000Prime Peer Review."
Here's an excerpt:
Peer review is the backbone of modern science. F1000Prime is a post-publication peer review system of the biomedical literature (papers from medical and biological journals). This study is concerned with the inter-rater reliability and convergent validity of the peer recommendations formulated in the F1000Prime peer review system. The study is based on around 100,000 papers with recommendations from Faculty members. Even if intersubjectivity plays a fundamental role in science, the analyses of the reliability of the F1000Prime peer review system show a rather low level of agreement between Faculty members. This result is in agreement with most other studies which have been published on the journal peer review system. Logistic regression models are used to investigate the convergent validity of the F1000Prime peer review system. As the results show, the proportion of highly cited papers among those selected by the Faculty members is significantly higher than expected. In addition, better recommendation scores are also connected with better performance of the papers.
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College & Research Libraries has released an eprint of "Four Facets of Privacy and Intellectual Freedom in Licensing Contracts for Electronic Journals."
Here's an excerpt:
This is a study of the treatment of library patron privacy in licenses for electronic journals in academic libraries. We begin by distinguishing four facets of privacy and intellectual freedom based on the LIS and philosophical literature. Next, we perform a content analysis of 42 license agreements for electronic journals, focusing on terms for enforcing authorized use and collection and sharing of user data. We compare our findings to model licenses, to recommendations proposed in a recent treatise on licenses, and to our account of the four facets of intellectual freedom. We find important conflicts with each.
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Christine Fruin and Fred Rascoe have published "Funding Open Access Journal Publishing Article Processing Charges" in College & Research Libraries News.
Here's an excerpt:
Libraries are viewed as the primary resource at academic institutions for information on scholarly publishing issues, including OA. Faculty interest in OA publishing is increasing, and when recent federal mandates for OA are implemented, the interest from those doing federally funded research will grow quickly. As such, librarians should be prepared to answer questions from faculty and researchers on how they can cover the costs that are often attendant to publishing in OA journals. While librarians should advocate and educate their constituents on the availability of green OA and the cost-free options available with many gold OA journals, they should also be cognizant of the frequency at which faculty and researchers are publishing in gold OA publications that charge a fee and the available options for covering those costs.
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Mikael Laakso has self-archived "Green Open Access Policies of Scholarly Journal Publishers: A Study of What, When, and Where Self-Archiving Is Allowed"
Here's an excerpt:
The degree to which scholarly journal articles published in subscription-based journals could be provided open access (OA) through publisher-permitted uploading to freely accessible web locations, so called green OA, is an underexplored area of research. This study combines article volume data originating from the Scopus bibliographic database with manually coded publisher policies of the 100 largest journal publishers measured by article output volume for the year 2010. Of the 1,1 million articles included in the analysis, 80.4% could be uploaded either as an accepted manuscript or publisher version to an institutional or subject repository after one year of publication. Publishers were found to be substantially more permissive with allowing accepted manuscripts on personal webpages (78.1% of articles) or in institutional repositories (79.9%) compared to subject repositories (32.8%). With previous studies suggesting realized green OA to be around 12% of total annual articles the results highlight the substantial unused potential for green OA.
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F1000Research has released an eprint of "Data Publication Consensus and Controversies."
Here's an excerpt:
As data publication venues proliferate, significant debate continues over formats, processes, and terminology. Here, we present an overview of data publication initiatives underway and the current conversation, highlighting points of consensus and issues still in contention.
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David J. Solomon has published "A Survey of Authors Publishing in Four Megajournals" in PeerJ.
Here's an excerpt:
Megajournals are drawing an international group of authors who tend to be experienced academics. They are choosing to publish in megajournals for a variety of reasons but most seem to value the quality of the journal and the speed of the review/publication process. Having a broad scope was not a key factor for most authors though being OA was important for PeerJ and SAGE Open authors. Most authors appeared pleased with the experience and indicated they are likely to submit future manuscripts to the same or similar megajournal which seems to suggest these journals will continue to grow in popularity.
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Micah Vandegrift and Chealsye Bowley have published "Librarian, Heal Thyself: A Scholarly Communication Analysis of LIS Journals" in In the Library with the Lead Pipe.
Here's an excerpt:
This article presents an analysis of 111 Library and Information Science journals based on measurements of "openness" including copyright policies, open access self-archiving policies and open access publishing options. We propose a new metric to rank journals, the J.O.I. Factor (Journal Openness Index), based on measures of openness rather than perceived rank or citation impact. Finally, the article calls for librarians and researchers in LIS to examine our scholarly literature and hold it to the principles and standards that we are asking of other disciplines.
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The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association has released a "Statement Regarding the Suspension of Springer's Membership in OASPA."
Here's an excerpt:
In February, it was reported by Nature (http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763) that around 120 fake articles had been published in apparently peer-reviewed conference proceedings.
Springer, one of the affected publishers, which published 16 of these articles, is a member of OASPA. Given that the publication of these articles is evidence of a systematic problem with editorial processes, we have placed Springer's membership of OASPA 'under review', pending a thorough response and description of the steps that are being taken to strengthen the necessary processes. Springer has already indicated that the fake articles are being retracted (http://www.springer.com/about+springer/media/statements?SGWID=0-1760813-6-1458253-0).
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Zohreh Zahedi, Rodrigo Costas, and Paul Wouters have self-archived "How Well Developed Are Altmetrics? A Cross-Disciplinary Analysis of the Presence of 'Alternative Metrics' in Scientific Publications."
Here's an excerpt:
In this paper an analysis of the presence and possibilities of altmetrics for bibliometric and performance analysis is carried out. Using the web based tool Impact Story, we collected metrics for 20,000 random publications from the Web of Science. We studied both the presence and distribution of altmetrics in the set of publications, across fields, document types and over publication years, as well as the extent to which altmetrics correlate with citation indicators. The main result of the study is that the altmetrics source that provides the most metrics is Mendeley, with metrics on readerships for 62.6% of all the publications studied, other sources only provide marginal information. In terms of relation with citations, a moderate spearman correlation (r=0.49) has been found between Mendeley readership counts and citation indicators.
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Paul S. Brookes has published "Internet Publicity of Data Problems in the Bioscience Literature Correlates with Enhanced Corrective Action" in PeerJ.
Here's an excerpt:
Several online forums exist to facilitate open and/or anonymous discussion of the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Data integrity is a common discussion topic, and it is widely assumed that publicity surrounding such matters will accelerate correction of the scientific record. This study aimed to test this assumption by examining a collection of 497 papers for which data integrity had been questioned either in public or in private. As such, the papers were divided into two sub-sets: a public set of 274 papers discussed online, and the remainder a private set of 223 papers not publicized. The sources of alleged data problems, as well as criteria for defining problem data, and communication of problems to journals and appropriate institutions, were similar between the sets. The number of laboratory groups represented in each set was also similar (75 in public, 62 in private), as was the number of problem papers per laboratory group (3.65 in public, 3.54 in private). Over a study period of 18 months, public papers were retracted 6.5-fold more, and corrected 7.7-fold more, than those in the private set. Parsing the results by laboratory group, 28 laboratory groups in the public set had papers which received corrective action, versus 6 laboratory groups in the private set. For those laboratory groups in the public set with corrected/retracted papers, the fraction of their papers acted on was 62% of those initially flagged, whereas in the private set this fraction was 27%. Such clustering of actions suggests a pattern in which correction/retraction of one paper from a group correlates with more corrections/retractions from the same group, with this pattern being stronger in the public set. It is therefore concluded that online discussion enhances levels of corrective action in the scientific literature. Nevertheless, anecdotal discussion reveals substantial room for improvement in handling of such matters.
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Walt Crawford has published "Ethics and Access 2: The So-Called Sting" in Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
John Bohannon wrote a news article in Science that either shows that many open access journals with APC charges have sloppy (or no) peer review…or shows almost nothing at all. This story discusses the article itself, offers a number of responses to it—and then adds something I don't believe you'll find anywhere else: A journal-by-journal test of whether the journals involved would pass a naive three-minute sniff test as to whether they were plausible targets for article submissions without lots of additional checking. Is this really a problem involving a majority of hundreds of journals—or maybe one involving 27% (that is, 17) of 62 journals? Read the story; make up your own mind.
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Christopher W. Belter has published "Measuring the Value of Research Data: A Citation Analysis of Oceanographic Data Sets" in PLOS ONE.
Here's an excerpt:
Evaluation of scientific research is becoming increasingly reliant on publication-based bibliometric indicators, which may result in the devaluation of other scientific activities—such as data curation—that do not necessarily result in the production of scientific publications. This issue may undermine the movement to openly share and cite data sets in scientific publications because researchers are unlikely to devote the effort necessary to curate their research data if they are unlikely to receive credit for doing so. This analysis attempts to demonstrate the bibliometric impact of properly curated and openly accessible data sets by attempting to generate citation counts for three data sets archived at the National Oceanographic Data Center. My findings suggest that all three data sets are highly cited, with estimated citation counts in most cases higher than 99% of all the journal articles published in Oceanography during the same years. I also find that methods of citing and referring to these data sets in scientific publications are highly inconsistent, despite the fact that a formal citation format is suggested for each data set. These findings have important implications for developing a data citation format, encouraging researchers to properly curate their research data, and evaluating the bibliometric impact of individuals and institutions.
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The Higher Education Funding Council for England and three other UK funding bodies (the Scottish Funding Council, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and the Department for Employment and Learning) have enacted an open access mandate.
Here's an excerpt:
5. The core of this policy is as follows: to be eligible for submission to the post-2014 REF, outputs must have been deposited in an institutional or subject repository on acceptance for publication, and made open-access within a specified time period. This requirement applies to journal articles and conference proceedings only; monographs and other long-form publications, research data and creative and practice-based research outputs are out of scope. Only articles and proceedings accepted for publication after 1 April 2016 will need to fulfil these requirements, but we would strongly urge institutions to implement the policy now. The policy gives a further list of cases where outputs will not need to fulfil the requirements.
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LIBER has released "Response to Elsevier's Text and Data Mining Policy: A LIBER Discussion Paper."
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
LIBER believes that the right to read is the right to mine and that licensing will never bridge the gap in the current copyright framework as it is unscalable and resource intensive. Furthermore, as this discussion paper highlights, licensing has the potential to limit the innovative potential of digital research methods by:
- restricting the tools that researchers can use
- limiting the way in which research results can be made available
- impacting on the transparency and reproducibility of research results.
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Karla L. Strieb and Julia C. Blixrud have self-archived "Unwrapping the Bundle: An Examination of Research Libraries and the 'Big Deal'."
Here's an excerpt:
This study presents and analyzes the findings of a 2012 survey of member libraries belonging to the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) on publishers' large journal bundles and compares the results to earlier surveys. The data illuminate five research questions: market penetration, journal bundle construction, collection format shifts, pricing models, and license terms. The structure of the product is still immature, particularly in defining content and developing sustainable pricing models. The typical "bundle" is something less than the full publishers list. Neither market studies nor market forces have produced a sustainable new strategy for pricing and selling e-journals. Finally, a complex history of managing license terms is revealed in the data.
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