Category Archives: oa.bmc

Many researchers were not compliant with their published data sharing statement: mixed-methods study – Journal of Clinical Epidemiology

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Abstract:  Objectives

To analyse researchers’ compliance with their Data Availability Statement (DAS) from manuscripts published in open access journals with the mandatory DAS.

 

Study Design and Setting

We analyzed all articles from 333 open-access journals published during January 2019 by BioMed Central. We categorized types of DAS. We surveyed corresponding authors who wrote in DAS that they would share the data. A consent to participate in the study was sought for all included manuscripts. After accessing raw data sets, we checked whether data were available in a way that enabled re-analysis.

 

Results

Of 3556 analyzed articles, 3416 contained DAS. The most frequent DAS category (42%) indicated that the datasets are available on reasonable request. Among 1792 manuscripts in which DAS indicated that authors are willing to share their data, 1670 (93%) authors either did not respond or declined to share their data with us. Among 254 (14%) of 1792 authors who responded to our query for data sharing, only 122 (6.8%) provided the requested data.

 

Conclusion

Even when authors indicate in their manuscript that they will share data upon request, the compliance rate is the same as for authors who do not provide DAS, suggesting that DAS may not be sufficient to ensure data sharing.

Celebrating 20?years of open access publishing at BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders | BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders | Full Text

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“Twenty years ago, on October 23, the first article published by BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders appeared free online. Over 5700 publications later, we celebrate our anniversary as the largest Open Access journal in the ‘Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine’ and ‘Rheumatology’ fields. Our ‘open, inclusive, and trusted’ ethos, along with our efficient and robust peer review services, are recognized by the musculoskeletal field.

The early pioneers of BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders pushed the Open Access publishing model, in order to better support the needs of both the clinical and research communities. We pride ourselves on the continual innovation of author services, data transparency, and peer review models. These advances would not have been possible without your efforts – so a massive thank you to all the authors, editorial teams, and reviewers who have contributed to our success. Excellent reviewers are the nucleus of any thriving journal, and we have been lucky to collaborate with so many talents….”

 

Fifteen years of epidemiology in BMC Medicine | BMC Medicine | Full Text

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Abstract:  BMC Medicine was launched in November 2003 as an open access, open peer-reviewed general medical journal that has a broad remit to publish “outstanding and influential research in all areas of clinical practice, translational medicine, medical and health advances, public health, global health, policy, and general topics of interest to the biomedical and sociomedical professional communities”. Here, I discuss the last 15?years of epidemiological research published by BMC Medicine, with a specific focus on how this reflects changes occurring in the field of epidemiology over this period; the impact of ‘Big Data’; the reinvigoration of debates about causality; and, as we increasingly work across and with many diverse disciplines, the use of the name ‘population health science’. Reviewing all publications from the first volume to the end of 2018, I show that most BMC Medicine papers are epidemiological in nature, and the majority of them are applied epidemiology, with few methodological papers. Good research must address important translational questions that should not be driven by the increasing availability of data, but should take appropriate advantage of it. Over the next 15?years it would be good to see more publications that integrate results from several different methods, each with different sources of bias, in a triangulation framework.

[1907.02565] The citation advantage of linking publications to research data

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Abstract:  Efforts to make research results open and reproducible are increasingly reflected by journal policies encouraging or mandating authors to provide data availability statements. As a consequence of this, there has been a strong uptake of data availability statements in recent literature. Nevertheless, it is still unclear what proportion of these statements actually contain well-formed links to data, for example via a URL or permanent identifier, and if there is an added value in providing them. We consider 531,889 journal articles published by PLOS and BMC which are part of the PubMed Open Access collection, categorize their data availability statements according to their content and analyze the citation advantage of different statement categories via regression. We find that, following mandated publisher policies, data availability statements have become common by now, yet statements containing a link to a repository are still just a fraction of the total. We also find that articles with these statements, in particular, can have up to 25.36% higher citation impact on average: an encouraging result for all publishers and authors who make the effort of sharing their data. All our data and code are made available in order to reproduce and extend our results.

In Review: a new way to open up the submissions and peer review process – Research in progress blog

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“That’s why we’ve created a new service, In Review. Powered by Research Square, In Review offers authors a personal dashboard to easily track the status of their manuscript, and the opportunity to share it with the wider community earlier in the submission and peer review process. In the first instance, this service will be available across four BMC journals….

By using In Review authors will be able to:

  • Share their work while it is under review and engage the wider community in discussion (through the Hypothes.is open annotation tool)
  • Track the status of their manuscript on a more granular level – including number of reviewers invited, number of reports received, and immediate access to reviewer reports
  • Demonstrate the integrity of their work with a transparent editorial checklist
  • Benefit from early sharing, including potential for earlier citations and collaboration opportunities…”

Recent APC price changes for 4 publishers (BMC, Hindawi, PLOS, and PeerJ)

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Following is a summary of recent APC changes for 4 publishers, prepared on request but posted in case this might be of interest to anyone else. In brief, each publisher appears to be following a different pricing strategy ranging from flat pricing over many years with one rare exception, to a tenfold increase from 2016 – 2017.

Poynder On Point: Ten Years After

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“The open access (OA) movement has had some big wins this year: In July [2004], a cross-party group of British politicians called on the U.K. government to make all publicly funded research accessible to everyone “free of charge, online.” That same month, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations recommended that all NIH-funded research be made freely available 6 months after publication. But where did the OA movement come from, and where is it taking us? …”

Winners announced for the BMC Ecology Image Competition 2017 | EurekAlert! Science News

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“From close-ups that capture the animated life of insects, to aerial views of vast landscapes, the 2017 BMC Ecology Image Competition has produced a terrific array of images that reflect the variety of research in progress in the field. All images are open access and available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.”

A new era for Italian Journal of Pediatrics | Italian Journal of Pediatrics | Full Text

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On behalf of the Editorial Board, welcome to the new Italian Journal of Pediatrics, the official journal of the ISP/SIP (Italian Society of Pediatrics/Società Italiana di Pediatria), now publishing on BioMed Central’s open access publishing platform. The move to BioMed Central will benefit authors by having their manuscripts published faster with rapid global dissemination. Readers will also benefit from free online access to the journal via the website and a range of full text archives.

Associate Publisher, Open Access : New York, NY, United States

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“The main purposes of the Associate Publisher role is to: Assist with the development and execution of a strategic plan for the Biological Sciences portfolio Assist with journal and team budgeting (including but not limited to honoraria, travel, and staffing) Assist with the development and execution of a strategic plan for growth of BioMed Central in key markets….”

FASTR to be Considered by Senate Committee | SPARC

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“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 the12 months does not serve ‘the public, industries, and the scientific community.’ We understand that these modifications were made in order accomplish a number of things: Satisfy the requirement of a number of Members of HSGAC that the language more closely track that of the OSTP Directive; Meet the preference of the major U.S. higher education associations for a maximum 12 month embargo; Ensure that, for the first time, a number of scientific societies will drop their opposition for the bill; and  Ensure that any petition process an agency may enable is focused on serving the interests of the public and the scientific community …”

Impact of Social Sciences – Rather than narrow our definition of impact, we should use metrics to explore richness and diversity of outcomes.

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“Impact is multi-dimensional, the routes by which impact occur are different across disciplines and sectors, and impact changes over time. Jane Tinkler argues that if institutions like HEFCE specify a narrow set of impact metrics, more harm than good would come to universities forced to limit their understanding of how research is making a difference. But qualitative and quantitative indicators continue to be an incredible source of learning for how impact works in each of our disciplines, locations or sectors.”

Wellcome Trust Launches Guide for Publishing Open Access Monographs and Book Chapters – OASPA

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“Open access for monographs and book chapters is a relatively new area of publishing, and there are many ways of approaching it.   With this in mind, a recent publication from the Wellcome Trust aims to provide some guidance for publishers to consider when developing policies and processes for open access books. The Wellcome Trust recognises that implementation around publishing monographs and book chapters open access is in flux, and invites publishers to email Cecy Marden at c.marden@wellcome.ac.uk with any suggestions for further guidance that would be useful to include in this document. ‘Open Access Monographs and Book Chapters: A practical guide for publishers’ is available to download as a pdf from the Wellcome Trust website.”

Library support in the transition to open access: membership cancellations | Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir les savoirs communs

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“The purpose of this post is to shed some light on a specific issue in the transition to open access that particularly affects small and low-cost publishers and to suggest one strategy to address this issue. In the words of one Resource Requirements interviewee: ‘So the other set of members that we used to have about forty library members , but when we went to open access online, we lost the whole bunch of libraries. Yeah, so basically we sent everybody ,you know, a letter saying we are going to open access online, the annual membership is only $30, we hope you will continue to support us even though there are no longer print journals, and then a whole flu of cancellations came in from a whole bunch of libraries, which we had kind of thought might happen but given how cheap we are, I have to say I was really disappointed when it indeed did happen especially from whole bunch of [deleted] libraries [for which our journal is extremely relevant]. I was going, seriously $30?’ Comments: for a university library, a society membership fee, when not required for journal subscriptions, may be difficult to justify from an accounting perspective. $30 is a small cost; however, for a university the administrative work of tracking such memberships and cutting a check every year likely exceeds the $30 cost. With 40 library members at a cost of $30, the total revenue for this journal from this source was $1,200. A university or university library could sponsor this amount at less than the cost of many an article processing charge. The university and library where the faculty member is located have a support program for open access journals; clearly the will, and some funding, is there. One of the challenges is transitioning subscription dollars to support for open access, as I address in my 2013 First Monday article. Following is one suggestion for libraries, or for faculty to suggest to their libraries: why not engage your faculty who are independent or society publishers to gain support for cancellations or tough negotiations and lower prices for the big deals of large, highly profitable commercial publishers that I argue are critical to redirect funding to our own publishing activities? Here is one scenario that may help to explain the potential …”