Category Archives: oa.gold

Cost of open access publishing in otolaryngology?head and neck surgery – Kim – 2023 – World Journal of Otorhinolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery – Wiley Online Library

Posted on by
Reply

Abstract:  Objective

Open access (OA) publishing makes research more accessible but is associated with steep article processing charges (APCs). The study objective was to characterize the APCs of OA publishing in otolaryngology-head and neck surgery (OHNS) journals.

Methods

We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of published policies of 110 OHNS journals collated from three databases. The primary outcomes were the publishing model, APC for original research, and APC waiver policy.

Results

We identified 110 OHNS journals (57 fully OA, 47 hybrid, 2 subscription-only, 4 unknown model). After excluding 12 journals (2 subscription-only, 4 unknown model, 5 OA with unspecified APCs, and 1 OA that accepts publications only from society members), we analyzed 98 journals, 23 of which did not charge APCs. Among 75 journals with nonzero APCs, the mean and median APCs were $2452 and $2900 (interquartile range: $1082–3520). Twenty-five journals (33.3%) offered APC subsidies for authors in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and/or on a case-by-case basis. Eighty-five and 25 journals were based in high-income countries (HICs) and LMICs, respectively. The mean APC was higher among HIC journals than LMIC journals ($2606 vs. $958, p?<?0.001).

Conclusion

APCs range from tens to thousands of dollars with limited waivers for authors in LMICs.

OPEN SCIENCE IN CHINA: AN OPEN OR CLOSED CASE?

Posted on by
Reply

“China’s place in the global system of science has become increasingly prominent. In 2016, China published the highest number of scientific articles and in 2022 it was home to the most cited papers.1 However, whether the world’s population can access and benefit from these scientific outputs largely depends on them being openly available. Academic and governmental institutions, as well as the public, connect the open science (OS) movement with two main practices, the publishing of open access (OA) research articles and sharing open data. Since the early 1990s, OS has been an umbrella term used to refer to all the different technology-enabled initiatives to strengthen openness, one core ethos of science.”

OSF Preprints | Title: Rebuttal to An Article Published in Current Science that Claims Indian researchers spent 17 Million USD on Article Processing Charges (APC) for gold Open Access (OA) articles in 2020

Posted on by
Reply

“Title: Publications in gold open access and article processing charge expenditure: evidence from Indian scholarly output.
Published in Current Science
Volume 125, Issue 10, 25 November, 2023

The article in question claims that Indian researchers spent 17 Million USD on Article Processing Charges (APC) for gold Open Access (OA) articles in 2020.
In this rebuttal, we show that the authors might have made multiple errors and need to redo their calculations. Given how widely the media article reporting on this paper was shared, it is imperative that the paper is retracted or a correction is issued by the authors and the journal.”

Biomedical Publisher Future Science Group Joins Taylor & Francis

Posted on by
Reply

“Knowledge services provider Taylor & Francis has today announced the addition of Future Science Group (FSG), publisher of medical, biotechnological and scientific research. As well as bringing a portfolio of cutting-edge journals and digital hubs, FSG’s leading publishing solutions program will enable Taylor & Francis to offer researchers and medical communication planners a host of additional services. Taylor & Francis now becomes the fourth largest publisher of pharma-funded research, with the addition of 32 peer-reviewed FSG journals and five digital hubs. These complement the existing range of over 340 Taylor & Francis medical and healthcare journals, including the Expert Collection, which is the world’s largest series of review journals in research, development and clinical medicine. FSG publications represent many of the most important and fast-growing fields of scientific, medical and pharmaceutical research, including oncology, medicinal chemistry, immunotherapy, microbiology, nanomedicine and biotechnology. Researchers can choose to publish open access (OA) in all FSG journals, with 15 titles fully OA.”

Discrepancies in Open Access Fees within Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Pharmaceutics Journals

Posted on by
Reply

Abstract:  Modern science has been transformed by open access (OA) publishing levied a significant economic burden on the authors. This article analyzes the discrepancies among OA publication fees in pharmacology, toxicology, and pharmaceutics. The observations comprise 160 OA journals and their corresponding Q ranking, SJR, H index, impact factor, country, and cost of publication. The OA fees were found to depend on the quality matrices, which was unexpected. Differences in OA fees raise ethical questions as OA fees are meant to cover the publication charges by the publishers or generate more revenues by taking advantage of the authors’ temptation to publish in high-impact journals. Despite our findings being based on limited sample size and belonging to a particular field (pharmacy), it will shed considerable light on the issue of discrepancies among APCs charged by OA journals.

Aerobiology | Free Full-Text | Aerobiology&mdash;A New Open Access Journal

Posted on by
Reply

“It is simultaneously professionally humbling and an absolute pleasure to be associated with the launch of a new open access journal, with added emphasis in a scientific field as rich and diverse as aerobiology. The field of aerobiology encompasses the living microbiologically diverse world in our collective atmosphere, spanning to both the ecological phenomena and the anthropomorphic effects of a shared biology in the air. The conception of the Journal is intended to be unique amongst peer publications—the scope of Aerobiology covers both the ecological study of bioaerosols and the subsequent interaction in the natural and built environment but also the ultimate disposition in biological systems [1], with emphasis on purported human health effects from exposure and transmission studies. Collectively, the subject matter encompassed under this broad scope will provide a focal source on aerobiology for many years to come.”

Open access and the future of the IJTLD [International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease]

Posted on by
Reply

“Our considered response to this changing publishing landscape is to continue to maintain a subscription journal (the IJTLD), but to also launch a new OA journal (IJTLD Open). This approach is fully supported by the Union Board as it will allow us to preserve a platform for authors in LMICs, while also having a fully compliant OA journal for enhanced coverage of TB and lung disease….

We are also aware that many recently launched OA journals are perceived to be of lower quality. To protect the reputation of our journals, IJTLD Open will share the same values, scope and Editorial Board as its sister title, with an identical peer review process and acceptance criteria….

The only change will occur after a paper has been accepted: authors with funding for OA will be published in IJTLD Open; those without will be published in the IJTLD….”

Editors quit diamond journal over author fees | Times Higher Education (THE)

Posted on by
Reply

“Dozens of editors and peer reviewers at a “diamond” journal have quit after the independent publication began charging author fees of £2,500…

In a LinkedIn post, Chris Glass, professor of practice in higher education at Boston College, announced his resignation as JIS’ editor-in-chief, warning that the introduction of article processing charges (APCs) meant that “our journal and community will be forever changed”.

Professor Glass said he was “not involved in the decision to transfer oversight of the journal” to a “new team overseeing editorial management”, which, he claimed, “does not share our journal’s historic commitment to open access”.

Numerous other editors have also quit, with the journal’s website no longer listing any of its four former section editors, 17 associate editors or its senior and special issues editors. Its list of peer reviewers is also reduced, while its editorial advisory board is not listed at all.”

Applying Librarian Created Evaluation Tools to Determine Quality and Credibility of Open Access Library Science Journals

Posted on by
Reply

Abstract:  This article explores the application of journal quality and credibility evaluation tools to library science publications. The researchers investigate quality and credibility attributes of forty eight peer-reviewed library science journals with open access components using two evaluative tools developed and published by librarians. The results identify common positive and negative attributes of library science journals, compare the results of the two evaluation tools, and discuss their ease of use and limitations. Overall, the results show that while library science journals do not fall prey to the same concerning characteristics that librarians use to caution other researchers, there are several areas in which publishers can improve the quality and credibility of their journals.

 

How many learned societies publish Diamond Open Access journals? – Ross Mounce

Posted on by
Reply

“To seek an answer to the question posed in the title, I sought out reliable data on open access journals. My first port of call was the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Although DOAJ certainly isn’t a complete listing of open access journals, as is well documented in ‘The OA Diamond Journals Study‘ (2021), it will at least help provide a minimum bound answer to the question….

After casting the net wide for societies and associations, I ended up finding over 1600 journals which both charge authors and readers no fees (diamond) AND are associated with a learned society. For transparency, I have uploaded this list of society associated, diamond open access journals to github here. Edits, additions, and corrections to this dataset are very welcome….”

Practices for enhancing research visibility, citations and impact: review of literature | Emerald Insight

Posted on by
Reply

“Institutional and subject repositories are excellent locations to make research outputs publicly accessible. Researchers can share their research with the public through a variety of alternative dissemination mechanisms, including Research Gate, Academia.edu and others. One of the best effective techniques to boost a research paper’s visibility and number of citations is through open-access (OA) publication, because it makes the study publicly accessible from the very beginning. Researchers can boost their visibility, preserve their work and make it available for use in the future by making all of their outputs publicly accessible. Ogunleye (2019) made a study on “Some determinants of visibility boost for research publications among early career educational researchers in southwest, Nigeria”. In this study, he described that the early career of educational researchers in Southwest Nigeria looked into some determinants (shared reference databases, research profiles, publishing in OA, self-archiving, publication metadata, researcher profiles and social media platforms) for boosting visibility of the publication. A structured questionnaire on factors determining publication boost (r = 0.81) was utilised to collect data, and multiple regression analysis and the Pearson’s correlation approach were employed to evaluate the data. A significant positive correlation between each of the following was discovered in the results: joint reference databases (r = 0.17), Publication metadata (r = 0.23), result profiles (r = 0.44), open-access publishing (r = 0.27), self-archiving (r = 0.52), social media networks (r = 0.43) and accessibility of published work are all positively correlated with each other. The six variables had a positive correlation with the publication visibility (R = 0.60), and they were responsible for 32.9% of the gains invisibility of early career researchers’ publications. Norman (2012) conducted a research on “Maximizing Journal Article Citation Online: Readers, Robots, and Research Visibility”. Then he explained that online academic publications with peer review provide numerous advantages for researchers. They can enhance an article’s popularity and publicity, connect someone’s research to the relevant web of existing literature rapidly and add other scholars’ attention who will use it, increasing the likelihood of it being used. Also provided five basic areas to make the literature more popular which are choosing a search engine-friendly title, writing of abstracts and introductions, making the article easy to find, using of media and links, dissemination of articles after publication and emphasised on increasing a piece of content’s prospects of future downloads, citations and visibility.”

Transforming research for an Open Science world | Research Information

Posted on by
Reply

“At the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), we believe that trusted research should be discoverable, open, and shareable as quickly as possible to help solve the global challenges that matter. That’s why we’ve been providing support to scientists and engineers at each step of their research journey for over 150 years.

Our Research Solutions are helping to transform research for an Open Science world….

With this in mind, we established a partnership with Wiley in 2020 and embraced the opportunity to transition our entire journals portfolio to Gold Open Access. Researchers can also get help towards the cost of publishing in our journals with APC discounts for IET members and support through Wiley’s Transformational Agreements and Research4Life.,,,:

Indian researchers paid $17mn to publish in open access journals in 2020 — 57% of global total

Posted on by
Reply

“Indian researchers paid a whopping $17 million in 2020 to publish their research articles in open access formats, with over 80 percent of it going to commercial publishers including MDPI, Springer Nature and Elsevier, a new study has revealed.”

Scientists paid large publishers over $1 billion in four years to have their studies published with open access | Science | EL PAÍS English

Posted on by
Reply

“For the last half century, scientists have followed the same method to publish their research. For example, a scientist discovers a treatment for cancer, other researchers check that the data is correct, and the final results are published in a study in an academic journal. If it is not published, it is not science. However, in recent years the system has undergone a transformation. It is no longer the readers who pay to read the studies, but the authors themselves who pay for their research to be published in digital journals with open access. Led by German expert Stefanie Haustein, a group of scientists has now calculated the turnover of the “oligopoly” that controls this new market. Using mainly public funds, the scientific community paid the five large publishers $1.06 billion in four years. And according to this estimate, the sum covers only the fees to publish open access studies….

Stefanie Haustein’s team from the University of Ottawa (Canada) has spent “years” collecting data from the period 2015-2018. According to their calculations, Springer Nature took the lion’s share, with $589.7 million, followed by Elsevier ($221.4 million), Wiley ($114.3 million), Taylor & Francis ($76.8 million), and Sage ($31.6 million). The fees required for a study to be made available with open access are officially called “article processing charges,” and on average, authors or their institutions have to pay more than $2,500 per study. French sociologist Pierre Bataille refers to the publishers’ charges as “research vampirization.” …

Stefanie Haustein considers it “obscene” that the profit margins of the main publishers “reach between 30% and 40%, well above most industries.” The researcher gives the example of the Dutch giant Elsevier, which last year published 600,000 studies, a quarter of which were open access. Elsevier’s annual income was $3.5 billion, with $1.3 billion in profit, according to its 2022 accounts. “This means that for every $1,000 that the academic community spends on publishing in Elsevier, about $400 go into the pockets of its shareholders,” Haustein explains….

The author warns that these five large publishers have tripled their number of open access studies since 2018 and have increased their prices, so the current expenditure will be well above $1 billion….”

Publications in gold open access and article processing charge expenditure: evidence from Indian scholarly output

Posted on by
Reply

“Article processing charges (APCs) ensure the financial viability of open access (OA) scholarly journals. The present study analyses the number of gold OA articles published in the Web of Science (WoS)- indexed journals by Indian researchers during 2020, including subject categories that account for the highest APC in India. Besides, it evaluates the amount of APC expenditure incurred in India. The findings of this study reveal that Indian researchers published 26,127 gold OA articles across all subjects in WoS-indexed journals in 2020. Researchers in the field of health and medical sciences paid the highest APC, amounting to USD 7 million, followed by life and earth sciences (USD 6.9 million), multidisciplinary (USD 4.9 million), and chemistry and materials science (USD 4.8 million). The study also reveals that Indian researchers paid an estimated 17 million USD as APC in 2020. Furthermore, 81% of APCs went to commercial publishers, viz. MDPI, Springer–Nature, Elsevier and Frontier Media. As there is a growing number of OA publications from India, we suggest having a central and state-level single-window option for funding in OA journals and backing the Plan S initiative for OA publishing in India”.