Category Archives: oa.authors

Open Access Publishing: A Study of UC Berkeley Faculty Views and Practices

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Abstract:  This project focused on open access (OA) publishing, which enhances researcher productivity and impact by increasing dissemination of, and access to, research. The study looked at the relationship between faculty’s attitudes toward OA and their OA publishing practices, including the roles of funding availability and discipline. The project team compared University of California Berkeley (Berkeley) faculty’s answers to questions related to OA from the 2018 Ithaka Faculty Survey with the faculty’s scholarly output in the Scopus database. Faculty Survey data showed that 71% of Berkeley faculty, compared to 64% of faculty nationwide, support a transition to OA publishing. However, when selecting a journal to publish in, faculty indicated that a journal having no cost to publish in was more important than having no cost to read. After joining faculty’s survey responses and their publication output, the data sample included 4,413 articles published by 479 Berkeley faculty from 2016 to 2019. With considerable disciplinary differences, the OA publication output for this sample, using data from Unpaywall, represented 72% of the total publication output. The study focused on Gold OA articles, which usually require authors to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) and which accounted for 18% of the publications. Overall, the study found a positive correlation between publishing Gold OA and the faculty’s support for OA (no cost to read). In contrast, the correlation between publishing Gold OA and the faculty’s concern about publishing cost was weak. Publishing costs concerned faculty in all subject areas, whether or not their articles reported research funding. Thus, Berkeley Library’s efforts to pursue transformative publishing agreements and prioritize funding for a program subsidizing publishing fees seem like effective strategies to increase OA. 

Library Impact Research Report: Open Access Publishing: A Study of UC Berkeley Faculty Views and Practices – Association of Research Libraries

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Overall, the UC Berkeley study found a positive correlation between publishing gold OA and the faculty’s support for OA (no cost to read). In contrast, the correlation between publishing gold OA and the faculty’s concern about publishing cost was weak. Publishing costs concerned faculty in all subject areas, whether or not their articles reported research funding. Therefore, UC Berkeley Library’s efforts to pursue transformative publishing agreements and prioritize funding for a program subsidizing publishing fees seem like effective strategies to increase OA.

Nature announces support for authors from over 70 countries to publish open access: Authors from low-income and lower-middle income countries to be able to publish for free in Nature and the Nature research journals

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From today, primary research from authors from over 70 countries classified by the World Bank as low-income (LIC) or lower-middle-income economies (LMICs) accepted for publication in either Nature or one of the Nature research journals (e.g. Nature Chemistry, Nature Sustainability) can now be published Gold open access at no cost. This move recognises that local funding is rarely available for publishing OA in specialist journals like Nature, whose characteristics such as in-house editorial teams and low acceptance rates make it difficult for authors from these countries who are less well-funded.  

The Preprint Club – A cross-institutional, community-based approach to peer reviewing | bioRxiv

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The academic community has been increasingly using preprints to disseminate their latest research findings quickly and openly. This early and open access of non-peer reviewed research warrants new means from the scientific community to efficiently assess and provide feedback to preprints. Yet, most peer review of scientific studies performed today are still managed by journals, each having their own peer review policy and transparency. However, approaches to uncouple the peer review process from journal publication are emerging. Additionally, formal education of early career researchers (ECRs) in peer reviewing is rarely available, hampering the quality of peer review feedback. Here, we introduce the Preprint Club, a cross-institutional, community-based approach to peer reviewing, founded by ECRs from the University of Oxford, Karolinska Institutet and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Over the past two years and using the collaborative setting of the Preprint Club, we have been discussing, assessing, and providing feedback on recent preprints in the field of immunology. In this article, we provide a blueprint of the Preprint Club basic structure, demonstrate its effectiveness, and detail the lessons we learned on its impact on peer review training and preprint author’s perception.

Survey of US Higher Education Faculty 2023: Use of Digital Repositories

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“This study looks at how 725 faculty from nearly 500 US colleges and universities are using their own and other digital repositories.  The study gives detailed data on the incidence and extent of use of the scholars own institution’s digital repository, and use of repositories from other institutions.  Data is broken out by 12 personal and institutional variables including size, type or Carnegie class, tuition level and public/private status of the participant’s affiliated institution, as well as personal characteristics such as academic field, tenure status, academic title, gender, income and other variables. The study helps its readers to answer questions such as: who is depositing their journal articles in repositories and how often?  Who is using the repositories of other institutions in their research?  Which scholars are having publication fees paid for them on their behalf by libraries, academic departments and other sponsors?  How satisfied are scholars with their college or university’s open access and digital repository policies?  How important is open access to them and how has it impacted their careers?

Just a few of this 76-page report’s many findings are:

Faculty aged 40-49 were more likely than their older or younger peers to put their research into a repository.
The tendency to place publications in repositories was closely and positively related to a researchers’ personal income. 
The more prestigious a faculty member’s title, the greater the likelihood that a publication fee had ever been paid on the faculty member’s behalf.”

Publishing in transformative journals to make your research openly available | Jisc

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“Transformative journals are a key route to open access. Jisc is negotiating with publishers on behalf of the sector to ensure that their journals are funder compliant. This guide will show researchers how they can publish their research open access in a transformative journal in order to meet funding requirements.  …”

Subject analysis of routes to compliance for UKRI funded authors

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As part of our work to support the implementation of the new UKRI Open Access policy, we have rapidly scaled up our negotiations and are now working with over 300 publishers (and have confirmed compliance of 100 more) across a broad range of subject areas using a range of open access publishing routes. The aim is to make it easy for authors to increase the reach and impact of their research, and to comply with UKRI, and other research funders’, open access (OA) policies.

We carry out detailed analysis of previous publishing patterns of UKRI funded authors and assign each journal a route to compliance category (Table 1). For journals that are non-compliant or ineligible for UKRI funds we then evaluate the gaps between the publisher’s existing publication routes and the UKRI OA policy requirements, and we work with these publishers to secure UKRI compliant agreements. All our negotiations with publishers are sector-led and designed to meet both sector and funder requirements.

A systematic literature review on research data management practices and services | Emerald Insight

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Abstract:  Purpose

Research data management (RDM) has been called a “ground-breaking” area for research libraries and it is among the top future trends for academic libraries. Hence, this study aims to systematically review RDM practices and services primarily focusing on the challenges, services and skills along with motivational factors associated with it.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic literature review method was used focusing on literature produced between 2016–2020 to understand the latest trends. An extensive research strategy was framed and 15,206 results appeared. Finally, 19 studies have fulfilled the criteria to be included in the study following preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis.

Findings

RDM is gradually gaining importance among researchers and academic libraries; however, it is still poorly practiced by researchers and academic libraries. Albeit, it is better observed in developed countries over developing countries, however, there are lots of challenges associated with RDM practices by researchers and services by libraries. These challenges demand certain sets of skills to be developed for better practices and services. An active collaboration is required among stakeholders and university services departments to figure out the challenges and issues.

Research limitations/implications

The implications of policy and practical point-of-view present how research data can be better managed in the future by researchers and library professionals. The expected/desired role of key stockholders in this regard is also highlighted.

Originality/value

RDM is an important and emerging area. Researchers and Library and Information Science professionals are not comprehensively managing research data as it involves complex cooperation among various stakeholders. A combination of measures is required to better manage research data that would ultimately move forward for open access publishing.

« Il n’y pas de raison que les scientifiques fassent une cession exclusive gratuite de leurs œuvres aux éditeurs » | CNRS

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“The CNRS now asks its researchers to apply the strategy of non-assignment of copyright when submitting their articles to publishers.

What is the non-assignment policy?
Alain Schuhl:  Scientists are the owners of their works: there is no reason for them to make an exclusive free transfer of them to publishers, thus depriving themselves of the possibility of reusing their own publications. With the strategy of non-assignment of copyright, it is now possible to distribute the accepted author manuscript (AAM) in immediate open access in an open archive, in particular the AAM of an article published in a journal under subscription. This allows immediate open access to be developed without paying publication charges (also misleadingly called article processing charges or APC)….

n English, it is about “  rights retention strategy ” which has been translated into French as “strategy of non-cession of rights”. The full wording would be: “strategy of not assigning   copyright  exclusively to a publisher  ”. By immediately placing a CC-BY license on all their manuscripts up to the MAA, the authors avoid having their publication taken over entirely by the publisher. That’s why in English it’s called a “  retention of rights” strategy, because you don’t cede all your copyrights exclusively to the publisher. But to tell the truth, by putting a CC-BY license on his MAA, it is actually a “strategy of opening of rights”, since the scientist no longer needs to authorize other people to use his publication to translate it, distribute it, etc. Moreover, the author may freely reuse his own texts, graphics and other content for his courses or any communication, which is not the case when he assigns all of his rights to the publisher….”

Price change: We’re updating our fee for authors | Dryad news

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”

In recognition of current costs, we’re increasing the Dryad data publication fee to $150, effective January 2023. 

Key points 

The fee for researchers submitting directly to Dryad, and not in affiliation with an institution or journal that covers fees on their behalf, will increase from $120 to 150. 
The increase focuses on cost-recovery, not generating a margin, and is based on an analysis of Dryad costs that was completed in July 2021. (See our latest Annual Report for information on costs).
Between July 2021 and June 2022, over 1,700 individual researchers paid Dryad directly to publish their data. Another 126 were not asked to pay a fee on the basis that they submitted from a country included in our waiver policy or made a special request.
Seven publishers, 17 academic societies & research organizations, and 51 institutions work with Dryad to cover costs for individuals submitting data in affiliation with them. The change does not affect our membership agreements.
The fee was last increased in January 2016….”

Motivations, concerns and selection biases when posting preprints: A survey of bioRxiv authors | PLOS ONE

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Abstract:  Since 2013, the usage of preprints as a means of sharing research in biology has rapidly grown, in particular via the preprint server bioRxiv. Recent studies have found that journal articles that were previously posted to bioRxiv received a higher number of citations or mentions/shares on other online platforms compared to articles in the same journals that were not posted. However, the exact causal mechanism for this effect has not been established, and may in part be related to authors’ biases in the selection of articles that are chosen to be posted as preprints. We aimed to investigate this mechanism by conducting a mixed-methods survey of 1,444 authors of bioRxiv preprints, to investigate the reasons that they post or do not post certain articles as preprints, and to make comparisons between articles they choose to post and not post as preprints. We find that authors are most strongly motivated to post preprints to increase awareness of their work and increase the speed of its dissemination; conversely, the strongest reasons for not posting preprints centre around a lack of awareness of preprints and reluctance to publicly post work that has not undergone a peer review process. We additionally find evidence that authors do not consider quality, novelty or significance when posting or not posting research as preprints, however, authors retain an expectation that articles they post as preprints will receive more citations or be shared more widely online than articles not posted.

 

Guest Post – Wikipedia’s Citations Are Influencing Scholars and Publishers – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“A well-written Wikipedia page will cite scholarly publications with links to the articles in those citations that can be accessed immediately by users. At the 2019 Charleston Conference keynote, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle claimed that 6% of Wikipedia readers click on a link in the footnotes (although another study found that it was more like 0.03%). In 2016, Wikipedia was the 6th-largest referrer for DOIs, with half of referrals successfully authenticating to access the article. External links on Wikipedia produce an estimated 7 million dollars of revenue per month. Given that Wikipedia is such a popular website, it’s unsurprising that academic publishers are actively pursuing ways to promote their work on Wikipedia. 

Scholarly publishers have reported increased traffic as a result of giving access to their publications to Wikipedia editors, and a controlled experiment on Wikipedia shows that they are right to value Wikipedia citations. Works cited on Wikipedia have an outsized influence on scholarly work — specifically in its literature reviews. Additionally, one research article found that open-access (OA) articles were cited more frequently than non-OA articles on Wikipedia in 2014, an idea supported by the generally increased readership of OA articles compared to paid-access articles (all of these ideas are explained in more detail below). …”

Open Voices: Publishing an Open Access Monograph | The HardiBlog – Blog for the NUI Galway Library

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In our Open Voices series we are talking to Dr Éamon Ó Cofaigh, who recently published the monograph “A Vehicle for Change. Popular Representations of the Automobile in 20th-Century France”. It is available from Liverpool University Press as an Open Access Monograph free to download (or as a printed copy for £34.99). We talked to Éamon about his book and about his experience of publishing a monograph Open Access.

 

Authorship equity guidelines in global health journals | BMJ Global Health

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“Summary box

Prior studies have demonstrated substantial under-representation of authors affiliated with low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) when studies are conducted in LMICs.

Despite most global health specialty journals including general authorship guidelines such as those put forth by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, only 17.8% of global health specialty journals included specific language regarding local authorship representation in research conducted in LMICs.

The adoption of guidelines to promote equitable authorship practices in work conducted in LMICs by journals is a necessary initial step towards reducing authorship disparities in global health research and decolonising global health authorship….”