Category Archives: oa.overlay

ST-OPEN(ing) to students of SEA-EU universities – an opportunity for the Alliance

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“ST-OPEN, the overlay+ journal of the University of Split [1], has been open to the work of international students and researchers since its first issue published in 2020. As the University of Split is part of the European University of the Seas (SEA-EU) Alliance, opening and promoting ST-OPEN to all students from SEA-EU is a logical step, fully in line with the commitment to share educational and research resources among the Alliance partners [2]. In this editorial, I will discuss the significant benefits this could bring to our students, researchers and society, from the perspective of the current state and plans of the SEA-EU Alliance.”

Model(s) of the future? Overlay journals as an overlooked and emerging trend in scholarly communication | The Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science

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Abstract: Overlay journals, a potentially overlooked model of scholarly communication, have seen a resurgence due to the increasing number of preprint repositories and preprints on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) related topics. Overlay journals at various stages of maturity were examined for unique characteristics, including whether the authors submitted their article to the journal, whether the peer reviews of the article were published by the overlay journal, and whether the overlay journals took advantage of opportunities for increased discovery. As librarians and researchers seek new, futuristic models for publishing, overlay journals are emerging as an important contribution to scholarly communication.

 

Could ‘Peer Community In’ be the revolution in scientific publishing we’ve all been waiting for?

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“PCI sets up communities of scientists who publicly review and approve pre-prints in their respective fields, while applying the same methods as those used for conventional scientific journals. Under this peer-review system, editors (known as ‘recommenders’) carry out one or more review rounds before deciding whether to reject or approve the preprint submitted to the PCI. Unlike virtually all traditional journals, if an article is approved, the editor must write a recommendation outlining its content and merits.

This recommendation is then published along with all other elements involved in the editorial process (including reviews, editorial decisions, authors’ responses, etc.) on the site of the PCI responsible for organising the preprint review. This level of transparency is what makes PCI unique within the current academic publishing system.

Lastly, the authors upload the finalised, approved and recommended version of the article – free of charge and on an open access basis – to the preprint server or open archive….

Peer Community Journal is a diamond journal, meaning one that publishes articles with no fees charged to authors or readers. All content can be read free of charge without a pay-wall or other access restrictions. Designed as a general journal, Peer Community Journal currently comprises 16 sections (corresponding to the PCIs in operation) and is able to publish any preprint recommended by a disciplinary PCI….”

PCI is making traditional journal publication obsolete. Due to its de facto peer-reviewed status, the finalised, recommended version of the preprint is already suitable for citation. In France, PCI-recommended preprints are recognised by several leading institutions, review committees and recruitment panels at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). At the Europe-wide level, the reviewed preprints are recognised by the European Commission and funding agencies such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.

PCI is also unique in its ability to separate peer review from publishing, given that approved and recommended preprints can still be submitted by authors for publication in scientific journals. Many journals even advertise themselves as ‘PCI-friendly’, meaning that when they receive submissions of PCI-recommended preprints, they take into account the reviews already completed by PCI in order to speed up their editorial decision-making….”

‘Peer Community In’ May Accomplish What Open Access Could Not | Science 2.0

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“PCI sets up communities of scientists who publicly review and approve pre-prints in their respective fields, while applying the same methods as those used for conventional scientific journals. Under this peer-review system, editors (known as ‘recommenders’) carry out one or more review rounds before deciding whether to reject or approve the preprint submitted to the PCI. Unlike virtually all traditional journals, if an article is approved, the editor must write a recommendation outlining its content and merits.

This recommendation is then published along with all other elements involved in the editorial process (including reviews, editorial decisions, authors’ responses, etc.) on the site of the PCI responsible for organising the preprint review. This level of transparency is what makes PCI unique within the current academic publishing system.

Lastly, the authors upload the finalised, approved and recommended version of the article – free of charge and on an open access basis – to the preprint server or open archive….

Peer Community Journal is a diamond journal, meaning one that publishes articles with no fees charged to authors or readers. All content can be read free of charge without a pay-wall or other access restrictions. Designed as a general journal, Peer Community Journal currently comprises 16 sections (corresponding to the PCIs in operation) and is able to publish any preprint recommended by a disciplinary PCI….”

PCI is making traditional journal publication obsolete. Due to its de facto peer-reviewed status, the finalised, recommended version of the preprint is already suitable for citation. In France, PCI-recommended preprints are recognised by several leading institutions, review committees and recruitment panels at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). At the Europe-wide level, the reviewed preprints are recognised by the European Commission and funding agencies such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.

PCI is also unique in its ability to separate peer review from publishing, given that approved and recommended preprints can still be submitted by authors for publication in scientific journals. Many journals even advertise themselves as ‘PCI-friendly’, meaning that when they receive submissions of PCI-recommended preprints, they take into account the reviews already completed by PCI in order to speed up their editorial decision-making….”

MIT Press Takes Agile Approach to Launching COVID-19 Overlay Journal: Interview with Nick Lindsay

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“When COVID-19 first hit, MIT Press was quick to respond, making relevant book and journal content freely available to help scholars and the general public better understand the pandemic. But, the press’ publishing team wanted to do something more. Like so many in academia, they were becoming concerned with rising instances of false scientific claims entering the mainstream media and eager to stop the spread. Recognizing misinformation in preprints as well as misinterpretation of preprint findings as two primary causes, they began considering ways to flag questionable preprint information while boosting the signal of promising new research.

“Our Press Director Amy Brand and I were talking one day about what we could do, and that’s when the notion of launching an overlay journal of preprint reviews popped up,” said Nick Lindsay, MIT Press’ Director of Journals and Open Access. Lindsay and Brand brought the idea back to their team and began planning what would become Rapid Reviews: COVID-19 (RR:C19), the first multi-disciplinary OA overlay journal for peer reviews of coronavirus-related preprints. MIT Press launched RR:C19 in August 2020….”

Needs for mobile-responsive institutional open access digital repositories | Emerald Insight

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Abstract:  Purpose

The purpose of this study is to promote mobile-responsive and agile institutional open-access digital repositories. This paper provided an x-ray of the tilted research approach to open access (OA). Most underlying causes that inhibit OA, such as lack of mobile-friendly user interfaces, infrastructure development and digital divides, are not sufficiently addressed. This paper also indicated that academic libraries over-relied on open-source software and institutional repository, but most institutional repositories are merely “dumping sites” due to how information is classified and indexed.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper adopted meta-analysis by mining data sets from databases and provided thematic clustering of its content analysis through network visualisation to juxtapose the existing research gaps and lack of mobile-first insights needed to provide open-access information to the library’s users to consume information via mobile platforms. The retrieved dataset was discussed in tandem with the literature and the author’s insights into systems librarianship knowledge.

Findings

The library and information science (LIS) has not addressed how the academics could escape the pay-for-play cost, which was an exclusion tactic to disenfranchise emerging scholars and those without sufficient financial resources to choose between visibility, citation or publishing their outputs in journals without the possibility of citations, which is very important to their academic advancements. The LIS must shift its paradigm from mere talking about OA by producing graduates with the requisite skill to design, develop and host platforms that could enhance indexing and citations and import references. The current design of the institutional repository could be enhanced and promote easy navigation through mobile devices. Thereby taking into accounts internet bandwidth and digital divide, which still hinders accessibility of online resources.

Research limitations/implications

This paper covered research within the LIS fields, and other outputs from other disciplines on OA were not included.

Practical implications

This paper showed the gaps that existed within the LIS campaign on OA, the research focuses of the LIS scholars/research librarians and the needed practical solution for the academic libraries to move beyond OA campaign and reconfigure institutional repository, not as dumping sites, but as infrastructure to host peer-reviewed journals.

JMIRx Med: Preprint Overlay Journal Accepted in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

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“JMIR Publications is pleased to announce that JMIRx Med has been accepted and indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). DOAJ applies strict criteria to review and index open access journals, which include licensing and copyright criteria, quality control processes, journal website technical and usability setups, and editorial evaluation. 

JMIRx Med (ISSN 2563-6316) is an innovative preprint overlay journal for medRxiv and JMIR Preprints. Conceived to address the urgent need to make highly relevant scientific information available as early as possible without losing the quality of the peer review process, JMIRx Med is the first in a new series of “superjournals” from JMIR Publications. Superjournals (a type of “overlay” journal) sit on top of preprint servers offering peer review and everything else a traditional scholarly journal does. …”

JMIRx Med first overlay journal accepted for PubMed and PubMed Central

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“MIR Publications is proud to announce that our first-of-its-kind overlay journal, JMIRx Med, has been accepted for indexing in PubMed Central (PMC) and PubMed.

As the first overlay journal in PMC and PubMed, JMIRx Med becomes the standard-bearer of this important innovation in scholarly publishing. Editors of overlay journals select content already posted on preprint servers such as medRxiv and bioRxiv. They then select manuscripts that match the scope and quality parameters of their publications and offer authors a rapid peer review and possible publication of their preprints, coupled with all the traditional elements of a journal publication. JMIRx Med enters the ranks of PubMed-ranked scientific publications following the US National Library of Medicine’s (NLM’s) rigorous evaluation criteria. Papers published in JMIRx Med will be in PubMed by mid-summer 2022, after legacy files are prepared and deposited….”

23 Scholarly Communication Things | QUT Library

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23 Scholarly Communication Things by Queensland University of Technology is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

 

Introduction

I. Foundations of Scholarly Communication

Research Integrity

Jennifer Hall; Eileen Salisbury; and Catherine Radbourne

Copyright and Creative Commons

Katya Henry; Rani McLennan; and David Cohen

Author Profiles

Paula Callan; Tanya Harden; and Brendan Sinnamon

II. Research Data Management

Managing research data

Philippa Frame

Publishing research data

Philippa Frame and Stephanie Jacobs

Licensing research data

Philippa Frame and Stephanie Jacobs

III. Open Access

Open Access organisations and developments – National and international

Sandra Fry

Open Access Models

Ginny Barbour; Paula Callan; and Stephanie Jacobs

Open Research

Alice Steiner

Open Educational Resources (OERs)

Katya Henry; Kate Nixon; and Sarah Howard

IV. Publishing

Which journal or book publisher to publish with

Paula Callan and Catherine Radbourne

Avoiding deceptive and vanity journals/conferences

Stephanie Jacobs; Catherine Radbourne; and Ginny Barbour

1. Persistent identifiers (PIDs)

Stephanie Jacobs; Paula Callan; Tanya Harden; and Brendan Sinnamon

Preprints, Preprint servers and Overlay journals

Ginny Barbour; Stephanie Jacobs; and Catherine Radbourne

Promoting research

Kate Harbison; Paula Callan; and Tanya Harden

V. Publication Metrics

Responsible use of metrics

Catherine Radbourne and Tanya Harden

Citation counts, author level metrics and journal rankings

Alice Steiner and Tanya Harden

Databases for metrics

Catherine Radbourne

The future of journal publishing here today – by Syksy Räsänen | Published by The Open Journal of Astrophysics

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“The bad news: the scientific community can no longer afford commercial science journals.

The good news: the scientific community no longer needs commercial science journals.

The bottom line: open internet archives and overlay journals are the solution….”

Psicológica and DIGITAL.CSIC join forces for Sustainable Diamond Open Access and Repository as a Publisher Services – Open Scholar C.I.C.

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“We are excited to announce the relaunch of Psicológica, the journal of the Spanish Society for Experimental Psychology (SEPEX), as a Diamond Open Access journal published exclusively on DIGITAL.CSIC, the institutional repository of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

This project kicks off in a time when both the sustainability of Diamond Open Access journals and the opportunities to consolidate Repository as a Publisher services have come to the fore in global discussion about innovative scholarly communications. On the one hand, in light of the heated debates about the true costs of academic publishing, the direct partnership between a society-owned journal and a publicly funded repository demonstrates the viability of a novel and sustainable publishing model that does not entail any costs to authors, institutions, readers or libraries. On the other hand, DIGITAL.CSIC takes a further step in its agenda to expand publishing services, by providing a full peer review workflow on top of its infrastructure. A rigorous quality control of incoming manuscripts is performed by senior volunteer academics with the collaboration of expert reviewers, while the institutional repository and its staff of professional librarians provide a state-of-the-art publishing infrastructure, including peer review management, metadata curation, DOI minting, support for database indexing and harvesting by aggregators and search engines, support for policy development, users support service, and digital preservation. This whole set of services on top of an institutional repository opens the door for truly innovative publishing controlled by the scholarly community and without the intermediation of third parties….”

Psicológica and DIGITAL.CSIC join forces for Sustainable Diamond Open Access and Repository as a Publisher Services – Open Scholar C.I.C.

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“We are excited to announce the relaunch of Psicológica, the journal of the Spanish Society for Experimental Psychology (SEPEX), as a Diamond Open Access journal published exclusively on DIGITAL.CSIC, the institutional repository of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

This project kicks off in a time when both the sustainability of Diamond Open Access journals and the opportunities to consolidate Repository as a Publisher services have come to the fore in global discussion about innovative scholarly communications. On the one hand, in light of the heated debates about the true costs of academic publishing, the direct partnership between a society-owned journal and a publicly funded repository demonstrates the viability of a novel and sustainable publishing model that does not entail any costs to authors, institutions, readers or libraries. On the other hand, DIGITAL.CSIC takes a further step in its agenda to expand publishing services, by providing a full peer review workflow on top of its infrastructure. A rigorous quality control of incoming manuscripts is performed by senior volunteer academics with the collaboration of expert reviewers, while the institutional repository and its staff of professional librarians provide a state-of-the-art publishing infrastructure, including peer review management, metadata curation, DOI minting, support for database indexing and harvesting by aggregators and search engines, support for policy development, users support service, and digital preservation. This whole set of services on top of an institutional repository opens the door for truly innovative publishing controlled by the scholarly community and without the intermediation of third parties….”

In Practice: An Interview with Francesco Maggi & Enrico Valdinoci (Ars Inveniendi Analytica) · In Practice: Interviews with Practitioners of Open

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“In this interview, Francesco Maggi (Professor of Mathematics, UT Austin) and Enrico Valdinoci (Professor of Mathematics, University of Western Australia) talk with Colleen Cressman about their new fee-free, open-access journal in Mathematics, Ars Inveniendi Analytica, for which they are the founding Editors-in-Chief. Established in 2020, Ars Inveniendi Analytica leverages the open-access repository arXiv as infrastructure: An author posts a manuscript to arXiv and then links to it in the submission form to the journal. Upon undergoing peer review, and if accepted for publication, the final version of the article is made available on arXiv. Francesco and Enrico discuss the merits and challenges of this model of publishing.”

In Practice: An Interview with Colleen Lyon (University of Texas at Austin) · In Practice: Interviews with Practitioners of Open

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“In this interview, Colleen Lyon, who is Head of Scholarly Communications at the University of Texas at Austin, talks with Colleen Cressman about her department’s efforts to make sharing research easier—from providing tools, such as Texas ScholarWorks and the Texas Data Repository, to offering classroom instruction, consultations, workshops, and learning communities. She also talks about the university’s focus on open practices with the Provost’s Sustainable Open Scholarship (SOS) Working Group and the ways she and her department have been able to “support open publishing initiatives that promise to be more financially sustainable over the long-term,” including a new arXiv overlay journal, Ars Inveniendi Analytica….”

The dawn of the age of duplicate peer review – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“To sum up, the existence of a public version of a manuscript (i.e., the preprint) opens up many new avenues for peer review, and these are largely positive for the integrity of the scientific record. However, many of these peer review efforts run in parallel to peer review at the journal. As I hope I’ve illustrated above, there’s no clear way to decide what counts as legitimate discussion of a preprint and what is unethical duplicate peer review. As preprints become more prevalent we may need to abandon our hopes of enforcing sequential peer review entirely, and that may not be a bad thing.”