[No. 010] Technics and Civilization: Open Science and the Creative Commons Climate Campaign – Korea IT Times

“The Creative Commons launched their 4-Year Open Climate Campaign late last year in 2022, and I contacted a lead scientist on the project, Dr. Monica Granados (Canada) about this remarkable project. The open science movement has contributed greatly to public awareness and subsequent public participation in science and society….”

Asia tipped to follow US lead on open access | Times Higher Education (THE)

“Asian research powerhouses will introduce open access (OA) mandates within the next “two to three” years, experts have predicted, in the wake of last month’s landmark order by the Biden administration.

Under the US decision, the published results of federally funded research must be made immediately and freely available to readers, starting from 2025. This follows the introduction of similar rules across Europe and the UK, spearheaded by the Plan S initiative.

Home to four of the top 10 research-producing countries – China, Japan, South Korea and India – Asia now appears poised to become the next battleground….”

An analysis of use statistics of electronic papers in a Korean scholarly information repository

Abstract:  Introduction. This study aimed to analyse the current use status of Korean scholarly papers accessible in the repository of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information in order to assess the economic validity of the maintenance and operation of the repository.

Method. This study used the modified historical cost method and performed regression analysis on the use of Korean scholarly papers by year and subject area.

Analysis. The development cost of the repository and the use volumes were analysed based on 1,154,549 Korean scholarly papers deposited in the Institute repository.

Results. Approximately 86% of the deposited papers were downloaded at least once and on average, a paper was downloaded over twenty-six times. Regression analysis showed that the ratio of use of currently deposited papers is likely to decrease by 7.6% annually, as new ones are added.

Conclusions. The need to manage currently deposited papers for at least thirteen years into the future and provide empirical proof that the repository has contributed to Korean researchers conducting research and development in the fields of science and technology. The benefit-cost ratio was above nineteen, confirming the economic validity of the repository.

Practical Advice for South Korean Medical Researchers Regarding Open-Access and Predatory Journals

Abstract: In recent decades, the volume of scholarly literature worldwide has increased significantly, and open-access publishing has become commonplace. These changes are even more dominant in South Korea. Comparing the periods of 1981-2000 and 2001-2020, the number of medical articles produced in Korea increased by 16.8 times on the Web of Science platform (13,223 to 222,771 papers). Before 1990, almost no open-access articles were produced in South Korea, but in the last 10 years open-access publications came to account for almost 40% of all South Korean publications on Web of Science. Along with the expansion of literature and the development of open-access publishing, predatory journals that seek profit without conducting quality assurance have appeared and undermined the academic corpus. In this rapidly changing environment, medical researchers have begun contemplating publication standards. In this article, recent trends in academic publishing are examined from international and South Korean perspectives, and the significance of open-access publishing and recent changes are discussed. Practical methods that can be used to select legitimate publishers, including open-access journals, and identify predatory journals are also discussed.

Journal statistics, coping strategy with upcoming scholarly journal publishing environment including Plan-S, and appreciation for reviewers and volunteers

“It is anticipated that the enactment of immediate open access publication without embargo period for articles will soon be supported by the US federal funding agencies including National Science Foundation and National Institute of Health [3,4]. It may be an extension of the public access policy by the above 2 funding institutes, which mandates free access after 1-year embargo period if the articles are supported by these funding agencies. It is a fortifying policy for open access publication. It may be a good chance for the journal to receive research results that had received US federal funding, because it is the diamond or platinum open access one without embargo period nor article processing charge. However, the situation in Europe is not favorable, where “all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in open access journals without embargo from 2021” according to Plan-S [5]. There are basic, mandatory, and recommended requirements to be eligible to receive the manuscripts supported by European funding bodies. Out of them, one basic requirement of “copyright owned by authors or institutes” cannot be fulfilled by the journal, because this journal is owned by the public institute publisher and all publishing cost is supported by the publisher. This year, 20% of the published articles were from Europe, although most of those articles were not supported by research grants. The JEEHP should be prepared for the situation in which manuscripts funded by European funding agencies cannot be accepted. However, at present, there seems to be no way to overcome this obstacle, and this may apply to other public or non-profit organization journals as well. I just anticipate a change in the principle of Plan-S on the ownership of copyright. There is no problem in publishing the journal as open access without embargo nor article processing charge although the copyright is owned by the publisher in Korea. Furthermore, the open access policy which may be enacted by the Korean Government in near future should be followed-up and discussed to evade the situation in Europe like Plan-S principle of copyright ownership….”

Exploring the quality of government open data | Comparison study of the UK, the USA and Korea | The Electronic Library | Vol 37, No 1

Abstract:  Purpose

The use of “open data” can help the public find value in various areas of interests. Many governments have created and published a huge amount of open data; however, people have a hard time using open data because of data quality issues. The UK, the USA and Korea have created and published open data; however, the rate of open data implementation and level of open data impact is very low because of data quality issues like incompatible data formats and incomplete data. This study aims to compare the statuses of data quality from open government sites in the UK, the USA and Korea and also present guidelines for publishing data format and enhancing data completeness.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses statistical analysis of different data formats and examination of data completeness to explore key issues of data quality in open government data.

Findings

Findings show that the USA and the UK have published more than 50 per cent of open data in level one. Korea has published 52.8 per cent of data in level three. Level one data are not machine-readable; therefore, users have a hard time using them. The level one data are found in portable document format and hyper text markup language (HTML) and are locked up in documents; therefore, machines cannot extract out the data. Findings show that incomplete data are existing in all three governments’ open data.

Originality/value

Governments should investigate data incompleteness of all open data and correct incomplete data of the most used data. Governments can find the most used data easily by monitoring data sets that have been downloaded most frequently over a certain period.

Geographic trends in attitudes to open access | Research Information

In the OA report, when asked whether authors had ever published in an OA journal, the majority of researchers from each country responded affirmatively (B, 68% of 1,133 respondents; I, 57% of 213; J, 59% of 708; UK 60% of 111; US, 51% of 419), except for China (34% of 2,085) and South Korea (44% of 409; roughly equal, yes verses no). Overall, across all survey respondents, with Yes at 45% and No at 35%, OA advocates may feel comfortable that the pendulum is swinging in the right direction. However, there are some striking differences in the geographic profiles of whether or not an author chooses to publish in an OA journal, with an overall 9% of responding authors indicating that they don’t know what OA publishing is.

For example, in response to why respondents chose to publish in an OA journal, more than 60% of authors in almost all geographic areas responded “I wanted my paper to be read by a larger audience” (B, 60% of 766; C, 69% of 710; I, 64% of 121; J, 64% of 415; UK, 63% of 67; US, 60% of 215), however in South Korea, only 37% of 181 authors responded in such a manner, and instead, 71% of 181 authors indicated that “I chose the journal that was the best fit for my paper and it happened to be OA”. This was in striking contrast to authors in the UK, for which the “best fit being OA” response was only indicated by 31% of 67 authors. Notably, when authors in the UK who had “never” published in an OA journal were asked why, 65% (of 34) said “I chose the journal that was the best fit for my paper and it happened to be a subscription journal”. …”

South Korean universities reach agreement with Elsevier after long standoff | Science | AAAS

“After a monthslong standoff, a consortium of hundreds of South Korean universities has reached a new deal with scientific publisher Elsevier for access to ScienceDirect, a database containing content from 3500 academic journals and thousands of electronic books. The agreement, which includes price hikes between 3.5% and 3.9%, was concluded shortly before 12 January, the day Elsevier had threatened to cut access to ScienceDirect. The publisher had pushed for a 4.5% increase….”

Pluto interviewed with Research Stash – Pluto Network – Medium

“According to National Science Foundation, 4000 new papers are published within the scientific community every day and the number of annual publications has increased from 1 million in 2000 to more than 2 million in 2013. On the other hand, the publication fees are skyrocketing in the past few decades… wasting of research resources and leading to ineffective communications.

PLUTO a nonprofit based in Seoul, Korea wants to address this issue by creating a Decentralized scholarly communication platform which makes the scholarly communication reasonable and transparent for the scientific community.

Q. Can you tell us about your founding team members and what inspired you to build Pluto Network?

We’re attaching a separate document describing the founding members. We gathered to develop applications using blockchain technology as we were fascinated with the emerging technology and the consequences it would enable. As most of us are graduates from POSTECH, a research-focused science, and technology university in South Korea, it wasn’t long until our concerns on the implementation of the technology concluded that we must integrate it with Scholarly Communication….”

In Italy, only 46% of the research is “open”

“What happens when science becomes open? And what drives researchers to publicize scientific articles where they have the result of their work? It is from these two questions that has taken the International survey of scientific authors (Issa), a project devoted to the OECD by Brunella Boselli and Fernando Galindo-Rueda. 

A research involving over 6,000 researchers who responded to a questionnaire sent by email at the end of 2014. With the goal of measuring the spread of openness, it is the choice to freely publish research results. And the result is that between 50 and 55% of publications are available in open format within three or four years of publication. A choice, that of open access, widespread in emerging economies.

In Indonesia it is over 90%, in Thailand 80, in Turkey 70%. And even though it is limited to the more mature economies, South Korea is the 66%, followed by Brazil with 64 and Russia with 61. In Italy, however, only 46% of the research is published in open format….”

ResearchGate: Disseminating, Communicating and Measuring Scholarship?

Abstract:  ResearchGate is a social network site for academics to create their own profiles, list their 

publications and interact with each other. Like Academia.edu, it provides a new way for 
scholars to disseminate their publications and hence potentially changes the dynamics of 
informal scholarly communication. This article assesses whether ResearchGate usage and 
publication data broadly reflect existing academic hierarchies and whether individual 
countries are set to benefit or lose out from the site. The results show that rankings based 
on ResearchGate statistics correlate moderately well with other rankings of academic 
institutions, suggesting that ResearchGate use broadly reflects traditional academic 
capital. Moreover, while Brazil, India and some other countries seem to be 
disproportionately taking advantage of ResearchGate, academics in China, South Korea 
and Russia may be missing opportunities to use ResearchGate to maximise the academic 
impact of their publications.