Category Archives: oad.notice

Keeping up with Open Access – News – Illinois State

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“As the fall semester begins and we welcome our students and faculty back to classes, we hope you’re excited about scholarly communications and Open Access too. Exciting projects to make scholarship and creative output more accessible for users seem to be announced every day, and it can become difficult to keep track of everything going on in the Open Access world. To help our readers, we’re offering three resources which can be used to track developments and projects that may be of interest.

The first resource is the Open Access Tracking Project (OATP). The OATP is crowd-sourced project that seeks “(1) to create real-time alerts for OA-related news and comment, and (2) to organize knowledge of the field, by tag or subtopic, for easy searching and sharing.” The project maintains a variety of feeds, from the general, comprehensive feed for all Open Access topics and news to feeds related to individual or specific topics or projects. The feed can be followed through an RSS reader, or it has a Twitter account.

The OATP is a part of the Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP), which can be a valuable resource itself. Although it is no longer grant funded, the project is still active and does free consultations and maintains a webpage of useful resources. These resources cover a variety of topics, including best practices for universities drafting OA policies, books about OA and making work OA, and reference pages on federal legislation.

Finally it may come as no surprise that social media can be a place to learn about OA projects and developments, although the sheer number of results can be daunting and the source should always be considered when reading an announcement. The Open Access Directory maintains a list of social media sites about OA. The list includes links to groups and feeds on major social media platforms and in a variety of languages….”

Regional and international experts come together to discuss open access research in MENA | ZAWYA MENA Edition

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“International research and education leaders will come together today to discuss the accessibility and visibility of research in the MENA region.  

The free symposium Towards a more knowledgeable world: Open Access research in MENAis being held during the annual global Open Access week. It will consist of a series of talks by leading regional stakeholders and global organisations about the implementation and benefits of open research practices.  …”

Open access

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“Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers.[1] With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre open access, barriers to copying or reuse are also reduced or removed by applying an open license for copyright….”

What happens when a journal converts to Open Access? A bibliometric analysis

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Abstract:  In recent years, increased stakeholder pressure to transition research to Open Access has led to many journals converting, or ‘flipping’, from a closed access (CA) to an open access (OA) publishing model. Changing the publishing model can influence the decision of authors to submit their papers to a journal, and increased article accessibility may influence citation behaviour. In this paper we aimed to understand how flipping a journal to an OA model influences the journal’s future publication volumes and citation impact. We analysed two independent sets of journals that had flipped to an OA model, one from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and one from the Open Access Directory (OAD), and compared their development with two respective control groups of similar journals. For bibliometric analyses, journals were matched to the Scopus database. We assessed changes in the number of articles published over time, as well as two citation metrics at the journal and article level: the normalised impact factor (IF) and the average relative citations (ARC), respectively. Our results show that overall, journals that flipped to an OA model increased their publication output compared to journals that remained closed. Mean normalised IF and ARC also generally increased following the flip to an OA model, at a greater rate than was observed in the control groups. However, the changes appear to vary largely by scientific discipline. Overall, these results indicate that flipping to an OA publishing model can bring positive changes to a journal.

 

Open Scholarship Knowledge Base

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“The Open Scholarship Knowledge Base (OSKB) is a collaborative initiative to curate and share knowledge about the what, why, and how of open scholarship. This includes reviewing, organizing, and improving the discoverability of content to support the education and application of open practices for all aspects of the research lifecycle….”

A policy and legal Open Science framework: a proposal

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Abstract:  Our proposal of an Open Science definition as a political and legal framework where research outputs are shared and disseminated in order to be rendered visible, accessible, reusable is developed, standing over the concepts enhanced by the Budapest Open Science Initiative (BOAI), and by the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) and Open data movements. We elaborate this proposal through a detailed analysis of some selected EC policies, laws and the role of research evaluation practices.

 

 

Open Scholarship Knowledge Base | OER Commons

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“What are we doing? And why?

The Problem

It is difficult for people new to open scholarship ideas and practices to find and apply existing materials.

It is difficult for educators to bring open scholarship concepts and exercises into their courses.

The open scholarship landscape changes quickly, so materials can become outdated. 

Our Solution

Our Project Roadmap outlines our approach: Build a knowledge base platform and a community of contributors to organize information on the what, why, and how of open scholarship so it is easy to find and apply. Contributors keep the information up-to-date and curate modules for self-learning or teaching….”

Open Scholarship Knowledge Base | OER Commons

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“What are we doing? And why?

The Problem

It is difficult for people new to open scholarship ideas and practices to find and apply existing materials.

It is difficult for educators to bring open scholarship concepts and exercises into their courses.

The open scholarship landscape changes quickly, so materials can become outdated. 

Our Solution

Our Project Roadmap outlines our approach: Build a knowledge base platform and a community of contributors to organize information on the what, why, and how of open scholarship so it is easy to find and apply. Contributors keep the information up-to-date and curate modules for self-learning or teaching….”

Publications | Free Full-Text | A Provisional System to Evaluate Journal Publishers Based on Partnership Practices and Values Shared with Academic Institutions and Libraries

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Abstract:  Background: Journals with high impact factors (IFs) are the “coin of the realm” in many review, tenure, and promotion decisions, ipso facto, IFs influence academic authors’ views of journals and publishers. However, IFs do not evaluate how publishers interact with libraries or academic institutions. Goal: This provisional system introduces an evaluation of publishers exclusive of IF, measuring how well a publisher’s practices align with the values of libraries and public institutions of higher education (HE). Identifying publishers with similar values may help libraries and institutions make strategic decisions about resource allocation. Methods: Democratization of knowledge, information exchange, and the sustainability of scholarship were values identified to define partnership practices and develop a scoring system evaluating publishers. Then, four publishers were evaluated. A high score indicates alignment with the values of libraries and academic institutions and a strong partnership with HE. Results: Highest scores were earned by a learned society publishing two journals and a library publisher supporting over 80 open-access journals. Conclusions: Publishers, especially nonprofit publishers, could use the criteria to guide practices that align with mission-driven institutions. Institutions and libraries could use the system to identify publishers acting in good faith towards public institutions of HE. 

 

Publications | Free Full-Text | A Provisional System to Evaluate Journal Publishers Based on Partnership Practices and Values Shared with Academic Institutions and Libraries

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Abstract:  Background: Journals with high impact factors (IFs) are the “coin of the realm” in many review, tenure, and promotion decisions, ipso facto, IFs influence academic authors’ views of journals and publishers. However, IFs do not evaluate how publishers interact with libraries or academic institutions. Goal: This provisional system introduces an evaluation of publishers exclusive of IF, measuring how well a publisher’s practices align with the values of libraries and public institutions of higher education (HE). Identifying publishers with similar values may help libraries and institutions make strategic decisions about resource allocation. Methods: Democratization of knowledge, information exchange, and the sustainability of scholarship were values identified to define partnership practices and develop a scoring system evaluating publishers. Then, four publishers were evaluated. A high score indicates alignment with the values of libraries and academic institutions and a strong partnership with HE. Results: Highest scores were earned by a learned society publishing two journals and a library publisher supporting over 80 open-access journals. Conclusions: Publishers, especially nonprofit publishers, could use the criteria to guide practices that align with mission-driven institutions. Institutions and libraries could use the system to identify publishers acting in good faith towards public institutions of HE. 

 

[2005.08753] Do journals flipping to Gold Open Access show an OA Citation or Publication Advantage?

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Authors: Nuria Bautista-Puig, Carmen Lopez-Illescas, Felix de Moya-Anegon, Vicente Guerrero-Bote, Henk F. Moed

Author copy of a manuscript accepted for publication in the journal Scientometrics (18 May 2020)

Abstract:

The effects of Open Access (OA) upon journal performance are investigated. The key research question holds: How does the citation impact and publication output of journals switching (‘flipping’) from non-OA to Gold-OA develop after their switch to Gold-OA? A review is given of the literature, with an emphasis on studies dealing with flipping journals. Two study sets with 119 and 100 flipping journals, derived from two different OA data sources (DOAJ and OAD), are compared with two control groups, one based on a standard bibliometric criterion, and a second controlling for a journal’s national orientation. Comparing post-switch indicators with pre-switch ones in paired T-tests, evidence was obtained of an OA Citation advantage but not of an OA Publication Advantage. Shifts in the affiliation countries of publishing and citing authors are characterized in terms of countries’ income class and geographical world region. Suggestions are made for qualitative follow-up studies to obtain more insight into OA flipping or reverse-flipping

2020 Update of the University Open Access Publication Fund

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“We are fortunate in our campus’s commitment to open access publishing. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is the only institution offering such funding in the state. The University of Wisconsin-Madison closed its fund in 2014 after spending its initial $50,000 seed money. For comparison of levels of open access initiatives at other universities, we reviewed 15 UWM peeruniversities and found that only three offer such funds: Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Temple University, and University of Illinois at Chicago. From our survey of their fund coordinators, we learned that only one fund (allocated annually at $20,000) was supported entirely from the library’s budget; and the two other funds included a partial contribution (one at $15,000) from the library’s budget along with money ($50,000-60,000 total per year) collected from schools, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. In writing this report (April 2020) we checked back on the status of OA funds at the three peer institutions and discovered that two were not currently active, either exhausted or being evaluated until the next fiscal year. After our survey of peer institutions in 2018, we added the UWM UOAP to two directories: Open Access Funds in Action hosted by SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)1 and Open Access Directory hosted by the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College2 ….”

LPForum20: Make the Open Access Directory Better for All: A Library Publishers Edit-a-thon | Library Publishing Coalition

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“One of JeSLIB’s goals is to contribute to the Open Access and Library Publishing communities. There are many open access resources maintained by organizations around the world that are community driven. This means they depend on community input and crowd-sourcing.

The editors planned an interactive workshop, or edit-a-thon, to teach forum participants how to contribute to one of these community-driven platforms, The Open Access Directory (OAD). The OAD was co-founded by Peter Suber, Director of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication and Director of the Harvard Open Access Project. OAD is hosted by the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University, maintained by the OA community at large, and supervised by an independent editorial board….”

Campus Encouraged to Share Research and Scholarship | University of Arkansas

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“Campus buildings across the country may be closed, but the quest for knowledge continues. Now more than ever, researchers and scholars are relying on access to digital materials. The Office of Scholarly Communications invites everyone, on the University of Arkansas campus and beyond, to submit their research to an open access repository.  

The online tool How Can I Share It can help determine if a publishing agreement allows for an article to be posted, and will also suggest a few general repositories. However, publications may be found more readily by fellow researchers in a discipline-specific repository, such as the ones listed by The Open Access Directory.  …”

Copyright Considerations for the Harvard Community in Shifting Courses from In-Person to Online During the COVID-19 Crisis – Research Guides at Harvard Library

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“Harvard Library staff are working hard to support instructors’ needs for resources and information as they rapidly shift to an online teaching environment. Information presented here is meant to proactively address questions concerning copyright and teaching online. 

Many pedagogical and technical issues make the shift from in-person to online teaching challenging, yet copyright is not an additional area of great concern. Many of the legal issues are the same in both contexts. 

If it was okay to do in class, it is often okay to do in a fully online classroom environment, especially when your online access is limited to the same enrolled students.
In particular, please always take accessibility needs into account. Copyright law does not preclude creating transcripts or captions for course videos and audio. In fact, it normally allows for it….”