Category Archives: oad.notice

‘It Feels Like Things Are Breaking Open’: High Publishing Charges Spur Neuroscientists to Start Their Own Journal

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“The editors of a prominent neuroscience journal are sending a clear message to their publisher — and, they hope, to the broader academic-publishing community — by resigning en masse to begin a new journal in protest of what they say are “unethical and unsustainable” publishing fees.

More than 40 handling editors, associate editors, senior editors, and editors in chief for NeuroImage and its companion journal NeuroImage: Reports, which are published by Elsevier, on Monday announced they were leaving their positions to assume similar roles at the newly formed Imaging Neuroscience, which will be published by the nonprofit MIT Press. They plan for the new journal to eclipse NeuroImage in standing, saying the fact that the entire editorial staff is making the shift will ensure the new journal’s quality.

The high-profile move is the latest chapter in the long-unfolding battle over who pays and who benefits in the academic-publishing world. The departure from a well-regarded journal, and the plan to mount direct competition to it, also highlight the complex ecosystem that surrounds journals’ prestige and impact — and the interplay of a publisher’s reach and scale with the academic bona fides of the scholars who run a title….”

Revisiting Methodology for Identifying Open Access Advantages | SpringerLink

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Abstract:  Although many empirical studies have investigated whether open access increases citations, researchers have not reached a consensus regarding the issue. This study revisited the methodology for identifying the effects of open access and revealed the causes for contradictory conclusions using four indices for journals that transitioned from subscription to open access. The four indices are two citation scores along with the number of citations and number of articles for eight journals independently launched by leading publishers. Correlation coefficients were used to compare the time trends in the values of the four indices. Although the aggregated data of the eight journals indicated that open access had a positive effect, the effect varied across journals. A few journals produced different results between the two citation scores as well as between citation scores and number of citations or articles. Furthermore, a publisher’s choice of which journal to shift to open access influenced their performance after the shift. Therefore, results varied based on the choice of journals, indices, and types of data (aggregated vs. individual journals), leading to contradictory conclusions regarding open access advantages.

 

Open Access Publishing Grants – What Are The Options?

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“In many cases, funding organisations expressly permit the use of research money to cover the costs of article processing charges (APCs) to publish in open access journals and the costs of Book Processing Charges (BPCs) to publish open access volumes. Many universities have now established central funds to pay the costs of APCs and BPCs, as well. The following is a list of available funding sources for APCs and BPCs.

National or international funding bodies permit the use of research monies to pay for open access APCs for books and articles published in open access journals.
Open access publishing agreements are another method of obtaining financial support. Many organisations worldwide assist scholars in obtaining gold open access publication in their preferred journals. These transformational and consortium agreements can benefit writers by lowering their APCs or by letting them to publish open access without incurring any additional costs.
Many universities also have open access memberships with open access publications, which they use to share research findings. Researchers situated at these universities may be able to publish gold open access articles at no cost to themselves if they meet specific criteria.
In some instances, open access publishers provide discounts or fee exemptions to researchers from impoverished nations.
There are other general resources for Open Access Funding available on the internet. These may be found in the databases of Sherpa Juliet, The Open Access Directory, SPARC, and other similar organisations, among others. Sherpa Juliet is a searchable database of open access policies for research funding organisations. The Open Access Directory keeps track of a list of institutional funding that supports open access publishing initiatives. SPARC maintains a list of North American institutions and university libraries establishing open access grants for their respective research and teaching….”

ACCESS TO OPEN ACCESS E-RESOURCES IN ACADEMIC WORLD: AN OVERVIEW

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Abstract:  The purpose of this paper is to outline the current trends and strategies in making availability of Open Access (OA) e-resources for users. For essential scholarly content users either subscribe or access to freely available information. Escalating prices of information is forcing users switch to open access information. Emergence of open access enabled researchers worldwide to access scholarly content without any restrictions. Now, the OA philosophy has resulted in more publishing opportunities and more access to scholarly content throughout the world by facilitating the flow of information between industrialized and less industrialized nations.

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