Category Archives: oa.publishing

Assessing the publishing priorities and preferences among STEM researchers at a large R1 institution: Heliyon

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The cost of academic publishing has increased substantially despite the ease with which information can be shared on the web. Open Access publishing is a key mechanism for amplifying research access, inclusivity, and impact. Despite this, shifting to a free-to-read publishing environment requires navigating complex barriers that vary by career status and publishing expectations. In this article, we investigate the motivations and preferences of researchers situated within our large research institution as a case study for publishing attitudes at similar institutions. We surveyed the publishing priorities and preferences of researchers at various career stages in STEM fields as they relate to openness, data practices, and assessment of research impact. Our results indicate that publishing preferences, data management experience and research impact assessment vary by career status and departmental approaches to promotion. We find that open access publishing is widely appreciated regardless of career status, but financial limitations and publishing expectations were common barriers to publishing in Open Access journals. Our findings shed light on publishing attitudes and preferences among researchers at a major R1 research institution, and offer insight into advocacy strategies that incentivize open access publishing.

Fradenburg Joy & & van Gerven Oei (2023) What is Your Threshold? The Economics of Open Access Scholarly Book Publishing, the “Business” of Care, and the Case of punctum books | The Journal of Electronic Publishing

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Fradenburg Joy, E. A. & van Gerven Oei, V. W., (2023) “What is Your Threshold? The Economics of Open Access Scholarly Book Publishing, the “Business” of Care, and the Case of punctum books”, The Journal of Electronic Publishing 26(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.3627

 

Opening Access | Association of University Presses 2023 Annual Report

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“The Association views Open Access (OA) to scholarship as an ideal fully in line with our mission, and a practice that must align with our values. The majority of member presses continue to explore OA publishing projects, and the Association works to support active learning and productive advocacy around OA modes of publishing.  The Open Access Committee is charged with developing resources, recommendations, and knowledge for our global community. To this end, the committee has published a draft resource list, curated to help university presses navigate the many different models, developing infrastructures, and growing expectations in OA publishing. The Committee has also continued inviting representatives from OA initiatives, such as OASPA, the Books Analytic Dashboard, and OpenStax, to present on their work to the committee. In 2022, on the heels of a new US Office of Science and Technology Policy memo outlining expansive OA expectations for federally funded research, the Committee coordinated a community hangout to share information, ideas, and concerns….”

Staff member Open Access Publication Services (m/f/d)

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“This is a permanent position with a weekly working time of 39.80 hours (full-time). The position is generally suitable for part-time work. The remuneration is based on pay scale group 9b TV-L, depending on the qualifications.

TIB operates the open access publisher TIB Open Publishing. This service offers professional publishing options for scholarly journals and conference proceedings and is part of the library’s strategic open access orientation.

Your tasks
You will work in the field of TIB Open Publishing, an Open Access publisher aimed at national and international target groups. You will support customers, in particular the editors of journals and conference proceedings as well as authors and reviewers, and contribute to the production of the publications….”

Open Science: stakeholders welcome European efforts towards publicly owned and not-for-profit scholarly communication | Plan S

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For European public research and innovation actors, scholarly knowledge is a public good. Publicly funded research and its results should be immediately and openly available to all without barriers such as subscription fees or paywalls. This is essential in driving knowledge forward, promoting innovation and tackling social issues.

Key representative organisations of the public research and innovation sector have welcomed today’s adoption of the ‘Council conclusions on high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy, and equitable scholarly publishing’.

Gold Open Access output and expenditures in the United States in the past decade

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Open access publishing has quite a significant cost associated with it. Article Processing Charges (APCs) are fees charged by publishers to authors for the publication of their articles in open access journals. These fees can present a new type of “paywall” to researchers and institutions who cannot afford to pay these amounts. Considering previous studies that showed barriers to publishing open access between countries as a result of high costs, in this study, we aimed to examine whether there are differences in open access publishing, expenditure and overall participation within universities in the United States. Our analysis shows that the majority of states published between 1,000 – 7,000 Gold Open Access publications and spent up to 6million dollars in the past 10 years. However, there are some noteworthy outliers’ states that publish a high number Gold Open Access papers but pay significantly less than other states that publish a lower number of Gold Open Access papers and pay significantly more.

Open access publishing in India: trends and policy perspectives | Emerald Insight

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Abstract:  Purpose

This study aims to analyze Open Access (OA) publishing trends and policy perspectives in India. Different aspects, such as the growth of OA journals digital repositories, the proportion of OA availability to research literature and the status of OA mandates and policies are studied.

Design/methodology/approach

Data for analyzing OA trends were gathered from multiple data sources, including Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), OpenDOAR, SCImago and Web of Science (WoS) databases. DOAJ and OpenDOAR were used for extracting OA journals and digital repository data. SCImago Journal and Country ranking portal and WoS database were used to obtain Indian publication data for assessing the proportion of OA to research literature. ROARMAP was used to study OA mandates and policies adopted by universities, research institutions and research funders in India. OA mandates and policies of major regulatory bodies and funding agencies were also reviewed using secondary sources of information and related websites.

Findings

India ranks number 15 and 17 globally for OA journals and OA repositories, with 317 journals and 98 repositories. Although India’s proportion to OA publications is 23% (7% below the world average of 30%), the annual growth rate of OA publications is around 18%. Although the governing bodies and institutions have made efforts to mandate researchers to adopt OA publishing and self-archiving, its implementation is quite low among Indian researchers, as only three institutions (out of 18 listed in the ROARMAP) are defined the embargo period. Funding agencies in India do not provide financial assistance to authors for the payment of Article Processing Charges despite mandates that research is deposited in OA repositories. India lacks a national OA policy but plans to implement a “one nation one subscription” formula to provide OA to scientific literature to all its citizens.

Research limitations/implications

The study has certain limitations. Because much of India’s research output is published in local journals that are not indexed in WoS, the study recommends conducting further analyses of publications using Scopus and other databases to understand the country’s OA publishing proportion better. A further study based on feedback from different stakeholders through a survey may be conducted for formulating a national OA policy.

Originality/value

The study is the first that used multiple data sources for investigating different facets of OA publishing in India, including OA journals, digital repositories, OA research output and OA mandates and policies for publicly funded research. The findings will be helpful for researchers and policymakers interested in promoting OA adoption among researchers worldwide.

Reenvisioning Success in an Open-Access World | 6 June 2023 | Association of University Presses annual meeting

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“Open-access models of scholarly publishing finally became mainstream, benefiting society during a time of crisis during the Covid-19 pandemic. This forced many presses to reenvision what success means in a model that is not predicated on revenue generation, harkening back to university presses’ roots in supplying scholarly books and journals that would not otherwise generate revenue in the mainstream publishing world. 

Speakers

 
Jason Gosnell, Marine Corps University Press, Deputy Director/Senior Managing Editor
Angela Anderson, Marine Corps University Press, Director
Megan Hall, Athabasca University Press, Associate Vice President, Learner Experience (interim)
Anthony Cond, Liverpool University Press, Chief Executive
Natalia Grygierczyk, Radboud University Press, Director
Lara Speicher, University College London, Head Of Publishing…”

Job: Digital Publishing Specialist, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, US

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“…Reporting to the Head of Scholarly Communication and Publishing, the Digital Publishing Specialist will manage editorial and production workflows including those related to publication metadata, digital archiving, and document transformation. The incumbent will act as part of the Library’s effort to offer high quality, open access publishing services to the Urbana-Champaign campus and beyond through the Illinois Open Publishing Network (https://iopn.library.illinois.edu/) and related scholarly communication efforts….”

Principles of Diamond Open Access Publishing: a draft proposal | Plan S

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“The Action Plan for Diamond Open Access outlines a set of priorities to develop sustainable, community-driven, academic-led and -owned scholarly communication. Its goal is to create a global federation of Diamond Open Access (Diamond OA) journals and platforms around shared principles, guidelines, and quality standards while respecting their cultural, multilingual and disciplinary diversity. It proposes a definition of Diamond OA as a scholarly publication model in which journals and platforms do not charge fees to either authors or readers. Diamond OA is community-driven, academic-led and -owned, and serves a wide variety of generally small-scale, multilingual, and multicultural scholarly communities. 

Still, Diamond OA is often seen as a mere business model for scholarly publishing: no fees for authors or readers. However, Diamond OA can be better characterized by a shared set of values and principles that go well beyond the business aspect. These distinguish Diamond OA communities from other approaches to scholarly publishing. It is therefore worthwhile to spell out these values and principles, so they may serve as elements of identification for Diamond OA communities. 

The principles formulated below are intended as a first draft. They are not cast in stone, and meant to inspire discussion and evolve as a living document that will crystallize over the coming months. Many of these principles are not exclusive to Diamond OA communities. Some are borrowed or adapted from the more general 2019 Good Practice Principles for scholarly communication services defined by Sparc and COAR1, or go back to the 2016 Vienna Principles. Others have been carefully worked out in more detail by the FOREST Framework for Values-Driven Scholarly Communication in a self-assessment format for scholarly communities. Additional references can be added in the discussion.

The formulation of these principles has benefited from many conversations over the years with various members of the Diamond community now working together in the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access, cOAlition S, the CRAFT-OA and DIAMAS projects, the Fair Open Access Alliance (FOAA), Linguistics in Open Access (LingOA), the Open Library of Humanities, OPERAS, SciELO, Science Europe, and Redalyc-Amelica. This document attempts to embed these valuable contributions into principles defining the ethos of Diamond OA publishing….”

Equitable Scholarly Publishing Systems Viewed as Key to Solving Development Challenges Identified by UN – SPARC

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“If the United Nations’ development plans are going to succeed, all voices need a chance to contribute to and access knowledge.

Experts gathered on May 3 for an online discussion on the importance of embracing open science and equitable scholarly publishing ecosystems to help solve the world’s biggest problems. [See video recording here.]

The United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library and UNESCO hosted the event, which focused on recommendations on expanding access to scientific knowledge in service of the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) – including the need for a Global Science Commons. The UN’s 2030 Agenda calls for mechanisms to advance science and technology through knowledge-sharing in open access, online platforms….”

Increasing access to open access books: SPARC Europe joins Open Book Futures (OBF) project | STM Publishing News

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We are pleased to announce our participation in the recently launched Open Book Futures (OBF) project, funded by Arcadia and the Research England Development (RED) Fund.

Open Access (OA) publishing has transformed how scholars and the wider public access academic content. However, despite the many benefits of OA, the number of OA books published each year is still relatively low compared to OA journal articles. In response to this challenge, the OBF project was launched with the intention of significantly increasing and improving the quantity, discoverability, and accessibility of academic content, ensuring it is freely and easily available to not only scholars but also the general public. The intention is to build on the pioneering work conducted within the Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project. 

SPARC Europe’s role in OBF

SPARC Europe will contribute to the OBF project in various ways: 

We bring our experience establishing and running The Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS) and our connections to Invest in Open Infrastructure to advise the project. The Open Book Collective Development Fund’s grant allocation work will address a gap in the funding landscape by offering financial support to smaller and newer OA book initiatives, and we look forward to supporting this effort.
We will contribute directly to the outreach work being conducted by Work Package 2, on behalf of the Open Book Collective, and Work Package 3, on behalf of the Opening the Future revenue model. 
Specifically, we will raise awareness of this important initiative and explore new opportunities for OA books to build a more sustainable infrastructure for OA books.

We are excited about the challenges that lie ahead for OBF. Our contribution will help initiate a step change in the ambition, scope, and impact of community-led OA book publishing. Together, we will improve the quantity, discoverability, and accessibility of long-form publications ensuring they are freely and easily available to scholars and the wider public. 

You can read more about the project here and stay informed by regularly checking our news page.

 

40 editors at a scientific journal just resigned in protest of their publisher’s “greed”

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“This came to a boil on April 17, when more than 40 scientists resigned from their editorial positions at a journal called NeuroImage — one of the world’s leading publications concerning brain imaging. Founded in 1992, the journal publishes around 1,000 articles per year with an impact factor of 7.4, which is a metric for how often the journal’s research is cited by others. NeuroImage has been open access since 2020, a mode of scientific publishing that eschews paywalls, allowing anyone to read the research, share it and build upon it….”

Ferwerda et. al. (2023) Open Access to Books – the Perspective of a Non-profit Infrastructure Provider | The Journal of Electronic Publishing

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Ferwerda, E. & Snijder, R. & Stern, N., (2023) “Open Access to Books – the Perspective of a Non-profit Infrastructure Provider”, The Journal of Electronic Publishing 26(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.3303

Abstract:

This article describes the open access (OA) book platforms OAPEN Library and Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), based on 1.the development and activities of OAPEN in the first ten years; 2. the underlying technical approach behind the platforms; 3. the current role of OAPEN and DOAB and future outlook.

OAPEN started out as a project funded by the European Commission, and become a legal non-profit Dutch entity in 2011. It hosts, disseminates and preserves open access books. OA book publishing has been explored in several pilot projects. Its current collection contains over 24,000 documents. DOAB launched in 2012, inspired and supported by DOAJ. It became a legal non-profit Dutch entity in 2019, owned by the OAPEN Foundationand OpenEdition. It’s current collection contains close to 60,000 titles.

The data model of both platforms  is optimised for a multilingual collection and supports funding information. Ingesting books has been optimised to support a wide array of publishers and the dissemination of books takes into account search engines; libraries and aggregators and other organisations. The usage has grown in the last years, to 1 million downloads per month.

The future developments entail increased support of research funders with the establishment of a FunderForum and multi-year research into policy development. DOAB will invest more in bibliodiversity, by adding more emphasis on African and Asian countries. Also,DOAB will roll out its Peer Review Information Service for Monographs (PRISM).

OAPEN and DOAB will continue to work on developing reliable infrastructures, policy development and quality assurance around open access books.