Category Archives: oa.comment

All publishers great and small – Samuel Moore

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It is common knowledge that the academic publishing industry is oligopolistic: a handful of large corporate publishers control the vast majority of the industry. Because it dominates so much of the industry, the oligopoly maintains market power through tentacular economies of scale and control of the publications which libraries must access. This is bad not only for negotiating over price, but also means that the values and practices of the larger publishers are hegemonic in their influence over what publishing should look like. I have written previously about how this shapes debate around the costs of publishing.

Academy of Europe: ON SHARING KNOWLEDGE AND FOSTERING OPEN SCIENCE

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 Professor Erol GelenbeA committee chaired by Prof. Erol Gelenbe MAE at the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts of Belgium, which included Prof Veronique Halloin, President of the European Science Foundation, recently published a report “On sharing knowledge and fostering open science” which addresses key problems in scientific and technical communication, and peer review, as we enter the post-Covid-19 period and address the energy transition required by the challenges of Climate Change.

Lettre de la science ouverte (The beautiful stories of open science)

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From Google’s English: 

“Because openness is not a utopia, nor a bunch of experts, but an essential quality of science that bears fruit on a daily basis, we wanted to show through these stories how open science benefits by its values and its operating model for knowledge and society.

We offer context articles to understand the challenges of opening up and sharing science, what obstacles it raises in accessing knowledge, what conception of research it carries. (…) ”

Scientists who share data publicly receive more citations | Science Codex

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“A new study finds that papers with data shared in public gene expression archives received increased numbers of citations for at least five years. The large size of the study allowed the researchers to exclude confounding factors that have plagued prior studies of the effect and to spot a trend of increasing dataset reuse over time. The findings will be important in persuading scientists that they can benefit directly from publicly sharing their data.

The study, which adds to growing evidence for an open data citation benefit across different scientific fields, is entitled “Data reuse and the open citation advantage”. It was conducted by Dr. Heather Piwowar of Duke University and Dr. Todd Vision of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and published today in PeerJ, a peer reviewed open access journal in which all articles are freely available to everyone….”

Scientists who share data publicly receive more citations | Science Codex

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“A new study finds that papers with data shared in public gene expression archives received increased numbers of citations for at least five years. The large size of the study allowed the researchers to exclude confounding factors that have plagued prior studies of the effect and to spot a trend of increasing dataset reuse over time. The findings will be important in persuading scientists that they can benefit directly from publicly sharing their data.

The study, which adds to growing evidence for an open data citation benefit across different scientific fields, is entitled “Data reuse and the open citation advantage”. It was conducted by Dr. Heather Piwowar of Duke University and Dr. Todd Vision of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and published today in PeerJ, a peer reviewed open access journal in which all articles are freely available to everyone….”

Open and Shut? The OA Interviews: Arul George Scaria

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One common criticism of the open access and open science movements is that they tend to take a standardised view of science and scholarship, and so propose one-size-fits-all approaches when advocating for ways of making research and the research process more open and transparent. This often poses significant challenges for, for instance, researchers in non-STEM disciplines. It is also often deeply problematic for those based in the global South.

Open access Academic publishing in transition

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It’s the year 2024: a scientist in Sudan, the family member of a patient with a rare disease in the United States, a farmer in China – assuming they have access to the internet, they are all able to access the latest scientific findings at any time, without restriction and free of charge. On this basis, they can develop new energy supply options for their community, prepare for visits to the doctor or follow the latest research on seeds and breeds. A pipe dream? Or isn’t free access to academic literature something we should have had for a long time, three decades since the development of the world wide web?

If ResearchGate is Where Authors Connect and Collaborate … – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“This is not the final chapter in the story of the relationships between ResearchGate and various publishers but this negotiated agreement with SNCUPT does demonstrate that there is not a uniformity of perspective in the publishing community about article sharing on ResearchGate, or presumably on the many other scholarly collaboration networks that exist. It also signals that ResearchGate, a decade-old start-up disruptor with with venture capital investment and a rapidly grown user base, has taken its place at the negotiating table and found not just enemies but allies.”

My journey towards Open Science | Research Data at Springer Nature

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“CODATA-RDA schools changed my career, making me a more responsible researcher but also an Open Science ambassador for the Central American area. I now aspire to be a young researcher that can teach Open and Data Science principles through my job at the University of Costa Rica and through the CODATA-RDA Schools, as well as also serve as a mentor for other people that want to learn how to practice Open Science.”

Finland takes a step back in the openness of academic journal pricing — Mostly Physics

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“Although I have not lived in Finland since 2013, I’ve kept in touch with the open science community there as well as with current open access discussions. On January 17, I got a rather unpleasant birthday present in the form of an announced three-year, 27 M€ deal between FinELib, a consortium of Finnish research institutions, and Elsevier, perhaps the most egregious of the big publishers. The deal was reached after two years of hard negotiations, supported by almost 3000 Finnish researchers who had committed in the #nodealnoreview boycott to refuse reviewing for Elsevier if the negotiations fail.

The glowing press release, seemingly written purely by Elsevier, compounded with an almost complete lack of details, left an immediate bad taste in my mouth. My opinion did not much improve through discussions in the Finnish Open Science Facebook group, and with journalist Richard Poynder whom I urged to try and get more details. He just published his Q&A with FinELib, which I warmly recommend you read. I have two principal concerns with the deal: the lack of transparency over the actual terms, and the hybrid OA discount option — especially as it was immediately implemented at the University of Helsinki….”

The Varieties of Lock-in in Scholarly Communications – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“My colleague Roger Schonfeld and I spend a great deal of time talking about lock-in: what it is, who is doing it, who is doing it well — and perhaps most curiously, why so many people and organizations seem to be unaware that they are in a marketing net until it is pulled tight.”

Open and Shut?: Realising the BOAI vision: Peter Suber’s Advice

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Peter Suber’s high-priority recommendations for advancing OA.