Editors’ note: On rent extraction in academic publishing and its alternatives | Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society

Abstract:  In this editorial we introduce new members of our editorial team and the contents of this issue. In addition we discuss open access developments of the journal, namely our new license policy, which allows authors to choose a Creative Common license that best suits their needs or the requirements of their funders. This change in licenses makes our journal also compliant with the Plan S programme, which several large European research funders have signed, in order to promote open access publishing. We support such initiatives, but note that they are designed mainly to push large commercial publishers to publish publicly funded research in open access. While the Plan S is a welcome program, commercial for-profit publishers charge exorbitant charges for open access, usually paid for by the researchers’ institutions. We note that these charges are a form of rent extraction, which produces little added value, as the commercial publishers rely on the free labor of researchers and publicly funded research to fill their journals’ pages. More so, due to these charges the public ends up paying again for the research it funded in the first place. We argue that public support for both institutional and independent non-profit open access publishing is a socially more just and sustainable model.

Diamond future of open access | Publication Forum

“In Finland, the expenses of open access publishing were calculated as part of the open science and research monitoring exercise in 2022. According to the monitoring, 4 million euros were used in Finnish research organisations for APCs and book processing charges (BPCs) in 2021.

This development has caused critique across the science community and reinforced the movement towards charge-free open access publishing, i.e. diamond open access. Science Europe, an association representing major public organisations funding or performing research in Europe, defines diamond open access as follows:

“Diamond Open Access refers to a scholarly publication model in which journals and platforms do not charge fees to either authors or readers. Diamond Open Access journals are community-driven, academic-led, and academic-owned publishing initiatives. Serving a fine-grained variety of generally small-scale, multilingual, and multicultural scholarly communities, these journals and platforms embody the concept of bibliodiversity. For all these reasons, Diamond Open Access journals and platforms are equitable by nature and design.”

Science Europe and cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funding and performing organisations, published the OA diamond journals study in 2021. It includes a report of the global situation of diamond open access journals and recommendations for funders, institutions and societies. 

The study finds that there are a few main concerns which many diamond journals share. These are, for example, lack of technical skills and resources to publish their content in a format which fulfils the standards specified in Plan S technical requirements. As a cause and effect of this, a large share of OA diamond journals are not included in established indexes for open access journals, such as DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals).

The study highlights that the editorial tasks of the journals are mainly based on the voluntary work of researchers, because the funding is not on a permanent basis. Voluntary work, e.g. editorial tasks or peer-review, is either not taken into account enough, for example, in institutions researchers’ assessment policies.

The study shows that despite common concerns the landscape of diamond journals is very diverse and fragmented. In conclusion, the study recommends measures for better utilising and sharing know-how and resources….”

Tampere University Automating its Open Access Management through ChronosHub – ChronosHub

“ChronosHub and Tampere University are proud to announce a collaboration to guide authors through the publishing process, making funder policies and open access (OA) agreements transparent and automating the management of article processing charges (APCs).  

As the first institution in Finland, Tampere University takes its OA management to the forefront by leveraging the ChronosHub platform. The platform supports an automated APC funding approval workflow by combining integrations with publishers, and AI-powered scanning of author-submitted acceptance letters and APC invoices. This provides Tampere with a single approval dashboard covering all articles across all publishers, with automated funding eligibility checks and full insights into its APC expenditure. …”

The Fundamental Right to Education and Science: Constitutional Law vs Copyright Law – LIBER Europe

“In October 2022 we witnessed a significant development in Finland, with the Parliament’s Constitutional Law Committee concluding that the government’s draft implementation of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive is not in line with the Finnish constitution. In particular, the Committee found that it conflicted with human rights – namely the right to education and science under Section 16 of the Finnish Constitution….

Until developments in the autumn of this year in the Finnish Parliament, we have been unaware of the fundamental human right to education and science being used in practice by European legislators[1] to challenge the broadening scope of exclusive rights under copyright law….”

Monitoring of open science and research

The objective of the monitoring of open science and research is to support the development of open science and research in organisations, support and verify the achievement of the objectives agreed in the Declaration and policies for open science and research, and form an overall view of the state of openness in Finnish science and research. The monitoring will use as much available, comparable data collected in the National Research Information Hub as possible. The monitoring also involves collecting data using a survey. The role of the survey as a source of monitoring data will decrease as more data accumulate in the National Research Information Hub. Initially, the survey plays a key role. The first year of monitoring is 2022. The results of the monitoring are published in research.fi and the survey results are stored for public open access. Monitoring will be carried out during the monitoring years as follows:

Job: Software Developer (PHP). End of play: Dec 12, 2022 | tsv.fi

The Federation of Finnish Learned Societies is looking to employ a Software Developer (PHP) to work in a three-year EU-funded project starting from February 1, 2023 or on agreement.

We are looking to employ a Software Developer to work on a PHP-based open source publishing system. The Federation of Finnish Learned Societies maintains nationally significant services for open publishing in Finland.

You will participate in an international EU-funded project which aims to advance the European infrastructure for open access publishing. Besides the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies, the project includes around twenty other European organizations. You will take part in developing a platform called Open Journal Systems intended for managing and publishing scholarly journals and will work with other project partners and the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), which leads the developer community of the system.

Tasks include:

Designing, documenting and developing new features for Open Journal Systems based on the goals set in the project
Presenting the results of the work in project meetings
Collaborating with the project partners and the developer community

Requirements:

University degree in computer science or other related field
Very good knowledge of PHP and relational databases
Knowledge of HTML, CSS and Javascript
Experience in maintenance of web applications
Good knowledge of English
Ability to work responsibly in a team and independently

Desirable:

Experience in software development projects and international projects
Familiar with Laravel, Vue.js, XML, Git and Github
Knowledge of scientific publishing and software used for scientific publishing, especially Open Journal Systems
Knowledge of Finnish (not required)

The position is for a fixed-term of three years starting from February 1, 2023 or on agreement. The probationary period is 6 months. The office of the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies is located at Kirkkokatu 6, 00170 Helsinki, Finland. We also offer flexible options for remote work.

The salary, based on the general collective agreement for the private teaching sector in Finland, is 3800–4000 €/month, depending on  how the requirements for the position are met.

 

Open science and research | Uniarts Helsinki

“The Uniarts Helsinki Open Access policy describes the general principles of publishing. The policy applies to researchers, staff and students working at the University of the Arts Helsinki. Publications of the University of the Arts Helsinki are typically both artistic and scientific in nature.

We follow the guidelines on responsible conduct of research determined by the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK) in the publishing and openness of our research results.
Uniarts Helsinki requires open access publishing when possible.
Uniarts supports publishing in Gold open access publication channels through a centralized APC fund, subject to specified criteria.
Uniarts recommends the use of Creative Commons licences in publishing text-based research outputs. If the research funder is the Academy of Finland or the European Commission, CC BY 4.0 should be used. When publishing with open licenses, the author(s) retains the copyright.
Uniarts recommends that researchers register their ORCID iD and add it to their publication data.
Uniarts requires that researchers self-archive their scientific and peer-reviewed research publications when allowed by the publisher. Uniarts recommends researchers to upload the Final Draft (Author Accepted Manuscript, AAM) or the Publisher’s PDF to Uniarts Helsinki’s institutional repository. Artistic research publications or their parts are linked to the metadata in the repository.
The author is responsible for evaluating the quality and responsibility of the publication channel they have chosen to publish in.
The theses of master’s, licentiate’s and doctoral (both scientific and artistic) degrees are published, as appropriate, in Uniarts Helsinki’s open institutional repository Taju and also for example in Research Catalogue.
Training, support and guidance is provided for open access publishing.
The progress of open access publishing is monitored at Uniarts through the strategic goals of research….”

How society publishers practice open science beyond open access publishing? | PUBMET

Abstract:  Scholarly publishing has rapidly moved towards open access (OA) over the last few decades. However, OA publishing is only one part of a larger open science movement. The recent UNESCO recommendation for open science (UNESCO, 2021) defines open science broadly to cover the openness of scientific knowledge, science infrastructures, engagement with societal actors, and dialogue with other knowledge systems. In its recommendations, open scientific knowledge includes OA to scientific publications but also open research data, metadata, open educational resources, software, and source code and hardware. Earlier research about open scientific knowledge from the point of view of academic publishers has mainly been focused on one element such as OA publishing and neglected other elements.

This paper aims to fill this gap by surveying how society publishers in Finland adopted other elements of open scientific knowledge. In Finland, learned societies account for 70% of national journal output (Late et al., 2020) and their publishing model is mainly diamond open access, which excludes author processing charges and relies on publishing subsidies (Pölönen et al., 2020). Furthermore, their activities often go beyond scholarly publishing to include education and research activities such as funding research and collecting and storing research data (Korkeamäki et al., 2019).

We conducted an electronic survey addressed to Finnish learned societies in November 2021 to answer the following research questions: “To what degree society publishers take up the elements of open scientific knowledge including open access to publications, open data, and open education?” (RQ1) and “Are elements of open scientific knowledge cumulative?” (RQ2)

In total 97 society publishers responded (40% response rate). We analysed their responses through nine variables measuring how they adopted different elements of open scholarly knowledge (Table 1) in view of the UNESCO recommendations for open science.

The results show elements related to open scholarly publications prevail. Almost 70% of respondents publish either gold, green, or hybrid OA publications. Most society publishers reported to support open data policies only some do collect, store, and provide open access to research datasets. Furthermore, only a few societies offer training for opening research data. Even so, a high share of publishers offers open education, and some share their educational materials openly. Although earlier studies have reported differences in adopting open science between disciplines (Rousi & Laakso, 2020), our analysis does not support these findings.

However, it has confirmed that adopting the elements of open scholarly knowledge is cumulative, as OA publishers are more likely to take up other elements of open scholarly knowledge. However, adopting all elements is not yet common. Since activities (e.g. collecting research data, offering education, etc.) of publishers other than societies seem to influence the take up of these elements, further research of their activities is needed. For example, it will show how often and how openly these other publishers provide research data or education beyond.

Open4DE Spotlight on Finland – An advanced culture of openness shaped by the research community

“In a comparison of European Openness strategies, Finland stands out for its sophisticated system of coordinated policy measures. While other countries have a strategy that bundles different aspects of the Openness culture into one central policy, the Finnish model impresses with unity in diversity. The website of the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies, which was set up specifically to provide information on Open Science (OS), lists four national policies on OS and research in Finland. In addition to a policy for data and methods, a policy on open access to scholary publications and a policy on open education and educational ressources document activity at a high level. The openness culture in Finland targets all stages of scientific communication but also teaching and learning. In addition, a national information portal provides orientation on publication venues, projects and publicly funded technical infrastructures. It is an exemplary tool to get an overview of the constantly growing Open Access (OA) and OS ecosystem and its numerous products and projects….”

FinELib partners with the Open Library of Humanities – FinELib

“FinELib and the not-for-profit Open Library of Humanities have signed a three-year (2022–2024) agreement that provides support for OLH through its Library Partnership Subsidy Model.

The partnership with OLH is FinELib’s first with a scholar-led diamond OA publisher.

Journals that have joined OLH include Glossa: a journal of general linquistics, Ethnologia Europaea, Architectural Histories as well as OLH’s flagship journal, the multidisciplinary Open Library of Humanities Journal….”

Uses of the Journal Impact Factor in national journal rankings in China and Europe – Kulczycki – Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology – Wiley Online Library

Abstract:  This paper investigates different uses of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) in national journal rankings and discusses the merits of supplementing metrics with expert assessment. Our focus is national journal rankings used as evidence to support decisions about the distribution of institutional funding or career advancement. The seven countries under comparison are China, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Poland, and Turkey—and the region of Flanders in Belgium. With the exception of Italy, top-tier journals used in national rankings include those classified at the highest level, or according to tier, or points implemented. A total of 3,565 (75.8%) out of 4,701 unique top-tier journals were identified as having a JIF, with 55.7% belonging to the first Journal Impact Factor quartile. Journal rankings in China, Flanders, Poland, and Turkey classify journals with a JIF as being top-tier, but only when they are in the first quartile of the Average Journal Impact Factor Percentile. Journal rankings that result from expert assessment in Denmark, Finland, and Norway regularly classify journals as top-tier outside the first quartile, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. We conclude that experts, when tasked with metric-informed journal rankings, take into account quality dimensions that are not covered by JIFs.

 

Learned Societies and Responsible Research: Results of the survey for the TSV member societies | Tieteellisten seurain valtuuskunta

Abstract:  The Federation of Finnish Learned Societies studied its member societies’ activities related to responsible research in connection to open science, research integrity and research evaluation. In addition to these areas, the assessment covered the societies’ scientific activities and activities promoting societal impact, as well as the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the societies’ ability to operate. The material was gathered through a survey carried out in November 2021. A total of 116 member societies, representing various fields, responded to it.

 

Research performance and scholarly communication profile of competitive research funding: the case of Academy of Finland | SpringerLink

Abstract:  The Academy of Finland (AKA), Finland’s major public research funding agency, uses a Web of Science (WoS) based bibliometric indicator to assess the performance of research it has funded. We use an alternative methodology to compare (1) the research performance and (2) the scholarly communication profile of AKA-funded research to the Finnish universities’ entire output across the major fields of arts and sciences. Our data consists of 142,742 publications (years 2015–2018) registered in the national information service, which integrates Current Research Information System (CRIS) data of 13 Finnish universities. Research performance is analyzed using the Finnish community-curated expert-based rating of publication channels (so-called JUFO). Our results show that compared to the Finnish universities’ entire output a larger share of AKA-funded research is published in leading JUFO rated journals and book publishers. JUFO and WoS-based indicators produced consonant results regarding the performance of AKA-funded research. Analysis of publication profiles shows that AKA-funded research is more focused than the universities’ output on using peer-reviewed publications, articles published in journals, English language, foreign publishers and open access publishing. We conclude that the CRIS-based publication data can support multidimensional assessments of research performance and scholarly communication profiles, potentially also in other countries and institutions. CRIS development and maintenance require multi-stakeholder commitment, resources and incentives to ensure data quality and coverage. To fully recognize diverse open science practices and to enable international comparisons, CRISs need further development and integration as data sources.