[BOAI] Farewell to the BOAI Forum

“Thank you for your interest in the BOAI Forum. This list was launched in 2002 when open access had just been defined by the Budapest Open Access Initiative. Two decades later, as the discussion of open access has evolved, and now largely takes place on other forums and social media, we are closing the Forum.

We would like to thank the University of Southampton for hosting the Forum.

Should you like additional resources on open access, you could check out:

* The BOAI20 Recommendations: New recommendations to mark the 20th anniversary of the BOAI which emphasize that OA is not an end in itself, but a means to other ends, above all, the equity, quality, sustainability, and usability of research.

* Open Access Tracking Project: A crowd-sourced social-tagging project to capture news and comment on OA.”

Survey for LIS dissertation

“I’m a Ph.D. candidate of library & information science. The topic of my thesis is “Recognition and comparison of knowledge sharing models in library and information science discussion groups and qualitative analysis of motivations”

  Considering the topic would you please kindly answer the following questions in detail If you are an active person in electronic discussion groups.”

Publishing of COVID-19 preprints in peer-reviewed journals, preprinting trends, public discussion and quality issues | SpringerLink

Abstract:  COVID-19-related (vs. non-related) articles appear to be more expeditiously processed and published in peer-reviewed journals. We aimed to evaluate: (i) whether COVID-19-related preprints were favored for publication, (ii) preprinting trends and public discussion of the preprints, and (iii) the relationship between the publication topic (COVID-19-related or not) and quality issues. Manuscripts deposited at bioRxiv and medRxiv between January 1 and September 27 2020 were assessed for the probability of publishing in peer-reviewed journals, and those published were evaluated for submission-to-acceptance time. The extent of public discussion was assessed based on Altmetric and Disqus data. The Retraction Watch Database and PubMed were used to explore the retraction of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 articles and preprints. With adjustment for the preprinting server and number of deposited versions, COVID-19-related preprints were more likely to be published within 120 days since the deposition of the first version (OR?=?1.96, 95% CI: 1.80–2.14) as well as over the entire observed period (OR?=?1.39, 95% CI: 1.31–1.48). Submission-to-acceptance was by 35.85 days (95% CI: 32.25–39.45) shorter for COVID-19 articles. Public discussion of preprints was modest and COVID-19 articles were overrepresented in the pool of retracted articles in 2020. Current data suggest a preference for publication of COVID-19-related preprints over the observed period.

 

ResearchHub | Open Science Community

“ResearchHub’s mission is to accelerate the pace of scientific research. Our goal is to make a modern mobile and web application where people can collaborate on scientific research in a more efficient way, similar to what GitHub has done for software engineering.

Researchers are able to upload articles (preprint or postprint) in PDF form, summarize the findings of the work in an attached wiki, and discuss the findings in a completely open and accessible forum dedicated solely to the relevant article.

Within ResearchHub, papers are grouped in “Hubs” by area of research. Individual Hubs will essentially act as live journals within focused areas, within highly upvoted posts. (i.e the paper and its associated summary and discussion) moving to the top of each Hub.

To help bring this nascent community together and incentivize contribution to the platform, a newly created ERC20 token, ResearchCoin (RSC), has been created. Users receive RSC for uploading new content to the platform, as well as for summarizing and discussion research. Rewards for contributions are proportionate to how valuable the community perceives the actions to be – as measured by upvotes.”

 

Welcome to the OA Books Network – Open Access Books Network Blog

“During the ElPub conference, a group of OA book experts — including members of SPARC Europe, OAPEN, OPERAS and ScholarLed — were discussing all things OA books over post-conference beers. If only we could do this more often, they thought!

Well here, they do.

A very warm welcome to everyone who would like to join our OA books community (if you are not yet a member, you are more than invited to join the conversation)!

We hope that this will be a space where we can test ideas and exchange information about the current issues in OA books, events to attend (physically or virtually) and texts to read and reflect upon. Whether you consider yourself a grizzled expert on OA book publishing, or if you’re just trying to find out more, please join the discussion boards, check out the events in the calendar, read the latest blog posts — and make this space your own.

Let us guide you through the site and how to use it….”

Welcome to the OA Books Network – Open Access Books Network Blog

“During the ElPub conference, a group of OA book experts — including members of SPARC Europe, OAPEN, OPERAS and ScholarLed — were discussing all things OA books over post-conference beers. If only we could do this more often, they thought!

Well here, they do.

A very warm welcome to everyone who would like to join our OA books community (if you are not yet a member, you are more than invited to join the conversation)!

We hope that this will be a space where we can test ideas and exchange information about the current issues in OA books, events to attend (physically or virtually) and texts to read and reflect upon. Whether you consider yourself a grizzled expert on OA book publishing, or if you’re just trying to find out more, please join the discussion boards, check out the events in the calendar, read the latest blog posts — and make this space your own.

Let us guide you through the site and how to use it….”

OKFN Open Science Mailing List will close on 31 Jan 2020 – where to next?

“Open Knowledge Foundation will be closing down their mailman lists by January 31st, 2020….Instead they will focus on offering a Discourse forum (https://discuss.okfn.org) which already has an open science category: https://discuss.okfn.org/c/working-groups/open-science

There are two things for members of this list to think about: 1 – where are the important conversations on open science happening now? What new lists should we join as this one closes and are there gaps that need to be filled? 2 – where to preserve the list archives? Open Knowledge Foundation do not plan to do so publicly and there is value (I think) in preserving conversations dating back 12 years to a time when open science was at a completely different level of development. If anyone has ideas or could help with archiving that would be great – I have asked for a copy to be kept but I don’t know in what form it will arrive!

As a very early member of this list I think it played an important role in developing an open science community that has spun into many active and exciting communities around the world. Moving on is not a bad thing and there are so many more communication channels to connect on open science topics than back in 2008 – I’d love to hear your recommendations! …

The decision has come about for three reasons:

 1. Managing the mailing lists and keeping the infrastructure up to date represents an effort in terms of resources and administration time that Open Knowledge Foundation is unable to meet going forward.

2. GDPR: EU legislation now requires us to have an active and current knowledge of the data held on our websites, as well as the consent of the subscribers regarding the use of their personal data, to ensure GDPR compliance. Unfortunately, Mailman mailing lists don’t comply with this Directive, which means we can’t use this tool any more.

3. We are currently implementing a new strategy within Open Knowledge Foundation which will focus the organisation on several key themes, namely Education, Health and Work. We want to keep fostering conversations but let groups choose what the best platform is for that.”

‘No comment’? A study of commenting on PLOS articles – Simon Wakeling, Peter Willett, Claire Creaser, Jenny Fry, Stephen Pinfield, Valerie Spezi, Marc Bonne, Christina Founti, Itzelle Medina Perea, 2019

Abstract:  Article–commenting functionality allows users to add publicly visible comments to an article on a publisher’s website. As well as facilitating forms of post-publication peer review, for publishers of open-access mega-journals (large, broad scope, open-access journals that seek to publish all technically or scientifically sound research) comments are also thought to serve as a means for the community to discuss and communicate the significance and novelty of the research, factors which are not assessed during peer review. In this article we present the results of an analysis of commenting on articles published by the Public Library of Science (PLOS), publisher of the first and best-known mega-journal PLOS ONE, between 2003 and 2016. We find that while overall commenting rates are low, and have declined since 2010, there is substantial variation across different PLOS titles. Using a typology of comments developed for this research, we also find that only around half of comments engage in an academic discussion of the article and that these discussions are most likely to focus on the paper’s technical soundness. Our results suggest that publishers are yet to encourage significant numbers of readers to leave comments, with implications for the effectiveness of commenting as a means of collecting and communicating community perceptions of an article’s importance.

what are the top 3 journals you would like to see break away from their commercial publisher? (#7) · Issues · Publishing Reform / discussion · GitLab

Discussion thread: “what are the top 3 journals you would like to see break away from their commercial publisher?”.

PubMed Commons to be Discontinued | NCBI Insights

PubMed Commons has been a valuable experiment in supporting discussion of published scientific literature. The service was first introduced as a pilot project in the fall of 2013 and was reviewed in 2015. Despite low levels of use at that time, NIH decided to extend the effort for another year or two in hopes that participation would increase. Unfortunately, usage has remained minimal, with comments submitted on only 6,000 of the 28 million articles indexed in PubMed. While many worthwhile comments were made through the service during its 4 years of operation, NIH has decided that the low level of participation does not warrant continued investment in the project, particularly given the availability of other commenting venues.

June 2017 – Open Access Standard Glossary Review – NOW LIVE – Development / Open Access – Forum

“Open access to publications is a key component of the modern research ecosystem, but the international community lacks a clear and unambiguous shared understanding of the key terminology. Several possible inputs exist that could profitably be cross referenced, gaps filled, and any conflicting meanings addressed. This activity identified an initial subset of open access terms that are currently the most problematic and, through a diverse Working Group of international subject experts, developed agreed definitions for an Open Access standard glossary in the CASRAI dictionary.

See this post for background on the Open Review. This review is open until June 30, 2017. The proposed new standard glossary terms are NOW READY for review and can be found listed here:”

ALAMW 2017: Providing long-term resources and support for Open Access | ALA Connect

“We are excited to announce a special panel discussion at 2017 ALA Midwinter Meeting organized by the ALCTS Scholarly Communication Interest Group.

 Date and time: 1/21/2017 from 1:00-2:30PM

Where: The Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC), Room A312

Atlanta, Georgia”