Category Archives: oa.hybrids

Wellcome ‘disappointed’ over fall in open-access compliance

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“The Wellcome Trust has announced it will keep a vigilant eye on how Oxford University Press complies with open-access policies, after data showed that the publisher’s adherence fell significantly last year….

The data show that overall compliance with the fund’s policies has fallen from 91 per cent in 2016 to 87 per cent in 2017….

In particular, compliance by Oxford University Press fell “significantly”, according to the trust, because the publisher has been experiencing problems with converting outputs to a format that is compliant with Europe PubMed Central’s technical requirements.

Wellcome said it would monitor the situation over three to six months, to ensure that it was resolved, and seek compensation from the publisher “for the poor service delivered to researchers, institutions and funders over the last 12 months”, it said.

A total of 34 per cent of articles paid for by the Charity Open Access Fund in 2016-17 and published by Oxford University Press were non-compliant—compared with 5 per cent the previous year. The second and third-most non-compliant publishers were Elsevier at 11 per cent and Wiley at 10 per cent….

Overall, the trust calculates that the cost of open-access publishing has seen “a significant increase”, and that the average cost of journal article-processing charges has risen by 11 per cent since last year….”

Open Access is for life and not just for compliance – Medically speaking…

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“In deciding where to publish our research, we have to consider why we do research. While some of us would probably undertake research for the intellectual challenge or excitement of discovery alone, for many of us it is important that our research will impact society in some way. This may be from contributing to the advance of our scientific discipline, or through the use of our research by the public, policymakers or industry. For all of these to come to pass, there is a basic premise that our publications can be found and accessed by those who can make use of the information they contain. Hence one of the key decisions around choice of where to publish is to think of the audience that reads the journal, and whether to make your paper Open Access.”

Transition to Open Access and its implications on Grey Literature Resources: EBSCOhost

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Abstract:  This paper describes the transition to Open Access and its implications on grey literature resources. In this paper we will present current Open Access models, known as “offsetting deals”, which main intention is to avoid “double dipping”. This part will also review the role of library consortia in this process, as well as current Open Access policies in Europe. The second part of this paper will explore the role of grey literature in transition process to Open Access. Grey literature is an important source of original research and up to date information, although the lack of peer review and formal publication standards must be taken into account during an evaluation process. Grey literature plays an important role in the rapid and timely distribution of in-depth, recent, scientific and technical information, and also provides access to a broad range of information and often contains new ideas. Research that is not published in journals but available in other formats (such as reports, theses or conference proceedings) is often more detailed, more recent and sometimes more rapidly disseminated. Due to the competitive and time consuming nature of publishing in peer-reviewed academic journals, some research may never make into journals and would, therefore, be inaccessible to interested parties without the grey literature. We will present possible ways of increasing the visibility of grey literature repositories, their inclusion in open access databases, and how to connect these institutional grey literature repositories with current research information systems. 

The setback danger of offsetting – Stockholm University Press Blog

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“A large number of offsetting deals, without compensating measures, will ensure that authors become ensnared even more than today by traditional journals and publishers. We know that this means more costly OA – as the lowest APCs are with the new, all-OA publishers. This ”black hole” gravitational effect towards traditional publishers could also mean the end of the all-OA publishers, and – over time – the re-enforcing of an increasingly oligopolistic market, with fewer and fewer sellers and ever decreasing price competition.

Suggestions for compensatory measures

To combat this unwanted side effect of a development we are working for, we need to think through compensatory measures. I do not have all the answers, but I could think of some things we could do – others may come up with more ideas (I hope): …[lists of 7 ideas]….”

The transformation of scientific journal publishing: Open access after the Berlin 12 Conference – IOS Press

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“In the last 10–15 years, Open Access has become a shared vision of many if not most of the world’s national and international research councils. Open Access as a principle is very well established in the international discourse on research policies; however, Open Access as a practice has yet to transform the traditional subscription-based publishing system, which is as vigorous and prosperous as ever, despite its inherent restrictions on access and usage and its remarkable detachment from the potentials of a 21st century web-based publishing system. OA2020 is a transformative initiative trying to bring a new approach to the transactional side of the publishing system and the ways in which its cash flow is organized. Publishing and financial data are brought together in a way to demonstrate that such a switch would indeed be feasible. OA2020 lays out the path for how this transformation could happen so that Open Access to research results would finally be a reality from the moment of their publication.”