Category Archives: oa.transparency

Report from ‘Equity in OA’ workshop #4 – part 2: Trust as the new prestige – OASPA

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“In workshop #4, participants discussed how part of the solution to perceptions of low quality OA publishing is positively defining what good or trustworthy OA publishing is, and so, help identify reliable publishing venues. 

The consensus amongst workshop participants was that a focus on the process and quality-assurance practices that a publisher (or journal / book / platform) follows is the best way to inspire trust. And that this matters more than the abstract and flawed concept of prestige. A philosophy that therefore emerged in workshop #4 was to drive a shift away from prestigious and towards trusted publishing venues – the latter judged by publishing processes and practices.

Participants discussed how some kitemarks already hint at publishing venues that can be, and are, trusted, such as COPE membership, DOAJ listing and OASPA membership. 

A new (and as yet unreleased) rubric for measuring publishers by their practices is also in development within the librarian community. This underscores the thinking that process and transparency are important….”

Put your publication money where your mouth is | Brain Communications | Oxford Academic

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“In this editorial, we will try to convince you that publishing in academic-led, community-oriented journals like ours is a better use of your hard-earned grant money than publishing in for-profit journals….

“For the society or charity-owned journals like ours, the surplus funds raised beyond the costs associated with publishing are put back into the scientific community. In our case, The Guarantors of Brain charity uses money raised by Brain and Brain Communications to support fellowships, meetings, and travel grants to attend conferences or to do pro-bono work in low-income countries (see https://guarantorsofbrain.org/)….”

openCost: cost data survey

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The aim of the project openCost is to create a technical infrastructure that makes publication costs freely accessible and exchangeable via standardized interfaces and formats. This is supposed to enable cost transparency on an institutional, national, and international level.

 

To achieve this, we are developing a standardized metadata schema to record, retrieve and map all publication costs of a scientific institution in a structured form. In addition to OA publication charges (APCs), the schema also includes costs from transformation contracts, memberships, etc.

 

With the help of this survey, we want to find out more about the work processes and tools of national and international libraries as well as the practice of publication cost monitoring in order to take the identified needs into account in the further course of the project.

 

To learn more about the openCost project, you’re welcome to visit our website. A first metadata schema for capturing journal article costs can be found in our GitHub repository. Comments and suggestions are welcome at any time, and may be submitted through GitHub Issues or via email.

 

The project is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) – grant number 457354095.

 

This survey will remain open through August 15, 2023.

Thank you for your participation!

 

Proceedings of the Expert Workshop openCost on the Road to Publication Cost Transparency

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The DFG funded project „openCost” creates a technical infrastructure to comprehensively record publication cost data, make them openly distributable by means of standardized interfaces, and accessible by well known platforms like EZB, OpenAPC or the the OpenAccess Monitor.Besides presenting first results from openCost itself the main goal of the workshop is to create an opportunity for knowledge exchange between national and international experts in the field. It will allow them to present their perspectives in the area of publication costs and cost transparency and report on their experiences to ensure openCost is internationally adoptable.The expert workshop will summarizes the desiderata of the individual participants and the bodies they represent. These results will serve as a starting point to enhance and fine tune the current internal proposal for a metadata schema jointly developed by the openCost core members DESY Library for the JOIN² collaboration and the university libraries of Bielefeld (e.g. OpenAPC and the OpenAccess activities there) and Regensburg (electronic journals database and the OpenAccess projects there).With contributions from AT2OA, California Digital Library, Forschungszentrum Jülich, JISC, National Library of Finland, OA Switchboard, Open Access Monitor and Unpaywall and others.

 

Content:

Using the institutional repository to store data related to payments / Gernot Deinzer

JOIN² and openCost / Lisa-Marie Stein & Alexander Wagner

Extension of the OpenAPC infrastructure as part of the openCost project / Julia Bartlewski & Christoph Broschinski

Information Budget: 12 + 6 + 8 = 10 / Bernhard Mittermaier

Value Assessment of License Agreements and Publication Cost from a Norwegian Perspective / Jens H. Aasheim

Analysis of Open Access publication costs at Austrian Universities / Kerstin Grossmaier-Stieg & Christian Kaier

Cost Monitoring in Finland / Timo Vilén

Transform2Open — Cost monitoring, criteria, competencies, and processes of the Open Access transformation / Heinz Pampel, Tobias Höhnow, Lea Maria Ferguson, Bernhard Mittermaier & Irene Barbers

Spreading Publication Cost Information with the Electronic Journals Library (EZB) / Colin Sippl & Silke Weisheit

Publication cost transparency and the role of the Open Access Monitor Germany / Irene Barbers

 

EDP Sciences – Subscribe to Open 2023 Transparency Report for maths journals provides expanded metrics and analysis, marking the third year of commitment to transparency

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“We are delighted to release the Subscribe to Open (S2O) 2023 Transparency Report for our mathematics journals* co-published by EDP Sciences and the Société de Mathématiques Industrielles et Appliquées (SMAI). Following the announcement that the journals will continue to publish in open access in 2023, this report marks our third consecutive year of providing this comprehensive overview, reinforcing our commitment to transparency. By presenting a detailed analysis of metrics such as subscription prices, subscription renewals, costs, and usage data, it offers a comprehensive understanding of the effectiveness of the S2O initiative for these titles….”

Wikimedia Foundation announces latest transparency report – Diff

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“For nearly two decades, the Wikimedia Foundation has supported free access to the sum of all knowledge.

This ambitious goal would not be possible without the Wikimedia community—thousands of volunteer editors, admins, and functionaries of the Wikimedia projects who not only contribute content, but monitor for harmful material, stop the spread of misinformation, and create policies that determine what content belongs on the projects.

Since the projects are open, collaborative and driven by volunteer efforts, those volunteer editors are best able to respond to requests to change, update, or delete content from our projects. These requests come from governments and private parties, and sometimes also include attempts to obtain nonpublic user information. The Foundation evaluates all requests with an eye towards protecting privacy and freedom of expression. We support the Wikimedia communities’ prerogative to determine what educational content belongs on the projects.

Twice a year, we publish a transparency report outlining the number of requests we received, their types, countries of origin, and other information. The report also features an FAQ and stories about interesting and unusual cases.

Here are a few highlights from the report:…”

Rethinking Transparency and Rigor from a Qualitative Open Science Perspective · Journal of Trial & Error

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Abstract:  Discussions around transparency in open science focus primarily on sharing data, materials, and coding schemes, especially as these practices relate to reproducibility. This fairly quantitative perspective of transparency does not align with all scientific methodologies. Indeed, qualitative researchers also care deeply about how knowledge is produced, what factors influence the research process, and how to share this information. Explicating a researcher’s background and role allows researchers to consider their impact on the research process and interpretation of the data, thereby increasing both transparency and rigor. Researchers may engage in positionality and reflexivity in a variety of ways, and transparently sharing these steps allows readers to draw their own informed conclusions about the results and study as a whole. Imposing a limited, quantitatively-informed set of standards on all research can cause harm to researchers and the communities they work with if researchers are not careful in considering the impact of such standards. Our paper will argue the importance of avoiding strong defaults around transparency (e.g., always share data) and build upon previous work around qualitative open science. We explore how transparency in all aspects of our research can lend itself toward projecting and confirming the rigor of our work.

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….”

PLOS partners with Einstein Foundation Berlin on Award for Promoting Quality in Research – The Official PLOS Blog

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“We are delighted to once again partner with the Einstein Foundation Award for Promoting Quality in Research.  PLOS is a longtime advocate for quality in research, and we are especially thrilled that the Einstein Foundation Berlin honors researchers who reflect rigor, reliability, robustness, and transparency in their work. Enhancing the quality and reliability of research is essential for trust in research….”

PLOS partners with Einstein Foundation Berlin on Award for Promoting Quality in Research – The Official PLOS Blog

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“We are delighted to once again partner with the Einstein Foundation Award for Promoting Quality in Research.  PLOS is a longtime advocate for quality in research, and we are especially thrilled that the Einstein Foundation Berlin honors researchers who reflect rigor, reliability, robustness, and transparency in their work. Enhancing the quality and reliability of research is essential for trust in research….”

PLOS partners with Einstein Foundation Berlin on Award for Promoting Quality in Research – The Official PLOS Blog

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“We are delighted to once again partner with the Einstein Foundation Award for Promoting Quality in Research.  PLOS is a longtime advocate for quality in research, and we are especially thrilled that the Einstein Foundation Berlin honors researchers who reflect rigor, reliability, robustness, and transparency in their work. Enhancing the quality and reliability of research is essential for trust in research….”

PLOS Price Transparency Update 2021

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We encourage researchers to give transparent insight into their work for the benefit of community understanding and assessment and we want to give you the same insight into ours. 

One of the ways we do this is through the Plan S Price & Service Transparency Framework. PLOS has participated in the framework since its pilot phase in 20201 and we’re pleased to once again share our reporting here to give our community insight into how our publication fees are used to support journal activities and operational costs. 

Toward Equitable Open Research: Stakeholder Co-Created Recommendations for Research Institutions, Funders and Researchers

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Open Research aims to make research more accessible, transparent, reproducible, shared and collaborative. Doing so is meant to democratize and diversify access to knowledge and knowledge production, and ensure that research is useful outside of academic contexts. Increasing equity is therefore a key aim of the Open Research movement, yet mounting evidence demonstrates that the practices of Open Research are implemented in ways that undermine this. In response, we convened a diverse community of researchers, research managers and funders to co-create actionable recommendations for supporting the equitable implementation of Open Research. Using a co-creative modified Delphi method, we generated consensus-driven recommendations that address three key problem areas: the resource-intensive nature of Open Research, the high cost of article processing charges, and obstructive reward and recognition practices at funders and research institutions that undermine the implementation of Open Research. In this paper, we provide an overview of these issues, a detailed description of the co-creative process, and present the recommendations and the debates that surrounded them. We discuss these recommendations in relation to other recently published ones and conclude that implementing ours requires ‘global thinking’ to ensure that a systemic and inclusive approach to change is taken. 

Let peer review be transparent | Communications Earth & Environment

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“For all peer reviewed articles submitted from 23rd January 2023, we will publish the editor decision letters, reviewer reports and author responses, together with the published paper. Reviewers can choose to remain anonymous or reveal their identity….

At Communications Earth & Environment, we are convinced that opening up the scholarly discussions that precede publication of our articles will deepen understanding of the scientific process and help spark trust in science. We are enormously grateful for the time and effort our reviewers put into elaborating on the merits and shortcomings of papers with the aim to improve them. We are impressed by the detailed and positive letters our authors send back along with their revisions in response to the points raised by the reviewers. And we are proud to put care and thought into our editorial decisions and give constructive guidance to our authors by explaining our take on the reviewer comments….”

MetaArXiv Preprints | Reproducible research practices and transparency across linguistics

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Abstract:  Scientific studies of language span across many disciplines and provide evidence for social, cultural, cognitive, technological, and biomedical studies of human nature and behavior. By becoming increasingly empirical and quantitative, linguistics has been facing challenges and limitations of the scientific practices that pose barriers to reproducibility and replicability. One of the proposed solutions to the widely acknowledged reproducibility and replicability crisis has been the implementation of transparency practices, e.g. open access publishing, preregistrations, sharing study materials, data, and analyses, performing study replications and declaring conflicts of interest. Here, we have assessed the prevalence of these practices in randomly sampled 600 journal articles from linguistics across two time points. In line with similar studies in other disciplines, we found a moderate amount of articles published open access, but overall low rates of sharing materials, data, and protocols, no preregistrations, very few replications and low rates of conflict of interest reports. These low rates have not increased noticeably between 2008/2009 and 2018/2019, pointing to remaining barriers and slow adoption of open and reproducible research practices in linguistics. As linguistics has not yet firmly established transparency and reproducibility as guiding principles in research, we provide recommendations and solutions for facilitating the adoption of these practices.