“Profiteering and restricted access have led to a crisis in academic publishing. The Fair Open Access movement is best promoted by mobilizing individual disciplines. With this manifesto, we, an open group of scholars of classical and modern South Asian Studies, declare our support for Fair Open Access publishing….
The following publishers and journals meet many or all FOA criteria (see §7 of the FOASAS Manifesto). …”
KU Leuven promotes non-commercial and community-owned approaches of OA, especially through the KU Leuven Fund for Fair OA. On the one hand, the fund supports innovative publishing initiatives and infrastructures. On the other hand, the fund covers membership costs for consortia and advocacy organizations focusing on a non-commercial approach to scholarly communication. On this page you can find an overview of everything that KU Leuven endorses.
[…]
“A draft pricing and service framework, developed by Information Power, was published in January 2020 and to help validate this – and ensure that the information sought could be provided – ten publishers (Annual Reviews, Brill, The Company of Biologists, EMBO, European Respiratory Society, F1000 Research, Hindawi, Institute of Physics Publishing, PLOS, and Springer Nature) participated in a pilot. Based on the outcomes of this – and informed by workshops and discussions – the framework has been updated and endorsed by the cOAlition S leadership. It consists of a data collection spreadsheet, an implementation guide, and recommendations.
Independent of this work, the Fair Open Access Alliance (FOAA) developed a Publication Services and Fees framework which, to date, has been implemented by Frontiers, MIT Press, Copernicus and MPDI.
Both frameworks have been endorsed by cOAlition S….”
Slides on APC price transparency, by Ashley Farley, presented at F100Research webinar.
[Undated]
“We write to provide a counter view to the recent open letter (“Plan S: Too Far, Too Risky”),1 partly based on our FOAA recommendations for the implementation of Plan S.2 We are glad to note that the researchers who have signed the open letter support open access as their very first principle. However, the letter itself goes on to make a number of highly problematic and logically fallacious statements with which we strongly disagree and here contest….”
[Undated]
“We write to provide a counter view to the recent open letter (“Plan S: Too Far, Too Risky”),1 partly based on our FOAA recommendations for the implementation of Plan S.2 We are glad to note that the researchers who have signed the open letter support open access as their very first principle. However, the letter itself goes on to make a number of highly problematic and logically fallacious statements with which we strongly disagree and here contest….”
[Undated]
“ii. Define a clear transition path for hybrid journals to (Gold) OA. We suggest, in line with Stephan Kuster’s comment at the LERU meeting of October 2018, that to be compliant, the journal would need to be able to demonstrate it is transitioning within a 3-4 year period to fully gold OA by reporting on progress every year. iii. Provide clarity if and how green Open Access (OA) will be compliant. Green OA repositories seem to be endorsed only for preservation, not for OA itself. However, if compliant green OA is explicitly defined as unembargoed libre green OA, this is just as satisfactory as unembargoed libre gold OA, and this might incentivize publishers to hasten the transition of their journals to full gold OA. In this way, the value of repositories for OA itself can be acknowledged, not just for preservation and editorial innovation. iv. We strongly recommend that support for OA promised in Plan S infrastructure be public and open infrastructure, that is, platforms running on open-source software, under open standards, with open APIs for interoperability, owned or hosted by non-profit organizations. This should avoid infrastructure being acquired by large commercial publishers, which is a deliberate approach being taken to increase ownership of the whole scholarly communication ecosystem ….”
[Undated]
“ii. Define a clear transition path for hybrid journals to (Gold) OA. We suggest, in line with Stephan Kuster’s comment at the LERU meeting of October 2018, that to be compliant, the journal would need to be able to demonstrate it is transitioning within a 3-4 year period to fully gold OA by reporting on progress every year. iii. Provide clarity if and how green Open Access (OA) will be compliant. Green OA repositories seem to be endorsed only for preservation, not for OA itself. However, if compliant green OA is explicitly defined as unembargoed libre green OA, this is just as satisfactory as unembargoed libre gold OA, and this might incentivize publishers to hasten the transition of their journals to full gold OA. In this way, the value of repositories for OA itself can be acknowledged, not just for preservation and editorial innovation. iv. We strongly recommend that support for OA promised in Plan S infrastructure be public and open infrastructure, that is, platforms running on open-source software, under open standards, with open APIs for interoperability, owned or hosted by non-profit organizations. This should avoid infrastructure being acquired by large commercial publishers, which is a deliberate approach being taken to increase ownership of the whole scholarly communication ecosystem ….”
“The editorial board of an influential scientometrics journal — the Journal of Informetrics — has resigned in protest over the open-access policies of its publisher, Elsevier, and launched a competing publication.
The board told Nature that given the journal’s subject matter — the assessment and dissemination of science — it felt it needed to be at the forefront of open publishing practices, which it says includes making bibliographic references freely available for analysis and reuse, and being open access and owned by the community….”
“As more and more editorial boards come into conflict over the open science policies of their journal, one decides to resign and take their expertise elsewhere. Today the entire editorial board of the Journal of Informetrics, a major publication in the field of Scientometrics and Informetrics, has unanimously resigned their position. In the future they will dedicate their time to a new full open access journal: Quantitative Science Studies. Robert-Jan Smits: “I hope that this example will inspire many more to follow suit.“
The move has been in the making for over a year tells Johan Rooryck (Leiden University), an expert in the field of flipping journals. He was involved in the transition on behalf of the Fair Open Access Alliance and explains the origin of the move. “It basically comes down to a conflict between the editorial board and Elsevier over the openness of the journal. In this case the availability of citation data was a major issue.”
In their response to a shifting landscape major publishing houses are preparing for a future where citation data and other metrics are expected to become much more important aspect of their business. It is therefore not unexpected that publishers want to retain ownership over this type of valuable data. Last year the European Commission was openly criticised for the involvement of Elsevier in the Open Science Monitor leading to a formal complaint to the European Ombudsman….”
“The entire editorial board of the Elsevier-owned Journal of Informetrics resignedThursday in protest over high open-access fees, restricted access to citation data and commercial control of scholarly work.
Today, the same team is launching a new fully open-access journal called Quantitative Science Studies. The journal will be for and by the academic community and will be owned by the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI). It will be published jointly with MIT Press.
The editorial board of the Journal of Informetrics said in a statement that they were unanimous in their decision to quit. They contend that scholarly journals should be owned by the scholarly community rather than by commercial publishers, should be open access under fair principles, and publishers should make citation data freely available.
Elsevier said in a statement that it regretted the board’s decision and that it had tried to address their concerns.
“Since hearing of their concerns, we have explained our position and made a number of concrete proposals to attempt to bridge our differences,” Tom Reller, vice president of global communications at Elsevier, said in a statement. “Ultimately they decided to step down and we respect that decision and wish them the best in their future endeavors.”
Elsevier’s response to the board’s requests can be accessed in full here.
This is not the first time the editorial board of an Elsevier-owned journal has quit to start a competing journal. In 2015, the editorial board of top linguistics journal Lingua made headlines by leaving their postsand announcing plans to start a rival open-access publication called Glossa….”
The new year begins with good news: The International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI) and its partners announce the founding of a new scientometric open access journal. The journal will be managed by the former board members of the renowned Journal of Informetrics, who have collectively resigned from this Elsevier journal and who would rather continue their work in an open access context after a journal flipping. TIB supports this process by taking on a significant share of the transformation costs….
Under the name Quantitative Science Studies (QSS), the journal complies with the Fair Open Access Principles: transparent academic control, no copyright transfer, use of an open access license for all articles, no APC payment obligation for authors, transparent and low publishing costs. The journal will be owned by the Society and published by MIT Press.
In a joint press release of the new partners, the resigning editors state three main criteria they wanted to have implemented for their journal:
Elsevier did not want to allow these conditions, which lead to the resignation of all editors.
The conditions are comprehensible: The academic ownership increases the chance that profit interests do not dominate the management of the magazine. The Fair Open Access principles are intended to help curb harmful open access models. In particular, the expensive APC (Article Processing Charges) model means that publishing in open access journals is not open to all. In addition, institutions and authors with a high publication output are being punished. The question of open citation data is particularly sensitive in a field of research in which the relations between publications can be very important. In the future, the publisher will automatically make this information available (see also Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC)) so that it will become part of the huge corpus of free citation data….”
“Over the last few years, the editorial board of the Journal of Informetrics (JOI) has grown increasingly dissatisfied with Elsevier’s actions and policies. While some of those have specific effects on our field—such as Elsevier’s refusal to participate in the Initiative for Open Citation (I4OC)—others are affecting all fields of science—such as its restrictive open access policies and prohibitive subscription costs. The editorial board of JOI expressed these concerns to Elsevier on numerous occasions, with no success. Given the inability of Elsevier to address these issues, the editorial board unanimous resigned on January 10th 2019. As of January 12th 2019, names of associate editors and editorial board members have been removed from the website of the Journal of Informetrics.
The resignation letter can be found here.
Journals should serve the research community—not the other way around. They provide an exchange forum which can only prosper through the work of authors, reviewers, and editors. Therefore, the former editorial board of the Journal of Informetrics unanimously decided to redirect its labor to a newly created journal, Quantitative Science Studies (QSS), published by MIT Press and owned by the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics. I invite all of you to join us in this new endeavor and help us demonstrate how the research community can take control back of its means for disseminating knowledge, in a fair, open, and transparent way. We must all work together in making QSS a success, not only for the field of scientometrics and informetrics, but for science as a whole….”
“January 14, 2019. The International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI) is pleased to announce the launch of a new journal, Quantitative Science Studies (QSS). QSS is owned by ISSI, the primary scholarly and professional society for scientometrics and informetrics, and will be published jointly with the MIT Press in compliance with fair open access principles. QSS will be a journal run for and by the scientometric community. The initial editorial board will be fully constituted by the former editorial board of the Journal of Informetrics (JOI), an Elsevier-owned journal.
The transition of the editorial board from JOI to QSS was initiated by the unanimous resignation, on January 10, of all members of the JOI editorial board. The editorial board members are in agreement that (1) scholarly journals should be owned by the scholarly community rather than by commercial publishers, (2) journals should be open access under fair principles, and (3) publishers should make their citation data freely available. These conditions were not accepted by Elsevier, prompting the termination of the relationship with this publisher.
The content for QSS will be open access and therefore freely available for readers worldwide. Funding for establishing and marketing the new journal has been provided in part by the MIT Libraries. To enable access for authors, the MIT Press will charge a comparatively low charge per article which will be fully covered by the Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology for the first three years of operation with support of the Communication, Information, Media Centre (KIM) of the University of Konstanz. The funds from TIB will be managed by the Fair Open Access Alliance (FOAA) to ensure that the journal is operating under fair open access principles. The MIT Press is also a full participant in the I4OC initiative, which promotes unrestricted availability of scholarly citation data….”
“The International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI) is pleased to announce the launch of a new journal, Quantitative Science Studies (QSS). QSS is owned by ISSI, the primary scholarly and professional society for scientometrics and informetrics, and will be published jointly with the MIT Press in compliance with fair open access principles. QSS will be a journal run for and by the scientometric community. The initial editorial board will be fully constituted by the former editorial board of the Journal of Informetrics (JOI), an Elsevier-owned journal.
The transition of the editorial board from JOI to QSS was initiated by the unanimous resignation, on January 10, of all members of the JOI editorial board. The editorial board members are in agreement that (1) scholarly journals should be owned by the scholarly community rather than by commercial publishers, (2) journals should be open access under fair principles, and (3) publishers should make their citation data freely available. These conditions were not accepted by Elsevier, prompting the termination of the relationship with this publisher.
The content for QSS will be open access and therefore freely available for readers worldwide. Funding for establishing and marketing the new journal has been provided in part by the MIT Libraries. To enable access for authors, the MIT Press will charge a comparatively low charge per article which will be fully covered by the Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology for the first three years of operation with support of the Communication, Information, Media Centre (KIM) of the University of Konstanz. The funds from TIB will be managed by the Fair Open Access Alliance (FOAA) to ensure that the journal is operating under fair open access principles. The MIT Press is also a full participant in the I4OC initiative, which promotes unrestricted availability of scholarly citation data….”