Category Archives: oa.nonprofit

[2311.09657] Open Access in Ukraine: characteristics and evolution from 2012 to 2021

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This study investigates development of open access (OA) to publications produced by authors affiliated with Ukrainian universities and research organisations in the period 2012-2021. In order to get a comprehensive overview we assembled data from three popular databases: Dimensions, Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus. Our final dataset consisted of 187,135 records. To determine the OA status of each article, this study utilised Unpaywall data which was obtained via API. It was determined that 71.5% of all considered articles during the observed period were openly available at the time of analysis. Our findings show that gold OA was the most prevalent type of OA through a 10 years studied period. We also took a look at how OA varies by research fields, how dominant large commercial publishers are in disseminating national research and the preferences of authors regarding where to self-archive articles versions. We concluded that Ukraine needs to be thoughtful with engagement with large publishers and make sure academics control publishing, not for profit companies, which would monopolise research output distribution, leaving national publishers behind. Beyond that we put a special emphasis on the importance of FAIRness of national scholarly communication infrastructure in monitoring OA uptake.

Paradigm Publishing Service’s University Press Library Embarks on a Sustainable Open Access Initiative for University Press Monographs | De Gruyter

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“Paradigm Publishing Services, the newly founded publishing services division of academic publisher De Gruyter, is taking a significant stride forward in shaping a financially sustainable business model for open access book publishing for its partner presses. In response to the call from the scholarly community, Paradigm Publishing Services, comprising the University Press Library Group and Ubiquity in collaboration with their publishing partners and libraries, proudly announces the launch of the University Press Library Open (UPLO), a comprehensive open access initiative and eBook platform hosted by Ubiquity with a central focus on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

UPLO leverages insights gained from previous open access eBook initiatives such as TOME, Luminos, and Opening the Future while uniting the collective influence and prestige of more than 50 university press partners and over 115 participating libraries, in addition to other vital stakeholders, including consortia, aggregators, vendors, and authors. This community-driven approach enables Paradigm Publishing Services to distribute the financial responsibilities more equitably across the scholarly publishing ecosystem, ensuring the long-term sustainability of open access book publishing.

At the core of UPLO lies eBound, a not-for-profit foundation established by De Gruyter in 2022 with the mission to champion the publishing, sustainability, and accessibility of mission-driven scholarly monographs for not-for-profit and open access publishers….”

Semantic Reader Open Research Platform

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“Semantic Reader Project is a collaborative effort of NLP + HCI researchers from non-profit, industry, and academic institutions to create interactive, intelligent reading interfaces for scholarly papers. Our research led to the creation of Semantic Reader, an application used by tens of thousands of scholars each week.

The Semantic Reader Open Research Platform provides resources that enable the broader research community to explore exciting challenges around novel research support tools: PaperMage, a library for processing and analyzing scholarly PDFs, and PaperCraft, a React UI component for building augmented and interactive reading interfaces. Join us in designing the future of scholarly reading interfaces with our open source libraries!…”

Open Data Watch – Unlocking the Data Revolution

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“Open Data Watch is an international, non-profit organization working at the intersection of open data and official statistics. Our work supports the implementation of change in the production and management of official statistical data. Concentrating efforts in three areas — policy advice, data support, and monitoring — ODW seeks to make development data better and more accessible for increased use and impact.

An example of the interaction between these workstreams, the Open Data Inventory (ODIN) provides in-depth assessments of data coverage and openness that countries actively use to identify and address data gaps. The ODIN Gender Data Index, for instance, checks for data needed to address gender issues. Only with high-quality and open data can international organizations, governments, and citizens solve the challenges of measuring and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)….”

The Urgency of Putting Community Over Commercialization — International Open Access Week

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“To better surface how organizations reflect a commitment to “Community over Commercialization” in their own work, a series of profiles are available on the Open Access Week website that showcase the many ways communities can be prioritized in the shift to open research.

This week provides an opportunity to join together, raise awareness around the importance of community control of knowledge sharing systems, and take action—over the coming days and year-round. Participate in the discussion online using the hashtag #OAweek, and if you’re not already joining an event this week, consider taking part in one of the many locally organized discussions below….”

Dawn of the Zombie Journal: New Poster (and T-Shirt) Celebrate History of OA Community Activism | Open Library of Humanities

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To celebrate Open Access Week 2023 (and its proximity to Halloween), the OLH is launching the Zombie Poster. This commemorates the term ‘zombie journal’, first used by linguists in 2015 following the mass resignation of editors at the Elsevier journal Lingua. Protesting Elsevier’s claim to ‘own’ their journal, the international linguistics community boycotted Lingua and launched the community-owned open access journal Glossa in its place (published by the OLH). What was left behind was dubbed ‘Zombie Lingua’.

 

Dobusch & Heimstädt (2023) The structural transformation of the scientific public sphere: Constitution and consequences of the path towards open access

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Dobusch, L., & Heimstädt, M. (2023). The structural transformation of the scientific public sphere: Constitution and consequences of the path towards open access. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537231203558

Abstract

We are currently witnessing a fundamental structural transformation of the scientific public sphere, characterized by processes of specialization, metrification, internationalization, platformization and visibilization. In contrast to explanations of this structural transformation that invoke a technological determinism, we demonstrate its historical contingency by drawing on analytic concepts from organization theory and the case of the Open Access transformation in Germany. The digitization of academic journals has not broadened access to scientific output but narrowed it down even further in the course of the ‘serials crisis’. For a long time, research institutions were not able to convince large academic publishers to adopt less restrictive forms of access to academic journals. It was only through the emergence of new and in part illegal actors (shadow libraries and preprint servers) that the existing path could be broken, and an Open Access path constituted. Following this analysis, we discuss consequences of the Open Access transformation for the public spheres of science and democracy. We conclude that Open Access publishing can only help to transform both communicative spaces towards the normative ideal of a public sphere when complemented by systematic support for non-profit publication infrastructures.

Nonprofit Publisher Annual Reviews Acquires Charleston Hub

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“Nonprofit publisher Annual Reviews is pleased to announce that it has acquired Charleston Hub, home of the Charleston Conference, the premier international library event, and Against The Grain, the journal connecting publishers, vendors, and librarians. Librarian and entrepreneur Katina Strauch organized the first Charleston Conference in 1980, with just 20 people in attendance. Over the years, the event has expanded into “something of an institution in the library world.” 1 This year, almost 2,000 people will come together in Charleston, South Carolina, and others will join the remote presentations scheduled for November 27-December 1st , 2023. In 2020, Charleston Hub was created to bring together the various websites associated with the conference. Richard Gallagher, President and Editor-in-Chief of Annual Reviews, said, “Libraries play a crucial role in ensuring that the research enterprise is impactful and equitable. This acquisition will preserve and extend a conference that addresses topics such as open science, data curation, and the role of artificial intelligence. We are excited to add the conference, Against the Grain, and other key Charleston Hub products to the Annual Reviews portfolio.” ”

Open Access Conversations | Five minutes with Niamh Tumelty | LSE Press

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“At LSE Library, I want to continue digging into Open Science and really trying to understand what open social science looks like when it is beneficial to the discipline.

As a sector, academic publishing is too dependent on making a profit. This doesn’t always act in line with the needs of researchers and can lead to decisions made for commercial reasons rather than reflecting the needs of the academy. Open Access university presses, such as LSE Press, help to create opportunities for researchers to work with a press that is aligned with what their values are, and to maximise access to their work without scrimping on quality. The output of LSE Press is high quality, peer-reviewed books and journal articles which can be used to promote social science research to the widest possible audience.

I’m really excited about the fact that LSE Press focuses on the social sciences specifically. There is a much more focused target audience which is helpful for building our brand and establishing ourselves as a leading publisher….”

Proudly nonprofit | Science

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“And Science has a different view of open access publishing compared to commercial journals. Consistent with its commitment to put the scientific community first, AAAS does not favor a publishing ecosystem driven by article processing charges—the fees that authors must pay so that their articles are freely available once published (“gold” open access). An environment dominated by this approach drains laboratory resources and favors well-funded investigators, institutions, and disciplines. These inequities are coming into ever starker contrast, including through a recent AAAS survey of over 400 researchers in the United States. Rather, AAAS favors an ecosystem that does not put the cost burden for access on scientists. It has become an open access publisher by adopting a “green” policy for its subscription journals, including Science, whereby accepted manuscripts are made immediately available in repositories of the author’s choice. This approach—one that AAAS is excited to pursue alongside the American Medical Association— is consistent with open access policies in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States. But for now, AAAS still has one gold open access journal, Science Advances, as an option for scientists or funders that prefer this mechanism.”

What Is A Repository For? – Building the Commons

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“If you haven’t heard, in 2024 Humanities Commons will be launching a completely reimagined open-access repository. It’s currently under heavy construction. So we’ve been asking ourselves: Why does the Commons have a repository in the first place? At our heart we are a social network, a hub for scholarly exchange. Most of us don’t think “repository” when we think about social networks like Mastodon or Instagram or Facebook. So what exactly is a repository? And why will the new repository be so vital to the life of the Commons?…

How will the new Commons repository broadcast researchers’ work? Reaching an audience is partly about open access. This is not just a matter of letting visitors view the works on the repository site free-of-charge. It is also about letting other open access services and sites “re-broadcast” works from the Commons collection. So we will offer free access to the Commons repository in the formats that other tools and aggregators can use: a REST API, OAI-PMH streams, and (later on) the COAR Notify protocol. And we will embed data about each work in its repository page so that it is catalogued by services like Google Scholar. This extends the audience for members’ work far beyond the circle of people who visit the Commons….”

Is sustainability research the victim or saviour of a broken academic publishing system? | Impact of Social Sciences

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“Is sustainability research broken? A recent opinion piece suggests so, claiming that up to 50% of published sustainability research is ‘scholarly bullshit’. Although being critical of contemporary publishing culture and advocating scientific rigour should be encouraged, is this really a solution? Dismissing half of an entire research stream as ‘bullshit’ based on unclear methodology contributes to cultivating homogeneity and elitism in academia, which is known to be highly exclusive. Rather than shaming scholars and their work, we advocate for a more nuanced and constructive debate on the systemic causes for the current crisis in academic research and publishing….

Much as society must phase out fossil fuels and radically engage in sustainability transformations, so must research find ways phase out of for-profit publishing and quantitative performance metrics….

Central to this final point is the creation and support of non-profit open-access journals that focus on high-quality research, rather than quantity. Such platforms could help both level and widen the academic playing field. Researchers and academic institutions can support non-profit, open-access journals in many ways. For instance, they can make public statements in favour of ethical and non-profit publishing or peer-review systems, withdraw free peer-review or editing labour from commercial journals, include the journal’s business model and publication ethics as criteria when deciding where to submit a paper, and discuss switching to ethical publishing with existing journal owners….”

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/)….”

COAR welcomes the Council of EU Conclusions on High-quality, Transparent, Open, Trustworthy and Equitable Scholarly Publishing – COAR

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“As a major voice for repositories at the international level, COAR joins other organizations in welcoming the Council of European Union’s Conclusions on high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable scholarly publishing, which highlight the importance of not-for-profit, scholarly open access publishing models….

There are over 3,000 open access repositories in Europe (1) – mainly hosted by universities, research centers and government agencies – that are a critical component of a not-for-profit scholarly communications infrastructure; one that can and should be leveraged to achieve the aims of the Council’s Conclusions. Repositories are much more than a parallel system (collecting manuscripts of paywalled papers). They reflect an investment in public research infrastructure that can expand and support innovation in scholarly publishing by connecting repository resources to value-added services, such as peer review (see for example, the model adopted by HAL and Peer Community In)….”

Who’s afraid of open infrastructures? | Research Information

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“Joanna Ball, Yvonne Campfens and Tasha Mellins-Cohen underline the importance of non-profit infrastructure and standards bodies…

both COUNTER and DOAJ are essential components of the knowledge ecosystem – but new challenges arise and new organisations are needed to help meet them. In 2018 the idea for the OA Switchboard (https://www.oaswitchboard.org/) was conceived to allow publishers, libraries and research funders to easily share information about OA publications throughout the publication journey, synchronising data from a multitude of systems and processes that would otherwise have to be manually connected within each separate organisation.

What do these organisations have in common? We are all owned and led by our community, and we’re not for sale or for profit. We are foundational open infrastructure and standards bodies, operating behind the scenes with low budgets and limited staffing – none of us have salespeople, marketing teams, exhibition budgets or in-house technology support. We collaborate with one another and with bigger bodies like Crossref, ORCID and NISO to create the foundations on which much scholarly infrastructure relies.

 

And foundations is absolutely the right word: scholarly communications is an exciting and innovative space with new commercial and non-commercial services springing up almost daily. We deliver value through open infrastructure, data and standards, and naturally services and tools have been built by commercial and not-for-profit groups that capitalise on our open, interoperable data and services – many of which you are likely to recognise and may use on a regular basis….”