Category Archives: oa.governance

CARE Principles — Global Indigenous Data Alliance

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“The current movement toward open data and open science does not fully engage with Indigenous Peoples rights and interests. Existing principles within the open data movement (e.g. FAIR: findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) primarily focus on characteristics of data that will facilitate increased data sharing among entities while ignoring power differentials and historical contexts. The emphasis on greater data sharing alone creates a tension for Indigenous Peoples who are also asserting greater control over the application and use of Indigenous data and Indigenous Knowledge for collective benefit.

This includes the right to create value from Indigenous data in ways that are grounded in Indigenous worldviews and realise opportunities within the knowledge economy. The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance are people and purpose-oriented, reflecting the crucial role of data in advancing Indigenous innovation and self-determination. These principles complement the existing FAIR principles encouraging open and other data movements to consider both people and purpose in their advocacy and pursuits….”

Wissenschaftsgeleitetes Publizieren. Sechs Handreichungen mit Praxistipps und Perspektiven | Alexander von Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft @Zenodo

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Im Zuge der Open-Access-Transformation sind wissenschaftsgeleitete Zeitschriften mit zahlreichen Herausforderungen konfrontiert: Neben finanzieller und infrastruktureller Unterstützung brauchen diese Zeitschriften ein „capacity building“, also die Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe, insbesondere, um Wissenslücken im Bereich des wissenschaftlichen Publizierens zu schließen. Die vorliegenden Handreichungen sind ein Beitrag zu diesem „capacity building“: Angelegt als praktische Ressource, sollen sie Zeitschriften und herausgebende Einrichtungen bedarfsorientiert anleiten und bei der Weiterentwicklung, Professionalisierung und Verstetigung der Publikationstätigkeit unterstützen. Das Set der sechs Handreichungen ist dabei das zentrale Ergebnis des Projektes „Scholar-led Plus“ am Alexander von Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft und gefördert vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung. Neben den praktischen Ressourcen hat das Projekt, aufbauend auf einer mehrstufigen Delphi-Befragung, strategische Empfehlungen erarbeitet, die das Feld des wissenschaftsgeleiteten Publizierens prospektiv konturieren. Um eine größtmögliche Nutzbarkeit durch wissenschaftsgeleitete Zeitschriften und Projekte zu gewährleisten, sind die Handreichungen in Zusammenarbeit mit Expert*innen aus der Publikationspraxis konzipiert und geschrieben worden.

Das Gesamtdokument als Summe seiner Teile vermittelt grundsätzliches Wissen zu technischen Abläufen, Tools und Infrastrukturen, verknüpft dies aber auch mit Hinweisen zu urheberrechtlichen Aspekten und dem Anspruch auf Datenschutz. Es betont die Relevanz der redaktionellen Arbeit und gibt Empfehlungen zur Optimierung der Prozesse, wobei die bisher vielfach unterrepräsentierten Bereiche der wissenschaftlichen Kommunikation und Verbreitung der Inhalte gesondert betrachtet werden. Nicht zuletzt werden administrative Vorgänge adressiert: Neben den Kosten für Zeitschriften und Möglichkeiten der Finanzierung und Förderung werden auch Strategien guter Governance für Zeitschriften beschrieben.

Das Set an Handreichungen wird herausgegeben von Marcel Wrzesinski (Projektleitung “Scholar-led Plus”).

Einzel-Handreichungen:

Technik und Infrastrukturen: Eichler, Frederik, Eppelin, Anita, Kampkaspar, Dario, Schrader, Antonia C., Söllner, Konstanze, Vierkant, Paul, & Withanage, Dulip. (2023). Handreichung Technik und Infrastrukturen. In Wissenschaftsgeleitetes Publizieren. Sechs Handreichungen mit Praxistipps und Perspektiven (pp. 7–18). Alexander von Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8208578

Urheberrecht und Datenschutz: Blumtritt, Ute, Euler, Ellen, Fadeeva, Yuliya, Pohle, Jörg, & Rack, Fabian. (2023). Handreichung Urheberrecht und Datenschutz. In Wissenschaftsgeleitetes Publizieren. Sechs Handreichungen mit Praxistipps und Perspektiven (pp. 19–34). Alexander von Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8208582

Arbeitsabläufe und Workflows: Bergmann, Max, Dalkilic, Evin, Ganz, Kathrin, Heinig, Julia, Kaden, Ben, Kalte, Isabella, & Junker, Judith. (2023). Handreichung Arbeitsabläufe und Workflows. In Wissenschaftsgeleitetes Publizieren. Sechs Handreichungen mit Praxistipps und Perspektiven (pp. 35–54). Alexander von Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8208678

Kommunikation und Distribution: Efferenn, Frederik, Ferguson, Lea Maria, Herb, Ulrich, Neufend, Maike, Schmitz, Jasmin, Siegfried, Doreen, & Taubert, Niels. (2023). Handreichung Kommunikation und Distribution. In Wissenschaftsgeleitetes Publizieren. Sechs Handreichungen mit Praxistipps und Perspektiven (pp. 55–68). Alexander von Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8208711

Kostenstrukturen und Geschäftsmodelle: Arning, Ursula, Barbers, Irene, Benz, Martina, Dellatorre, Margit, Finger, Juliane, Gast, Konstantin, Gebert, Agathe, Geuenich, Michael, Hahn, Daniela, Rieck, Katharina, & Sänger, Astrid. (2023). Handreichung Kostenstrukturen und Geschäftsmodelle. In Wissenschaftsgeleitetes Publizieren. Sechs Handreichungen mit Praxistipps und Perspektiven (pp. 69–82). Alexander von Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8210924

Governance und Rechtsform: Dalkilic, Evin, Hacker, Andrea, Hesse, Cindy, Jobmann, Alexandra, Kirchner, Andreas, Pampel, Heinz, Siegert, Olaf, & Steiner, Tobias. (2023). Handreichung Governance und Rechtsform. In Wissenschaftsgeleitetes Publizieren. Sechs Handreichungen mit Praxistipps und Perspektiven (pp. 83–96)

Introducing arXiv’s new governance model – arXiv blog

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“In early 2022, arXiv embarked on a plan to reorganize its governance. We are happy to report that arXiv leadership, with significant input from its advisory board members, has finalized a new governance model. 

New Bylaws went into effect on July 1, 2023. As part of the governance restructuring, the Member Advisory Board and the Scientific Advisory Board were retired, and three new Advisory Councils were created:

Editorial Advisory Council (EAC)—The Editorial Advisory Council acts as the editorial board of arXiv. It organizes and monitors moderation of arXiv content. The former Subject Advisory Committees have been renamed Section Editorial Committees, and the chairs (also known as editors) of these committees are the regular members of the Editorial Advisory Council.
Institutions Advisory Council (IAC)—The Institutions Advisory Council represents the scholarly communications community and advises on topics such as issues related to publishing, standards, open access and open science; issues related to the arXiv membership program and policy; arXiv services, interoperability and advocacy to the community; user needs, metadata, technical and user trends, and other issues guiding the sustainability and success of arXiv. Institutions Advisory Council members must be affiliated with an arXiv member organization.
Science Advisory Council (SAC)—The Science Advisory Council represents the scientific and research community of arXiv by advising on topics such as intellectual impact and relevance of arXiv, including aspects of significant expansions, high-level issues of standards, expansion in new fields/sections, novelties and changes in the production and dissemination of scholarly works, and impact across disciplines. Science Advisory Council members should be active researchers, be tenured or in a position with similar seniority/stability, be recognized experts in their field, and have had a leadership position and/or successful experience in advisory committees….”

Open Terms Archive

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“Open Terms Archive addresses a critical gap in the ability of activists, journalists, researchers, lawmakers and regulators to analyse and influence the rules of online services.

Digital platforms hold immense power in forming global information flows, managing personal data and dictating business practices, and thus massively influence societal change. Their power is shaped by the rules set forth in complex and regularly changing documents that define how these platforms operate: terms of service, privacy policies, community guidelines…

These terms often offer unequal rights and opportunities across jurisdictions and increasingly constitute norms designed unilaterally, with little to no democratic oversight. Due to the sheer volume of these documents, the frequency at which they change, and the legalese often used, these critical governing rules remain largely opaque, even to the most dedicated observers.

Open Terms Archive publicly records these terms in different languages and countries several times a day, increasing their readability and highlighting their changes….”

Re-Launch of Platform Governance Archive (PGA): Datasets, downloads and data paper, new website and collaboration with OTA – Platform Governance Archive

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“The Lab Platform Governance, Media and Technology (PGMT) at the ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research, and the Alexander von Humboldt Institut for Internet and Society (HIIG) launch this week an updated version of its pioneering open-access repository of platform policies, the Platform Governance Archive (PGA). The extensive update includes the launch of a new website, which enables easier data access, the publication of a data paper, which gives a holistic overview of building the PGA, and the release of an updated dataset, which widens the scope of the PGA to cover more platforms and policies….”

Governance by output reduces humanities scholarship to monologue | Impact of Social Sciences

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Drawing on a large-scale comparative study of scholars in the UK and Germany on how pressure to publish is experienced across research careers, Marcel Knöchelmann, argues that the structural incentive to publish inherent to research assessment in the UK shapes a research culture focused on output and monologue at the expense of an engaged public dialogue.

 

DIAMAS deliverable: D3.1 IPSP Best Practices Quality evaluation criteria, best practices, and assessment systems for Institutional Publishing Service Providers (IPSPs) | Zenodo

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“This report outlines existing quality evaluation criteria, best practices, and assessment systems for IPSPs developed by international associations, RPOs, governments, and international databases. It also analyses academic literature on research evaluation of IPSPs, assessment criteria and indicators. The analysis matrix includes the following categories, which will also be the core components of EQSIP: 

Funding: description of the funding model, OA business model, transparency in listing all funding sources, etc. 

Ownership and governance: legal ownership, mission, and governance.

Open science practices: OA policy, copyright and licensing, open peer review, data availability, new approaches to research assessment, etc.

Editorial quality, editorial management, and research integrity.  

Technical service efficiency: technical strength, interoperability – metadata, ISSN, PIDs, machine readability, and accessible  journal website. 

Visibility, including indexation, communication, marketing and impact.

Equity, Diversity  and Inclusion (EDI): multilingualism, gender equity….”

Best practices for open access publishing | EIFL

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“The DIAMAS (Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication) project has published a best practices report highlighting quality evaluation criteria and assessment systems for Institutional Publishing Service Providers (IPSPs).  

EIFL is a partner in the DIAMAS project, which was formed to support high-quality, sustainable, open access publishing, and to develop common standards, guidelines and practices for the Diamond institutional publishing sector. Diamond Open Access refers to a scholarly publication model in which journals and platforms do not charge fees to either authors or readers. 

Iryna Kuchma, Manager of the EIFL Open Access Programme, and Milica Ševkuši?, Project Coordinator for the EIFL Open Access Programme, co-authored this report, which is based on analyses of existing quality evaluation criteria, best practices and assessment systems for IPSPs developed by international associations, Research Performing Organizations, governments,and international databases. The report also analyzes academic literature on research evaluation of IPSPs, assessment criteria and Indicators.

The recommendations and tips cover seven categories, which are also the core components of the Extensible Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing (EQSIP). Also included in the report is a self-assessment checklist for IPSPs which you can use to see how your publishing practices measure up….”

DIAMAS launches an open call to identify reference materials | DIAMAS

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As part of its scope to support Open Access Diamond and institutional publishing, DIAMAS is launching a campaign to gather resources addressing the Extensible Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing (EQSIP) components: Funding; Ownership and governance; Open Science practices; Editorial quality, editorial management and research integrity; Technical service efficiency; Visibility; and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI).

The resources will be used to develop a range of outputs (best practices, recommendations, guidelines) and a toolsuite offering support to publishers and service providers to address challenges related to skills, management, visibility, and sustainability.

We encourage you to join us in identifying resources for the DIAMAS registry of reference materials and become part of a community that actively participates in the development of a portal and knowledge-exchange hub to improve the efficiency and quality of institutional publishing.

[…]

 

COPIM final conference “Scaling Small: Community-Owned Futures for Open Access Books”: Presentation slidedecks | Zenodo

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Adema, Janneke, Barr, Peter, Bowie, Simon, Cole, Gareth, Deville, Joe, Fathallah, Judith, Grady, Tom, Grand, Philippa, Hall, Gary, McHardy, Julien, Kiesewetter, Rebekka, Mackay, Caroline, Moore, Samuel, Montgomery, Lucy, Ramalho, Amanda, & Tscheke, Nina. (2023, May 5). COPIM final conference “Scaling Small: Community-Owned Futures for Open Access Books”: Presentation slidedecks. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7898815

This deposit holds all slidedecks from presentations given during the two days of the final conference of the Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project, which was held on April 20 and 21, 2023, under the title of “Scaling Small: Community-Owned Futures for Open Access Books”.

Slidedecks & video recordings are also available via the conference website, at https://scalingsmall.pubpub.org/

 

 

Creating resilient publishing infrastructures | PubPub Community Spotlight

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Adema, J., Deville, J., Steiner, T., & Gulliford (Kearns), S. (2023). Creating resilient publishing infrastructures. PubPub Help. Retrieved from https://help.pubpub.org/pub/n5lqcqb4

In this Spotlight interview, we chat with a few of the folks at COPIM — Janneke Adema, Joe Deville, and Tobias Steiner — about the many work packages and projects that have come out of their organization. This includes, but is not limited to, the Open Book Collective, Experimental Publishing Compendium, Thoth, and their latest project Open Book Futures. Given all these ideas and projects, we talk about what it means to adapt as an organization with shifting funding all the while “scaling small.”

 

How to cultivate good closures: ‘scaling small’ and the limits of openness | Samuel Moore

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Text of a talk given to the COPIM end-of-project conference: “Scaling Small: Community-Owned Futures for Open Access Books”, April 20th 2023.

Open access publishing has always had a difficult relationship with smoothness and scale. Openness implies seamlessness, limitlessness or structureless-ness – or the idea that the removal of price and permission barriers is what’s needed to allow research to reach its full potential. The drive for seamlessness is on display in much of the push for interoperability of standards and persistent identifiers that shape the infrastructures of openness. Throughout the evolution of open access, many ideas have been propagated around, for example, the necessity of CC BY as the one and only licence that facilitates this interoperability and smoothness of access and possible reuse. Similarly, failed projects such as One Repo sought to create a single open access repository to rule them all, in response to the perceived messy and stratified institutional and subject repository landscape.

Yet this relationship between openness and scale also leads to new kinds of closure, particularly the commercial closures of walled gardens that stretch across proprietary services and make researcher data available for increasing user surveillance. The economies of scale of commercial publishers require cookie-cutter production processes that remove all traces of care from publishing, in exchange for APCs and BPCs, thus ensuring that more publications can be processed cheaply with as little recourse to paid human labour as possible. Smoothness and scale are simply market enclosures by another name.

[…]

 

COPIM and community-led infrastructures for open access books: where are we now and what’s next? | Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

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by Lucy Barnes

This is a mirror of a post originally published on the OASPA blog: Lucy Barnes, ‘Guest post – COPIM and community-led infrastructures for open access books: where are we now and what’s next?’, OASPA blog, 11 April 2023

Since November 2019, the COPIM project has been building community-led systems and infrastructures to support and develop open access (OA) book publishing. We’ve focused particularly on how to enable smaller and medium-sized presses to thrive in an open access world, following the principle of ‘Scaling Small’: that publishing communities can grow their capacity to publish open access books through intentional collaboration and mutual support, fostering resilience and bibliodiversity through cooperation and knowledge-sharing rather than individual initiatives seeking to grow larger at the expense of ‘competitors’.

Our initial period of funding, generously given by the Research England Development Fund and Arcadia, is now coming to an end, so we wanted to share: what have we built, how can publishers use it, and what comes next?

 

 

Final WP4 Report: Governing Scholar-Led OA Book Publishers | Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM)

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We are pleased to announce the release of the final report from COPIM’s Governance Work Package (WP4), titled Governing Scholar-Led OA Book Publishers: Values, Practices, Barriers. This report develops some of the issues we have previously explored within COPIM with regard to community governance, such as the challenges of governing a collective and the relationship of governance to common resources, to explore how these apply in practice to the publication of books by small-to-medium Open Access publishers, as well as what barriers they have faced in implementing their governance models. It presents and discusses the results of six interviews with small and medium Open Access publishers from the ScholarLed consortium. It then offers some recommendations and insights into how other small and medium Open Access publishers might set up and/or improve their governance practices, including how the Open Book Collective and Open Book Futures project might support them in doing so.

Governing Scholar-Led OA Book Publishers was written by Dr. Judith Fathallah, with the kind assistance of the following interviewees:

François van Schalkwyk, Director of African Minds

Joe Deville, Co-Founder of Mattering Press

Jeff Pooley, Director of mediastudies.press

Mercedes Bunz, Co-Founder of meson press

Alessandra Tosi, Co-Director of Open Book Publishers

Eileen Joy, Co-Director of punctum books.

After a contextual discussion on the need for scholar-led OA publishers and governance issues related to the concept of the knowledge commons, the report presents the interview data. The publishers discuss the impetuses to startup their presses; incorporation and its forms; the elements, resources and actors in their governance structures; the evolution of governance structures and processes; their current mechanisms and procedures;t ransparency and self assessment; their relationships with institutions and organizations; and their perspectives on current governance.

Some reccomendations are then made to assist new publishers in considering their governance, and links to tools and resources provided.

The report has been published as a living document on COPIM’s Open Documentation Site (PubPub), and is also availabe as a time-stamped PDF version on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7801216.

 

Supporting Shared Infrastructure for Scholarly Communication – Ithaka S+R, March 1, 2023

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“Developing, maintaining, and sustaining fit-for-purpose community infrastructure is a challenge in the higher education and research sectors, particularly when the technology and policy environments are in flux. Ithaka S+R has conducted a variety of projects and studies touching on these issues over several years. Today, I’m pleased to share that we are launching a new study focusing on shared infrastructure in support of scholarly communication, with support from STM Solutions. The Project For some time, shared infrastructure has been a key enabler for delivering the services that authors and readers need from scholarly communication. Services like reference linking, repositories, identifiers, single sign-on, and digital preservation have supported the digital transformation of scholarly publishing, enabling new and improved services and achieving real efficiencies for all stakeholder communities. Looking ahead, it is necessary to sustain and in some cases improve existing shared infrastructure, even as next generation shared infrastructure must be developed to support the research community…. As part of this project, we will be conducting interviews this spring with individuals from major stakeholder groups, including infrastructure providers, researchers, open science community members, publishers, and librarians, among others. This spring, we will publish a landscape overview of shared infrastructure for scholarly communication. Over the summer, we will issue a draft report of our findings to allow for broad input. We expect to publish the final report in the fall….

And, with respect to shared infrastructure, we have just launched a project with the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and other partners to design and prototype a shared community infrastructure that will support collections and collecting, with our work focused on governance and sustainability issues for this collaboration….”