They create copycat ‘science journals’, exploit academic authors and publish junk ‘peer reviewed’ science. Hagar Cohen investigates one of the biggest of the alleged ‘predatory’ publishers, and the dubious tactics used in this growing sector.
Monthly Archives: July 2015
Librarians Leap to the Aid of Researchers Whose Funding Will Soon Depend on Open Access
“As more federal agencies begin requiring grant recipients to make research results freely available to the public, college librarians have taken on a new role: helping researchers comply with open-access rules.
A February 2013 memorandum from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy said federal agencies with more than $100 million in research-and-development expenditures would have to require that results be available within a year of publication.
New open-access rules will take effect in October at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, among other agencies. Researchers will risk losing grant support from those sources if they don’t make their findings freely available to the public. Several private funders, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are also shifting to public-access requirements. In response, many college libraries are working with institutional research offices and others to let researchers know what’s expected of them….”
Opening the Curriculum: Open Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2014
“Awareness and adoption of open educational resources (OER) has yet to enter the mainstream of higher education. Most faculty remain unaware of OER, and OER is not a driving force for faculty decisions about which educational materials to adopt. The picture does include some promising signals, as results show that faculty find the concept attractive: those who are aware of OER rate it roughly on par with traditional resources, and those who have not yet used it are very willing to give it a try….”
Open Access and Institutional Repositories: How Should Subscription Journals Respond? : American Journal of Roentgenology: Vol. 205, No. 2 (AJR)
“Our recent experience with institutional repositories and the impact of open-access policy raise concerns for subscription biomedical journals. We have been notified by only one of the 57 institutions with repositories that it has its own repository regulations that are applied to all authors. Does this mean we need to obtain a list of the repository rules at each of the 57 institutions and check every submission to see whether any of the authors is on the faculty? A daunting task, indeed. As we study the most effective approach to this issue, there are several first steps that we are in the process of implementing. We are currently in the process of modifying portions of the copyright transfer agreement [4] and the author guidelines, including the content requirements of the cover letter.
Our author guidelines follow those set forth by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors [5]. Our current author guidelines already state that any similar work must be disclosed and documented. Copies of any work that might be considered similar should be included with the cover letter when submitting the manuscript. We will also need to emphasize work included in registries and repositories, making it very clear that any such work should be documented. Before initiating the peer-review process, we require institutional waivers or documentation that authors have opted out of participation in institutional repositories. Failure to provide this documentation can result in copyright issues and even the retraction of articles published in AJR that may be redundant because of institutional licensing issues. This approach requires AJR staff to determine during an initial technical check whether any of the authors of a submission are from institutions with repositories….”
HSGAC approves Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act
“The Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) today passed S. 779, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act, unanimously by voice vote and moved it to the full Senate for consideration. This marks the first time the Senate has acted on a government-wide policy ensuring public access to the results of publicly funded research, and is an important step towards codifying the progress made by the 2013 White House OSTP Directive….”
Open Access Week 2015 – Wikipedia EditAtone
To observe the global Open Access Week- 2015, Wikipedia Bengali community is going to arrange a Wikipedia Online Edit Atone likewise most of the other Wikipedia communities around the globe. This online edit atone will go through October 19 to 25.
On this day, Wikipedia community members can attend the online occasion from any part of world through a wiki userACCOUNT
globally or community basis.
globally or community basis.
Subject of the Year: Topics, defining Open Access
The Wikipedia and Facebook event pages for this issue of Bengali community already have launched. The community invites its members to join and take part toGROW awareness about this Open Knowledge Access Program.
awareness about this Open Knowledge Access Program.It is suggested to the members to determine their subject- topic, on which, (s)he would like toWORK with and to enlist own topic at the specific linked page as given bellow:
with and to enlist own topic at the specific linked page as given bellow:
What to do:
1) Create new article about Open Access and Open Access Week
2) Develop previous articles about Open Access and Open Access Week
3) To accomplish previously initiated articles
4) To relate simultaneous subjective articles in cross lingual platform through WikiData
5) After accomplishment, classify each article in view of proper evaluation at the Talk page.
Put your requirement at the Talk page for farther assistance
What not to do:
1) Do not create incomplete or shorter article
2) Do not create article except information source
3) Should not involve in edit conflict
Moving FASTR in the US Senate.
“FASTR will go to markup tomorrow at the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC)….We already have the 2008 NIH policy, but it only covers one agency. We already have the 2013 Obama directive requiring about two dozen federal agencies to adopt OA mandates, but the next President could rescind it. FASTR would subsume and extend the NIH policy. FASTR would solidify the Obama directive by grounding these agency policies in legislation. Moreover, FASTR would strengthen the NIH policy and Obama directive by requiring reuse rights or open licensing. It has bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. FASTR has been introduced in two sessions of Congress (February 2013 and March 2015), and its predecessor, FRPAA (Federal Research Public Access Act), was introduced in three (May 2006, April 2010, February 2012). Neither FASTR nor FRPAA has gotten to the stage of markup and a committee vote. That’s why tomorrow’s markup is so big….”
Open Access and Digital Scholarship Blog-Open Access and Digital Scholarship at Imperial College London. Making Open Access simple – The Imperial College approach to OA
“When you come at it for the first time, open access looks pretty complicated. Funder policies, institutional policies, publisher policies, different flavours of OA including ‘green’, ‘gold’, ‘libre’ and ‘gratis’ and a whole new language with mystifying terms like ‘hybrid journal’, ‘article processing charge’ and ‘author accepted manuscript’ await. Even librarians sometimes struggle to understand journal policies, or what certain licensing conditions actually mean. It was perhaps for this reason that, when we started the College open access project, academics gave us a clear mission: a one button solution to open access. We haven’t quite achieved that yet, but since May we are running a new workflow that reduces the complexity to one sentence: ‘When you have a paper accepted, deposit the peer-reviewed manuscript – we do the rest, no matter what type of open access.’ The workflow is based on two ideas: Ask authors for the minimum information required. Offer authors a single publications workflow that covers green and gold OA as well information required for funder reporting. The frontend for this workflow is Symplectic Elements, the system used by our academics to manage their scholarly outputs. We have worked with the vendor to deliver an OA workflow that kicks in on acceptance for publication, and then we customised the system to interface with ASK OA, our in-house APC management system …”
FASTR to be Considered by Senate Committee | SPARC
“After a month of intense conversations and negotiations, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) will bring the ‘Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act’ up for mark-up on Wednesday, July 29th. The language that will be considered is an amended version of FASTR, officially known as the ‘Johnson-Carper Substitute Amendment,’ which was officially filed by the HSGAC leadership late on Friday afternoon, per committee rules. There are two major changes from the original bill language to be particularly aware of. Specifically, the amendment Replaces the six month embargo period with ‘no later than 12 months, but preferably sooner’ as anticipated; and Provides a mechanism for stakeholders to petition federal agencies to ‘adjust’ the embargo period if the12 months does not serve ‘the public, industries, and the scientific community.’ We understand that these modifications were made in order accomplish a number of things: Satisfy the requirement of a number of Members of HSGAC that the language more closely track that of the OSTP Directive; Meet the preference of the major U.S. higher education associations for a maximum 12 month embargo; Ensure that, for the first time, a number of scientific societies will drop their opposition for the bill; and Ensure that any petition process an agency may enable is focused on serving the interests of the public and the scientific community …”
Te Papa’s Blog | Free, downloadable images from Te Papa’s collections
“A few weeks ago we released an updated version of Collections Online, making images bigger, search results clearer, and easier to use regardless of what device you are using. Today we are extremely happy to let you know about our latest development; over 30,000 images downloadable, for free, in the highest resolution we have them….”
Impact of Social Sciences – Rather than narrow our definition of impact, we should use metrics to explore richness and diversity of outcomes.
“Impact is multi-dimensional, the routes by which impact occur are different across disciplines and sectors, and impact changes over time. Jane Tinkler argues that if institutions like HEFCE specify a narrow set of impact metrics, more harm than good would come to universities forced to limit their understanding of how research is making a difference. But qualitative and quantitative indicators continue to be an incredible source of learning for how impact works in each of our disciplines, locations or sectors.”
Job opportunity: Director of Publications at CODESRIA
“The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites applications from suitably qualified African professionals to fill the vacant position of Director of Publications in its pan-African Secretariat located in Dakar, Senegal….Applicants must: …4. Be abreast of the developments in open access publishing/scholarship….”
Directory of Korea Open Access Journals
A directory of Korea-based OA journals.
We Want the Funk: The Ups and Downs of Wild Microbes in Beer
Funky, floral, complex. No, this is not a description of a piece of vintage wallpaper. These are some of the words that are used to describe the enormous variety that exists within the world of beer. Whether you are enjoying … Continue reading
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Wellcome Trust Launches Guide for Publishing Open Access Monographs and Book Chapters – OASPA
“Open access for monographs and book chapters is a relatively new area of publishing, and there are many ways of approaching it. With this in mind, a recent publication from the Wellcome Trust aims to provide some guidance for publishers to consider when developing policies and processes for open access books. The Wellcome Trust recognises that implementation around publishing monographs and book chapters open access is in flux, and invites publishers to email Cecy Marden at c.marden@wellcome.ac.uk with any suggestions for further guidance that would be useful to include in this document. ‘Open Access Monographs and Book Chapters: A practical guide for publishers’ is available to download as a pdf from the Wellcome Trust website.”