“Scholars have formed a peer-review boycott to encourage journals to take a firm stance against requests to cull sensitive articles….More than 1,000 people from around the world have signed a petition calling on major journal publishers not to censor their offerings within China in response to governmental pressure. The petition pledges a peer-review boycott, stating, “we will not agree to provide peer review service until editors confirm that their publications do not censor content in the [People’s Republic of China], and we call on all others to do so as well.” …”
Monthly Archives: February 2018
Taylor & Francis Group responds to the open letter from SCONUL – Librarian Resources
“Taylor & Francis would like to provide the following context and statement following recent feedback from the library and academic community in relation to our new policy to introduce a rolling wall of 20 years’ courtesy access to subscribers. This replaces our prior policy of access back to 1997.”
What sufficient conditions allow editors to be comfortable with following the example of J. Algebraic Combinatorics? (#20) · Issues · Publishing Reform / discussion · GitLab
Discussion point: “confidence that a new Fair OA-compliant publisher is at least as good technically as the current one”.
what are the top 3 journals you would like to see break away from their commercial publisher? (#7) · Issues · Publishing Reform / discussion · GitLab
Discussion thread: “what are the top 3 journals you would like to see break away from their commercial publisher?”.
OSF | Public Access Submission System (PASS)
“The Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University, the Center for Open Science, MIT Libraries and the Harvard University Office for Scholarly Communication are building the Public Access Submission System (PASS), an open platform that would support researchers’ workflows related to compliance with funding agencies’ public access policies. The main ideas for this project arose based on discussions between Harvard, MIT and COS over the last two years….
While many federal agencies require research results to be made publicly accessible, the processes and requirements to do so vary greatly from one agency to another. The heterogeneous processes and requirements have become burdensome for researchers and their institutions, resulting in lower rates of compliances or compliance efficacies. Federal agencies, however, are not in a position to develop and commit to a solution, which would harmonize these workflows.
On the university side, many researchers are subject to more than one OA policy, for example, a university policy and a funder policy. Similarly, in the case of researches with multiple funding sources, researchers are subjects to public access policies from different funders. Universities would face an implementation nightmare, if the only paths to compliance were the different submission interfaces at different funders and institutions,. A unified submission interface would lighten the load on universities, and improve compliance, even if the unified submission interface were not exclusive….”
DFAJ [Directory of Free Arab Journals]
A directory of OA Arab journals. As of February 19, 2018, it lists 319 journals from 150 publishers in 18 countries.
Authorial and institutional stratification in open access publishing: the case of global health research [PeerJ]
Abstract: Using a database of recent articles published in the field of Global Health research, we examine institutional sources of stratification in publishing access outcomes. Traditionally, the focus on inequality in scientific publishing has focused on prestige hierarchies in established print journals. This project examines stratification in contemporary publishing with a particular focus on subscription vs. various Open Access (OA) publishing options. Findings show that authors working at lower-ranked universities are more likely to publish in closed/paywalled outlets, and less likely to choose outlets that involve some sort of Article Processing Charge (APCs; gold or hybrid OA). We also analyze institutional differences and stratification in the APC costs paid in various journals. Authors affiliated with higher-ranked institutions, as well as hospitals and non-profit organizations pay relatively higher APCs for gold and hybrid OA publications. Results suggest that authors affiliated with high-ranked universities and well-funded institutions tend to have more resources to choose pay options with publishing. Our research suggests new professional hierarchies developing in contemporary publishing, where various OA publishing options are becoming increasingly prominent. Just as there is stratification in institutional representation between different types of publishing access, there is also inequality within access types.
Responsible metrics: where it’s at? – The Bibliomagician
“At the Lis-Bibliometrics event, Katie Evans raised the important question as to how we can encourage openness in early-career colleagues when they face such pressures to publish in usually closed ‘high impact’ journals. David Price said that he felt senior colleagues had to lead the way. At UCL, Paul Ayris pointed out, promotion criteria now included openness metrics. The challenges of measuring openness, and open measures were acknowledged. Interestingly enough, Lis-Bibliometrics plans to take a look at this in more detail at a future event….”
Kristin Antelman, Leveraging the Growth of Open Access in Library Collection Decision Making
“A primary goal for collection management is assessing the relative value of continuing information resources. A variety of new environmental factors and data are pertinent to relative value. One of the emerging metrics is the degree to which the articles within a subscription journal are also available open access (OA). That OA level directly affects the value of a journal subscription. This paper outlines a theoretical model for accounting for open access in decision making by proposing an Open Access-adjusted Cost per Download metric. Refinements to the metric are also discussed, as well as how it can be applied, and the broader scholarly communication implications of leveraging open access in library decision making….
From the perspective of the individual institution, transformation of the broader scholarly communication system will always be indirect. Each research library can focus on journal value, supporting new OA models where applicable, and making decisions that support management flexibility suitable for a rapidly changing environment. Since the library shields costs from journals’ primary stakeholders (readers), the library bears the responsibility to be good stewards of those resources. If we choose not to use OA in decision making, even as the data becomes more readily available and reliable, we are not being good stewards of our institutional resources, and we are not serving future researchers as much as we could be through development of collectively heterogeneous and deep collections.33 One of the broadest questions research libraries are faced with is an ethical one: are we perpetuating a legacy, and suboptimal, scholarly communication system that does not best serve either current or future researchers? While the impact of the perpetuation of the traditional journal subscription model on research libraries’ collective collection diversity is out of scope here, it is relevant to note that continued commitment to the model, especially in the form of a big deal, constrains experimentation with—and adoption of—new OA funding models. The resulting lack of budget flexibility, even in the presence of organizational will to make substantive changes, consigns OA-related initiatives to the margins where they are largely disconntected from the core players and systemwide economic forces. Transition to a competitive OA journal market will require disruption of the current market.34 Until libraries use all available data, including about OA, to reduce expenditures on traditional subscription journals, large publishers will continue to develop a separate author-facing market (Hybrid OA) and to restrict non-market OA (Green). A meaningfully reduced spending on traditional subscription journals will push lower value journals into unsustainability as subscription journals; they may then become viable through competing for authors as Gold OA journals, or they may be nonviable and be eliminated. The OA-adjusted Cost per Download is one tool to support libraries in leveraging, and even just thinking about, all of the data that is available to us in a rapidly changing scholarly communication landscape.”
Innovating for Impact: The Next Evolution of Library Consortia
“One of the most common approaches is centralized consortium support or management for member library digital repository platforms, which allows institutions to showcase and disseminate student and faculty scholarly and creative works. A precursor to the broader scope of current institutional repositories is seen in shared digital collections of theses and dissertations (ETDs), with OhioLINK’s ETD Center (created in 2001) one of the best examples of a library consortium-supported ETD repository. Other regional consortia or state university systems (e.g., Texas Digital Library, California Digital Library) support similar shared ETD repositories. Most consortia-supported digital repositories now focus on creating institutionallybranded portals (rather than shared collections) that include faculty publications, student scholarship, and other unique and locally-created or curated content. Digital repositories are supported by different types of academic library consortia and library systems. For example, the California State University (CSU) system’s Digital Library Services offers centrally-supported repository services called ScholarWorks to all CSU libraries, while the British Columbia Electronic Library Network (BCELN)–a consortium that includes members ranging from small technical colleges to large research universities–provides a shared repository platform that offers individually branded portals and federated search across all member repositories. Both CSU and BCELN use open source platforms (CSU is currently migrating to Samvera/Hyrax, while BCELN uses Islandora), leveraging shared, centralized support to configure and manage software that would not necessarily be feasible (or desirable) for individual members to maintain on their own. The growth in academic library engagement with open access publishing is also driving interest in consortia support and management of platforms that facilitate formal publishing processes beyond the simple dissemination of a repository or digital asset system….”
Why OpenStreetMap is in Serious Trouble — Emacsen’s Blog
“…The first problem that I feel plagues OSM is that the OpenStreetMap Foundation views the mission of the project to provide the world a geographic database, but not geographic services. OSM gives people the tools to create their own map rather than offering them a simple, out of the box solution. Providing the ability for individuals and organizations to make their own map may work well for some, but it discourages small and medium size organizations from using OSM and thus engaging with the project. And even if they do use our data, their engagement is through a third party, rather than directly with us….”
MyScienceWork: The Global Scientific Platform
“Founded in 2010 by Virginie Simon, a biotech engineer and PhD in nanotechnology, and Tristan Davaille, a financial engineer with a degree in economics — MyScienceWork serves the international scientific community and the promotes easy access to scientific publications, unrestricted diffusion of knowledge and open science. Our comprehensive database includes more than 70 million scientific publications and 12 million patents.
We host a community of professional scientists and science enthusiasts from around the world who use MyScienceWork’s open network to deposit and discover scientific publications of all disciplines. Join the community!
For Research Institutions, Scientific Publishers & private-sector R&D companies, MyScienceWork provides a suite of data-driven solutions. Learn more about our products.
Our vision for the near future is to empower research institutions and industries with more intelligence related to research fields by aggregating all available data related to research results to accelerate findings, optimize funding and research efforts, improve transparency, bridge the knowledge gap between academia and industry and avoid duplicate research.
MySciencework believes that making science more accessible will foster data sharing amongst science organizations….”
We need to fix tech transfer at universities | University Affairs
“Why should universities continue to own and profit from publicly-funded work? If the public pays for it, why shouldn’t the public own it? … However, unlike governmental funding, the funds given by a private company to an academic researcher also come with an expectation of ownership. The trouble arises when the university is unwilling to fund the work but is also unwilling to cede ownership of the resulting invention. (As an aside, this is not unlike the longstanding debate on open access to scientific papers)….I can understand the institution retaining some claim on the IP alongside the public because they are providing the infrastructure to enable this work, which is effectively considered an extension of this work by their faculty. But when the university pulls back research funding entirely and expects financial support of “its own” scientists to come entirely from public grants or private contracts, and then “double dips” – detracting from these grants’ operating expenses to support the indirect costs of maintaining the research lab, then ownership of the resulting IP should pass to the funding parties….”
AI experts call for support of STEM education, research and open data policies at House hearing | CIO Dive
“The industry and government have spent many years collecting data, and now there is finally a tool [AI] to derive insight from it. The panel [at a House Oversight and Government Reform committee hearing Wednesday] agreed that open data policies are needed so the industry can begin making use of it, but it won’t be an easy process. Most of the government’s data is still unstructured and needs to be organized in a meaningful way.”
Open Science (Open Access) – European Commission
“The global shift towards making research findings available free of charge for readers, so-called ‘Open access’, has been a core strategy in the European Commission to improve knowledge circulation and thus innovation. It is illustrated in particular by the general principle for open access to scientific publications in Horizon 2020 and the pilot for research data.”