Monthly Archives: April 2019

Dear eLife: please give us eLife ONE | Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

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“I do see why some people think it’s desirable to have an OA alternative to Science and Nature. But I can’t understand at all why they won’t add a second, non-selective journal — an eLIFE ONE, if you will — and automatically propagate articles to it that are judged “sound but dull” at eLIFE proper (or eLIFE Gold, as they may want to rename it). Way back in I think 2012 I spoke separately to Randy Schekman and executive director Mark Patterson about this: both of them were completely uninterested then, and it seems that’s still the case.

This is why Mike Eisen’s appointment is such a surprise. In a recent interview regarding this appointment, he commented “Our addiction to high-impact factor journals poisons hiring and funding decisions, and distorts the research process” — which I agree with 100%. But then why has he taken on a role in a journal that perpetuates that addiction?

We can only hope that he plans to change it from within, and that eLife ONE is lurking just beyond the horizon….”

ROAD, the Directory of Open Access scholarly Resources | ISSN

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“Launched in December 2013, ROAD provides a free access to those ISSN bibliographic records which describe scholarly resources in Open Access: journals, monographic series, conference proceedings, academic repositories and scholarly blogs. These records, created by the ISSN Network (90 National Centres worldwide + the International Centre), are enriched by information extracted from indexing and abstracting databases, directories (DOAJ, Latindex, The Keepers registry) and journals indicators (Scopus).

ROAD is in line with the actions of UNESCO for promoting Open Access to scientific resources. ROAD is complementary to the Global Open Access Portal (GOAP) developed by UNESCO and providing a snapshot of the status of Open Access to scientific information around the world….”

Gettysburg College Employment Site | Scholarly Communications Librarian

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“Gettysburg College’s Musselman Library invites a librarian with a teaching and outreach orientation to join its Scholarly Communications department. Our library is a dynamic organization where every staff member makes a difference. We serve an increasingly diverse liberal arts community of 2,600 undergraduate students, including 20-25% first-generation college students and over 16% Pell Grant recipients. We recognize that excellence cannot be achieved without diversity, and we seek to recruit and retain a workforce that offers students and colleagues richly varied perspectives and ways of knowing and learning.

The Scholarly Communications Librarian plays a key role in providing and expanding library services related to open access, open education, and library publishing. The successful candidate is an enthusiastic and engaged teacher who can design and deliver outreach and instructional activities and programs, both to promote scholarly communications services and to contribute to an active information literacy program. This position will oversee sustainable growth and management of our established institutional repository, The Cupola, as well as collaborate to develop new open access journals like our undergraduate journals. This librarian will join a growing campus conversation about textbook affordability and work with administrators, faculty, and other stakeholders to improve affordability. They will also provide education and support that enables faculty to adopt, adapt, and create Open Educational Resources for use in their courses….”

Gettysburg College Employment Site | Scholarly Communications Librarian

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“Gettysburg College’s Musselman Library invites a librarian with a teaching and outreach orientation to join its Scholarly Communications department. Our library is a dynamic organization where every staff member makes a difference. We serve an increasingly diverse liberal arts community of 2,600 undergraduate students, including 20-25% first-generation college students and over 16% Pell Grant recipients. We recognize that excellence cannot be achieved without diversity, and we seek to recruit and retain a workforce that offers students and colleagues richly varied perspectives and ways of knowing and learning.

The Scholarly Communications Librarian plays a key role in providing and expanding library services related to open access, open education, and library publishing. The successful candidate is an enthusiastic and engaged teacher who can design and deliver outreach and instructional activities and programs, both to promote scholarly communications services and to contribute to an active information literacy program. This position will oversee sustainable growth and management of our established institutional repository, The Cupola, as well as collaborate to develop new open access journals like our undergraduate journals. This librarian will join a growing campus conversation about textbook affordability and work with administrators, faculty, and other stakeholders to improve affordability. They will also provide education and support that enables faculty to adopt, adapt, and create Open Educational Resources for use in their courses….”

Open Journal Systems (OJS) sets new standards to achieve OpenAIRE compliance with JATS – OpenAIRE Blogs

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“Open Journal Systems (OJS, https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/) is an open source journal management and publishing system, developed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP, https://pkp.sfu.ca/). Around 10,000 journals worldwide and over a thousand journals published in Europe use Open Journal Systems. The latest major version OJS 3 was released in 2016, and since then hundreds of OJS journals have upgraded including large national journal platforms like Tidsskrift.dk and Journal.fi.Therefore, it is important to help the growing number of OJS 3 journals to become compliant with the OpenAIRE infrastructure in terms of comprehensive metadata descriptions of open access articles on research in Europe and beyond….”

Open Journal Systems (OJS) sets new standards to achieve OpenAIRE compliance with JATS – OpenAIRE Blogs

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“Open Journal Systems (OJS, https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/) is an open source journal management and publishing system, developed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP, https://pkp.sfu.ca/). Around 10,000 journals worldwide and over a thousand journals published in Europe use Open Journal Systems. The latest major version OJS 3 was released in 2016, and since then hundreds of OJS journals have upgraded including large national journal platforms like Tidsskrift.dk and Journal.fi.Therefore, it is important to help the growing number of OJS 3 journals to become compliant with the OpenAIRE infrastructure in terms of comprehensive metadata descriptions of open access articles on research in Europe and beyond….”

Open Access Requirements for Horizon 2020-Funded Projects | Jisc scholarly communications

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“UK institutions and organisations are particularly well represented in Horizon 2020, the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020), and Jisc is the National Open Access Desk in the UK for OpenAIREAdvance, one of whose tasks is to ensure that Horizon 2020-funded projects comply with funding policies. As such, we routinely contact project coordinators or research officers on behalf of OpenAIRE.  The relationship makes sense, because Jisc works on digital infrastructures across the country, and we supply HEI with the Janet Network, as well as a host of open access/open science services. In some instances, however,coordinators have not been cascading down the information we’ve sent to others who are involved in the various projects.

There is one particular Open Access obligation for all Horizon2020 projects that takes priority over many of the others:

Open Access Mandate:  All H2020 projects must provide open access (OA) to all peer-reviewed scientific publications that stem from project activities, immediately or otherwise within 6/12 months of publication where publisher embargoes apply.  Non-compliance can lead to a grant reduction and potential sanctions….”

Open Access Requirements for Horizon 2020-Funded Projects | Jisc scholarly communications

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“UK institutions and organisations are particularly well represented in Horizon 2020, the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020), and Jisc is the National Open Access Desk in the UK for OpenAIREAdvance, one of whose tasks is to ensure that Horizon 2020-funded projects comply with funding policies. As such, we routinely contact project coordinators or research officers on behalf of OpenAIRE.  The relationship makes sense, because Jisc works on digital infrastructures across the country, and we supply HEI with the Janet Network, as well as a host of open access/open science services. In some instances, however,coordinators have not been cascading down the information we’ve sent to others who are involved in the various projects.

There is one particular Open Access obligation for all Horizon2020 projects that takes priority over many of the others:

Open Access Mandate:  All H2020 projects must provide open access (OA) to all peer-reviewed scientific publications that stem from project activities, immediately or otherwise within 6/12 months of publication where publisher embargoes apply.  Non-compliance can lead to a grant reduction and potential sanctions….”

Elsevier and Norway Agree on New Open-Access Deal | The Scientist Magazine®

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“After unsuccessful negotiations between a coalition of Norwegian organizations and the academic publisher Elsevier culminated in cancelled subscriptions earlier this year, the two have successfully established a new nationwide licensing agreement. The deal, which was announced yesterday (April 23), is a pilot program that covers a period of two years, during which articles with corresponding authors from Norway will be published open access in most of Elsevier’s journals….”

Elsevier and Norway Agree on New Open-Access Deal | The Scientist Magazine®

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“After unsuccessful negotiations between a coalition of Norwegian organizations and the academic publisher Elsevier culminated in cancelled subscriptions earlier this year, the two have successfully established a new nationwide licensing agreement. The deal, which was announced yesterday (April 23), is a pilot program that covers a period of two years, during which articles with corresponding authors from Norway will be published open access in most of Elsevier’s journals….”

Scientists who share data publicly receive more citations | Science Codex

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“A new study finds that papers with data shared in public gene expression archives received increased numbers of citations for at least five years. The large size of the study allowed the researchers to exclude confounding factors that have plagued prior studies of the effect and to spot a trend of increasing dataset reuse over time. The findings will be important in persuading scientists that they can benefit directly from publicly sharing their data.

The study, which adds to growing evidence for an open data citation benefit across different scientific fields, is entitled “Data reuse and the open citation advantage”. It was conducted by Dr. Heather Piwowar of Duke University and Dr. Todd Vision of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and published today in PeerJ, a peer reviewed open access journal in which all articles are freely available to everyone….”