“The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) today announces the publication of its Recommended Practice, RP-31-2021, Reproducibility Badging and Definitions. Developed by the NISO Taxonomy, Definitions, and Recognition Badging Scheme Working Group, this new Recommended Practice provides a set of recognition standards that can be deployed across scholarly publishing outputs, to easily recognize and reward the sharing of data and methods….”
Monthly Archives: January 2021
Publishing Philosophy Open Access Without a Particle Collider | Impact of Social Sciences
Open Access often appears to be a monolithic concept, covering all fields of research and publication. However, in practice its application is to a large extent determined by the needs and resources available to different academic communities. In this post, Bryan W. Roberts and David Teira discuss open access publishing in philosophy and how an emerging generation of open publications has developed to meet the needs of an academic discipline where funding for publication is scarce.
Don’t believe the hype: repositories are critical for ensuring equity, inclusion and sustainability in the transition to open access | Plan S
“The rhetoric of some scholarly publishers lately has shown a troublesome trend with respect to Open Access repositories (often referred to as Green OA). Most recently, the CEO of Springer Nature, Frank Vrancken Peeters, delivered a presentation to the Academic Publishing in Europe conference in which he mischaracterizes OA repositories in several ways. In that presentation, which I did not attend personally, but has been reported on by Porter Anderson in Publishing Perspectives, Peeters echoes a number of inaccuracies posted in an earlier OASPA guest blog, to which COAR immediately responded with Correcting the Record: The Critical Role of OA Repositories in Open Access and Open Science.
Unfortunately, I must again speak out, to correct the many errors contained in Peeters’ presentation. Contrary to what Peeters states:
OA repositories support Open Access and Open Science. The original definition of open access as defined by the Budapest Open Access Initiative included two paths: OA journals and OA repositories. Depositing an article in an OA repository without embargo is full open access (and, as such, this route is an option for compliance with Plan S).
OA repositories most often provide access to the author’s accepted manuscript (AAM), which can be licenced CC-BY and the text contained in the AAM differs very little from the formatted publisher version.
OA repositories can easily link to related content held elsewhere, including published versions, datasets, and other related materials. They also include open metrics and employ open standards and software.
Articles in OA repositories are discoverable through major discovery systems including Google Scholar, Unpaywall, OpenAIRE, CORE, LA Referencia and so on. Researchers do not need to search through individual repositories to find the articles contained in repositories….”
Why we should stop publishing in open-access journals with article processing charges | AESOP Young Academics
“Within this framework, a question emerges: should we publish in these journals? My opinion is that we should not do it at all (for a similar viewpoint, see Eric Verdeil’s opinion). It is not only an issue of individual ethics, but of public ethics, which concerns the whole academic system. As a matter of fact, feeding the APC journal system has three serious negative consequences.
It sets a barrier to access for those without research funds. This system creates a barrier for researchers who do not have access to substantial research funds (such as young or precarious researchers or scholars from not-so-affluent universities). This increases the hierarchical segmentation of the academic world even further.
It risks not adequately guaranteeing the quality control of the scientific publications. “Predatory journals” have repeatedly been suspected of lowering the review process standards. Can the same suspect apply also to many non-predatory APC journals? My answer is affirmative. All APC journals make money and survive thanks to the articles sent to them. The very mechanism of requiring a fee from authors for publishing their article could push every APC journal to lower qualitative standards in order to publish as much as possible. The fact that, in many cases, the publication time of APC journals is very short (three or four weeks maximum, from sending the paper to its publication) seem to support these suspicions.
It makes serious research work impossible. Many APC journals publish a significant number of articles. The case of Sustainability is blatant. During 2020, Sustainability published around 10,500 articles. For a researcher working on questions of sustainable cities, how is it possible to stay on top of everything that is published in this journal, so as to be aware of recent research developments in his/her field? Publishing a reasonable number of carefully selected articles is an essential task of scientific journals, which allows robust research work to be possible. In this regard, serious scientific journals are an essential component of the academic world: through their rigorous filter, they make the development of cumulative knowledge and robust research possible, as well as the flourishing of scientific debates. The publication of an exaggerated number of articles with almost no filter is, therefore, extremely detrimental to everybody’s research….”
Trump EPA’s Fast Track for ‘Secret Science’ Rule Nixed (1)
“The Trump administration’s EPA broke the law when it finalized a “science transparency” rule and made it effective immediately, a federal court ruled Wednesday in a decision that could help the Biden administration scrap the rule.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Montana said the Environmental Protection Agency failed to justify its decision to make the controversial rule take effect right after its publication in the Federal Register, instead of after 30 days, as is typical….”
Court rules against fast-track of Trump EPA’s ‘secret science’ rule | TheHill
“A federal judge in Montana late Wednesday ruled against the Trump administration’s attempt to fast-track a controversial rule about how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers scientific evidence, endangering its future under the Biden administration.
The Trump EPA had characterized the rule, which would restrict the use of studies that don’t make their underlying data publicly available, as procedural, allowing it to go into effect immediately.
Judge Brian Morris, an Obama appointee, disagreed, determining that the rule was substantive and ordering that it can’t go into effect until Feb. 5.
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Delaying the rule could jeopardize it, as it would now be subject to a new White House memo that freezes pending regulations for 60 days….”
Preservation of Digital Blog-Posts | Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir les savoirs communs
The goal of this literature review was to gain an understanding of the current status of research on the topic of digital blog preservation. After conducting a series of searching within the database LISTA (Library, Information Science, and Technology Abstracts), one can determine that there are little to no recent developments in technology or research specifically for the access/preservation of digital blog posts. Unsurprisingly, much of the scholarly conversation about blog/microblog preservation took place between 2002 and 2010.
by Katie Pelland
Peer review, preprints and a pandemic | Research Information
“Even before the Covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020, staff at MIT Press were noticing a problem with preprint servers. Over time, more and more preprints were being published and drifting into mainstream media, even government, in ways that weren’t always helpful and were sometimes even misleading.
Then came coronavirus. As Nick Lindsay, director of journals and open access at MIT Press, puts it: ‘These issues were exacerbated as the sheer volume of research we were seeing on bioRxiv, medRxiv and other preprint servers was immense. Literally thousands of preprints were going out there with no review, and we started to see some really troubling things take place.’
Amid the torrent of data released onto preprint servers, research clangers emerged and withdrawals, retractions and expressions of concern followed. For example, in late January, 2020, a bioRXiv preprint from a group of researchers from the India Institute of Technology reported HIV insertions in the spike of SARS-CoV-2 that were not present in past coronaviruses. The researchers also speculated these had been placed in the virus intentionally. Then around a week later, a ResearchGate preprint from a researcher at the South China University of Technology and colleague, proposed that coronavirus ‘probably originated from a laboratory’….
Rapid Reviews: COVID-19 (RR:C19), headed up by Professor Stefano Bertozzi from Public Health at the the University of California Berkeley, quickly followed. Described as an ‘open-access overlay journal’, the publication aims to accelerate the peer review of Covid-19-related research preprints to advance findings and prevent the dissemination of false or misleading news….”
Heartbeat of Marygrove College Continues with Online Library Collection – Internet Archive Blogs
“For nearly 100 years, the Marygrove College library was the hub of activity on campus. The small, liberal arts college in Detroit didn’t have a student union, so the library served as the heartbeat of campus, offering students a place to study, learn and socialize.
“The Marygrove library was very unique. It was a place where students came for help and to see their classmates,” says Laura Manley, a librarian from 2005-2015. “If they didn’t understand something about an assignment, they would find out from others and network in the library.”
As enrollment dropped and financial pressures mounted, the college closed in December 2019. The fate of the library collection was uncertain. Administrators explored avenues to sell or dispose of the books but decided instead to donate the entire collection to the Internet Archive. More than 70,000 volumes were boxed up and then scanned into a digital format. The physical copies were put into storage and the Archive makes one digital version of each item available for free check out through its Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) program.
Rather than shut its doors permanently, the library has a new home online. The Internet Archive celebrated the reopening of the Marygrove College Library last October, offering a way for the heart of the Marygrove campus to keep beating….”
Library Futures: New Nonprofit Launches to Support a Technology-Positive Future for Libraries – Internet Archive Blogs
“A coalition of advocacy and public interest groups has joined forces to launch the Library Futures Institute, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) committed to upholding the right of libraries to provide users with materials in the new digital environment.
The new organization launched its website on January 25 and will work to empower libraries to fulfill their mission of providing equal and equitable access to culture for the public good. …”
Library Futures: New Nonprofit Launches to Support a Technology-Positive Future for Libraries – Internet Archive Blogs
“A coalition of advocacy and public interest groups has joined forces to launch the Library Futures Institute, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) committed to upholding the right of libraries to provide users with materials in the new digital environment.
The new organization launched its website on January 25 and will work to empower libraries to fulfill their mission of providing equal and equitable access to culture for the public good. …”
Public Humanities and Publication
“Publicly engaged scholars produce work in new formats that are not yet universally supported by academic institutions. Conventional single-author print books are joined by or give way to print-plusdigital and digital-only publications or “born-digital” publications, which are designed in and for a digital environment, featuring multimedia, dynamic content, data sets, or other tools to shape, use, and navigate the contents. Different publishers are able to cater to different subsets of these established and new formats, depending on the expertise available and the capacity to adapt to evolving needs. Seeking out collaborations across campus, with libraries, or with outside funding agencies to support new formats and business models is a key activity in developing capacity for the public humanities. At Stanford University Press, with the support of two consecutive grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we are building a digital publishing program (https://www.sup.org/digital/) of interactive scholarly works. The program is not exclusively dedicated to the public humanities, but it offers an ideal home for this kind of work. Our publications are open access, allowing audiences to engage with our content without paywalls. Interactive formats can more easily cater to different audiences, incorporating scholarly arguments and community resources. We are collaborating on campus with Stanford University Libraries on preservation and archiving our publications. Our FAQs (https://www.sup.org/digital/faq/) explain the scope of our program and our blog (http://blog.supdigital.org/), features content especially about our archiving and preservation efforts….”
Public Humanities and Publication
“Publicly engaged scholars produce work in new formats that are not yet universally supported by academic institutions. Conventional single-author print books are joined by or give way to print-plusdigital and digital-only publications or “born-digital” publications, which are designed in and for a digital environment, featuring multimedia, dynamic content, data sets, or other tools to shape, use, and navigate the contents. Different publishers are able to cater to different subsets of these established and new formats, depending on the expertise available and the capacity to adapt to evolving needs. Seeking out collaborations across campus, with libraries, or with outside funding agencies to support new formats and business models is a key activity in developing capacity for the public humanities. At Stanford University Press, with the support of two consecutive grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we are building a digital publishing program (https://www.sup.org/digital/) of interactive scholarly works. The program is not exclusively dedicated to the public humanities, but it offers an ideal home for this kind of work. Our publications are open access, allowing audiences to engage with our content without paywalls. Interactive formats can more easily cater to different audiences, incorporating scholarly arguments and community resources. We are collaborating on campus with Stanford University Libraries on preservation and archiving our publications. Our FAQs (https://www.sup.org/digital/faq/) explain the scope of our program and our blog (http://blog.supdigital.org/), features content especially about our archiving and preservation efforts….”
Should Universities Get Out of the Patent Business? | Centre for International Governance Innovation
“The emphasis on university patenting is an example of a policy that was developed for the right reasons but fails in practice. Unfortunately, rather than abandoning the policy, universities and governments are doubling down on it. The results aren’t surprising: Canadians are paying more to get less. It turns out that university patenting represents a cost that hinders Canada’s — already lagging — innovation performance. It lessens investments in innovation, lowers innovation outputs for Canadian firms and delays or kills promising innovation. It is past time to fix this policy, and open science collaborations are an emerging tool that may be right for the job….”
Should Universities Get Out of the Patent Business? | Centre for International Governance Innovation
“The emphasis on university patenting is an example of a policy that was developed for the right reasons but fails in practice. Unfortunately, rather than abandoning the policy, universities and governments are doubling down on it. The results aren’t surprising: Canadians are paying more to get less. It turns out that university patenting represents a cost that hinders Canada’s — already lagging — innovation performance. It lessens investments in innovation, lowers innovation outputs for Canadian firms and delays or kills promising innovation. It is past time to fix this policy, and open science collaborations are an emerging tool that may be right for the job….”