Monthly Archives: October 2022

Statement from Martha Whitehead Celebrating Open Access Week 2022 | Harvard Library

Posted on by
Reply

“Harvard Library is proud to celebrate International Open Access Week. Established by SPARC and partners in the student community in 2008, International Open Access Week is an opportunity for academic and research communities around the globe to “inspire wider participation in helping to make open access the new norm in scholarship and research.”

Our collective commitment to open is central to Harvard Library’s mission to advance the learning, research, and pursuit of the truth that are at the heart of Harvard, and our aspiration to be global leaders in expanding world knowledge and intellectual exploration. This commitment is embedded in our values as we endeavor to lead with curiosity, seek collaboration, embrace diverse perspectives, champion access, and aim for the extraordinary. We do not pursue open as an end in itself—open is only the beginning.

As we come together to celebrate this week, I am reflecting on the varieties of open we create, support, and maintain at Harvard Library. We create and invest in collections, content, and resources that carry open licenses, not only to provide unfettered access to these rich and illuminating materials, but to inspire new and transformative uses among those who seek and discover them. We support our communities of researchers as they leverage open-access policies and data management plans to share their scholarship as openly as possible, as a public good. We support our scholars, too, as they launch their own open-access journals, working together as partners who share a vision for knowledge equity.

Critically, we maintain these services, collections, and infrastructure as a collaborative, global endeavor.  We envision a robust network of open repositories that enables the sharing of research outputs by communities around the world. Indeed, our public commitment to open aligns with recent national initiatives to disseminate federally funded research outputs and data through open repositories so that all may benefit from free and immediate access to breakthroughs in science, technology, medicine, and more. …”

GREI Collaborative Webinar Series on Data Sharing in Generalist Repositories | Data Science at NIH

Posted on by
Reply

“Join us for a series of presentations and panel discussions by generalist repositories to learn about available repository resources and best practices for sharing NIH-funded research.

Presented by the members of the NIH Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI): Dryad, Dataverse, Figshare, Mendeley Data, Open Science Framework, Vivli, and Zenodo….”

International Open Access Week – Research Consulting

Posted on by
Reply

“Between 24 and 30 October, Open Access Week is bringing together members of the academic community around the aim of making openness the default for research. Events throughout the week have focused on equitable knowledge sharing as a key part of the OA endeavour, highlighting the important role that this sharing plays in addressing global inequalities.

Since 2013, Research Consulting has shared this mission as we aim to inform, support and accelerate the transition to open access. Over the years, we’ve also engaged with universities, research funders, publishers, government departments, charities and more as they work to achieve this goal.

Now, as Open Access Week draws to a close, we believe there’s an opportunity to reflect on how we can all keep supporting the transition to open. In this post, we’ve summarised some of our most recent work that can help you – whatever your role in the open community – to do just that….”

Exploring the Hidden Impacts of Open Access Financing Mechanisms: AAAS Survey on Scholarly Publication Experiences & Perspectives

Posted on by
Reply

“While open access has tremendous benefits, the primary mechanism that has evolved to enable OA for publications – the article processing charge (APC) – has created concerning unintended consequences. APCs, which are fees paid to publish open access, have engendered a pay-to-play environment that is contributing to growing inequities in who can publish and where. In a recent survey, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) sought insight into researchers’ and institutions’ experiences with scientific publishing. We received complete responses from 422 researchers across the country and learned that: 

• Most Researchers Do Not Currently Budget for Publishing Costs & Many Have Not Yet Paid APCs: Nearly two-thirds of researchers (n=264, 62.9%) reported that they did not budget for publishing costs. Slightly over one-third had never paid an APC.

• Most Researchers Find It Difficult to Obtain Funds for APCs: Of the researchers who had paid APCs (n=170) most reported it being very difficult (n=33, 19.4%) or difficult (n=56, 32.9%) to obtain funds to pay APC’s. Researchers at institutions ranging from 3,000 to 9,999 students were three times as likely to find it difficult to very difficult as researchers at institutions larger than 10,000 students.

• Most Researchers Are Using Grant Funds to Pay APCs: Among the researchers who had paid APCs (n=173), most used grant funding to cover costs (n=120, 69.4%). Women were nearly three times as likely as men to have paid APCs using grant funds. Of 89 institutions represented by librarians and administrators who responded to the survey, only about one-third (n=32, 36.0%) had funds to support APC payments by students and/or faculty.

• APCs Create Significant Tradeoffs for Researchers: Over three-quarters of researchers (n=115, 77.7%) reported foregoing purchases of materials, equipment, or tools to pay APCs, and nearly three-fifths (n=86, 58.1%) reported not attending workshops or conferences relevant to their work. Compared with men, women were more than 2.5 times as likely not to attend workshops and conferences so that they could pay APCs….

Recommendations Ensuring that OA policies across federal research agencies do not embed adverse consequences of APCs and related financing models in our nation’s scientific enterprise is paramount to the integrity of and trust in the enterprise. AAAS recommends study, evidence development, and response to:

• Understand the direct and indirect costs associated with OA policies and increased APCs.

• Ensure that federal policies solve access barriers, not create them.

• Provide clarity and consistency in OA policy terminology.

• Ensure alignment between OA policies and federal data policies.”

Exploring the Hidden Impacts of Open Access Financing Mechanisms: AAAS Survey on Scholarly Publication Experiences & Perspectives

Posted on by
Reply

“While open access has tremendous benefits, the primary mechanism that has evolved to enable OA for publications – the article processing charge (APC) – has created concerning unintended consequences. APCs, which are fees paid to publish open access, have engendered a pay-to-play environment that is contributing to growing inequities in who can publish and where. In a recent survey, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) sought insight into researchers’ and institutions’ experiences with scientific publishing. We received complete responses from 422 researchers across the country and learned that:

• Most Researchers Do Not Currently Budget for Publishing Costs & Many Have Not Yet Paid APCs: Nearly two-thirds of researchers (n=264, 62.9%) reported that they did not budget for publishing costs. Slightly over one-third had never paid an APC.

• Most Researchers Find It Difficult to Obtain Funds for APCs: Of the researchers who had paid APCs (n=170) most reported it being very difficult (n=33, 19.4%) or difficult (n=56, 32.9%) to obtain funds to pay APC’s. Researchers at institutions ranging from 3,000 to 9,999 students were three times as likely to find it difficult to very difficult as researchers at institutions larger than 10,000 students.

• Most Researchers Are Using Grant Funds to Pay APCs: Among the researchers who had paid APCs (n=173), most used grant funding to cover costs (n=120, 69.4%). Women were nearly three times as likely as men to have paid APCs using grant funds. Of 89 institutions represented by librarians and administrators who responded to the survey, only about one-third (n=32, 36.0%) had funds to support APC payments by students and/or faculty.

• APCs Create Significant Tradeoffs for Researchers: Over three-quarters of researchers (n=115, 77.7%) reported foregoing purchases of materials, equipment, or tools to pay APCs, and nearly three-fifths (n=86, 58.1%) reported not attending workshops or conferences relevant to their work. Compared with men, women were more than 2.5 times as likely not to attend workshops and conferences so that they could pay APCs….”

AAAS Survey: Many Researchers Face Difficulties Paying Open Access Fees | American Association for the Advancement of Science

Posted on by
Reply

“The APC “is a model that freezes inequities into place,” said Sudip Parikh, chief executive officer of AAAS and executive publisher of the Science family of journals. Parikh announced the survey findings Oct. 25 at the AAAS Science and Technology Policy Forum – and offered recommendations to ensure that public access policies benefit readers and ensure equitable opportunities for researchers.

AAAS collected 422 responses from U.S. researchers between March and September 2022 to better understand how open access publishing trends and costs are affecting the scientific enterprise and received survey responses from librarians and administrators representing 89 institutions. According to the survey findings, 63 percent of researchers had paid an APC at some point in their career. Among those who had previously paid APCs and answered survey questions about experiences paying APCs, 52 percent of respondents reported that it was difficult or very difficult to obtain those funds, and 69 percent of respondent had used grant funds to cover APC costs.

The ability of researchers to obtain funding for APCs varied based on institution size, the survey found.  Researchers at institutions with a student body between 3,000 and 9,999 students were three times as likely to find it very difficult to obtain funds for APCs as their counterparts at larger institutions with more than 10,000 students, adjusting for gender, race, and length of time conducting research. The survey also found gender disparities in funding for APCs: women were three times as likely to use grant funds to pay for APCs than their male counterparts, adjusting for race, length of time conducting research, and institution size.

Paying APCs can result in tradeoffs for researchers seeking to advance their work and their careers. Researchers who had paid APCs reported they diverted funds they might have otherwise spent on equipment or professional development. More than three-quarters of researchers reported forgoing purchases of materials, equipment or tools, while more than half reported using funds they may have otherwise spent on workshops or conferences. Women were 2.5 times as likely as men to forgo a professional development opportunity in order to pay APCs. …”

US scientists wary of author publication fees | Times Higher Education (THE)

Posted on by
Reply

“But the AAAS, in outlining its survey results, warned of risks from that approach. “While open access has tremendous benefits,” the AAAS said, the expected reliance on APCs “has created concerning unintended consequences”.

Among its key findings, the AAAS survey showed that about two-thirds of researchers already had paid an APC. Of those who had paid APCs and answered a question about where the money came from, 70 per cent said they used grant money. Yet among those who had paid an APC, a slight majority described the experience as difficult or very difficult, with the problem more pronounced at smaller institutions, the AAAS said.

Also, large majorities of the researchers using APCs made sacrifices that included foregoing purchases of materials, equipment or tools, and not attending workshops or conferences relevant to their work, the AAAS said.

Women were more than twice as likely as men not to attend workshops and conferences to afford their APCs, it said. Among 89 institutions represented in the survey by librarians and administrators, only about a third said they had money to cover APC payments by students and other authors needing it. A full 15 per cent of those researchers said they paid APCs out of their own personal funds….

Dr Parikh warned that other publishers with for-profit models have set up families of journals so that they can lure scientists into paying the APC with the hope of getting published in their top-tier journal, but then keep the APC and publish the paper in one of their smaller journals.

That system also creates an “unholy alliance with the tenure-track process”, by fuelling the incentives for scientists to publish more papers, Dr Parikh said.”

Speculation on the Most Likely OSTP Nelson Memo Implementation Scenario and the Resulting Publisher Strategies – The Scholarly Kitchen

Posted on by
Reply

“Unlike Plan S, this is not a policy intended to regulate (or radically reshape) an industry. That is beyond the goal or remit of the Nelson Memo, even if it will impact some business models. What it does is to regulate the conditions required for a researcher to receive federal research funding, and that is where implementation will focus. It will set requirements on funded researchers, not pick a business model that publishers must follow. On this point, the policies will be agnostic, even if they have impact. The difference is important. Implementation plans will specify an end state, and likely say little (if anything) about the route to that end state. That will be left up to the researcher and their service providers (e.g., publishers) to sort out.

Second, one must look at the policy implementations that are currently in place as a result of the Holdren Memo. Presently, funded authors must ensure that a copy of at least the Accepted Manuscript (AM) version of the paper (or better) is deposited in their funder’s designated repository and made publicly available at or before the time when the allowable embargo period, currently 12 months, expires. Funding agencies, particularly the large agencies covered by the Holdren Memo, are conservative organizations, and given that there is currently no additional funding available to support this new policy and that they already have successful infrastructure in place, Occam’s Razor points to the most likely solution as “more of the same, just sooner”….

Again, the Nelson Memo guidance is explicitly agnostic with regard to business models. An insistence on CC BY would most likely eliminate many potential routes to compliance and result in driving things toward the article processing charge (APC) Gold OA model. By leaving out licensing requirements, a broader slate of more equitable routes come into play….

This suggests that APC-driven Gold OA, with its many inequities, may well end up as the dominant route to compliance, largely by default if no other alternatives are sustainable. In some fields Green OA may not be an option for authors if most publishers decide that they have to flip to Gold OA in order to survive.”

 

Open Access Week Workshop: Open Science and Open for Climate Justice – EELISA

Posted on by
Reply

“In the context of the Open Science Week UPB has prepared a Workshop to share Open Science Practices in the framework for Climate Justice. During this event participants will recive an overview of what is Open Science, best pracices, its reproducibility and successful case studies of the use of Open Science research methodologies at UPB. The lecturers will also talk about open sources, Open Science Software and Open Science code….”

Avert Bangladesh’s looming water crisis through open science and better data

Posted on by
Reply

“Access to data is a huge problem. Bangladesh collects a large amount of hydrological data, such as for stream flow, surface and groundwater levels, precipitation, water quality and water consumption. But these data are not readily available: researchers must seek out officials individually to gain access. India’s hydrological data can be similarly hard to obtain, preventing downstream Bangladesh from accurately predicting flows into its rivers….

Publishing hydrological data in an open-access database would be an exciting step. For now, however, the logistics, funding and politics to make on-the-ground data publicly available are likely to remain out of reach.

Fortunately, satellite data can help to fill the gaps. Current Earth-observing satellite missions, such as the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) Follow-On, the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) network, multiple radar altimeters and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors make data freely available and can provide an overall picture of water availability across the country (this is what we used in many of our analyses). The picture is soon to improve. In December, NASA and CNES, France’s space agency, plan to launch the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission. SWOT will provide unprecedented information on global ocean and inland surface waters at fine spatial resolution, allowing for much more detailed monitoring of water levels than is possible today. The international scientific community has been working hard over the past 15 years to get ready to store, process and use SWOT data….

New open-science initiatives, particularly NASA’s Earth Information System, launched in 2021, can help by supporting the development of customized data-analysis and modelling tools (see go.nature.com/3cffbh9). The data we present here were acquired in this framework. We are currently working on an advanced hydrological model that will be capable of representing climate-change effects and human impacts on Bangladesh’s water availability. We expect that the co-development of such a modelling system with local partners will support decision-making….”

ORCID’s 2022 Public Data File Now Available – ORCID

Posted on by
Reply

“ORCID was founded on a set of 10 principles, some of which directly mirror the goals of the Open Access initiative. In particular, our 7th founding principle states: All data contributed to ORCID by researchers or claimed by them will be available in standard formats for free download (subject to the researchers’ own privacy settings) that are updated once a year and released under a CC0 waiver. This is why we publish our annual public data file, as we do each year, usually during Open Access Week. 

Our 2021 data file was downloaded 14,299 times and received one citation. In 2020, the data file contributed to the data visualization that showed the digital footprint of Covid-19 research in an astounding map produced by the Research Graph Foundation. 

The file is available in XML format, however, if you prefer JSON, you can use our ORCID Conversion Library available in our Github repository. This Java application enables the generation of JSON from XML in the default version ORCID schema format.

The data is divided into 12 subsets for easier download and use. The first set contains the full record summary for each record. The other 11 contain the activities for each record, including full work data. We also have an article for those who need help working with bulk data.

 

We look forward to seeing how the research community will take advantage of this free, open source of data that is an asset to the research ecosystem. Do you have plans to use the public data file? Let us know by contacting us at comms@orcid.org or Tweet us @ORCID_org to let us know. ”

Labbers win MIT Prize for Open Data 2022 — MIT Media Lab

Posted on by
Reply

“The MIT School of Science and the MIT Libraries co-sponsored the inaugural MIT Prize for Open Data to highlight the value of open data at MIT and to encourage the next generation of researchers. The following winners and honorable mentions include members of the Media Lab community, and were selected from more than 70 nominees representing all five schools and several research centers across MIT….”

Speculation on the Most Likely OSTP Nelson Memo Implementation Scenario and the Resulting Publisher Strategies

Posted on by
Reply

What is the most likely scenario for implementation of the OSTP’s Nelson Memo? And what strategies will that offer for publishers?

The post Speculation on the Most Likely OSTP Nelson Memo Implementation Scenario and the Resulting Publisher Strategies appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.

Adieu to Educopia: An Interview with Katherine Skinner

Posted on by
Reply

Read about the history of Educopia and look ahead to its future in today’s interview with co-founder Katherine Skinner, who recently stepped down as their Executive Director

The post Adieu to Educopia: An Interview with Katherine Skinner appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.