Catégorie : EN

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EN

Building internationally competitive journals for science data sharing: The evolution of three biomedical English academic journals launched in China

Authors : Huisheng Wang, Hao Cheng

Academic journals serve as the platform of scientific collaboration. As China’s contribution to world-class science is advancing at a remarkable pace, cultivating world-class English-language journals has become a national imperative issue. Taking Academician George F. Gao and the three flagship journals he founded or led—Protein & Cell (2010), China CDC Weekly (2019), and hLife (2023)—as examples, herein we trace the evolutionary trajectory of English-language periodicals in China, dissecting their evolving missions, internationalization strategies and contributions to biosafety and ethical governance to provide a reproducible roadmap for currently-emerging journals.

Through analyses of the case of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) gene-editing ethics controversy, pandemic-data-sharing protocols, and international cooperation frameworks, we highlight that journals are pivotal arenas where domestic and global scientific discourses on critical biosafety and public health issues are made.

Building internationally competitive journals for science data sharing scientific governance will serve as a critical foundation for China’s ambitions to become a scientific power and for its deeper engagement in global science and technology governance.

URL : Building internationally competitive journals for science data sharing: The evolution of three biomedical English academic journals launched in China

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bsheal.2026.04.002

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EN

Research integrity and open access models: insights from Retraction Watch and OpenAlex

Author : Ben Rawlins

This study examines the relationship between research integrity and open access (OA) publishing models using data from Retraction Watch and OpenAlex. Analysing 60,608 retracted publications from 2009 to 2024, the article traces how retraction patterns have shifted alongside the expansion of OA, with gold OA surpassing closed access as the dominant modality among retracted articles by 2023.

The analysis also highlights the economic dimensions of research integrity and OA, with an estimated US$41.9 million in article processing charges (APCs) collected by publishers for research that was later retracted.

These findings raise concerns about APC‑based publishing models that directly link publisher revenue to publication volume, creating structural tensions for editorial oversight and quality control. Rather than framing OA as inherently more or less prone to integrity failures, the article argues that these challenges reflect broader incentive structures within contemporary scholarly publishing.

Addressing them will require co‑ordinated governance efforts among publishers, funders, libraries and research institutions to ensure that OA is matched by accountability, transparency and trust in scholarly research.

URL : Research integrity and open access models: insights from Retraction Watch and OpenAlex

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.763

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EN

The Rise of Diamond Open Access Journals in Earth Sciences: Past Developments, Present Tensions, and Future Pathways

Authors : Olivier Pourret, Maëlis Arnould, Thibault Duretz, James Ian Farquharson, Dasapta Erwin Irawan, Larry Syu-Heng Lai, Alice Lefebvre, Craig Magee, Marc-Alban Millet, Samantha Teplitzky, Camille Thomas, Romain Vaucher, Lauren Waszek, Mark A Wieczorek, Thomas William Wong Hearing

Over roughly the last decade, a visible, community-led Diamond Open Access (OA) ecosystem has emerged in the Earth sciences, not as a departure from tradition, but as the latest expression of a long-standing culture of open, society-supported scholarly communication.

While free-to-read, fee-free publishing initiatives have deep roots in the field, predating the Diamond terminology by decades and encompassing regional infrastructures and institutional serial publishing by geological surveys and learned societies, the period since the mid-2010s has brought a new wave of explicitly Diamond-identified, community-governed disciplinary journals that have transformed the visibility and ambition of this model. This article analyzes that transition through a field-specific lens, taking journals such as Volcanica, Seismica, Tektonika, Geomorphica, Geodynamica, Sedimentologika, Advances in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry, Open Paleontology, Planetary Research, and Journal of Studies of Earth’s Deep Interior as emblematic of a broader shift in scholarly communication.

Building on current Diamond OA debates, we argue that Earth sciences Diamond journals are not merely “no-fee” outlets but sociotechnical experiments in reclaiming agency, redistributing publishing labor, and redefining value away from commercial metrics. This article develops three claims. First, the Earth sciences Diamond turn has been enabled by existing community infrastructures and high levels of volunteer coordination, but it remains uneven and fragile.

Second, Diamond models strengthen equity for authors and readers while exposing unresolved tensions around labor sustainability, institutional support, and recognition regimes still structured by prestige metrics. Third, Earth sciences offer a strategically important testbed for a wider transition towards commons-based scholarly communication, especially where global fieldwork, data justice, and decolonizing commitments demand alternatives to the pay-to-read and pay-to-publish systems.

We conclude that the next decade should prioritize durable funding compacts, shared technical infrastructure, and reform of research assessment so that Diamond OA can scale without reproducing extractive or technocratic governance.

URL : The Rise of Diamond Open Access Journals in Earth Sciences: Past Developments, Present Tensions, and Future Pathways

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31223/X56J5P

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EN

Sleeping beauties papers in open science: identification, characteristics, and impact

Authors : Xu Wang, Dongyang Shi, Zeeshan Muhammad, Yufei Xue, Junping Qiu

In an open scientific environment, multidimensional feature analysis and influence comparison of Sleeping Beauty papers can fully tap their potential scientific research value. This study selected management and computer science as the representative disciplines. The data sources are Web of Science (WoS) and altmetric.com, from which the study obtained a large amount of bibliographic data, citation data, and altmetrics data.

Firstly, the Sleeping Beauty papers are recognized by the K-values recognition method combined with three indicators. This study then analyzes and compares the sleep characteristics, journal distribution characteristics, awakening mechanisms, and impact of Sleeping Beauty papers across the two disciplines.

The empirical results show that. (1) computer science disciplines are more prone to producing Sleeping Beauty papers with more prominent citation features. (2) Papers published in top-tier management journals may also experience delayed recognition after years of dormancy, whearase Sleeping Beauty papers in the field of computer science often appear in low-level journals. (3)

Both disciplines focus on the innovation and value of articles in theoretical aspects, whearase the computer science discipline pays more attention to the application and improvement of previous algorithms or technologies. (4) The sleep and awakening of Sleeping Beauty papers are associated with both academic and social influences.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dsim.2026.100047

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EN

(De)generative AI and research integrity

Author : Jurij Selan

The phenomenon of artificial intelligence (AI) is inherently paradoxical. On one hand, it is generative. This generative quality has benefited contemporary research by enabling researchers to generate ideas and enhance research opportunities while saving time and costs.

On the other hand, the generative nature of AI appears inevitably to lead to antagonism, resulting in entropy through model collapse and becoming degenerative. In this article, we explore the extent to which the implicitly degenerative nature of AI could be regarded as the main long-term threat to research integrity (RI), as many other problems associated with the impact of AI on RI may be seen as its effects.

In the first part, we provide an overview of the impact of AI on RI, including AI ethics, the use of AI in education (AIED), AI as a “grey area” or questionable research practice (QRP), the implementation of principles for AI use in codes of conduct, and the attitudes of academic publishers and universities towards AI. In the second part, we examine how the collapse of generative AI into degenerative AI poses a critical threat to RI in the future.

We emphasise that the only way to prevent the harmful effects of the degenerative nature of AI on RI is to retain the original human-generated datasets as the basis for AI systems and continually add new human-generated datasets.

One of the key principles regarding the impact of AI on RI is therefore the responsibility to ensure that AI remains grounded in human-created reality. This, however, leads us to the sociotechnical perspective on degenerative AI, which we address in the third part, where we evaluate the broader social and moral impact of degenerative AI.

We stress a fundamental shift in human trust requirements towards society and make a plea for more inclusive anticipatory risk management of AI with respect to RI.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-08248-y
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EN

Modernizing Legal Scholarship: Toward Open Access Compliance

Authors : Ana Rogers-Butterworth, Melissa Moreau

Introduction and Literature Review: Legal research often operates outside conventional academic scholarship standards, characterized by a proliferation of student-edited journals and a notable absence of rigorous peer review. While some law journals have sought to align with established academic standards, many have struggled to keep pace with emerging open access (OA) requirements, such as those outlined by Plan S. As funding agencies increasingly mandate immediate OA for research outputs, the field of legal scholarly communications faces urgent needs for adaptation and modernization.

Methods: This study analyzed the OA policies of 384 journals that included articles and reviews authored by Canadian law faculty members. Data were extracted from Web of Science and Open Alex, focusing on six law faculties across Canada known for their high research output. Quantitative methods were used to assess publishing policies concerning OA principles.

Results: The findings reveal a strong preference for hybrid OA journals, particularly those with an international focus, often produced by interdisciplinary publishers. Diamond OA journals, primarily centered in North America, ranked second. Notably, a significant number of diamond OA journals fail to meet established OA standards, alongside a considerable presence of closed-access law journals.

Discussion and Conclusion: A consistent theme among law-specific publications, whether from academic faculty or corporate law publishers, is a pervasive lack of compliance with OA standards and a limited understanding of their implications. This underscores the imperative for further education and policy reform within the legal publishing ecosystem to enhance access and uphold the principles of open scholarship.

URL : Modernizing Legal Scholarship: Toward Open Access Compliance

DOI : https://doi.org/%2010.31274/jlsc.20259

Catégories
EN

Data Availability Statements in Mega Journals: A Comparative Analysis of Global and Korea-Affiliated Publications in Health and Medical Research

Authors : Sanghee Oh, Yunseo Park, Seyun Sim

Data Availability Statements (DAS) have become a standard mechanism for promoting transparency and reproducibility in open-access mega journals, yet questions remain about how effectively they support meaningful data sharing in practice and how these practices vary across national research contexts.

This study examines data-sharing practices in the medical and health sciences through a comparative analysis of global publications and Korea-affiliated articles in three mega journals indexed in PubMed Central: PLOS ONE, Scientific Reports and BMJ Open (2020–2024). DAS from 176,145 articles were collected from PubMed Central using an automated pipeline with manual validation and classified into a seven-category typology reflecting levels of data accessibility and reuse.

Results indicate that although DAS inclusion increased over time, repository-based data sharing remains limited, while ‘data available upon request’ continues to be prevalent. Clear differences are observed across journals: PLOS ONE shows greater use of repository-based and in-article sharing, whereas Scientific Reports and BMJ Open rely more heavily on ‘data available upon request’. Korea-affiliated articles largely follow global trends, with slightly greater reliance on national public data repositories.

Repository use is concentrated among a small number of international multidisciplinary platforms and selected national biomedical databases. The findings reveal a persistent gap between formal DAS compliance and effective data accessibility, indicating the need for clearer, more actionable data-sharing guidance.

URL : Data Availability Statements in Mega Journals: A Comparative Analysis of Global and Korea-Affiliated Publications in Health and Medical Research

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.2083