Archives des mots-clés : Scholarly Publishing

‘Publication favela’ or bibliodiversity? Open access publishing viewed from a European perspective

par Hans Dillaerts

Author : Pierre Mounier

A number of initiatives exist in European countries to support open scholarly communication in humanities and social sciences.

This article looks at the work of Open Access in the European Research Area through Scholarly Communication (OPERAS), a consortium of 36 partners from all over Europe, including many university presses, that is working to build a future European infrastructure to address the challenges in open access publishing.

Their initial study, OPERAS‐D, revealed a variety of models among the partners influenced by national cultures. Although the partners’ activities were found to be fragmented, they also reflect the ‘bibliodiversity’ that exists in European societies.

To address the challenge of fragmentation, it is argued that, by following a cooperative model, European actors can benefit by sharing expertise, resources, and costs of development for the good of all.

As a future infrastructure to support open scholarly communication across Europe, OPERAS aims to coordinate a range of publishers and service providers to offer researchers and societies a fully functional web of services to cover the entire research lifecycle.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1194

L’obsession de la productivité et la fabrique du chercheur publiant

par Hans Dillaerts

Auteur/Author : Franck Aggeri

À quoi rêvent les jeunes doctorants en gestion lorsqu’ils débutent leur thèse ? Leurs aspirations ne diffèrent pas fondamentalement de celles des doctorants d’autres disciplines : ils valorisent l’autonomie supposée du métier, la réflexion et les discussions intellectuelles, la lecture, la création, l’écriture, la pédagogie.

Cette vision romantique du métier est souvent renforcée par la rencontre avec des enseignants-chercheurs qui leur ont donné le goût de la réflexion, leur ont fait découvrir l’esthétique de l’écriture et de l’argumentation, des textes marquants ou des recherches de terrain originales.

Bref, ils rêvent souvent de devenir des enseignants-chercheurs singuliers. Modèle des singularités vs modèle productif Le modèle des singularités dans la recherche, rappelle Lucien Karpik, est celui auquel se réfèrent traditionnellement les chercheurs.

Il repose sur une orientation symbolique « autour d’un ensemble de normes et de valeurs classiques : la découverte comme finalité, l’importance de l’originalité, de l’ambition et du plaisir intellectuel, un imaginaire enraciné dans l’histoire de la science, la position centrale du jugement des pairs, le pouvoir collégial ou semi-collégial, une conception du métier organisée autour de l’indépendance individuelle, une compétition animée par la volonté d’être le premier à découvrir et le premier à publier, le premier reconnu et le premier primé » (Karpik, 2012, p. 119).

À rebours du modèle des singularités, se développe depuis quelques années, notamment en économie et en sciences de gestion, un modèle productif qui repose sur une performance « objective » mesurée à partir d’une métrique simple : le nombre de publications de rang A.

URL : https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01368023

Liberation through Cooperation: How Library Publishing Can Save Scholarly Journals from Neoliberalism

par Hans Dillaerts

Author : Dave S. Ghamandi

This commentary examines political and economic aspects of open access (OA) and scholarly journal publishing. Through a discourse of critique, neoliberalism is analyzed as an ideology causing many problems in the scholarly journal publishing industry, including the serials crisis.

Two major efforts in the open access movement that promote an increase in OA funded by article-processing charges (APC)—the Open Access 2020 (OA2020) and Pay It Forward (PIF) initiatives—are critiqued as neoliberal frameworks that would perpetuate existing systems of domination and exploitation.

In a discourse of possibility, ways of building a post-neoliberal system of journal publishing using new tactics and strategies, merging theory and praxis, and grounding in solidarity and cooperation are presented.

This includes organizing journal publishing democratically using cooperatives, which could decommodify knowledge and provide greater open access.

The article concludes with a vision for a New Fair Deal, which would revolutionize the system of scholarly journal publishing by transitioning journals to library publishing cooperatives.

URL : Liberation through Cooperation: How Library Publishing Can Save Scholarly Journals from Neoliberalism

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2223

The rent’s too high: Self-archive for fair online publication costs

par Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Robert T. Thibault, Amanda MacPherson, Stevan Harnad, Amir Raz

The main contributors of scientific knowledge, researchers, generally aim to disseminate their findings far and wide. And yet, publishing companies have largely kept these findings behind a paywall.

With digital publication technology markedly reducing cost, this enduring wall seems disproportionate and unjustified; moreover, it has sparked a topical exchange concerning how to modernize academic publishing.

This discussion, however, seems to focus on how to compensate major publishers for providing open access through a « pay to publish » model, in turn transferring financial burdens from libraries to authors and their funders.

Large publishing companies, including Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, PLoS, and Frontiers, continue to earn exorbitant revenues each year, hundreds of millions of dollars of which now come from processing charges for open-access articles.

A less expensive and equally accessible alternative exists: widespread self-archiving of peer-reviewed articles. All we need is awareness of this alternative and the will to employ it.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.06130

How open is open access research in Library and Information Science?

par Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Wanyenda Leonard Chilimo, Omwoyo Bosire Onyancha

The study investigates Library and Information Science (LIS) journals that published research articles between 2003 and 2013, which were about open access (OA) and were indexed in LIS databases.

The purpose was to investigate the journals’ OA policies, ascertain the degree to which these policies facilitate OA to publications, and investigate whether such texts are also available as OA. The results show that literature growth in the domain has been significant, with a total of 1,402 articles produced during the eleven years under study.

The OA policies of the fifty-six journals that published the highest number of articles were analysed. The results show that most articles (404; 41%) were published in hybrid journals, whereas 272 (29.7%) appeared in OA journals.

Some 143 (53%) of the articles published in hybrid journals were available as green OA copies. In total, 602 (66%) of all the articles published were available as OA.

The results show that the adoption of OA for research articles on that very subject is somewhat higher than in other fields. The study calls on LIS professionals to be conversant with the OA policies of the various journals that may publish their research.

URL : How open is open access research in Library and Information Science?

Alternative location : http://sajlis.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/1710

Vanishing industries and the rising monopoly of universities in published research

par Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Vincent Larivière, Benoit Macaluso, Philippe Mongeon, Kyle Siler, Cassidy R. Sugimoto

Anecdotes abound regarding the decline of basic research in industrial and governmental settings, but very little empirical evidence exists about the phenomenon. This article provides a systematic and historical analysis of the contribution of various institutional sectors to knowledge production at the world and country levels across the past four decades.

It highlights a dramatic decline in the diffusion of basic research by industrial and governmental sectors across all countries—with a corresponding increase in the share from universities—as well as an increase of partnerships between universities and other sectors.

Results also shows an increase in the relative share of industries in applied research, as measured through patents. Such divergence in university and industry research activities may hinder industries’ ability to translate basic knowledge into technological innovation, and could lead to a growing misalignment between doctoral training and future job expectations.

Industries and universities must rethink strategies for partnerships and publishing to maximize scientific progress and to ensure the greatest gains for society.

URL : Vanishing industries and the rising monopoly of universities in published research

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202120

Ethical Concerns in the Rise of Co-Authorship and Its Role as a Proxy of Research Collaborations

par Hans Dillaerts

Author : Sameer Kumar

Increasing specialization, changes in the institutional incentives for publication, and a host of other reasons have brought about a marked trend towards co-authored articles among researchers.

These changes have impacted Science and Technology (S&T) policies worldwide. Co-authorship is often considered to be a reliable proxy for assessing research collaborations at micro, meso, and macro levels.

Although co-authorship in a scholarly publication brings numerous benefits to the participating authors, it has also given rise to issues of publication integrity, such as ghost authorships and honorary authorships.

The code of conduct of bodies such as the American Psychological Association (APA) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) make it clear that only those who have significantly contributed to the study should be on the authorship list.

Those who have contributed little have to be appropriately “acknowledged” in footnotes or in the acknowledgement section. However, these principles are sometimes transgressed, and a complete solution still remains elusive.

URL : Ethical Concerns in the Rise of Co-Authorship and Its Role as a Proxy of Research Collaborations

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/publications6030037