Open Access and the Author-Pays Problem: Assuring Access for Readers and Authors in a Global Community of Scholars

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Out of concern for its lifeblood—communication—academia is rushing to correct serious inequities in access and revenue distribution by embracing open access (OA) in a variety of ways: some journals provide access openly to all readers, some allow authors to pay for OA options, some share copyrights with authors to allow open sharing,etc.

For publication in some fully OA journals, though, publication charges associated with an ‘author-pays’ business model can be substantial, reflecting costs involved in production and publication of quality scholarly articles and (sometimes) significant profit margins for publishers. Such charges may constitute significant barriers for potential authors, particularly those at institutions or in countries with fewer resources.

Consequently, an OA journal for readers may in reality be a closed-access journal for authors.

[…]

This commentary is not a criticism of OA publishers with author-pays systems, such as PLoS, which has creatively faced a difficult challenge and stands as an example of a
successful non-profit OA publishing endeavor.

Nor is this commentary an attack on OA journals in general. On the contrary, this paper advocates developing a robust and vibrant variety of OA journals. Two of the authors are also publishers of OA journals that do not follow the ‘author-pays’ system, described briefly later in this commentary.

URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol1/iss3/3/

Modeling peer review an agent based approach …

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Modeling peer review: an agent-based approach :

“The peer review system is under severe strain. Corrections have been proposed, but experiments to determine effective measures are difficult to perform. I propose a framework in which alternatives to the current peer review system can be studied quantitatively using agent-based modeling. I implement three possible systems. I show how, all other things being equal, these alternatives produce different results in terms of speed of publication, quality control, reviewers’ effort, and authors’ impact. This modeling framework can be used to test other solutions for peer review, leading the way to an improvement of how science is disseminated.”

URL : http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/IEE/article/view/4447

Exploring the Effects of a Transition to Open…

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Exploring the Effects of a Transition to Open Access: Insights from a Simulation Study :

“The Open Access (OA) movement, which postulates gratis and unrestricted online access to publicly funded research findings, has significantly gained momentum in recent years. The two ways of achieving OA are self-archiving of scientific work by the authors (Green OA) and publishing in OA journals (Gold OA). But there is still no consensus which model should be supported in particular. The aim of this simulation study is to discover mechanisms and predict developments that may lead to specific outcomes of possible market transformation scenarios. It contributes to theories related to OA by substantiating the argument of a citation advantage of OA articles and by visualizing the mechanisms of a journal system collapsing in the long-term due to the continuation of the serials crisis. The practical contribution of this research stems from the integration of all market players: Decisions regarding potential financial support of OA models can be aligned with our findings – as well as the decision of a publisher to migrate his journals to Gold OA. Our results indicate that for scholarly communication in general, a transition to Green OA combined with a certain level of subscription-based publishing and a migration of few top journals is the most beneficial development.”

URL : http://www.is-frankfurt.de/publikationenNeu/ExploringtheEffectsofaTransiti4353.pdf

Use of blogs, Twitter and Facebook by PhD Students for Scholarly Communication: A UK study

This study explores scholarly use of social media by PhD researchers through mix-methods of qualitative interviews, participant observation and content analysis of a case study #phdchat.

We found that blogs, Twitter and Facebook are among the most popular social media tools being used by researchers. They can be used by PhD students and early career researchers to benefit their scholarly communication practice, promote their professional profiles, disseminate their work to a wider audience quickly, and gain feedbacks and support from peers across the globe.

There are also difficulties and potential problems such as the lack of standards and incentives, the risks of idea being pinched and plagiarism, lack of knowledge of how to start and maintain using social media tool and the potential huge amount of time and effort needed to invest.

We found that respondents link different social media tools together to maximise the impact of the content disseminated, as well as to create a personal learning network (PLN) connected with people across the globe.

For privacy issue, the participants use different identities on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook is usually set as private with access for friends only and Twitter is public and used for professional purposes.

However, Facebook page and groups can be public which are used to build a community and disseminate information without revealing much content from individual member’s personal profile.”

URL : https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/item/?pid=uk-ac-man-scw:187789

Academic Publishing and Open Access With the…

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Academic Publishing and Open Access :

“With the spread of the internet and new opportunities for publishing academic works digitally at virtually no costs, the traditional copyright model has recently been put under critical review which is for at least two reasons: First and foremost, a vast increase in subscription prices for academic journals has forced (university) libraries to significantly cut their journal portfolios. Second, copyright seems negligible in academia as researchers are motivated by reputation gains and CV effects rather than direct financial returns from publishing their works. As a consequence, the promotion of Open Access (OA) to scientific research is claimed as the perceived future of academic publishing in the information age.

This paper critically reviews the OA debate by discussing theoretical and empirical arguments on the role of copyright in publishing scientific outcomes. A brief historical perspective introduces to the changed environmental conditions for scholarly publishing, pointing to a new trade-off in the digital age. By framing the debate in a broader literature stream and related issues, we provide with caveat for further research and a glimpse of possible future scenarios. It is shown that copyright may be both a blessing and a curse in establishing an effective framework for scientific progress.”

URL : http://ssrn.com/abstract=2198400

Assemblée générale extraordinaire des revues diffusées sur Cairn.info : Les revues SHS et l’Open Access

Ouverture de la journée – Contexte et objectifs

Marc Minon, Ouverture de la journée from Cairn.info on Vimeo.

L’Open Access : les origines du mouvement, ses motivations, ses modalités

Gh Chartron.00 from Cairn.info on Vimeo.

Les questions juridiques liées à l’Open Access – Analyse du texte de la recommandation de la Commission Européenne du 17 juillet 2012

Jean Martin, Les questions juridiques liées à l’Open Access from Cairn.info on Vimeo.

La position de la France sur l’Open Access

Michel Marian, La position de la France sur l’Open Access from Cairn.info on Vimeo.

Le modèle auteur-payeur : définition, avantages, difficultés éventuelles de mise en place

Jean-Marc Quilbé, Le modèle auteur-payeur : définition, avantages, difficultés éventuelles de mise en place from Cairn.info on Vimeo.

Freemium, Platinium : les autres modèles de financement des revues

Pierre Mounier, Jean-Christophe Peyssard, Freemium, Platinium : les autres modèles de financement des revues from Cairn.info on Vimeo.