Preprints in Scholarly Communication: Re-Imagining Metrics and Infrastructures

Authors : B. Preedip Balaji, M. Dhanamjaya

Digital scholarship and electronic publishing among the scholarly communities are changing when metrics and open infrastructures take centre stage for measuring research impact. In scholarly communication, the growth of preprint repositories over the last three decades as a new model of scholarly publishing has emerged as one of the major developments.

As it unfolds, the landscape of scholarly communication is transitioning, as much is being privatized as it is being made open and towards alternative metrics, such as social media attention, author-level, and article-level metrics. Moreover, the granularity of evaluating research impact through new metrics and social media change the objective standards of evaluating research performance.

Using preprint repositories as a case study, this article situates them in a scholarly web, examining their salient features, benefits, and futures. Towards scholarly web development and publishing on semantic and social web with open infrastructures, citations, and alternative metrics—how preprints advance building web as data is discussed.

We examine that this will viably demonstrate new metrics and in enhancing research publishing tools in scholarly commons facilitating various communities of practice.

However, for the preprint repositories to sustain, scholarly communities and funding agencies should support continued investment in open knowledge, alternative metrics development, and open infrastructures in scholarly publishing.

URL : Preprints in Scholarly Communication: Re-Imagining Metrics and Infrastructures

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7010006

Tracking the popularity and outcomes of all bioRxiv preprints

Authors : Richard J. Abdill, Ran Blekhman

Researchers in the life sciences are posting their work to preprint servers at an unprecedented and increasing rate, sharing papers online before (or instead of) publication in peer-reviewed journals.

Though the popularity and practical benefits of preprints are driving policy changes at journals and funding organizations, there is little bibliometric data available to measure trends in their usage.

Here, we collected and analyzed data on all 37,648 preprints that were uploaded to bioRxiv.org, the largest biology-focused preprint server, in its first five years. We find that preprints on bioRxiv are being read more than ever before (1.1 million downloads in October 2018 alone) and that the rate of preprints being posted has increased to a recent high of more than 2,100 per month.

We also find that two-thirds of bioRxiv preprints posted in 2016 or earlier were later published in peer-reviewed journals, and that the majority of published preprints appeared in a journal less than six months after being posted.

We evaluate which journals have published the most preprints, and find that preprints with more downloads are likely to be published in journals with a higher impact factor. Lastly, we developed Rxivist.org, a website for downloading and interacting programmatically with indexed metadata on bioRxiv preprints.

URL : Tracking the popularity and outcomes of all bioRxiv preprints

Alternative location : https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/01/13/515643

The Rutgers Open Access Policy goes into effect: Faculty reaction and implementation lessons learned

Authors : Jane Otto, Laura Bowering Mullen

From laying the groundwork for the successful passage of a university-wide Open Access policy, through the development and planning that goes into a successful implementation, to “Day One” when the official university policy goes into effect, there is a long list of factors that affect faculty interest, participation and compliance.

The authors, Mullen and Otto, having detailed earlier aspects of the Rutgers University Open Access Policy passage and implementation planning, analyze and share the specifics that followed the rollout of the Policy and that continue to affect participation.

This case study presents some strategies and systems used to enhance author self-archiving in the newly minted SOAR (Scholarly Open Access at Rutgers) portal of the Rutgers institutional repository, including involvement of departmental liaison librarians, effective presentation of metrics, and a focus on targeted communication with faculty.

Roadblocks encountered as faculty began to deposit their scholarship and lessons learned are a focus. Early reaction from faculty and graduate students (doctoral students and postdocs) to various aspects of the Policy as well as the use of SOAR for depositing their work are included.

DOI : https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3D50QDM

Les enjeux éthiques et juridiques du dépôts des travaux scientifiques dans une archive ouverte

Auteur/Author : Isabelle Gras

Cette contribution vise à analyser comment la structuration du marché numérique de l’édition scientifique a induit de nouveaux enjeux éthiques et juridiques en matière de diffusion du savoir. Le secteur de l’édition numérique des publications scientifiques se caractérise par une concurrence imparfaite qui menace la circulation des connaissances scientifiques.

Si ce phénomène s’observe tout particulièrement dans le champ des sciences et techniques, il ne faut pas en négliger les conséquences dans le domaine des sciences humaines et sociales.

Le transfert des droits d’auteur en faveur des éditeurs tout comme le diktat du « publish or perish » pèsent sur l’ensemble de la communauté scientifique. Face à cette situation, les chercheurs se tournent vers la voie verte de l’Open Access afin de diffuser leurs travaux scientifiques dans une archive ouverte.

Ils se trouvent alors confrontés à des questions juridiques et éthiques que nous nous proposerons d’analyser afin de dégager des bonnes pratiques. Dans cette optique, cette contribution propose de préciser les nouvelles opportunités offertes par l’article 30 de la loi pour une République numérique.

Enfin, dans la mesure où ils constituent des dispositifs opérants pour repenser les logiques traditionnelles du droit d’auteur, les spécificités des licences creative commons et des epi-revues, étroitement liées aux archives ouvertes, seront soulignées.

URL : Les enjeux éthiques et juridiques du dépôts des travaux scientifiques dans une archive ouverte

Alternative location : https://hal-amu.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01929557

A Very Long Embargo: Journal Choice Reveals Active Non-Compliance with Funder Open Access Policies by Australian and Canadian Neuroscientists

Authors: Shaun Yon-Seng Khoo, Belinda Po Pyn Lay

Research funders around the world have implemented open access policies that require funded research to be made open access, usually by self-archiving, within 12 months of publication.

Elsevier is unique among major science publishers because it produces several journals with non-compliant self-archiving embargoes of more than 12 months. We used Elsevier’s Scopus database to study the rate at which Australian and Canadian neuroscientists publish in Elsevier’s non-compliant (embargoes > 12 months) and compliant journals (embargoes ≤ 12 months).

We also examined publications in immediate open access neuroscience journals that had the DOAJ Seal and neuroscience publications in open access mega-journals. We found that the implementation of Australian and Canadian funder open access policies in 2012/2013 and 2015 did not reduce the number of publications in non-compliant journals.

Instead, scientific output in all publication types increased with the greatest growth in immediate open access journals. This data suggests that funder open access policies that are similar to the Australian and Canadian policies are likely to have little effect beyond an association with a general cultural trend towards open access.

URL : A Very Long Embargo: Journal Choice Reveals Active Non-Compliance with Funder Open Access Policies by Australian and Canadian Neuroscientists

DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10252

 

Leveraging Elsevier’s Creative Commons License Requirement to Undermine Embargo

Author : Josh Bolick

In the last round of author-sharing policy revisions, Elsevier created a labyrinthine title-by-title embargo structure requiring embargoes from 12 to 48 months for authors sharing via institutional repository (IR), while permitting immediate sharing via an author’s personal website or blog. At the same time, all prepublication versions are to bear a Creative Commons-Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) license.

At the time this policy was announced, it was criticized by many in the scholarly communication community as overly complicated and restrictive. However, this CC licensing requirement creates an avenue for subverting an embargo in the IR to achieve quicker and wider open distribution of the author’s accepted manuscript (AAM).

To wit, authors may post an appropriately licensed copy on their personal site or blog, at which point the author’s host institution may deposit without an embargo in the IR, not through the license granted in the publication agreement, but through the CC license on the author’s version, which the sharing policy mandates.

This article outlines the background and rationale of the issue and discusses the benefits, workflows, and remaining questions.

URL : Leveraging Elsevier’s Creative Commons License Requirement to Undermine Embargo

DOI : https://doi.org/10.17161/jcel.v2i2.7415

Enquête Archives Ouvertes COUPERIN 2017 : résultats de l’enquête

Auteurs/Authors : Emmanuelle Ashta, Louise Béraud, Christelle Caillet, Mathilde Gallet, Marine Laffont, Diane Le Henaff, Léa Maubon, Christine Okret, Nicolas Pinet, Anne Slomovici, Sandrine Girod

Les archives ouvertes s’inscrivent de plus en plus solidement et durablement dans le paysage documentaire de l’enseignement supérieur. Si les organismes de recherche ont été précurseurs pour la création d’archives ouvertes, les grandes écoles, mais surtout les universités ont désormais massivement rejoint le mouvement.

Signe de cette progression notable, 82 % des répondants disposent en 2017 d’une archive en production ou en cours de mise en œuvre, contre 62 % en 2014. L’adoption majoritaire de la plate-forme HAL (qui représente 79 % des archives en production et 84 % des archives des universités parmi les répondants) se renforce encore depuis 2014.

La structuration d’un réseau des utilisateurs de HAL au sein du club utilisateur CasuHal, même si elle est relativement récente (septembre 2016), semble portée par une vraie dynamique puisque 68 % des établissements ayant une archive ouverte adhèrent ou projettent d’y adhérer.

L’intégration des archives ouvertes à leur environnement technique progresse globalement mais toujours partiellement depuis 2014. L’intégration aux sites web institutionnels ainsi qu’aux catalogues de bibliothèques est désormais majoritairement effective, mais elle reste insuffisante vers les systèmes d’information des établissements, ENT, SI Recherche et outils de gestion RH.

La place des archives ouvertes dans le contexte global d’un marché de la publication scientifique en plein questionnement (conflits ouverts avec les éditeurs, généralisation du Gold Open Access, questionnements autour de nouveaux modèles possibles de publication et d’évaluation, Open Science) progresse depuis 2014 mais semble encore insuffisamment prise en compte par les établissements porteurs, seule une petite majorité d’entre eux (53 %, contre 30,6 % en 2014) ayant inscrit en 2017 leur Archive Ouverte dans une politique globale d’établissement.

D’où des freins récurrents au développement des projets, que l’on observe d’une part via des politiques de dépôt encore majoritairement, et notamment pour les universités, peu contraignantes et peu efficaces, mais aussi par la constance des obstacles identifiés pour la réussite des projets qui restent les mêmes depuis 10 ans : manque d’implication politique, communication institutionnelle insuffisante, faiblesse des moyens humains dédiés mais surtout et structurellement une trop faible implication des chercheurs dans la démarche.

Resserrer toujours plus les liens entre les acteurs les plus actifs du développement des archives ouvertes que sont les bibliothèques et services de documentation (72 % des répondants 2017 ne travaillent qu’en bibliothèque) et les organes scientifiques, politiques et décisionnels des établissements semble donc plus que jamais de mise pour que ce mouvement se pérennise et continue durablement de croître.

URL : https://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_01858348