Les revues de sciences humaines et sociales en France: libre accès et audience

Statut

“La Commission européenne a émis le 17 juillet 2012 une recommandation en faveur du libre accès aux résultats de la recherche financée sur fonds publics.

La question posée aux politiques publiques est celle de la durée pendant laquelle l’accès peut être payant avant le passage à la gratuité de l’article. Il s’agit donc de prendre la mesure des gains et des coûts d’une telle politique de libre accès pour déterminer quel serait le délai optimal d’embargo.”

URL : http://www.ipp.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/revues-shs-rapport-IPP-juillet2015.pdf

Accelerating Scientific Publication in Biology

Statut

“Scientific publications enable results and ideas to be transmitted throughout the scientific community. The number and type of journal publications also have become the primary criteria used in evaluating career advancement. Our analysis suggests that publication practices have changed considerably in the life sciences over the past thirty years. Considerably more experimental data is now required for publication, and the average time required for graduate students to publish their first paper has increased and is approaching the desirable duration of Ph.D. training.

Since publication is generally a requirement for career progression, schemes to reduce the time of graduate student and postdoctoral training may be difficult to implement without also considering new mechanisms for accelerating communication of their work. The increasing time to publication also delays potential catalytic effects that ensue when many scientists have access to new information. The time has come for the life scientists, funding agencies, and publishers to discuss how to communicate new findings in a way that best serves the interests of the public and scientific community.”

URL : http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/07/11/022368

From Peer-Reviewed to Peer-Reproduced in Scholarly Publishing: The Complementary Roles of Data Models and Workflows in Bioinformatics

Motivation

Reproducing the results from a scientific paper can be challenging due to the absence of data and the computational tools required for their analysis. In addition, details relating to the procedures used to obtain the published results can be difficult to discern due to the use of natural language when reporting how experiments have been performed.

The Investigation/Study/Assay (ISA), Nanopublications (NP), and Research Objects (RO) models are conceptual data modelling frameworks that can structure such information from scientific papers. Computational workflow platforms can also be used to reproduce analyses of data in a principled manner. We assessed the extent by which ISA, NP, and RO models, together with the Galaxy workflow system, can capture the experimental processes and reproduce the findings of a previously published paper reporting on the development of SOAPdenovo2, a de novo genome assembler.

Results

Executable workflows were developed using Galaxy, which reproduced results that were consistent with the published findings. A structured representation of the information in the SOAPdenovo2 paper was produced by combining the use of ISA, NP, and RO models. By structuring the information in the published paper using these data and scientific workflow modelling frameworks, it was possible to explicitly declare elements of experimental design, variables, and findings.

The models served as guides in the curation of scientific information and this led to the identification of inconsistencies in the original published paper, thereby allowing its authors to publish corrections in the form of an errata.”

URL : From Peer-Reviewed to Peer-Reproduced in Scholarly Publishing: The Complementary Roles of Data Models and Workflows in Bioinformatics

DOI : 10.1371/journal.pone.0127612

Data journals: A survey

Data occupy a key role in our information society. However, although the amount of published data continues to grow and terms such as data deluge and big data today characterize numerous (research) initiatives, much work is still needed in the direction of publishing data in order to make them effectively discoverable, available, and reusable by others.

Several barriers hinder data publishing, from lack of attribution and rewards, vague citation practices, and quality issues to a rather general lack of a data-sharing culture.

Lately, data journals have overcome some of these barriers. In this study of more than 100 currently existing data journals, we describe the approaches they promote for data set description, availability, citation, quality, and open access. We close by identifying ways to expand and strengthen the data journals approach as a means to promote data set access and exploitation.”

URL : http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/download.php/14938/DataJournalsSurvey%20%281%29.pdf

The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era

Statut

“The consolidation of the scientific publishing industry has been the topic of much debate within and outside the scientific community, especially in relation to major publishers’ high profit margins. However, the share of scientific output published in the journals of these major publishers, as well as its evolution over time and across various disciplines, has not yet been analyzed. This paper provides such analysis, based on 45 million documents indexed in the Web of Science over the period 1973-2013. It shows that in both natural and medical sciences (NMS) and social sciences and humanities (SSH), Reed-Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, and Taylor & Francis increased their share of the published output, especially since the advent of the digital era (mid-1990s). Combined, the top five most prolific publishers account for more than 50% of all papers published in 2013. Disciplines of the social sciences have the highest level of concentration (70% of papers from the top five publishers), while the humanities have remained relatively independent (20% from top five publishers). NMS disciplines are in between, mainly because of the strength of their scientific societies, such as the ACS in chemistry or APS in physics. The paper also examines the migration of journals between small and big publishing houses and explores the effect of publisher change on citation impact. It concludes with a discussion on the economics of scholarly publishing.”

URL : The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era

DOI :10.1371/journal.pone.0127502

Evolution or revolution? Publishers’ perceptions of future directions in research communications and the publisher role

Statut

“This report presents a snapshot of the views of a wide range of publishers, covering their perceptions of future directions in research communications, scholarly publishing and the role of publishers. It is important to emphasise that there is not a single “publishers’ view” on these matters: the publishers represented here are of differing scale, ownership, (dominant) business model, discipline, and tradition, and their views reflect that diversity of experience.

 Nearly 20 publishers of different types and scale were interviewed: for-profit and not-for-profit; open access and subscription-based; commercial, society, university presses; and with representation from all scholarly fields. We aimed to synthesise the views thus gathered, while reflecting the diversity of opinion where salient.”

 URL : Evolution or revolution? Publishers’ perceptions of future directions in research communications and the publisher role

Related URL : http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/RCUK-prod/assets/documents/international/EvolutionOrRevolution.pdf

Have the “mega-journals” reached the limits to growth?

Statut

“A “mega-journal” is a new type of scientific journal that publishes freely accessible articles, which have been peer reviewed for scientific trustworthiness, but leaves it to the readers to decide which articles are of interest and importance to them. In the wake of the phenomenal success of PLOS ONE, several other publishers have recently started mega-journals. This article presents the evolution of mega-journals since 2010 in terms of article publication rates. The fastest growth seems to have ebbed out at around 35,000 annual articles for the 14 journals combined. Acceptance rates are in the range of 50–70%, and speed of publication is around 3–5 months. Common features in mega-journals are alternative impact metrics, easy reusability of figures and data, post-publication discussions and portable reviews from other journals.”

URL :  Have the “mega-journals” reached the limits to growth?

DOI : https://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.981