Open access journals in Humanities and Social Science

This British Academy research project on the effects of current UK open access policies was funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and was overseen by a Steering Committee set up by the Academy to manage the project. The project was led by Professor Chris Wickham, FBA (British Academy Vice-President, Publications), with support and co-writing from Dr Rebecca Darley and Dr Daniel Reynolds. It investigates some of the issues involved in open access publishing, seeking to examine various practical issues and difficulties that may arise, using the example of twelve disciplines across the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS).

The key issues investigated were:

  • the degree to which non-UK journals are ‘compliant’ with current UK open-access policies, particularly ‘green’ open-access policies;
  • the differences between journal half-lives across the same disciplines;
  • library acquisition policies and the degree to which these are affected by embargoes before articles are openly available.

URL : Open access journals in humanities and social science

EPUB as Publication Format in Open Access Journals…

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EPUB as Publication Format in Open Access Journals: Tools and Workflow :

“In this article, we present a case study of how the main publishing format of an Open Access journal was changed from PDF to EPUB by designing a new workflow using JATS as the basic XML source format. We state the reasons and discuss advantages for doing this, how we did it, and the costs of changing an established Microsoft Word workflow. As an example, we use one typical sociology article with tables, illustrations and references. We then follow the article from JATS markup through different transformations resulting in XHTML, EPUB and MOBI versions. In the end, we put everything together in an automated XProc pipeline. The process has been developed on free and open source tools, and we describe and evaluate these tools in the article. The workflow is suitable for non-professional publishers, and all code is attached and free for reuse by others.”

URL : http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/9462

Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the…

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Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the Light of the Digital Transition: setting the scene for a major study :

“The paper provides the results of the first phase of the research project Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the Light of the Digital Transition. It provides for an examination of the behaviours and attitudes of academic researchers as producers and consumers of scholarly information resources in the digital era in respect to how they determine authority and trustworthiness in the sources they use, cite, and publish in. The first phase of the study utilized focus groups to formulate research questions for the project as a whole. It provided the direction for the literature review, interviews, and questionnaires studies that would follow. Fourteen focus groups were held in the UK and US in order to obtain this information. A total of 66 science and social science researchers participated. The main findings were: (a) researchers play down difficulties of establishing trustworthiness, not because there are none, but because they have well-developed methods of establishing trust; (b) citation-derived metrics are becoming more important in regard to where researchers publish; (c) social media are ancillary to research, but are used for promotion of research and idea generation; (d) researchers are suspicious and confused about open access, but less so if produced by a traditional publisher; (e) there was a uniformity of perceptions/behaviour of researchers irrespective of differences in subject, country, and age; (f) although some early career researchers behave the same as their more senior colleagues this is because of a fear of the system: they actually think differently.”

URL : http://ciber-research.eu/download/20140406-Learned_Publishing_27_2-Trust.pdf

How research funders can finance APCs in full…

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How research funders can finance APCs in full OA and hybrid journals :

“Open access (OA) publishing is steadily growing in both full OA journals and hybrid journals where authors can pay to open up individual articles. Funding for article processing charges (APCs) is still a strong barrier for many authors, particularly for subscription journals where the hybrid option is expensive and an added extra feature after an article is accepted for publication. Many research funders in Europe have started or are considering mechanisms for paying APCs with earmarked funding in order to increase the uptake of OA. At the same time they are well aware that their actions may influence the way the OA market will develop in the near future. This article discusses a number of scenarios for ways in which funders could cover the cost of APCs, while encouraging the development of a competitive and transparent market for APC-funded OA scholarly publishing. We provide evidence that the current APC-funded full OA market is sensitive to journal prestige/impact. We present a value-based cap funding scheme which could help maintain transparency, bringing hybrid market pricing in line with the full OA market. We also consider a scenario that addresses hybrid ‘double dipping’ while limiting the cost of transitioning to full OA for research-intensive universities as well as costsharing as a mechanism for providing authors with an incentive for considering cost as well as value in choosing where to publish.”

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/20140203

Access to Research: the experience of implementing a pilot in public libraries

The Access to Research project is a collaboration between scholarly publishers and librarians to provide free licensed access to research journals via terminals in public libraries. The project is an element of the ‘balanced package’ proposed by the Finch Working Group on how to expand access to published research in the UK, which reported its recommendations to the UK government in June 2012. We describe the setting up of the project and the findings from a three-month technical pilot prior to the launch of a two-year national pilot in February 2014.

The project has already attracted support from the major scholarly publishers, with about 8,400 journal titles now available. The access platform has been shown to be usable by public librarians and library patrons. We are now addressing the challenge of understanding how the public will make use of the system and exploring how best to provide training and education for librarians and users.

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/20140202

Evaluer la qualité des archives ouvertes le certificat DINI

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Evaluer la qualité des archives ouvertes : le certificat DINI :

“L’article présente le certificat DINI, un référentiel pour la certification et l’audit des archives ouvertes, des archives institutionnelles et des plateformes de revues en libre accès, développé par l’Initiative Allemande pour l’Information en Réseau DINI. L’article décrit le contexte, l’objectif et l’historique de ce certificat avant d’exposer sa structure et son contenu. Parmi les huit sections du certificat figurent la visibilité du site, la sécurité de l’information et l’archivage pérenne. La discussion porte sur l’objet du référentiel, sur son influence et sur la nécessité d’une adaptation au contexte francophone. La traduction française du certificat a été publiée en 2012.”

“The article presents the DINI certificate, standard recommendations for the certification of document and publishing services, i.e. open archives, institutional repositories and platforms for open access journals, developed by the German Initiative for Networked Information DINI. The article describes the context, purpose and history of this certificate before exposing its structure and content. The eight areas include criteria for the visibility of the site, information security and long-term preservation. The article discusses the object of certification, its impact and the need to adapt some recommendations to the French-speaking context. The French translation of the certificate has been published in 2012.”

URL : Evaluer la qualité des archives ouvertes : le certificat DINI
Alternative URL : https://journal.lib.uoguelph.ca/index.php/perj/article/view/2733

Student Embargoes within Institutional Repositories: Faculty Early Transparency Concerns

Libraries encourage students to utilize Institutional Repositories (IRs) to house e-portfolios that demonstrate their skills and experiences. This is especially important for students when applying for jobs and admission into graduate schools. However, within the academic sphere there are legitimate reasons why some faculty-student collaboration efforts should not be documented and openly shared in institutional repositories. The need for the protection of ideas and processes prior to faculty publication can be in direct conflict with the intention for institutional repositories to promote the excellent efforts of students.

This is certainly true in laboratory situations where details of experiments and research areas are guarded for the lifetime of the exploration process. Librarians must work with others to develop guidelines and educational programs that prepare all stakeholders for these new information release considerations. One outcome of such deliberations could be the development of mutually beneficial publication guidelines which protect sensitive details of research yet allow students to submit selective research documentation into an IR.

The other extreme, with no agreed upon partial embargo scenarios, could result in the removal of students from sensitive collaborations. Given the need for scientific laboratories to utilize student workers, and the benefit of real research experiences for students, the academy must find a balanced solution to this inherent conflict situation.

URL : http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol2/iss2/6/