Do I-PASS for FAIR? Measuring the FAIR-ness of Research Organizations

Authors : Jacquelijn Ringersma, Margriet Miedema

Given the increased use of the FAIR acronym as adjective for other contexts than data or data sets, the Dutch National Coordination Point for Research Data Management initiated a Task Group to work out the concept of a FAIR research organization.

The results of this Task Groups are a definition of a FAIR enabling organization and a method to measure the FAIR-ness of a research organization (The Do-I-PASS for FAIR method). The method can also aid in developing FAIR-enabling Road Maps for individual research institutions and at a national level.

This practice paper describes the development of the method and provides a couple of use cases for the application of the method in daily research data management practices in research organizations.

URL : Do I-PASS for FAIR? Measuring the FAIR-ness of Research Organizations

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2021-030

Sharing published short academic works in institutional repositories after six months : The implementation of the article 25fa (Taverne Amendment) in the Dutch Copyright Act

Authors : Jeroen Sondervan, Arjan Schalken, Saskia Woutersen-Windhouwer

The ambition of the Netherlands, laid down in the National Plan Open Science, is to achieve 100% open access for academic publications. The ambition was to be achieved by 2020. However, it is to be expected that for the year 2020 between 70% and 75% of the articles will be open access.

Until recently, the focus of the Netherlands has been on the gold route – open access via journals and publishers’ platforms. This is likely to be costly and it is also impossible to cover all articles and other publication types this way.

Since 2015, Dutch Copyright Act has offered an alternative with the implementation of Article 25fa (also known as the ‘Taverne Amendment’), facilitating the green route, i.e. open access via (trusted) repositories.

This amendment allows researchers to share short scientific works (e.g. articles and book chapters in edited collections), regardless of any restrictive guidelines from publishers. From February 2019 until August 2019 all Dutch universities participated in the pilot ‘You Share, we Take Care!’ to test how this copyright amendment could be interpreted and implemented by institutions as a policy instrument to enhance green open access and “self-archiving”.

In 2020 steps were taken to scale up further implementation of the amendment. This article describes the outcomes of this pilot and shares best practices on implementation and awareness activities in the period following the pilot until early 2021, in which libraries have played an instrumental role in building trust and working on effective implementations on an institutional level.

It concludes with some possible next steps for alignment, for example on a European level.

URL : Sharing published short academic works in institutional repositories after six months : The implementation of the article 25fa (Taverne Amendment) in the Dutch Copyright Act

DOI : https://doi.org/10.53377/lq.10915

The Plan S Rights Retention Strategy is an administrative and legal burden, not a sustainable open access solution

Author : Shaun Yon-Seng Khoo

The Plan S Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) requires authors who are submitting to subscription journals to inform publishers that the author accepted manuscript (AAM) will be made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence.

The laudable stated aim of the RRS is to achieve immediate open access to research outputs, while preserving journal choice for authors. However, proponents of the RRS overlook the significant administrative and legal burdens that the RRS places on authors and readers.

Even though compliance with existing green open access (self-archiving) policies is poor at best, the RRS is likely to rely on authors to successfully execute the CC licensing of their work in the face of publisher resistance.

The complexity of copyright law and CC licensing gives many reasons to doubt the legal validity of an RRS licence grant, which creates legal risk for authors and their institutions. The complexity of RRS CC BY licensing also creates legal risk for readers, who may not be able to fully rely on the reuse rights of a CC BY licence on the AAM.

However, cOAlition S has released no legal advice that explains why the RRS is valid and legally binding. Publishers of legacy subscription journals have already begun implementing strategies that ensure they can protect their revenue streams.

These actions may leave authors having to choose between paying publication fees and complying with their funding agreements. The result is that the RRS increases the complexity of the copyright and licensing landscape in academic publishing, creates legal risk and may not avoid author fees.

Unless increased complexity and conflict between authors and publishers drives open access, the RRS is not fit for its stated purpose as an open access strategy.

URL : The Plan S Rights Retention Strategy is an administrative and legal burden, not a sustainable open access solution

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.556

A Scientific Knowledge Graph with Community Detection and Routes of Search. Testing “GRAPHYP” as a Toolkit for Resilient Upgrade of Scholarly Content

Authors : Renaud Fabre, Otmane Azeroual, Patrice Bellot, Joachim Schöpfel, Daniel Egret

Unlimited change in scientific terminology challenges integrity in scientific knowledge graph (SKG) representation, while current data and modeling standards, mostly document oriented, hardly allow a resilient semantic upgrade of scholarly content.

Moreover, results of a “multimodal knowledge acquisition” are required for an efficient upgrade of search methods: « vital nodes » differ among users of the same keyword, due to distinct needs of scientific communities, rooted in their own interpretations and controversies.

Modeling and data are challenged to propose new outcomes, mixing automated information and human choices allowing dynamic community detection: to fulfill this program with GRAPHYP toolkit, we identify a workflow ensuring the objectives of integrity and completeness of search management activities.

It encompasses data standards for « routes » of search, modeling of community detection and navigation inside SK bipartite hypergraph, and a first test with extraction of characteristics of communities’ preferences from readings of scholarly content.

“Search is not Research” and therefore further work should explore the links between modeling and data recording research contents and “search and select” results in SKG data structure.

URL : A Scientific Knowledge Graph with Community Detection and Routes of Search. Testing “GRAPHYP” as a Toolkit for Resilient Upgrade of Scholarly Content

Original location : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03365118

The UGC-CARE initiative: Indian academia’s quest for research and publishing integrity

Authors : Bhushan Patwardhan, Shubhada Nagarkar

This paper discusses the reasons for emergence of predatory publications in India, engendered by mandates of higher educational institutions: that require stipulated number of research publications for employment and promotions.

Predatory journals have eclipsed the merits of open access publishing, compromised ethical practices, and left the research community groping for benchmarks of research integrity and publication ethics. To fight back the menace of predatory publications, University Grants Commission, India has established “Consortium for Academic Research and Ethics” (UGC-CARE) in 2018 to promote and benchmark research integrity and publication ethics among the Indian academia.

The present paper discusses the UGC-CARE initiative, its structure, objectives and specifically, “UGC-CARE Reference List of Quality Journals” (UGC-CARE list) and finally, the challenges it faces.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v26i10.10349

The value of research funding for knowledge creation and dissemination: A study of SNSF Research Grants

Authors : Rachel Heyard, Hanna Hottenrott

This study investigates the effect of competitive project funding on researchers’ publication outputs. Using detailed information on applicants at the Swiss National Science Foundation and their proposal evaluations, we employ a case-control design that accounts for individual heterogeneity of researchers and selection into treatment (e.g. funding).

We estimate the impact of the grant award on a set of output indicators measuring the creation of new research results (the number of peer-reviewed articles), its relevance (number of citations and relative citation ratios), as well as its accessibility and dissemination as measured by the publication of preprints and by altmetrics.

The results show that the funding program facilitates the publication and dissemination of additional research amounting to about one additional article in each of the three years following the funding.

The higher citation metrics and altmetrics by funded researchers suggest that impact goes beyond quantity and that funding fosters dissemination and quality.

URL : The value of research funding for knowledge creation and dissemination: A study of SNSF Research Grants

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00891-x

Electronic resource management in a post-Plan S world

Authors: Jill Emery, Graham Stone

cOAlition S and research funding policies mean open access content is no longer a ‘trend’ but rather another consideration of content management for librarians and libraries. In 2018, the authors of this article launched a new version of TERMS (Techniques for Electronic Resources Management).

TERMS 2.0 envisages a post-Plan S e-resources life cycle blending e-resources and open access content management.

This article outlines how open content management can dovetail into current e-resource management tactics across six TERMS: Investigation of material, procurement and licensing of content, implementation, troubleshooting of problems, evaluation and preservation, and sustainability concerns.

Lastly, we reflect on the themes growing in libraries in regard to management of online resources.

URL : Electronic resource management in a post-Plan S world

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.554