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Keeping out the Masses: Understanding the Popularity and Implications of Internet Paywalls

Authors : Panagiotis Papadopoulos, Peter Snyder, Benjamin Livshits

Funding the production of quality online content is a pressing problem for content producers. The most common funding method, online advertising, is rife with well-known performance and privacy harms, and an intractable subject-agent conflict: many users do not want to see advertisements, depriving the site of needed funding.

Because of these negative aspects of advertisement-based funding, paywalls are an increasingly popular alternative for websites. This shift to a « pay-for-access » web is one that has potentially huge implications for the web and society. Instead of a system where information (nominally) flows freely, paywalls create a web where high quality information is available to fewer and fewer people, leaving the rest of the web users with less information, that might be also less accurate and of lower quality. Despite the potential significance of a move from an « advertising-but-open » web to a « paywalled » web, we find this issue understudied.

This work addresses this gap in our understanding by measuring how widely paywalls have been adopted, what kinds of sites use paywalls, and the distribution of policies enforced by paywalls.

A partial list of our findings include that (i) paywall use is accelerating (2x more paywalls every 6 months), (ii) paywall adoption differs by country (e.g. 18.75% in US, 12.69% in Australia), (iii) paywalls change how users interact with sites (e.g. higher bounce rates, less incoming links), (iv) the median cost of an annual paywall access is $108 per site, and (v) paywalls are in general trivial to circumvent.

Finally, we present the design of a novel, automated system for detecting whether a site uses a paywall, through the combination of runtime browser instrumentation and repeated programmatic interactions with the site. We intend this classifier to augment future, longitudinal measurements of paywall use and behavior.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.01406

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EN

Towards Trusted Identities for Swiss Researchers and their Data

Authors : Julien A. Raemy, René Martin Schneider

In this paper we report on efforts to enhance the Swiss persistent identifier (PID) ecosystem. We will firstly describe the current situation and the need for improvement in order to describe in full detail the steps undertaken to create a Swiss-wide model.

A case study was undertaken by using several data sets from the domains of art and design in the context of the ICOPAD project. We will provide a set of recommendations to enable a PID service that could mint Archival Resource Key (ARK) identifiers or a flavour of Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs) as complement to Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs).

We will conclude with some remarks concerning the transferability of this approach to other areas and the requirements for a national hub for PID management in Switzerland.

URL : Towards Trusted Identities for Swiss Researchers and their Data

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v14i1.596

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EN

Megajournal mismanagement: Manuscript decision bias and anomalous editor activity at PLOS ONE

Author : Alexander M. Petersen

Since their emergence just a decade ago, nearly 2% of scientific research is now published by megajournals, representing a major industrial shift in the production of knowledge. Such high-throughput production stresses several aspects of the publication process, including the editorial oversight of peer-review.

As the largest megajournal, PLOS ONE has relied on a single-tier editorial board comprised of ∼7000 active academics, who thereby face conflicts of interest relating to their dual roles as both producers and gatekeepers of peer-reviewed literature.

While such conflicts of interest are also a factor for editorial boards of smaller journals, little is known about how the scalability of megajournals may introduce perverse incentives for editorial service.

To address this issue, we analyzed the activity of PLOS ONE editors over the journal’s inaugural decade (2006–2015) and find highly variable activity levels. We then leverage this variation to model how editorial bias in the manuscript decision process relates to two editor-specific factors: repeated editor-author interactions and shifts in the rates of citations directed at editors – a form of citation remuneration that is analogue to self-citation.

Our results indicate significantly stronger manuscript bias among a relatively small number of extremely active editors, who also feature relatively high self-citation rates coincident in the manuscripts they handle.

These anomalous activity patterns are consistent with the perverse incentives and the temptations they offer at scale, which is theoretically grounded in the “slippery-slope” evolution of apathy and misconduct in power-driven environments.

By applying quantitative evaluation to the gatekeepers of scientific knowledge, we shed light on various ethics issues crucial to science policy – in particular, calling for more transparent and structured management of editor activity in megajournals that rely on active academics.

URL : Megajournal mismanagement: Manuscript decision bias and anomalous editor activity at PLOS ONE

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2019.100974

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EN

Economie et organisation éditoriale des plateformes et des agrégateurs de revues scientifiques françaises : Analyse comparative de huit plateformes étrangères de diffusion de revues scientifiques

Effectuée pour le compte du Comité de suivi de l’édition scientifique (CSES), cette étude présente une analyse comparative de huit plateformes étrangères avec deux objectifs : décrire leurs principales caractéristiques et enrichir l’étude des plateformes et agrégateurs de revues scientifiques françaises par une analyse du potentiel concurrentiel et des complémentarités de ces plateformes et agrégateurs étrangers.

Le panel est composé de huit plateformes, trois acteurs commerciaux (EBSCO, ProQuest, Cambridge University Press) et cinq acteurs publics ou à but non lucratif (JSTOR, Project MUSE, Érudit, SciELO, Open Library of Humanities).

L’étude présente pour chaque plateforme le modèle d’affaires, les services et fonctionnalités, le positionnement par rapport à l’Open Access, les perspectives de développement et la part des contenus français.

Elle décrit également les trajectoires, particularités et futurs développements de plusieurs plateformes dont notamment Project MUSE, JSTOR et Érudit, et s’intéresse à des aspects fonctionnels et techniques intéressants comme le TDM et l’intelligence artificielle.

Toutes ces plateformes ont en commun qu’elles diffusent des revues scientifiques en ligne, avec des technologies du web, suivant le modèle d’affaires biface (avec deux clientèles différentes, éditeurs de revues et lecteurs), et qu’elles proposent des services aux éditeurs (producteurs de contenus) aussi bien qu’aux institutions, bibliothèques et particuliers (consommateurs d’informations scientifiques et techniques).

Cependant, l’étude révèle une grande diversité de modèles économiques (chiffre d’affaires, part des ventes et des subventions, reversement aux éditeurs, open access) et propose une comparaison entre ces plateformes étrangères et le panel français, en soulignant notamment la proximité entre CAIRN, JSTOR et Project MUSE.

L’intérêt pour une revue française d’établir un partenariat avec l’une des plateformes internationales est surtout lié à la diffusion par un agrégateur commercial avec une clientèle internationale et anglophone, mais ouvert à des revues non anglophones.

Ces plateformes représentent une opportunité complémentaire plutôt qu’une alternative à leurs propres moyens de diffusion. L’étude ajoute quelques éléments d’information pour évaluer l’impact de ces plateformes sur le marché français.

Être en mesure de créer des conditions (techniques, financières, organisationnelles) favorables à l’innovation, est peut-être l’un des critères qui fera la différence entre les plateformes dans les cinq à dix ans à venir.

Mais également, la capacité de garantir une conservation (et un accès) à long terme, le degré de standardisation des systèmes et formats, et l’intégration dans les communautés et institutions scientifiques, y compris dans des projets de recherche.

URL : Economie et organisation éditoriale des plateformes et des agrégateurs de revues scientifiques françaises : Analyse comparative de huit plateformes étrangères de diffusion de revues scientifiques

Original location : https://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/cid149053/analyse-comparative-de-huit-plateformes-etrangeres-de-diffusion-de-revues-scientifiques.html

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EN

The stability of Twitter metrics: A study on unavailable Twitter mentions of scientific publications

Authors : Zhichao Fang, Jonathan Dudek, Rodrigo Costas

This paper investigates the stability of Twitter counts of scientific publications over time. For this, we conducted an analysis of the availability statuses of over 2.6 million Twitter mentions received by the 1,154 most tweeted scientific publications recorded by this http URL up to October 2017.

Results show that of the Twitter mentions for these highly tweeted publications, about 14.3% have become unavailable by April 2019. Deletion of tweets by users is the main reason for unavailability, followed by suspension and protection of Twitter user accounts.

This study proposes two measures for describing the Twitter dissemination structures of publications: Degree of Originality (i.e., the proportion of original tweets received by a paper) and Degree of Concentration (i.e., the degree to which retweets concentrate on a single original tweet).

Twitter metrics of publications with relatively low Degree of Originality and relatively high Degree of Concentration are observed to be at greater risk of becoming unstable due to the potential disappearance of their Twitter mentions.

In light of these results, we emphasize the importance of paying attention to the potential risk of unstable Twitter counts, and the significance of identifying the different Twitter dissemination structures when studying the Twitter metrics of scientific publications.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.07491

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EN

Peer review and preprint policies are unclear at most major journals

Authors : Thomas Klebel, Stefan Reichmann, Jessica Polka, Gary McDowell, Naomi Penfold, Samantha Hindle, Tony Ross-Hellauer

Clear and findable publishing policies are important for authors to choose appropriate journals for publication. We investigated the clarity of policies of 171 major academic journals across disciplines regarding peer review and preprinting.

31.6% of journals surveyed do not provide information on the type of peer review they use. Information on whether preprints can be posted or not is unclear in 39.2% of journals. 58.5% of journals offer no clear information on whether reviewer identities are revealed to authors.

Around 75% of journals have no clear policy on coreviewing, citation of preprints, and publication of reviewer identities. Information regarding practices of Open Peer Review is even more scarce, with <20% of journals providing clear information.

Having found a lack of clear information, we conclude by examining the implications this has for researchers (especially early career) and the spread of open research practices.

URL : Peer review and preprint policies are unclear at most major journals

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.24.918995

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EN

Altmetrics data providers: A meta-analysis review of the coverage of metrics and publication

Author : José-Luis Ortega

The aim of this paper is to review the current and most relevant literature on the use of altmetric providers since 2012. This review is supported by a meta-analysis of the coverage and metric counts obtained by more than 100 publications that have used these bibliographic platforms for altmetric studies.

The article is the most comprehensive analysis of altmetric data providers (Lagotto, Altmetric.com, ImpactStory, Mendeley, PlumX, Crossref Event Data) and explores the coverage of publications, social media and events from a longitudinal view. Disciplinary differences were also analysed.

The results show that most of the studies are based on Altmetric.com data. This provider is the service that captures most mentions from social media sites, blogs and news outlets. PlumX has better coverage, counting more Mendeley readers, but capturing fewer events.

CED has a special coverage of mentions from Wikipedia, while Lagotto and ImpactStory are becoming disused products because of their limited reach.

URL : Altmetrics data providers: A meta-analysis review of the coverage of metrics and publication

Original location : https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/EPI/article/view/epi.2020.ene.07