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10 octobre 2015

Retrospective analysis of the quality of reports by author-suggested and non-author-suggested reviewers in journals operating on open or single-blind peer review models

Objectives

To assess whether reports from reviewers recommended by authors show a bias in quality and recommendation for editorial decision, compared with reviewers suggested by other parties, and whether reviewer reports for journals operating on open or single-blind peer review models differ with regard to report quality and reviewer recommendations.

Design

Retrospective analysis of the quality of reviewer reports using an established Review Quality Instrument, and analysis of reviewer recommendations and author satisfaction surveys.

Setting

BioMed Central biology and medical journals. BMC Infectious Diseases and BMC Microbiology are similar in size, rejection rates, impact factors and editorial processes, but the former uses open peer review while the latter uses single-blind peer review. The Journal of Inflammation has operated under both peer review models.

Sample

Two hundred reviewer reports submitted to BMC Infectious Diseases, 200 reviewer reports submitted to BMC Microbiology and 400 reviewer reports submitted to the Journal of Inflammation.

Results

For each journal, author-suggested reviewers provided reports of comparable quality to non-author-suggested reviewers, but were significantly more likely to recommend acceptance, irrespective of the peer review model (p<0.0001 for BMC Infectious Diseases, BMC Microbiology and the Journal of Inflammation). For BMC Infectious Diseases, the overall quality of reviewer reports measured by the Review Quality Instrument was 5% higher than for BMC Microbiology (p=0.042). For the Journal of Inflammation, the quality of reports was the same irrespective of the peer review model used.

Conclusions

Reviewers suggested by authors provide reports of comparable quality to non-author-suggested reviewers, but are significantly more likely to recommend acceptance. Open peer review reports for BMC Infectious Diseases were of higher quality than single-blind reports for BMC Microbiology. There was no difference in quality of peer review in the Journal of Inflammation under open peer review compared with single blind.

URL : Retrospective analysis of the quality of reports by author-suggested and non-author-suggested reviewers in journals operating on open or single-blind peer review models

DOI : 10.1136/bmjopen-2015-008707

7 octobre 2015

A multi-institutional study of the impact of open textbook adoption on the learning outcomes of post-secondary students

In some educational settings, the cost of textbooks approaches or even exceeds the cost of tuition. Given limited resources, it is important to better understand the impacts of free open educational resources (OER) on student outcomes. Utilizing digital resources such as OER can substantially reduce costs for students. The purpose of this study was to analyze whether the adoption of no-cost open digital textbooks significantly predicted students’ completion of courses, class achievement, and enrollment intensity during and after semesters in which OER were used. T

his study utilized a quantitative quasi-experimental design with propensity-score matched groups to examine differences in outcomes between students that used OER and those who did not. The demographics of the initial sample of 16,727 included 4909 students in the treatment condition with a pool of 11,818 in the control condition. There were statistically significant differences between groups, with most favoring students utilizing OER.

URL : http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12528-015-9101-x

4 octobre 2015

Strategies for Success: Open Access Policies at North American Educational Institutions

Recognizing the paucity of quantitative and qualitative data from North American educational institutions that have pursued open access policies, the authors devised a survey to collect information on the characteristics of these institutions, as well as the elements of the open access policies, the methods of promoting these policies, faculty concerns about the policies, and how those concerns have been addressed.

The data collected through survey results from fifty-one institutions can inform the strategic decisions being made by other institutions considering an open access policy and illustrates the essential roles that academic libraries can play in the development and passage of open access policies.

URL : http://crl.acrl.org/content/early/2015/09/24/crl15-809.full.pdf

3 octobre 20159 avril 2020

‘Predatory’ open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics

Background

A negative consequence of the rapid growth of scholarly open access publishing funded by article processing charges is the emergence of publishers and journals with highly questionable marketing and peer review practices. These so-called predatory publishers are causing unfounded negative publicity for open access publishing in general. Reports about this branch of e-business have so far mainly concentrated on exposing lacking peer review and scandals involving publishers and journals. There is a lack of comprehensive studies about several aspects of this phenomenon, including extent and regional distribution.

Methods

After an initial scan of all predatory publishers and journals included in the so-called Beall’s list, a sample of 613 journals was constructed using a stratified sampling method from the total of over 11,000 journals identified. Information about the subject field, country of publisher, article processing charge and article volumes published between 2010 and 2014 were manually collected from the journal websites. For a subset of journals, individual articles were sampled in order to study the country affiliation of authors and the publication delays.

Results

Over the studied period, predatory journals have rapidly increased their publication volumes from 53,000 in 2010 to an estimated 420,000 articles in 2014, published by around 8,000 active journals. Early on, publishers with more than 100 journals dominated the market, but since 2012 publishers in the 10–99 journal size category have captured the largest market share. The regional distribution of both the publisher’s country and authorship is highly skewed, in particular Asia and Africa contributed three quarters of authors. Authors paid an average article processing charge of 178 USD per article for articles typically published within 2 to 3 months of submission.

Conclusions

Despite a total number of journals and publishing volumes comparable to respectable (indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals) open access journals, the problem of predatory open access seems highly contained to just a few countries, where the academic evaluation practices strongly favor international publication, but without further quality checks.

URL : ‘Predatory’ open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics

Alternative location : http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/13/230

29 septembre 2015

Open access chemical probes for epigenetic targets

Background

High attrition rates in drug discovery call for new approaches to improve target validation. Academia is filling gaps, but often lacks the experience and resources of the pharmaceutical industry resulting in poorly characterized tool compounds.

Discussion

The SGC has established an open access chemical probe consortium, currently encompassing ten pharmaceutical companies. One of its mandates is to create well-characterized inhibitors (chemical probes) for epigenetic targets to enable new biology and target validation for drug development.

Conclusion

Epigenetic probe compounds have proven to be very valuable and have not only spurred a plethora of novel biological findings, but also provided starting points for clinical trials. These probes have proven to be critical complementation to traditional genetic targeting strategies and provided sometimes surprising results.

URL : http://www.future-science.com/doi/pdfplus/10.4155/fmc.15.127

29 septembre 2015

Institutional policy implementation at University of Minho, Portugal

This case study describes the implementation process of the Open Access institutional policy at the University of Minho (UMinho), Portugal. Starting with a brief introduction about the institution, in terms of its academic community and research, the document then provides a detailed description of the steps taken to implement the UMinho’s institutional repository (the IR) and the Open Access policy. We highlight the main goals which oriented the implementation of the repository, the devised communication plan, the value-added services created for authors, and finally, the engagement within the international community in these areas.

Regarding the Open Access policy, we present a brief summary of the main points of the self-archiving policy, approved late 2004, and also point out the main additions to the policy when it was upgraded in 2011.
This case study also provides some figures and tables about the results of the various monitoring processes carried out by the University of Minho Documentation Services to follow-up and measure policy compliance.
In summary, since the beginning of 2004 with the IR implementation, several initiatives have been taking place with the purpose of increasing the number of deposited documents. The Open Access policy adoption was, definitely, the main success factor amongst all the other initiatives and efforts.

URL : Institutional policy implementation at University of Minho, Portugal

Alternative location : http://www.pasteur4oa.eu/sites/pasteur4oa/files/resource/Case%20Study_UMinho.pdf