EN

Transformative agreements: Do they pave the way to open access?

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Ángel Borrego, Lluís Anglada, Ernest Abadal

Transformative agreements, also known as ‘offsetting’, ‘read and publish’, or ‘publish and read’ agreements, have shifted the focus of scholarly journal licensing from cost containment towards open access publication.

An analysis of 36 full‐text transformative agreements recorded in the ESAC registry shows that ‘transformative agreement’ is an umbrella term that encompasses different kinds of contracts. We differentiate between pre‐transformative, partially transformative, and fully transformative agreements.

Pre‐transformative agreements are traditional subscription licences that grant article processing charge (APC) discounts or vouchers for open access publication of a limited number of articles. Partially transformative agreements differentiate between a read fee and a publish fee to cover the processing charges of a certain number of articles.

Fully transformative agreements allow unlimited open access publication of the scholarly output of the subscribing institution. In all three categories, some agreements restrict open access publication to hybrid journals, whereas others allow publication in both hybrid and gold journals.

Transformative agreements are more transparent than traditional journal licences, allow authors to retain copyright, and make provisions to facilitate the management of open access workflows.

It is hard to assess whether these agreements are just a temporary phase in the transition towards open access or will perpetuate the current structure of the scholarly communication system and its associated high costs.

URL : Transformative agreements: Do they pave the way to open access?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1347

EN

The odd couple: contrasting openness in innovation and science

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Maximilian Heimstädt, Sascha Friesike

Over the last few decades, two domains have undergone seemingly similar transformations: Closed innovation turned into open innovation, closed science into open science. In this essay we engage critically with recent calls for a close coupling of the two domains based on their apparent commonality: openness.

Comparing the historically-specific ways in which openness has been defined and mobilised, we find substantial differences between open innovation and open science. While openness in innovation was developed as an analytic concept and redefined quite flexibly over time, openness in science was created as a programmatic concept and its initial definition has been preserved rather rigidly.

Contrasting openness in innovation and science helps anticipate some of the unintended consequences that a close coupling of these domains might yield. A close coupling might alienate advocates for change within the academic community, marginalise maintenance-oriented collaborations between science and practice, and increase the dependence of science on profit-oriented platforms.

Reflecting upon these unintended consequences can help policy-makers and researchers to fine-tune their concepts for new forms of engagement across the science-practice divide.

URL : The odd couple: contrasting openness in innovation and science

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1080/14479338.2020.1837631

EN

How is open access publishing going down with early career researchers? An international, multi-disciplinary study

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : David Nicholas, Hamid R. Jamali, Eti Herman, Jie Xu, Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri, Anthony Watkinson, Blanca Rodríguez-Bravo, Abdullah Abrizah, Marzena Świgoń, Tatiana Polezhaeva

This study explores early career researchers’ (ECRs) appreciation and utilisation of open access (OA) publishing. The evidence reported here results from a questionnaire-based international survey with 1600 participants, which forms the second leg and final year of a four year long, mixed methods, longitudinal study that sought to discover whether ECRs will be the harbingers of change when it comes to scholarly communications.

Proceeding from the notion that today’s neophyte researchers, believed to hold millennial values of openness to change, transparency and sharing, may be best placed to power the take-up of OA publishing, the study sought to discover: the extent to which ECRs publish OA papers; the main reasons for their doing or not doing so; and what were thought to be the broader advantages and disadvanta-ges of OA publishing.

The survey data is presented against a backdrop of the literature-based evidence on the subject, with the interview stage data providing contextualisation and qualitative depth. The findings show that the majority of ECRs published in OA journals and this varied by discipline and country.

Most importantly, there were more advantages and fewer disadvantages to OA publishing, which may be indicative of problems to do with cost and availability, rather than reputational factors.

Among the many reasons cited for publishing OA the most important one is societal, although OA is seen as especially benefiting ECRs in career progression. Cost is plainly considered the main downside.

URL : How is open access publishing going down with early career researchers? An international, multi-disciplinary study

Alternative location : http://www.elprofesionaldelainformacion.com/contenidos/2020/nov/nicholas-herman-jamali-xu-boukacem-watkinson-rodriguez-abrizah-swigon-polezhaeva.pdf

FR

Visibilité et évaluation des revues scientifiques

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Auteur/Author : Françoise Gouzi

Cet article a pour ambition de proposer une approche multicritère et explicitement qualitative pour l’évaluation de la qualité scientifique des revues. Le système d’évaluation des articles scientifiques repose depuis des décennies sur la contribution scientifique et sur le support de publication , donc sur la revue dans laquelle ils sont publiés.

Si la citation (notamment en sciences des techniques et médicales) constitue également un indicateur bibliométrique central de l’évaluation a posteriori des articles scientifiques, aujourd’hui, le lecteur, qu’il fasse partie de la communauté des pairs ou qu’il soit un simple citoyen, prend de plus en plus part à l’évaluation des textes scientifiques par l’intermédiaire de nouvelles fonctionnalités techniques de commentaires associées à certaines plateformes de publication ou de diffusion.

URL : https://hal-univ-tlse2.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03007946

EN

Open Academic Book Publishing during COVID-19 Pandemic: A View on Romanian University Presses

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Mariana Cernicova-Buca, Katalin Luzan

In the context of the 2020 public health crisis that discourages exchanges of physical objects in society, university-led publishing needed to rethink its operations. Worldwide the opening of quality scholarly content proved to be a solution.

University presses reacted rapidly and offered books according to the open access model. The present research aimed to map the editorial landscape of Romanian university presses, to identify the main features displayed online by the university presses parented by public universities and to highlight the readiness of these players to further open access academic books, especially in the time of the COVID-19 crisis.

The quantitative approach investigated the availability of e-books in the university presses’ portfolios, including the alignment to the open access scholarship movement, the use of social media accounts to promote the presses and the response of the presses to the challenges of the health crisis.

Out of the 46 active university presses, only six had open book titles in their portfolios and only one genuinely responded actively to the challenges posed by the need for electronic formats in 2020. Unless Romanian university presses modernize and restructure their modus operandi, they can prove irrelevant in the post-crisis period.

URL : Open Academic Book Publishing during COVID-19 Pandemic: A View on Romanian University Presses

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications8040049

EN

Citations driven by social connections? A multi-layer representation of coauthorship networks

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Christian Zingg, Vahan Nanumyan, Frank Schweitzer

To what extent is the citation rate of new papers influenced by the past social relations of their authors? To answer this question, we present a data-driven analysis of nine different physics journals.

Our analysis is based on a two-layer network representation constructed from two large-scale data sets, INSPIREHEP and APS. The social layer contains authors as nodes and coauthorship relations as links.

This allows us to quantify the social relations of each author, prior to the publication of a new paper. The publication layer contains papers as nodes and citations between papers as links.

This layer allows us to quantify scientific attention as measured by the change of the citation rate over time. We particularly study how this change correlates with the social relations of their authors, prior to publication.

We find that on average the maximum value of the citation rate is reached sooner for authors who have either published more papers, or who have had more coauthors in previous papers.

We also find that for these authors the decay in the citation rate is faster, meaning that their papers are forgotten sooner.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00092

EN

Creating Institution-Wide Awareness of, and Engagement with, Open Scholarship

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Author : Eleanor Colla

INTRODUCTION

Strategies for how, when, and why to communicate on the topics of Open Scholarship (OS) are many and varied. Here, the author reflects on how a small, regional university library went from a low knowledge base of OS to having OS more thoughtfully and thoroughly considered across many aspects of scholarship.

DESCRIPTION OF APPROACH

The author discusses how, over a three-year period, the library turned OS from being seen as a topic only the library deals with, to a nuanced conversation present across many levels of a university. This was done in three broad stages: first, upskilling librarians; second, reaching out to others working in this space and creating conversations across campus; and third, broadening conversations to different audiences whilst beginning to embed OS in institutional practices.

NEXT STEPS

Collaborative engagement across various levels has worked well for this university. The library will continue this approach to further embed OS in the culture of the institution while looking to further collaborate across the institution, and working with colleagues and OS advocates in other organizations, groups, and bodies.

URL : Creating Institution-Wide Awareness of, and Engagement with, Open Scholarship

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2387