Is Scholarly Publishing Like Rock and Roll?

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Author : David W. Lewis

This article uses Alan B. Krueger’s analysis of the music industry in his book Rockonomics: A Backstage Tour of What the Music Industry Can Teach Us About Economics and Life as a lens to consider the structure of scholarly publishing and what could happen to scholarly publishing going forward.

Both the music industry and scholarly publishing are facing disruption as their products become digital. Digital content provides opportunities to a create a better product at lower prices and in the music industry this has happened. Scholarly publishing has not yet done so.

Similarities and differences between the music industry and scholarly publishing will be considered. Like music, scholarly publishing appears to be a superstar industry. Both music and scholarly publishing are subject to piracy, which threatens revenue, though Napster was a greater disrupter than Sci-Hub seems to be.

It also appears that for a variety of reasons market forces are not effective in driving changes in business models and practices in scholarly publishing, at least not at the rate we would expect given the changes in technology. After reviewing similarities and differences, the prospects for the future of scholarly publishing will be considered.

URL : Is Scholarly Publishing Like Rock and Roll?

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/1805/20430

Public Views on Models for Accessing Genomic and Health Data for Research: Mixed Methods Study

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Authors : Kerina H Jones, Helen Daniels, Emma Squires, David V Ford

Background

The literature abounds with increasing numbers of research studies using genomic data in combination with health data (eg, health records and phenotypic and lifestyle data), with great potential for large-scale research and precision medicine.

However, concerns have been raised about social acceptability and risks posed for individuals and their kin. Although there has been public engagement on various aspects of this topic, there is a lack of information about public views on data access models.

Objective

This study aimed to address the lack of information on the social acceptability of access models for reusing genomic data collected for research in conjunction with health data.

Models considered were open web-based access, released externally to researchers, and access within a data safe haven.

Methods

Views were ascertained using a series of 8 public workshops (N=116). The workshops included an explanation of benefits and risks in using genomic data with health data, a facilitated discussion, and an exit questionnaire.

The resulting quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, and the qualitative data were analyzed for emerging themes.

Results

Respondents placed a high value on the reuse of genomic data but raised concerns including data misuse, information governance, and discrimination. They showed a preference for giving consent and use of data within a safe haven over external release or open access.

Perceived risks with open access included data being used by unscrupulous parties, with external release included data security, and with safe havens included the need for robust safeguards.

Conclusions: This is the first known study exploring public views of access models for reusing anonymized genomic and health data in research.

It indicated that people are generally amenable but prefer data safe havens because of perceived sensitivities. We recommend that public views be incorporated into guidance on models for the reuse of genomic and health data.

URL : Public Views on Models for Accessing Genomic and Health Data for Research: Mixed Methods Study

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2196/14384

COCI, the OpenCitations Index of Crossref open DOI-to-DOI citations

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Authors : Ivan Heibi, Silvio Peroni, David Shotton

In this paper, we present COCI, the OpenCitations Index of Crossref open DOI-to-DOI citations (this http URL). COCI is the first open citation index created by OpenCitations, in which we have applied the concept of citations as first-class data entities, and it contains more than 445 million DOI-to-DOI citation links derived from the data available in Crossref.

These citations are described in RDF by means of the newly extended version of the OpenCitations Data Model (OCDM).

We introduce the workflow we have developed for creating these data, and also show the additional services that facilitate the access to and querying of these data via different access points: a SPARQL endpoint, a REST API, bulk downloads, Web interfaces, and direct access to the citations via HTTP content negotiation.

Finally, we present statistics regarding the use of COCI citation data, and we introduce several projects that have already started to use COCI data for different purposes.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.06052

Open Up: A Survey on Open and Non-anonymized Peer Reviewing

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Authors : Lonni Besançon, Niklas Rönnberg, Jonas Löwgren, Jonathan P. Tennant, Matthew Cooper

We present a discussion and analysis regarding the benefits and limitations of open and non-anonymized peer review based on literature results and responses to a survey on the reviewing process of alt.chi, a more or less open-review track within the CHI conference, the predominant conference in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI).

This track currently is the only implementation of an open-peer-review process in the field of HCI while, with the recent increase in interest in open science practices, open review is now being considered and used in other fields.

We collected 30 responses from alt.chi authors and reviewers and found that, while the benefits are quite clear and the system is generally well liked by alt.chi participants, they are reluctant to see it used in other venues.

This concurs with a number of recent studies that suggest a divergence between support for a more open review process and its practical implementation. The data and scripts are available on https://osf.io/vuw7h/, and the figures and follow-up work on http://tiny.cc/OpenReviews.

URL : Open Up: A Survey on Open and Non-anonymized Peer Reviewing

Alternative location : https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201905.0098/v2

 

Dataset search: a survey

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Authors : Adriane Chapman, Elena Simperl, Laura Koesten, George Konstantinidis, Luis-Daniel Ibáñez, Emilia Kacprzak, Paul Groth

Generating value from data requires the ability to find, access and make sense of datasets. There are many efforts underway to encourage data sharing and reuse, from scientific publishers asking authors to submit data alongside manuscripts to data marketplaces, open data portals and data communities.

Google recently beta-released a search service for datasets, which allows users to discover data stored in various online repositories via keyword queries. These developments foreshadow an emerging research field around dataset search or retrieval that broadly encompasses frameworks, methods and tools that help match a user data need against a collection of datasets.

Here, we survey the state of the art of research and commercial systems and discuss what makes dataset search a field in its own right, with unique challenges and open questions.

We look at approaches and implementations from related areas dataset search is drawing upon, including information retrieval, databases, entity-centric and tabular search in order to identify possible paths to tackle these questions as well as immediate next steps that will take the field forward.

URL : Dataset search: a survey

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s00778-019-00564-x

A Crisis in “Open Access”: Should Communication Scholarly Outputs Take 77 Years to Become Open Access?

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Authors : Abbas Ghanbari Baghestan, Hadi Khaniki, Abdolhosein Kalantari, Mehrnoosh Akhtari-Zavare, Elaheh Farahmand, Ezhar Tamam, Nader Ale Ebrahim, Havva Sabani, Mahmoud Danaee

This study diachronically investigates the trend of the “open access” in the Web of Science (WoS) category of “communication.” To evaluate the trend, data were collected from 184 categories of WoS from 1980 to 2017.

A total of 87,997,893 documents were obtained, of which 95,304 (0.10%) were in the category of “communication.” In average, 4.24% of the documents in all 184 categories were open access. While in communication, it was 3.29%, which ranked communication 116 out of 184.

An Open Access Index (OAI) was developed to predict the trend of open access in communication. Based on the OAI, communication needs 77 years to fully reach open access, which undeniably can be considered as “crisis in scientific publishing” in this field.

Given this stunning information, it is the time for a global call for “open access” by communication scholars across the world. Future research should investigate whether the current business models of publications in communication scholarships are encouraging open access or pose unnecessary restrictions on knowledge development.

URL : A Crisis in “Open Access”: Should Communication Scholarly Outputs Take 77 Years to Become Open Access?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019871044