EN

Quality open access publishing and registration to Directory of Open Access Journals

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Xin Bi, Xi’an Jiaotong

With the fast development of open access publishing worldwide, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) as a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals, has been recognized for its high criteria in facilitating high quality open access scholarly publishing and used as the portal for accessing quality open access journals.

While the numbers of journal application to be inclusion in DOAJ in Asia are kept increasing dramatically, many editors of these journals are not very clear about the idea or concept of the open access which have been embedded in the application form containing 58 questions falling into several different criteria categories.

The very commonly seen misunderstanding of the required item, inaccurate or vague or incomplete and even missing information, poorly organized website, non-transparent process of publishing, especially no open access statement and copyright statement, or conflicts between the policy statements would cause much more communication between the reviewer and the editor and delay the completion of the review.

This article gives an in depth introduction to DOAJ criteria and detailed introduction to the general process on how to register to DOAJ, suggestions based on application review also is given for journal editors to better prepare for this application.

And it is the most important for editors to keep in mind that to be indexed by DOAJ is not just about filling a form, it is about truly change and adapt to best practices in open access publishing.

URL : Quality open access publishing and registration to Directory of Open Access Journals

DOI : https://doi.org/10.6087/kcse.82

EN

A ‘gold-centric’ implementation of open access: Hybrid journals, the ‘total cost of publication’ and policy development in the UK and beyond

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Stephen Pinfield, Jennifer Salter, Peter A. Bath

This paper reports analysis of data from higher education institutions in the UK on their experience of the open-access (OA) publishing market working within a policy environment favouring ‘Gold’ OA (OA publishing in journals).

It models the ‘total cost of publication’ – comprising costs of journal subscriptions, OA article-processing charges (APCs) and new administrative costs – for a sample of 24 institutions. APCs are shown to constitute 12% of the ‘total cost of publication’, APC administration, 1%, and subscriptions, 87% (for a sample of seven publishers).

APC expenditure in institutions rose between 2012 and 2014 at the same time as rising subscription costs. There was disproportionately high take up of Gold options for Health and Life Sciences articles.

APC prices paid varied widely, with a mean APC of £1,586 in 2014. ‘Hybrid’ options (subscription journals also offering OA for individual articles on payment of an APC) were considerably more expensive than fully-OA titles, but the data indicate a correlation between APC price and journal quality (as reflected in the citation rates of journals).

The policy implications of these developments are explored particularly in relation to hybrid OA and potential of offsetting subscription and APC costs.

URL : http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/96336/

EN

Why We Read Wikipedia

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Philipp Singer, Florian Lemmerich, Robert West, Leila Zia, Ellery Wulczyn, Markus Strohmaier, Jure Leskovec

Wikipedia is one of the most popular sites on the Web, with millions of users relying on it to satisfy a broad range of information needs every day. Although it is crucial to understand what exactly these needs are in order to be able to meet them, little is currently known about why users visit Wikipedia.

The goal of this paper is to fill this gap by combining a survey of Wikipedia readers with a log-based analysis of user activity.

Based on an initial series of user surveys, we build a taxonomy of Wikipedia use cases along several dimensions, capturing users’ motivations to visit Wikipedia, the depth of knowledge they are seeking, and their knowledge of the topic of interest prior to visiting Wikipedia.

Then, we quantify the prevalence of these use cases via a large-scale user survey conducted on live Wikipedia with almost 30,000 responses.

Our analyses highlight the variety of factors driving users to Wikipedia, such as current events, media coverage of a topic, personal curiosity, work or school assignments, or boredom.

Finally, we match survey responses to the respondents’ digital traces in Wikipedia’s server logs, enabling the discovery of behavioral patterns associated with specific use cases.

For instance, we observe long and fast-paced page sequences across topics for users who are bored or exploring randomly, whereas those using Wikipedia for work or school spend more time on individual articles focused on topics such as science.

Our findings advance our understanding of reader motivations and behavior on Wikipedia and can have implications for developers aiming to improve Wikipedia’s user experience, editors striving to cater to their readers’ needs, third-party services (such as search engines) providing access to Wikipedia content, and researchers aiming to build tools such as recommendation engines.

URL : Why We Read Wikipedia

Alternative location : https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.05379

EN

An Exploration of Faculty Experiences With Open Access Journal Publishing at Two Canadian Comprehensive Universities

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Barbara McDonald, Ian Gibson, Elizabeth Yates, Carol Stephenson

Introduction

This exploratory study was intended to shed light on Canadian academics’ participation in, knowledge of and attitudes towards Open Access (OA) journal publishing. The primary aim of the study was to inform the authors’ schools’ educational and outreach efforts to faculty regarding OA publishing.

The survey was conducted at two Canadian comprehensive universities: Brock University (St. Catharines, Ontario) and Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Ontario) in 2014.

Methods

A web-based survey was distributed to faculty at each university. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. Limitations: Despite the excellent response rates, the results are not generalizable beyond these two institutions.

Results

The Brock response rate was 38%; the Laurier response rate was 23% from full-time faculty and five percent from part-time faculty. Brock and Laurier faculty members share common characteristics in both their publishing practices and attitudes towards OA.

Science/health science researchers were the most positive about OA journal publishing; arts and humanities and social sciences respondents were more mixed in their perceptions; business participants were the least positive. Their concerns focused on OA journal quality and associated costs.

Conclusion

While most survey respondents agreed that publicly available research is generally a good thing, this study has clearly identified obstacles that prevent faculty’s positive attitudes towards OA from translating into open publishing practices.

URL : An Exploration of Faculty Experiences With Open Access Journal Publishing at Two Canadian Comprehensive Universities

Alternative location : https://journal.lib.uoguelph.ca/index.php/perj/article/view/3703

EN

Academic Libraries and Copyright: Do Librarians Really Have the Required Knowledge?

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors: Juan-Carlos Fernández-Molina, João Batista E. Moraes, José Augusto C. Guimarães

A solid professional performance on the part of academic librarians at present calls for adequate knowledge about copyright law, not only for the development of their own tasks without infringing the law, but also to guide and provide pertinent advice for library users (faculty and students).

This paper presents the results of an online survey of Brazilian academic librarians, the objective being to determine the level of knowledge about basic questions on copyright related to their professional activities.

The case of Brazil is especially relevant, as it is one of the few countries still not including library exceptions and limitations in its copyright law. Our results make manifest important gaps in knowledge about copyright, underlining the need for a training program to remedy the situation.

Moreover, because training is needed for current as well as future professionals, it should be implemented in both the professional and the educational sector.

URL : http://crl.acrl.org/content/78/2/241.abstract

FR

Patrimoine numérisé et Open Content : quelle place pour le domaine public dans les bibliothèques numériques patrimoniales ?

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Auteur/Author : Laura Le Coz

Le mouvement d’ouverture des données dans lequel la France s’engage depuis 2011 témoigne d’une prise de conscience par les acteurs publics des enjeux de la réutilisation des données. Pourtant, les institutions culturelles sont longtemps restées a la traine de ce mouvement.

En ce qui concerne spécifiquement les reproductions numérisées d’oeuvres du domaine public, beaucoup d’institutions continuent de les soumettre a des conditions de réutilisation contraignantes,comme la loi les y autorise, du fait de l’assimilation de ces fichiers numériques a des données publiques.

Étant donné le caractère très hétérogène et souvent peu lisible des politiques de réutilisation a travers le paysage des institutions culturelles, ce mémoire vise d’abord a faire un état des lieux des pratiques des bibliothèques numériques patrimoniales, ainsi qu’un examen des raisons qu’elles font valoir en faveur des diverses politiques de réutilisation.

Il s’agira également d’éclaircir la situation juridique des bibliothèques numériques en analysant les nombreuses bases légales,plus ou moins solides, sur lesquelles elles s’appuient.

Puisque cette situation juridique a elle-même connu des évolutions récentes, il convient enfin de mettre en lumière les dynamiques de changement à l’œuvre, ainsi que les prises de position suscitées de divers côtés par la question du domaine public numérisé.

URL : Patrimoine numérisé et Open Content : quelle place pour le domaine public dans les bibliothèques numériques patrimoniales ?

Alternative location : http://www.enssib.fr/bibliotheque-numerique/notices/67307-patrimoine-numerise-et-open-content-quelle-place-pour-le-domaine-public-dans-les-bibliotheques-numeriques-patrimoniales

EN

Scholarly journal publishing in transition – from restricted to open access

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Bo-Christer Björk

While the business models used in most segments of the media industry have been profoundly changed by the Internet surprisingly little has changed in the publishing of scholarly peer reviewed journals. Electronic delivery has become the norm, but the same publishers as before are still dominating the market, selling content to subscribers.

This article asks the question why Open Access (OA) to the output of mainly publicly funded research hasn’t yet become the mainstream business model. OA implies a reversal of revenue logic from readers paying for content to authors paying for dissemination via universal free access.

The current situation is analyzed using Porter’s five forces model. The analysis demonstrates a lack of competitive pressure in this industry, leading to so high profit levels of the leading publishers that they have not yet felt a strong need to change the way they operate.

OA funded by article publishing charges (APCs) might nevertheless start rapidly becoming more common. The driving force currently consists of the public research funders and administrations in Europe, which are pushing for OA by starting dedicated funds for paying the APCs of authors from the respective countries.

This has in turn lead to a situation in which publishers have introduced “big deals” involving the bundling of (a) subscription to all their  journals, (b) APCs for their hybrid journals and (c) in the future also APCs to their full OA journals.

This appears to be a relatively risk free strategy for the publishers in question to retain their dominance of the market and high profit levels also in the future.

URL : http://www.openaccesspublishing.org/Landscape%20Green%20versionacr.pdf