For 481 biomedical open access journals, articles are not searchable in the Directory of Open Access Journals nor in conventional biomedical databases

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“Background. Open access (OA) journals allows access to research papers free of charge to the reader. Traditionally, biomedical researchers use databases like MEDLINE and EMBASE to discover new advances. However, biomedical OA journals might not fulfill such databases’ criteria, hindering dissemination. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a database exclusively listing OA journals. The aim of this study was to investigate DOAJ’s coverage of biomedical OA journals compared with the conventional biomedical databases.

Methods. Information on all journals listed in four conventional biomedical databases (MEDLINE, PubMed Central, EMBASE and SCOPUS) and DOAJ were gathered. Journals were included if they were (1) actively publishing, (2) full OA, (3) prospectively indexed in one or more database, and (4) of biomedical subject. Impact factor and journal language were also collected. DOAJ was compared with conventional databases regarding the proportion of journals covered, along with their impact factor and publishing language. The proportion of journals with articles indexed by DOAJ was determined.

Results. In total, 3,236 biomedical OA journals were included in the study. Of the included journals, 86.7% were listed in DOAJ. Combined, the conventional biomedical databases listed 75.0% of the journals; 18.7% in MEDLINE; 36.5% in PubMed Central; 51.5% in SCOPUS and 50.6% in EMBASE. Of the journals in DOAJ, 88.7% published in English and 20.6% had received impact factor for 2012 compared with 93.5% and 26.0%, respectively, for journals in the conventional biomedical databases. A subset of 51.1% and 48.5% of the journals in DOAJ had articles indexed from 2012 and 2013, respectively. Of journals exclusively listed in DOAJ, one journal had received an impact factor for 2012, and 59.6% of the journals had no content from 2013 indexed in DOAJ.

Conclusions. DOAJ is the most complete registry of biomedical OA journals compared with five conventional biomedical databases. However, DOAJ only indexes articles for half of the biomedical journals listed, making it an incomplete source for biomedical research papers in general.”

URL : For 481 biomedical open access journals, articles are not searchable in the Directory of Open Access Journals nor in conventional biomedical databases

DOI : https://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.972

Have the “mega-journals” reached the limits to growth?

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“A “mega-journal” is a new type of scientific journal that publishes freely accessible articles, which have been peer reviewed for scientific trustworthiness, but leaves it to the readers to decide which articles are of interest and importance to them. In the wake of the phenomenal success of PLOS ONE, several other publishers have recently started mega-journals. This article presents the evolution of mega-journals since 2010 in terms of article publication rates. The fastest growth seems to have ebbed out at around 35,000 annual articles for the 14 journals combined. Acceptance rates are in the range of 50–70%, and speed of publication is around 3–5 months. Common features in mega-journals are alternative impact metrics, easy reusability of figures and data, post-publication discussions and portable reviews from other journals.”

URL :  Have the “mega-journals” reached the limits to growth?

DOI : https://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.981

New Consortial Model for E-Books Acquisitions

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Author : Luke Swindler

E-books constitute major challenges for library collections generally and present fundamental problems for consortial collection development specifically. The Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) and Oxford University Press (OUP) have created a mutually equitable and financially sustainable model for the consortial acquisition of e-books coupled with print titles needed to support instruction and research across the disciplinary spectrum within a transitional framework that is acceptable to users while moving both libraries and publishers to a decidedly electronic environment for monographs.

Working with YBP Library Services, TRLN and OUP developed a flexible vending model for systematically increasing e-books acquisitions in tandem with reducing print intake over time and keeping net costs constant that other consortia and publishers would find useful.

This article focuses on creating an acceptable and sustainable model that allows libraries to shift to e-books and the implications for traditional cooperative collection development.

The research reports on the principles undergirding the pilot, how it developed, challenges encountered and lessons learned, librarian and user reactions to this format shift, and resulting philosophical and practical evolutions in consortial approaches to monographic acquisitions and understandings of what constitutes cooperative collections success in a digital environment.

URL : New Consortial Model for E-Books Acquisitions

Alternative location : http://crl.acrl.org/content/77/3/269.abstract

Study on Perspectives Regarding Deposit on Open Access Repositories in the Context of Public Universities in the Central-Eastern Region of Argentina

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“This article presents the results of a survey and qualitative study of needs and practices of open access scholarly works dissemination.The survey and study focused on different issues related to usability, navigation, and accessibility of institutional repositories, which have guided the design of an experimental prototype in the context of a regional project that joins three universities in Argentina. In such academic practices, the teaching community offers various types of production and simultaneous application areas for digital objects. Thus, there is a technological requirement to enable users to carry out their self-archiving process of different objects, in a user-friendly way, allowing them to upload these objects in various collections. A prototype was implemented and tested in order to obtain an initial assessment of the proposed model.”

URL : Study on Perspectives Regarding Deposit on Open Access Repositories in the Context of Public Universities in the Central-Eastern Region of Argentina

Related URL : http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/145

Disrupting the subscription journals’ business model for the necessary large-scale transformation to open access

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“This paper makes the strong, fact-based case for a large-scale transformation of the current corpus of scientific subscription journals to an open access business model. The existing journals, with their well-tested functionalities, should be retained and developed to meet the demands of 21st century research, while the underlying payment streams undergo a major restructuring. There is sufficient momentum for this decisive push towards open access publishing. The diverse existing initiatives must be coordinated so as to converge on this clear goal.

The international nature of research implies that this transformation will be achieved on a truly global scale only through a consensus of the world’s most eminent research organizations. All the indications are that the money already invested in the research publishing system is sufficient to enable a transformation that will be sustainable for the future. There needs to be a shared understanding that the money currently locked in the journal subscription system must be withdrawn and re-purposed for open access publishing services.

The current library acquisition budgets are the ultimate reservoir for enabling the transformation without financial or other risks. The goal is to preserve the established service levels provided by publishers that are still requested by researchers, while redefining and reorganizing the necessary payment streams. By disrupting the underlying business model, the viability of journal publishing can be preserved and put on a solid footing for the scholarly developments of the future.”

URL : MPDL_OA-Transition_White_Paper

Related URL : http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0026-C274-7

Searching for Explanations: How the Internet Inflates Estimates of Internal Knowledge

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“As the Internet has become a nearly ubiquitous resource for acquiring knowledge about the world, questions have arisen about its potential effects on cognition. Here we show that searching the Internet for explanatory knowledge creates an illusion whereby people mistake access to information for their own personal understanding of the information. Evidence from 9 experiments shows that searching for information online leads to an increase in self-assessed knowledge as people mistakenly think they have more knowledge “in the head,” even seeing their own brains as more active as depicted by functional MRI (fMRI) images.”

URL : http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-0000070.pdf

Study of Open Access Publishing in Social Sciences and its Implications for Libraries

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The Open Access Movement (OAM), which started as a gradual realisation by authors mainly in biomedical sciences to make available results of public-funded research projects to the public without much barrier pertaining to cost, permission, copyright obligations, etc., gradually gained momentum across the world and India was no exception to it.

Though the movement was confined mainly to science, technology and medical fields in India, since last few years, a number of open access repositories and open access journals in Social Science subjects have started appearing.

The present study which is confined to the open access Social Science journals published from India as mentioned in the Directory of Open Access Journals, identified 60 open access Social Sciences journals in India.

The study also analysed the journals on the basis of certain parameters as to trend of open access journals in Social Sciences, and was found that most of open access journals in Social Sciences appeared between 2009 and 2014 and about half of the journals charge authors for publishing their papers in the journals and only a few are published under Creative Commons Attribution.

Lastly, the paper discusses about implications of open access publishing on Social Science research libraries made few suggestions towards encouraging open access publishing in Social Science subjects in India.

URL : Study of Open Access Publishing in Social Sciences and its Implications for Libraries

Related URL : http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/article/view/8720