InfoDoc MicroVeille – Page 387 – Veille dédiée aux Sciences de l'Information et des Bibliothèques // Collecting and Sharing research papers in Library and Information science ISSN 2429-3938

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

Posted on 3 octobre 2015 by Hans Dillaerts

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

Calliopê.ch : Recommandations pour la mise en place d’une offre de ebooks en bibliothèque

Posted on 29 septembre 2015 by Hans Dillaerts

Initié par la Haute École de gestion de Genève, le projet de recherche Calliopê.ch s’est déroulé entre janvier 2014 et juin 2015. Cette étude visait à appréhender la réception et l’usage de dispositifs mobiles de lecture (notamment liseuses et tablettes) en bibliothèque, de manière à formuler des préconisations sur la mise en place d’une offre numérique globale (contenus, organisation des contenus, interfaces, dispositifs de lecture, modalités de prêt).

Mené en partenariat avec l’enssib (école nationale supérieure des sciences de l’information et des bibliothèques), la Bibliothèque de l’UNIGE (Université de Genève) et la CLP (Communauté de travail des bibliothèques suisses de lecture publique), le projet a abouti à l’élaboration de recommandations basées sur les résultats d’une enquête en ligne et les retours d’expériences d’usagers.

Présentées sous formes de fiches, ces préconisations fournissent des pistes de réflexion et d’actions concrètes aux bibliothèques suisses romandes désireuses d’offrir une collection de livres numériques à leurs usagers. Elles traitent d’une part d’aspects généraux et, d’autre part, de points spécifiques au contexte académique et à la lecture publique.

De nature pratique, elles couvrent à la fois les aspects techniques, fonctionnels, organisationnels et juridiques mais aussi ceux relatifs aux publics et à la communication. L’objectif est de soutenir les bibliothèques dans leur démarche de mise en place d’une offre complète alliant ebooks, dispositifs mobiles et services d’accompagnement nécessaires à leur valorisation et, in fine, à leur appropriation par les publics.

URL : Calliopê.ch : Recommandations pour la mise en place d’une offre de ebooks en bibliothèque

Accessible également sur ArchiveSic : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_01186706

Open access chemical probes for epigenetic targets

Posted on 29 septembre 2015 by Hans Dillaerts

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

Institutional policy implementation at University of Minho, Portugal

Posted on 29 septembre 2015 by Hans Dillaerts

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

Making Open Science a reality

Posted on 28 septembre 2015 by Hans Dillaerts

Science is the mother of the digital age. And yet, twenty-two years after CERN placed the World Wide Web software in the public domain, effectively creating the open internet, science itself has struggled not only to “go digital” but also to “go open”. This report, Making open science a reality reviews the progress in OECD countries in making the results of publicly funded research, namely scientific publications and research data openly accessible to researchers and innovators alike.

The report i) reviews the policy rationale behind open science and open data; ii) discusses and presents evidence on the impacts of policies to promote open science and open data; iii) explores the legal barriers and solutions to greater access to research data; iv) provides a description of the key actors involved in open science and their roles; and finally v) assesses progress in OECD and selected non-member countries based a survey of recent policy trends.

URL : http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/making-open-science-a-reality_5jrs2f963zs1-en

A Framework to Explore the Knowledge Structure of Multidisciplinary Research Fields

Posted on 26 septembre 2015 by Hans Dillaerts

Understanding emerging areas of a multidisciplinary research field is crucial for researchers, policymakers and other stakeholders. For them a knowledge structure based on longitudinal bibliographic data can be an effective instrument. But with the vast amount of available online information it is often hard to understand the knowledge structure for data.

In this paper, we present a novel approach for retrieving online bibliographic data and propose a framework for exploring knowledge structure. We also present several longitudinal analyses to interpret and visualize the last 20 years of published obesity research data.

URL : A Framework to Explore the Knowledge Structure of Multidisciplinary Research Fields

DOI : http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0123537