A survey of authors publishing in four megajournals

« Aim. To determine the characteristics of megajournal authors, the nature of the manuscripts they are submitting to these journals, factors influencing their decision to publish in a megajournal, sources of funding for article processing charges (APCs) or other fees and their likelihood of submitting to a megajournal in the future.

Methods. Web-based survey of 2,128 authors who recently published in BMJ Open, PeerJ, PLOS ONE or SAGE Open.

Results. The response rate ranged from 26% for BMJ Open to 47% for SAGE Open. The authors were international, largely academics who had recently published in both subscription and Open Access (OA) journals. Across journals about 25% of the articles were preliminary findings and just under half were resubmissions of manuscripts rejected by other journals. Editors from other BMJ journals and perhaps to a lesser extent SAGE and PLOS journals appear to be encouraging authors to submit manuscripts that were rejected by the editor’s journals to a megajournal published by the same publisher. Quality of the journal and speed of the review process were important factors across all four journals. Impact factor was important for PLOS ONE authors but less so for BMJ Open authors, which also has an impact factor. The review criteria and the fact the journal was OA were other significant factors particularly important for PeerJ authors. The reputation of the publisher was an important factor for SAGE Open and BMJ Open. About half of PLOS ONE and around a third of BMJ Open and PeerJ authors used grant funding for publishing charges while only about 10% of SAGE Open used grant funding for publication charges. Around 60% of SAGE Open and 32% of PeerJ authors self-funded their publication fees however the fees are modest for these journals. The majority of authors from all 4 journals were pleased with their experience and indicated they were likely to submit to the same or similar journal in the future.

Conclusions. Megajournals are drawing an international group of authors who tend to be experienced academics. They are choosing to publish in megajournals for a variety of reasons but most seem to value the quality of the journal and the speed of the review/publication process. Having a broad scope was not a key factor for most authors though being OA was important for PeerJ and SAGE Open authors. Most authors appeared pleased with the experience and indicated they are likely to submit future manuscripts to the same or similar megajournal which seems to suggest these journals will continue to grow in popularity. »

URL : A survey of authors publishing in four megajournals
Alternative URL : https://peerj.com/articles/365/

Le développement de l’archive ouverte institutionnelle HAL UPS…

Le développement de l’archive ouverte institutionnelle HAL-UPS : Préconisations pour la mise en place d’un workflow pour la chaîne de traitement documentaire des publications scientifiques des laboratoires de recherche de l’Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier :

« État des lieux des politiques en matière d’archives ouvertes sur Toulouse et l’Université de Toulouse 3. Rappel historique sur la création de l’archive ouverte institutionnelle HAL-UPS. Tableaux récapitulatifs des pratiques en matière d’archives ouvertes par pôle disciplinaire sur l’Université Toulouse 3. Des préconisations sur les scénarios possibles de dépôts. »

URL : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00977548

Open access journals in Humanities and Social Science

This British Academy research project on the effects of current UK open access policies was funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and was overseen by a Steering Committee set up by the Academy to manage the project. The project was led by Professor Chris Wickham, FBA (British Academy Vice-President, Publications), with support and co-writing from Dr Rebecca Darley and Dr Daniel Reynolds. It investigates some of the issues involved in open access publishing, seeking to examine various practical issues and difficulties that may arise, using the example of twelve disciplines across the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS).

The key issues investigated were:

  • the degree to which non-UK journals are ‘compliant’ with current UK open-access policies, particularly ‘green’ open-access policies;
  • the differences between journal half-lives across the same disciplines;
  • library acquisition policies and the degree to which these are affected by embargoes before articles are openly available.

URL : Open access journals in humanities and social science

EPUB as Publication Format in Open Access Journals…

EPUB as Publication Format in Open Access Journals: Tools and Workflow :

« In this article, we present a case study of how the main publishing format of an Open Access journal was changed from PDF to EPUB by designing a new workflow using JATS as the basic XML source format. We state the reasons and discuss advantages for doing this, how we did it, and the costs of changing an established Microsoft Word workflow. As an example, we use one typical sociology article with tables, illustrations and references. We then follow the article from JATS markup through different transformations resulting in XHTML, EPUB and MOBI versions. In the end, we put everything together in an automated XProc pipeline. The process has been developed on free and open source tools, and we describe and evaluate these tools in the article. The workflow is suitable for non-professional publishers, and all code is attached and free for reuse by others. »

URL : http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/9462

Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the…

Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the Light of the Digital Transition: setting the scene for a major study :

« The paper provides the results of the first phase of the research project Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the Light of the Digital Transition. It provides for an examination of the behaviours and attitudes of academic researchers as producers and consumers of scholarly information resources in the digital era in respect to how they determine authority and trustworthiness in the sources they use, cite, and publish in. The first phase of the study utilized focus groups to formulate research questions for the project as a whole. It provided the direction for the literature review, interviews, and questionnaires studies that would follow. Fourteen focus groups were held in the UK and US in order to obtain this information. A total of 66 science and social science researchers participated. The main findings were: (a) researchers play down difficulties of establishing trustworthiness, not because there are none, but because they have well-developed methods of establishing trust; (b) citation-derived metrics are becoming more important in regard to where researchers publish; (c) social media are ancillary to research, but are used for promotion of research and idea generation; (d) researchers are suspicious and confused about open access, but less so if produced by a traditional publisher; (e) there was a uniformity of perceptions/behaviour of researchers irrespective of differences in subject, country, and age; (f) although some early career researchers behave the same as their more senior colleagues this is because of a fear of the system: they actually think differently. »

URL : http://ciber-research.eu/download/20140406-Learned_Publishing_27_2-Trust.pdf

How research funders can finance APCs in full…

How research funders can finance APCs in full OA and hybrid journals :

« Open access (OA) publishing is steadily growing in both full OA journals and hybrid journals where authors can pay to open up individual articles. Funding for article processing charges (APCs) is still a strong barrier for many authors, particularly for subscription journals where the hybrid option is expensive and an added extra feature after an article is accepted for publication. Many research funders in Europe have started or are considering mechanisms for paying APCs with earmarked funding in order to increase the uptake of OA. At the same time they are well aware that their actions may influence the way the OA market will develop in the near future. This article discusses a number of scenarios for ways in which funders could cover the cost of APCs, while encouraging the development of a competitive and transparent market for APC-funded OA scholarly publishing. We provide evidence that the current APC-funded full OA market is sensitive to journal prestige/impact. We present a value-based cap funding scheme which could help maintain transparency, bringing hybrid market pricing in line with the full OA market. We also consider a scenario that addresses hybrid ‘double dipping’ while limiting the cost of transitioning to full OA for research-intensive universities as well as costsharing as a mechanism for providing authors with an incentive for considering cost as well as value in choosing where to publish. »

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/20140203

Access to Research: the experience of implementing a pilot in public libraries

The Access to Research project is a collaboration between scholarly publishers and librarians to provide free licensed access to research journals via terminals in public libraries. The project is an element of the ‘balanced package’ proposed by the Finch Working Group on how to expand access to published research in the UK, which reported its recommendations to the UK government in June 2012. We describe the setting up of the project and the findings from a three-month technical pilot prior to the launch of a two-year national pilot in February 2014.

The project has already attracted support from the major scholarly publishers, with about 8,400 journal titles now available. The access platform has been shown to be usable by public librarians and library patrons. We are now addressing the challenge of understanding how the public will make use of the system and exploring how best to provide training and education for librarians and users.

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/20140202