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The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer: The Effect of Open Access on Cites to Science Journals Across the Quality Spectrum

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

An open-access journal allows free online access to its articles, obtaining revenue from fees charged to submitting authors. Using panel data on science journals, we are able to circumvent some problems plaguing previous studies of the impact of open access on citations.

We find that moving from paid to open access increases cites by 8% on average in our sample, but the effect varies across the quality of content. Open access increases cites to the best content (top-ranked journals or articles in upper quintiles of citations within a volume) but reduces cites to lower-quality content.

We construct a model to explain these findings in which being placed on a broad open-access platform can increase the competition among articles for readers’ attention. We can find structural parameters allowing the model to fit the quintile results quite closely.

URL : http://ssrn.com/abstract=2269040

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Delayed Open Access – an overlooked high impact…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Delayed Open Access – an overlooked high-impact category of openly available scientific literature:

« Delayed open access (OA) refers to scholarly articles in subscription journals made available openly on the web directly through the publisher at the expiry of a set embargo period. Though a substantial number of journals have practiced delayed OA since they started publishing e-versions, empirical studies concerning open access have often overlooked this body of literature. This study provides comprehensive quantitative measurements by identifying delayed OA journals, collecting data concerning their publication volumes, embargo lengths, and citation rates. Altogether 492 journals were identified, publishing a combined total of 111 312 articles in 2011. 77,8 % of these articles were made open access within 12 months from publication, with 85,4 % becoming available within 24 months. A journal impact factor analysis revealed that delayed OA journals have on average twice as high average citation rates compared to closed subscription journals, and three times as high as immediate OA journals. Overall the results demonstrate that delayed OA journals constitute an important segment of the openly available scholarly journal literature, both by their sheer article volume as well as by including a substantial proportion of high impact journals. »

URL : http://hanken.halvi.helsinki.fi/portal/en/publications/delayed-open-access%28a2eb7a79-1078-4657-9d57-4f9f5a1ff228%29.html

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Open Access Subject Repositories – an Overview

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Subject repositories are open web collections of working papers or manuscript copies of published scholarly articles, specific to particular scientific disciplines. The first repositories emerged already in the early 1990’s and in some fields of science they have become an important channel for the dissemination of research results.

Using quite strict inclusion criteria 56 subject repositories were identified from a much larger number indexed in two repository indexes. A closer study of these demonstrated a huge variety in sizes, organizational models, functions and topics.

When they first started to emerge subject repositories catered to a strong market demand, but the later development of Internet search engines, the rapid growth of institutional repositories and the tightening up of journal publisher OA policies seems to be slowing down their growth.

URL : http://www.openaccesspublishing.org/repositories/Subject_Repositories.pdf

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The Openness of the University of the Philippines…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

The Openness of the University of the Philippines Open University: Issues and Prospects :

« This paper is a self-reflection on the state of openness of the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU). An exploratory and descriptive study, it aims not only to define the elements of openness of UPOU, but also to unravel the causes and solutions to the issues and concerns that limit its options to becoming a truly open university. It is based on four parameters of openness, which are widely universal in the literature, e.g., open admissions, open curricula, distance education at scale, and the co-creation, sharing and use of open educational resources (OER). It draws from the perception survey among peers, which the author conducted in UPOU in July and August 2012. It also relies on relevant secondary materials on the subject. »

URL : http://openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/article/view/26

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Ethics of using language editing services in an era of digital communication and heavily multiauthored papers

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Scientists of many countries in which English is not the primary language routinely use a variety of manuscript preparation, correction or editing services, a practice that is openly endorsed by many journals and scientific institutions.

These services vary tremendously in their scope; at one end there is simple proof-reading, and at the other extreme there is in-depth and extensive peer-reviewing, proposal preparation, statistical analyses, re-writing and co-writing.

In this paper, the various types of service are reviewed, along with authorship guidelines, and the question is raised of whether the high-end services surpass most guidelines’ criteria for authorship. Three other factors are considered.

First, the ease of collaboration possible in the internet era allows multiple iterations between authors and the editing service, so essentially, papers can be co-written.

Second, ‘editing services’ often offer subject-specific experts who comment not only on the language, but interpret and improve scientific content.

Third, the trend towards heavily multi-authored papers implies that the threshold necessary to earn authorship is declining.

The inevitable conclusion is that at some point the contributions by ‘editing services’ should be deemed sufficient to warrant authorship. Trying to enforce any guidelines would likely be futile, but nevertheless, it might be time to revisit the ethics of using some of the high-end ‘editing services’.

In an increasingly international job market, recognizing this problem might prove progressively more important in authorship disputes, the allocation of research grants, and hiring decisions. »

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.2401

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The Role of the Library in the Research Enterprise

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Libraries have provided services to researchers for many years. Changes in technology and new publishing models provide opportunities for libraries to be more involved in the research enterprise.

Within this article, the author reviews traditional library services, briefly describes the eScience and publishing landscape as it relates to libraries, and explores possible library programs in support of research. Many of the new opportunities require new partnerships, both within the institution and externally.

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.2013.1043

Non classé

The role of twitter in the life cycle…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

The role of twitter in the life cycle of a scientific publication :

« Twitter is a micro-blogging social media platform for short messages that can have a long-term impact on how scientists create and publish ideas. We investigate the usefulness of twitter in the development and distribution of scientific knowledge. At the start of the life cycle of a scientific publication, twitter provides a large virtual department of colleagues that can help to rapidly generate, share and refine new ideas. As ideas become manuscripts, twitter can be used as an informal arena for the pre-review of works in progress. Finally, tweeting published findings can communicate research to a broad audience of other researchers, decision makers, journalists and the general public that can amplify the scientific and social impact of publications. However, there are limitations, largely surrounding issues of intellectual property and ownership, inclusiveness and misrepresentations of science sound bites. Nevertheless, we believe twitter is a useful social media tool that can provide a valuable contribution to scientific publishing in the 21st century. »

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.0435