Cost-effectiveness of open access publications

Open access publishing has been proposed as one possible solution to the serials crisis – the rapidly growing subscription prices in scholarly journal publishing.

However, open access publishing can present economic pitfalls as well, such as excessive publication charges.

We discuss the decision that an author faces when choosing to submit to an open access journal.

We develop an interactive tool to help authors compare among alternative open access venues and thereby get the most for their publication fees.

URL : http://www.eigenfactor.org/openaccess/CostEffectiveness.pdf

Science 3.0: Corrections to the « Science 2.0 » paradigm

The concept of « Science 2.0 » was introduced almost a decade ago to describe the new generation of online-based tools for researchers allowing easier data sharing, collaboration and publishing.

Although technically sound, the concept still does not work as expected. Here we provide a systematic line of arguments to modify the concept of Science 2.0, making it more consistent with the spirit and traditions of science and Internet.

Our first correction to the Science 2.0 paradigm concerns the open-access publication models charging fees to the authors. As discussed elsewhere, we reiterate that the monopoly of such publishing models increases biases and inequalities in the representation of scientific ideas based on the author’s income.

Our second correction concerns post-publication comments online, which are all essentially non-anonymous in the current Science 2.0 paradigm.

We conclude that scientific post-publication discussions require special anonymization systems.

We further analyze the reasons of the failure of the current post-publication peer-review models and suggest what needs to be changed in « Science 3.0 » to convert Internet into a large « journal club ». »

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.2522

Implementing Open Access Policies Using Institutional Repositories …

Implementing Open Access Policies : Using Institutional Repositories :

« Implementing an open access (OA) policy off ers libraries an unusually high level of challenge. Chris Armbruster, who surveyed early policy implementers says that “open access policy implementation is a tough job. Policy pioneers have faced considerable challenges in meeting their own aims and achieving recognized success.”1 But the implementation process also off ers a proportionally high potential for positive payback not just to the campuses, but to the academy and the world beyond. Given this level of challenge and potential impact, libraries would do well to confer with those who have travelled further down the path, in order to maximize their chances for success. Yet not much has been written to date about policy implementation, no doubt because this task is so new to libraries. »

URL : http://www.ala.org/alcts/sites/ala.org.alcts/files/content/resources/papers/ir_ch05_.pdf