Veille dédiée aux Sciences de l'Information et des Bibliothèques // Collecting and Sharing research papers in Library and Information science ISSN 2429-3938
Authors : Olivier Pourret, Dasapta Erwin Irawan
In this short communication, we discuss the latest advances regarding Open Access in the earth sciences and geochemistry community from preprints to findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable data following the 14f session held at Goldschmidt conference (4–9 July 2021) dedicated to “Open Access in Earth Sciences”.
URL : Open Access in Geochemistry from Preprints to Data Sharing: Past, Present, and Future
Author : Olivier Pourret
Open access is not a new topic for Elements. The topic was addressed by Alex Speer, Kevin Murphy, and Sharon Tahirkheliin 2013 (Speer et al. 2013) and, later, by Christian Chopin in 2018 (Chopin 2018). I fully agree that there is a strong imperative for the geochemistry, mineralogy, and petrology communities to ensure that the research it produces is widely accessible, especially in the increasingly important context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Indeed, according to the STM Report 2018 (Johnson et al. 2018), two thirds of the scholarly literature in 2016 remains inaccessible to the public because it is hidden behind a paywall. Scholars have been making various cases for wider public access to published research, known as open access (OA), since the late 1980s.
Scientific publishing is currently undergoing a major transformation,with a move towards OA marking a major shift in the financial models of the major publishers. This opens up greater diversity in publishing routes and raises wider issues around publishing ethics.
Authors : Olivier Pourret, Dasapta Erwin Irawan, Jonathan P. Tennant
In recent years, the pace of the dissemination of scientific information has increased. In this context, the possibility and value of sharing open access (OA) online manuscripts in their preprint form seem to be growing in many scientific fields. More and more platforms are especially dedicated to free preprint publishing.
They are published, non-peer-reviewed scholarly papers that typically precede publication in a peer-reviewed journal. They have been a part of science since at least the 1960s.
In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web to help researchers share knowledge easily. A few months later, in August 1991, as a centralized web-based network, arXiv was created. arXiv is arguably the most influential preprint platform and has supported the fields of physics, mathematics and computer science for over 30 years.
Since, preprint platforms have become popular in many disciplines (e.g., bioRxiv for biological sciences) due to the increasing drive towards OA publishing, and can be publisher- or community-driven, profit or not for profit, and based on proprietary or free and open source software. A range of discipline-specific or cross-domain platforms now exist, with exponential growth these last five years.
While preprints as a whole still represent only a small proportion of scholarly publishing, a strong community of early adopters is already beginning to experiment with such value-enhancing tools in many more disciplines than before.
The two main options for geochemists are EarthArXiv and ESSOAr. A “one size fits all” model for preprints would never work across the entire scientific community. The geochemistry community needs to develop and sustain their own model.
URL : On the Potential of Preprints in Geochemistry: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Authors : Olivier Pourret, Dasapta Erwin Irawan, Jonathan P. Tennant, Andrew Hursthouse, Eric D. van Hullebusch
In this communication, we look at Open Access (OA) publishing practices in geochemistry.
We examine a list of 56 journals and assess whether Article Processing Charges (APCs) and Journal Impact Factors (JIFs) appear to influence publication or not. More than 40% of articles in 2018-2019 were published OA, and about 70% of that portion in fully OA journals.
These had a mean APC of US$ 900, whereas the remaining were published in hybrid journals with a higher mean APC of more than $US 1,800. A moderate and positive correlation is found between the number of OA articles published in hybrids journals and their JIF, whereas there is a stronger positive relationship between the number of OA articles published in fully OA journals and the APC.
For OA articles published in hybrid journals, it seems that the proportion of OA articles tends to increase in journals with higher JIF.
Authors : Olivier Pourret, Andrew Hursthouse, Dasapta Erwin Irawan, Karen Johannesson, Haiyan Liu, Marc Poujol, Romain Tartèse, Eric D. van Hullebusch, Oliver Wiche
Open Access (OA) describes the free, unrestricted access to and re-use of research articles. Recently, a new wave of interest, debate, and practice surrounding OA publishing has emerged.
In this paper, we provide a simple overview of the trends in OA practice in the broad field of geochemistry. Characteristics of the approach such as whether or not an article processing charge (APC) exists, what embargo periods or restrictions on self-archiving’ policies are in place, and whether or not the sharing of preprints is permitted are described.
The majority of journals have self-archiving policies that allow authors to share their peer reviewed work via green OA without charge. There is no clear relationship between journal impact and APC.
The journals with the highest APC are typically those of the major commercial publishers, rather than the geochemistry community themselves. The rise in OA publishing has potential impacts on the profiles of researchers and tends to devolve costs from organizations to individuals.
Until the geochemistry community makes the decision to move away from journal-based evaluation criteria, it is likely that such high costs will continue to impose financial inequities upon research community.
However, geochemists could more widely choose legal self-archiving as an equitable and sustainable way to disseminate their research.
URL : Open Access publishing practice in geochemistry: overview of current state and look to the future