Haiyan Liu – InfoDoc MicroVeille

Authors : Olivier Pourret, David William Hedding, Daniel Enrique Ibarra, Dasapta Erwin Irawan, Haiyan Liu, Jonathan Peter Tennant

Background

Open access (OA) implies free and unrestricted access to and re-use of research articles. Recently, OA publishing has seen a new wave of interest, debate, and practices surrounding that mode of publishing.

Objectives

To provide an overview of publication practices and to compare them among six countries across the world to stimulate further debate and to raise awareness about OA to facilitate decision-making on further development of OA practices in earth sciences.

Methods

The number of OA articles, their distribution among the six countries, and top ten journals publishing OA articles were identified using two databases, namely Scopus and the Web of Science, based mainly on the data for 2018.

Results

In 2018, only 24%–31% of the total number of articles indexed by either of the databases were OA articles. Six of the top ten earth sciences journals that publish OA articles were fully OA journals and four were hybrid journals. Fully OA journals were mostly published by emerging publishers and their article processing charges ranged from $1000 to $2200.

Conclusions

The rise in OA publishing has potential implications for researchers and tends to shift article-processing charges from organizations to individuals. Until the earth sciences community decides to move away from journal-based criteria to evaluate researchers, it is likely that such high costs will continue to maintain financial inequities within this research community, especially to the disadvantage of researchers from the least developed countries.

However, earth scientists, by opting for legal self- archiving of their publications, could help to promote equitable and sustainable access to, and wider dissemination of, their work.

URL : International disparities in open access practices in the Earth Sciences

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3897/ese.2021.e63663

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

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e03551