Archives des mots-clés : open access publishing

Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal: The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)

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Author : M. Ángeles Oviedo-García

The extent to which predatory journals can harm scientific practice increases as the numbers of such journals expand, in so far as they undermine scientific integrity, quality, and credibility, especially if those journals leak into prestigious databases.

Journal Citation Reports (JCRs), a reference for the assessment of researchers and for grant-making decisions, is used as a standard whitelist, in so far as the selectivity of a JCR-indexed journal adds a legitimacy of sorts to the articles that the journal publishes.

The Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) once included on Beall’s list of potential, possible or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers, had 53 journals ranked in the 2018 JCRs annual report.

These journals are analysed, not only to contrast the formal criteria for the identification of predatory journals, but taking a step further, their background is also analysed with regard to self-citations and the source of those self-citations in 2018 and 2019.

The results showed that the self-citation rates increased and was very much higher than those of the leading journals in the JCR category. Besides, an increasingly high rate of citations from other MDPI-journals was observed.

The formal criteria together with the analysis of the citation patterns of the 53 journals under analysis all singled them out as predatory journals. Hence, specific recommendations are given to researchers, educational institutions and prestigious databases advising them to review their working relations with those sorts of journals.

URL : Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal: The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvab020

Austrian Transition to Open Access: a collaborative approach

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Authors : Rita Pinhasi, Lothar Hölbling, Brigitte Kromp

This article presents a collaborative project, the ‘Austrian Transition to Open Access’ (AT2OA), initially running from 2017 to 2020, which had the overarching goal of enabling the large-scale transformation of publishing outputs from closed to open access (OA) in Austria.

The initiative, which has recently secured funding for a second four-year cycle from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, brings together all key players: universities, research institutes, the national library consortium and a cOAlition S funding member, the Austrian Science Fund.

The project outcomes include a transition feasibility study that builds on the methodology of the 2015 Schimmer et al. article, the seeds of a national OA monitoring data hub and transformative agreements with major publishers.

In addition, the project helped launch institutional OA Publishing Funds across the country and explored alternative publishing models. Furthermore, it saw the emergence of a nationwide network of OA experts. The authors also share their thoughts on lessons learned.

URL: Austrian Transition to Open Access: a collaborative approach

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.561

Open Access Publishing Probabilities Based on Gender and Authorship Structures in Vietnam

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Authors : Huyen Thanh T. Nguyen, Minh-Hoang Nguyen, Tam-Tri Le, Manh-Toan Ho, Quan-Hoang Vuong

Open access (OA) publishing is beneficial for researchers to improve recognition, representation, and visibility in academia. However, few studies have been conducted for studying the association between gender and OA publishing likelihood.

Therefore, the current study explores the impacts of gender-based authorship structures on OA publishing in Vietnamese social sciences and humanities. Bayesian analysis was performed on a dataset of 3122 publications in social sciences and humanities.

We found that publications with mixed-gender authorship were most likely to be published under Gold Access terms (26.31–31.65%). In contrast, the likelihood of publications with the solely male or female author(s) was lower.

It is also notable that if female researcher(s) held the first-author position in an article of mixed-gender authorship, the publication would be less likely to be published under Gold Access terms (26.31% compared to 31.65% of male-first-author structure).

In addition, publications written by a solo female author (14.19%) or a group of female authors (10.72%) had lower OA publishing probabilities than those written by a solely male author(s) (17.14%).

These findings hint at the possible advantage of gender diversity and the disadvantage of gender homophily (especially female-only authorship) on OA publishing likelihood. Moreover, they show there might be some negative impacts of gender inequality on OA publishing.

As a result, the notion of gender diversity, financial and policy supports are recommended to promote the open science movement.

URL : Open Access Publishing Probabilities Based on Gender and Authorship Structures in Vietnam

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9040045

Sharing published short academic works in institutional repositories after six months : The implementation of the article 25fa (Taverne Amendment) in the Dutch Copyright Act

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Authors : Jeroen Sondervan, Arjan Schalken, Saskia Woutersen-Windhouwer

The ambition of the Netherlands, laid down in the National Plan Open Science, is to achieve 100% open access for academic publications. The ambition was to be achieved by 2020. However, it is to be expected that for the year 2020 between 70% and 75% of the articles will be open access.

Until recently, the focus of the Netherlands has been on the gold route – open access via journals and publishers’ platforms. This is likely to be costly and it is also impossible to cover all articles and other publication types this way.

Since 2015, Dutch Copyright Act has offered an alternative with the implementation of Article 25fa (also known as the ‘Taverne Amendment’), facilitating the green route, i.e. open access via (trusted) repositories.

This amendment allows researchers to share short scientific works (e.g. articles and book chapters in edited collections), regardless of any restrictive guidelines from publishers. From February 2019 until August 2019 all Dutch universities participated in the pilot ‘You Share, we Take Care!’ to test how this copyright amendment could be interpreted and implemented by institutions as a policy instrument to enhance green open access and “self-archiving”.

In 2020 steps were taken to scale up further implementation of the amendment. This article describes the outcomes of this pilot and shares best practices on implementation and awareness activities in the period following the pilot until early 2021, in which libraries have played an instrumental role in building trust and working on effective implementations on an institutional level.

It concludes with some possible next steps for alignment, for example on a European level.

URL : Sharing published short academic works in institutional repositories after six months : The implementation of the article 25fa (Taverne Amendment) in the Dutch Copyright Act

DOI : https://doi.org/10.53377/lq.10915

The UGC-CARE initiative: Indian academia’s quest for research and publishing integrity

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Authors : Bhushan Patwardhan, Shubhada Nagarkar

This paper discusses the reasons for emergence of predatory publications in India, engendered by mandates of higher educational institutions: that require stipulated number of research publications for employment and promotions.

Predatory journals have eclipsed the merits of open access publishing, compromised ethical practices, and left the research community groping for benchmarks of research integrity and publication ethics. To fight back the menace of predatory publications, University Grants Commission, India has established “Consortium for Academic Research and Ethics” (UGC-CARE) in 2018 to promote and benchmark research integrity and publication ethics among the Indian academia.

The present paper discusses the UGC-CARE initiative, its structure, objectives and specifically, “UGC-CARE Reference List of Quality Journals” (UGC-CARE list) and finally, the challenges it faces.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v26i10.10349

Investigating the Blind Spot of a Monitoring System for Article Processing Charges

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Authors : Andre Bruns, Niels Taubert

The Open Access (OA) publishing model that is based on article processing charges (APC) is often associated with the potential for more transparency regarding the expenditures for publications.

However, the extent to which transparency can be achieved depends not least on the completeness of data in APC monitoring systems. This article investigates two blind spots of the largest collection of APC payment information, OpenAPC. It aims to identify likely APC-liable publications for German universities that contribute to this system and for those that do not provide data to it.

The calculation combines data from Web of Science, the ISSN-Gold-OA-list and OpenAPC. The results show that for the group of universities contributing to the monitoring system, more than half of the APC payments are not covered by it and the average payments for non-covered APCs is higher than for APCs covered by the system.

In addition, the group of universities that do not contribute to OpenAPC accounts for two thirds of the number of APC-liable publications recorded for contributing universities. Regarding the size of these blind spots, the value of the monitoring system is limited at present.

URL : Investigating the Blind Spot of a Monitoring System for Article Processing Charges

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9030041

Faculty Use of Open-Access Journals: A Case Study of Faculty Publications and Cited References at a California University

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Author : Kendall Faulkner

Many in the library world see open-access (OA) publishing as the way of the future, necessary to combat ever-rising costs, expand knowledge and information production, and level the playing field for researchers and students across the world.

However, ingrained notions of the publishing process in academia, and concerns over OA journals’ quality and costs often make researchers less enthusiastic. This study takes a close look at faculty habits at the college-department level by reviewing faculty publishing habits and cited references in those publications.

Results show that the faculty in the Psychology Department at California State University, Los Angeles regularly publish at all OA levels, but utilize formal self-archiving less than what is found in their cited references. Furthermore, the department faculty cite fully OA (Gold) journals less than they publish in them.

URL : Faculty Use of Open-Access Journals: A Case Study of Faculty Publications and Cited References at a California University

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9030039