Disentangling Gold Open Access

Authors : Daniel Torres-Salinas, Nicolas Robinson-Garcia, Henk F. Moed

This chapter focuses on the analysis of current publication trends in gold Open Access (OA). The purpose of the chapter is to develop a full understanding on country patterns, OA journals characteristics and citation differences between gold OA and non-gold OA publications.

For this, we will first review current literature regarding Open Access and its relation with its so-called citation advantage. Starting with a chronological perspective we will describe its development, how different countries are promoting OA publishing, and its effects on the journal publishing industry.

We will deepen the analysis by investigating the research output produced by different units of analysis. First, we will focus on the production of countries with a special emphasis on citation and disciplinary differences. A point of interest will be identification of national idiosyncrasies and the relation between OA publication and research of local interest.

This will lead to our second unit of analysis, OA journals indexed in Web of Science. Here we will deepen on journals characteristics and publisher types to clearly identify factors which may affect citation differences between OA and traditional journals which may not necessarily be derived from the OA factor.

Gold OA publishing is being encouraged in many countries as opposed to Green OA. This chapter aims at fully understanding how it affects researchers’ publication patterns and whether it ensures an alleged citation advantage as opposed to non-gold OA publications.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.04535

Global OA APCs (APC) 2010–2017: Major Trends

Author : Heather Morrison

The open access (OA) article processing charges (APC) project is a longitudinal study of the minority of fully OA journals (27% in 2016) that have APCs. The global average APC shows little change; in USD, 906 in 2010, 964 in 2016, 974 in 2017.

The average masks currency differences and the impact of a growing market; new APC journals often start with an APC of 0. Traditional commercial scholarly publishers are entering the OA market: the largest OA journal publishers’ portfolios in 2017 were Springer, De Gruyter, Elsevier, and Wolters Kluwer Medknow.

However, these are a small portion of OA journal publishing which is still marked by a very long tail and extensive involvement by very small, often university or society publishers. APC pricing shows a wide range and variability. The APC market can be described as volatile.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01816699

Five principles to navigate a bumpy golden road towards open access

Authors : Matthijs van Otegem, Sofie Wennström, Kristiina Hormia-Poutanen

The publishing ecosystem of the future will be built on several models such as offsetting agreements as well as various open access publishing channels. The LIBER Open Access Working Group has issued five principles to support libraries in their efforts to negotiate offsetting deals as they move towards full open access to research information.

This article describes why the five principles were created and the underlying considerations and limitations encountered while working on them.

URL : Five principles to navigate a bumpy golden road towards open access

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.403

Are funder Open Access platforms a good idea?

Authors : Tony Ross-Hellauer​, Birgit Schmidt, Bianca Kramer

As open access to publications continues to gather momentum we should continuously question whether it is moving in the right direction. A novel intervention in this space is the creation of open access publishing platforms commissioned by funding organisations. Examples include those of the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation, as well as recently announced initiatives from public funders like the European Commission and the Irish Health Research Board.

As the number of such platforms increases, it becomes urgently necessary to assess in which ways, for better or worse, this emergent phenomenon complements or disrupts the scholarly communications landscape.

This article examines ethical, organisational and economic strengths and weaknesses of such platforms, as well as usage and uptake to date, to scope the opportunities and threats presented by funder open access platforms in the ongoing transition to open access.

The article is broadly supportive of the aims and current implementations of such platforms, finding them a novel intervention which stand to help increase OA uptake, control costs of OA, lower administrative burden on researchers, and demonstrate funders’ commitment to fostering open practices.

However, the article identifies key areas of concern about the potential for unintended consequences, including the appearance of conflicts of interest, difficulties of scale, potential lock-in and issues of the branding of research.

The article ends with key recommendations for future consideration which include a focus on open scholarly infrastructure.

URL : Are funder Open Access platforms a good idea?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26954v1

Awareness of Institutional Repositories and Open Access Publishing Among Researchers in University of Calicut

Authors : Manchu O, asudevan T M

The paper examined institutional repositories and open access publishing awareness among the researchers in university of calicut. Questionnaire method was adopted to collect data for the study. Major findings of the study were that a large majority of researchers in university of Calicut aware of the concept of institutional repositories and open access publishing.

The major motivating factors of researchers for using institutional repositories and open access publishing was improvement of their scholarly communication. The discouraging factors for researchers not deposit their work in it were that majority of them did not aware of how can they deposit their work in it and a good number of them thought that repository would have low prestige.

The study concluded with a suggestion that library should provide appropriate awareness program and training to researchers about the benefits of using institutional repositories and open access publishing and should encourage them to deposit their work in it.

URL : Awareness of Institutional Repositories and Open Access Publishing Among Researchers in University of Calicut

Alternative location : http://irjlis.com/awareness-of-institutional-repositories-and-open-access-publishing-among-researchers-in-university-of-calicut/

Data-Driven Transition: Joint Reporting of Subscription Expenditure and Publication Costs

Authors : Irene Barbers, Nadja Kalinna, Bernhard Mittermaier

The transition process from the subscription model to the open access model in the world of scholarly publishing brings a variety of challenges to libraries. Within this evolving landscape, the present article takes a focus on budget control for both subscription and publication expenditure with the opportunity to enable the shift from one to the other.

To reach informed decisions with a solid base of data to be used in negotiations with publishers, the diverse already-existing systems for managing publications costs and for managing journal subscriptions have to be adapted to allow comprehensive reporting on publication expenditure and subscription expenditure.

In the case presented here, two separate systems are described and the establishment of joint reporting covering both these systems is introduced. Some of the results of joint reporting are presented as an example of how such a comprehensive monitoring can support management decisions and negotiations.

On a larger scale, the establishment of the National Open Access Monitor in Germany is introduced, bringing together a diverse range of data from several already-existing systems, including, among others, holdings information, usage data, and data on publication fees.

This system will enable libraries to access all relevant data with a single user interface.

URL : Data-Driven Transition: Joint Reporting of Subscription Expenditure and Publication Costs

Alternative location : http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/6/2/19

Is Predatory Publishing a Real Threat? Evidence from a Large Database Study

Authors : Marcelo Perlin, Takeyoshi Imasato, Denis Borenstein

Using a database of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access journals, the objective of this research is to study the penetration of predatory publications in the Brazilian academic system and the profile of authors in a cross-section empirical study.

Based on a massive amount of publications from Brazilian researchers of all disciplines during the 2000 to 2015 period, we were able to analyze the extent of predatory publications using an econometric modeling.

Descriptive statistics indicate that predatory publications represent a small overall proportion, but grew exponentially in the last 5 years. Departing from prior studies, our analysis shows that experienced researchers with a high number of non-indexed publications and PhD obtained locally are more likely to publish in predatory journals.

Further analysis shows that once a journal regarded as predatory is listed in the local ranking system, the Qualis, it starts to receive more publications than non-predatory ones.

DOI : https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3067958