Étiquette : open access publishing

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EN

An APC Trap? Privilege and the Perception of Reasonableness in Open Access Publishing

Authors : Melissa H. Cantrell, Jennifer A. Mezick, Matthew Estill, Rachel Caldwell &
Lauren B. Collister

Introduction: This article investigates funding sources reported by authors of open access (OA) articles at four R1 (doctoral-granting institutions in the United States with very high research activity) universities, along with these authors’ perceptions of Article Processing Charges (APCs). The study suggests a cognitive dissonance among many respondents, in which there appears to be a desire and willingness to participate in OA publishing, which is at odds with a sense of unreasonableness and an uneven distribution of the ability of researchers to participate.

Literature review: Much of the literature on APCs centers on rising prices, how commercial publishers profit from this model, and the resulting inequities in OA publishing. Some information exists about resources for funding APCs, including grant funding, library programs, and fee waivers.

Methods: We surveyed authors who published an OA article in the calendar year 2022. The survey asked whether there was an APC, the funding source for the fee, and the author’s perception of the reasonableness of APC prices and their relative ability to pay compared with their peers.

Results: From 321 total respondents, grant funding was the largest source of APC funding, and authors reported fees of over $1,500 in U.S. dollars as unreasonable.

Discussion: This study confirms the hypothesis that external grants are the primary support for authors paying APCs, and beyond that, authors use a variety of sources to support their publishing fees. Respondents characterized APCs in general as unreasonable for less well-resourced colleagues.

Conclusion: Though authors were generally able to find funding or have fees waived, they perceive a threshold of reasonableness for APCs.

URL : An APC Trap? Privilege and the Perception of Reasonableness in Open Access Publishing

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18184

Catégories
FR

Publication en accès ouvert et coûts d’Article Processing Charges (APC) en Argentine

Auteur.ices : Fernanda Beigel, Osvaldo Gallardo, Soledad Gomez, Flavia Prado

La prolifération des revues en libre accès présente un dilemme difficile pour les chercheurs basés en Argentine, en raison des coûts élevés des APC (Article Processing Charges) qui créent un écart entre ceux qui peuvent payer pour publier et ceux qui ne le peuvent pas. Dans la première partie de ce travail, nous analysons le problème des frais APC dans différents pays d’Amérique latine et les leçons des études réalisées sur le cas de l’Argentine.

Nous décrivons ensuite la population de chercheurs faisant l’objet de l’enquête — les directeurs de projets financés au niveau national — ainsi que la méthode utilisée et ses résultats. Nous proposons une classification des pratiques de publication en libre accès avec APC en quatre groupes comprenant des chercheurs de plusieurs disciplines.

Dans chaque groupe, on observe des tendances différentes vers la publication en accès ouvert ou fermé, l’origine des fonds utilisés pour payer les APC et les disciplines dans lesquelles ce phénomène a plus ou moins d’impact. Enfin, nous analysons la section qualitative de l’enquête qui comprend les questions ouvertes auxquelles ont répondu une bonne partie des chercheurs, offrant un aperçu de leurs stratégies face au problème et les voies envisagées pour en atténuer les effets néfastes.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/140p9

Catégories
EN

Incentives for Open Science and Advancing Sustainability: A German Perspective

Authors : Markus Putnings, Michael Zweier

Open science in ensuring equitable access to information is relevant to the attainment of all United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Badges, prizes and awards evaluate and recognise achievements, encourage involvement in open science and open access practices and provide an opportunity to present related activities to the outside world in a succinct form.

The focus, however, is not on mundane self-promotion, but rather on the goal of external and internal reflec–tion and promotion of the work done, as well as an appropriate presentation of the open resources and workflows produced. Prizes and awards constitute a stimulus for best practice, education and exchange both within an institution, with an insti–tution ́s users and with the wider community.

This chapter provides an overview of the various badges, awards and prizes relevant to Germany as incentive systems for open science and open access activities. The contributions to the SDGs and edu–cation for sustainable development (ESD) are contextualised and discussed. It concludes with a selection of recommendations and summarises the most important results.

URL : Incentives for Open Science and Advancing Sustainability: A German Perspective

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111336466-006

Catégories
EN

Evolving library practice toward the sustainability of supporting open access

Authors : Maureen P Walsh, Miranda Bennett, Matthew W Goddard, Joshua Shelly

This paper is based on the Evolving Library Practice toward the Sustainability of Supporting Open Access panel presented at the 2024 NISO Plus Global/Online conference on September 17, 2024, and brings together four perspectives on how academic research library practices are evolving in response to developments in the global open access landscape.

The authors discuss current pain points in library support of open access publishing and explore how we might collectively work toward scalable and sustainable open access workflows.

URL : Evolving library practice toward the sustainability of supporting open access

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/18758789251339911

 

Catégories
EN

The African Platform for Open Scholarship Advancing Diamond Open Access and Inclusivity

Authors : Reggie Raju, Saiansha Maharaj

Geographic, language, peer review, and editorial biases have to be navigated by Global South authors to get published. Initially, the open access movement was praised for bridging the information access divide.

However, commercial publishers have hijacked the philanthropic ethos, turning it into a business model. Publishing charges add to the aforementioned biases, consolidating the exclusion of Global South scholarship. The African Platform for Open Scholarship developed by the University of Cape Town (UCT) counters these biases by offering free publishing infrastructure to advance the publishing of African scholarship without compromising academic rigor.

The platform adopts the diamond open access model to demarginalize Global South scholarship. Further, there is a discussion on the challenges and opportunities associated with creating an inclusive and equitable scholarly communication ecosystem. This paper focuses on UCT’s use of the platform to transition its commercial publishing arm (UCT Press) and to grow UCT Libraries Press. The paper will use exemplars to demonstrate the positive impact of these initiatives on the growth of diamond open access.

URL : The African Platform for Open Scholarship Advancing Diamond Open Access and Inclusivity

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18278

Catégories
EN

Implementation of Transformative Agreements at the University of Chicago Library: A Case Study

Authors : Jessica Harris, Greg Fleming, Jennifer Hart, Adrian K. Ho, Barbara Kern,
Catherine Mardikes, Debra A. Werner

The University of Chicago Library created a working group, composed of librarians across the library, to engage in dedicated and focused work around transformative agreements, including understanding how they work and how the library should be engaging with them in a complex open access (OA) landscape.

The working group was charged with specific tasks, including determining challenges and opportunities around transformative agreements, developing criteria for determining when to use the library’s OA fund to pursue an agreement, conducting ongoing assessments of the agreements, and developing a set of recommendations to communicate this out to our wider campus community.

The group’s work included piloting several transformative agreements and establishing a rubric to evaluate these agreements. The creation of the group allowed the library to gain valuable knowledge and expertise, engage actively in new models for supporting OA, and start critical conversations on campus.

The group continues the work, with the ultimate goal of affordable OA publishing and communicating the value of OA with researchers and campus partners, as well as positioning the library as a campus leader in OA.

URL : Implementation of Transformative Agreements at the University of Chicago Library: A Case Study

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18265

Catégories
EN

The time for action is now: Equity and sustainability for diamond publishing in Aotearoa New Zealand

Authors : Luqman Hayes, Craig Murdoch

Diamond open access journals make a significant contribution to scholarship globally while enduring a precarious existence due to a lack of funding. The purpose of this study was to identify the necessary characteristics of a shared service that would deliver improved sustainability for diamond journals in Aotearoa New Zealand.

We conducted semi-structured interviews with several of the editors of journals hosted by Tuwhera, Auckland University of Technology’s diamond hosting service. We sought to understand their experiences, both positive and negative, via thematic analysis of the interview transcripts. These themes indicate that our diamond journal editors face significant burdens due to lack of funding, which threaten the unique contribution they make as journals of and from Aotearoa.

We conclude that a shared open infrastructure is the most appropriate way to ensure the sustainability of diamond journals in Aotearoa, but that it must be accompanied by shared services that address the administrative and journal production load currently experienced by editors.

We propose that such an endeavor should be funded by shifting a small percentage of existing library subscription expenditure from profit-making publishers to diamond journals.

URL : The time for action is now: Equity and sustainability for diamond publishing in Aotearoa New Zealand

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18311