Archives des mots-clés : open access publishing

International dissemination of evidence-based practice, open access and the IACAPAP textbook of child and adolescent mental health

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Dramatic changes have occurred in both publishing and teaching in the last 20 years stemming from the digital and Internet revolutions. Such changes are likely to grow exponentially in the near future aided by the trend to open access publishing. This revolution has challenged traditional publishing and teaching methods that—largely but not exclusively due to cost—are particularly relevant to professionals in low and middle income countries.

The digital medium and the Internet offer boundless opportunities for teaching and training to people in disadvantaged regions. This article describes the development of the IACAPAP eTextbook of child and adolescent mental health, its use, accessibility, and potential impact on the international dissemination of evidence-based practice.

URL : International dissemination of evidence-based practice, open access and the IACAPAP textbook of child and adolescent mental health

URL : http://www.capmh.com/content/9/1/51

Open Access publishing and scholarly communications in non-scientific disciplines

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Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the current state of debates surrounding Open Access (OA) in non-STEM disciplines.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper uses a selective literature review and discussion methodology to give a representative summary of the state of the art.

Findings

Non-STEM disciplines persistently lag behind scientific disciplines in their approach to OA, if the teleology towards open dissemination is accepted. This can be attributed to a variety of economic and cultural factors that centre on the problem of resource allocation with respect to quality.

Originality/value

This paper will be of value to policymakers, funders, academics and publishers. The original aspect of the paper pertains to the identification of an anxiety of irrelevance in the humanities disciplines and a focus on “quality” in Open-Access publishing debates.

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/OIR-04-2015-0103

Open Access Publishing, academic research and scholarly communication

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Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the difference between Open Access and accessibility, to argue that accessibility is the most crucial feature, and to suggest some ways in which Open Access militates against accessibility.

Design/methodology/approach

Analysis of best practice by journals and monograph publishers is used to highlight the degree to which accessibility is enhanced by input from readers and editors. The expense of this, both real and hidden, is shown to be compatible only with difficulty with publishing methods where keeping costs low is essential, and Open Access alternatives that make available manuscripts “as submitted” are shown to make available less accessible scholarship.

Findings

Scholarship is markedly improved by referees and editors; the emphasis needs to be put on making available the most accessible scholarship, not on making more scholarship available.

Practical implications

Journals and publishers should concentrate on, and research councils and similar bodies insist upon, ensuring high quality critical review and editing, not cost-free access.

Originality/value

The debate on Open Access has put its emphasis in the wrong place. Rather than easier access to more scholarship, increased resource devoted to pre-publication review, revision and editing is the most important development to ensure the greatest advances in research and scholarship.

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/OIR-03-2015-0083

‘Predatory’ open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics

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Background

A negative consequence of the rapid growth of scholarly open access publishing funded by article processing charges is the emergence of publishers and journals with highly questionable marketing and peer review practices. These so-called predatory publishers are causing unfounded negative publicity for open access publishing in general. Reports about this branch of e-business have so far mainly concentrated on exposing lacking peer review and scandals involving publishers and journals. There is a lack of comprehensive studies about several aspects of this phenomenon, including extent and regional distribution.

Methods

After an initial scan of all predatory publishers and journals included in the so-called Beall’s list, a sample of 613 journals was constructed using a stratified sampling method from the total of over 11,000 journals identified. Information about the subject field, country of publisher, article processing charge and article volumes published between 2010 and 2014 were manually collected from the journal websites. For a subset of journals, individual articles were sampled in order to study the country affiliation of authors and the publication delays.

Results

Over the studied period, predatory journals have rapidly increased their publication volumes from 53,000 in 2010 to an estimated 420,000 articles in 2014, published by around 8,000 active journals. Early on, publishers with more than 100 journals dominated the market, but since 2012 publishers in the 10–99 journal size category have captured the largest market share. The regional distribution of both the publisher’s country and authorship is highly skewed, in particular Asia and Africa contributed three quarters of authors. Authors paid an average article processing charge of 178 USD per article for articles typically published within 2 to 3 months of submission.

Conclusions

Despite a total number of journals and publishing volumes comparable to respectable (indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals) open access journals, the problem of predatory open access seems highly contained to just a few countries, where the academic evaluation practices strongly favor international publication, but without further quality checks.

URL : ‘Predatory’ open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics

Alternative location : http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/13/230

Estimation des dépenses de publication de l’Inra dans un modèle théorique “Gold Open Access”

Statut

L’étude publiée ici est le résultat d’une simulation menée à l’Institut national de la recherche agronomique (Inra) et dont l’objectif principal était de déterminer quels auraient été les coûts de diffusion en libre accès des articles publiés par ses équipes de recherche sur l’année 2011 selon un modèle Gold Open Access (ou “voie dorée”) dans lequel le financement est assuré par les auteurs et leurs établissements.

Les auteurs de l’étude comparent ensuite ces résultats avec les coûts en abonnements supportés par l’Inra. À l’instar des estimations récentes de Wouter Gerritsma (Wageningen UR Library) au sujet de ce que coûterait le passage intégral au Gold Open Access aux Pays-Bas (wowter.net/2014/03/05/costsgoing-gold-netherlands), la publication de ces résultats a pour objectif d’alimenter la réflexion collective sur l’opportunité de s’orienter vers ce nouveau modèle de diffusion.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01097171/

Barriers to Open Access Publishing: Views from the Library Literature

Statut

The library and information science (LIS) community has an active role in supporting access to information and, therefore, is an important stakeholder in the open access conversation. One major discussion involves the barriers that have hindered the complete transition to open access in scientific publications.

Building upon a longitudinal study by Bo-Christer Björk that looked at barriers to the open access publishing of scholarly articles, this study evaluates the discussion of those barriers in the LIS literature over the ten year period 2004–2014, and compares this to Björk’s conclusions about gold open access publishing. Content analysis and bibliometrics are used to confirm the growth of the discussion of open access in the past ten years and gain insight into the most prevalent issues hindering the development of open access.

URL : Barriers to Open Access Publishing: Views from the Library Literature

DOI : 10.3390/publications3030190

Fee Waivers for Open Access Journals

Statut

Open access journals which charge article processing charges (APCs) sometimes offer fee waivers to authors who cannot afford to pay them. This article measures the extent of this practice among the largest toll access and open access publishers by gathering stated fee waiver policies from publishers’ websites. A majority (68.8%) were found to offer fee waivers and sometimes they are only available to authors from low- and middle-income countries. This has implications for the ability of authors without funding to publish in journals from these publishers.

URL : Fee Waivers for Open Access Journals

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/publications3030155