open access publishing – Page 36

Aligning Open Access Publication with the Research and Teaching Missions of the Public University: The Case of the Lethbridge Journal Incubator (If ‘if’s and ‘and’s were pots and pans)

Statut

“The Lethbridge Journal Incubator is a joint project of the University of Lethbridge Library, School of Graduate Studies, and Faculty of Arts and Science. Its goal is to address the issue of the sustainability of gold open access journals by aligning the publication process with the educational and research missions of the public University. In this way, the open access publication, which is more commonly understood as a cost center that draws resources away from a host university’s core missions, is transformed into a sustainable, high-impact resource that improves retention and recruitment. It does this by providing graduate students with early experience with scholarly publishing (a proven contributor to in- and post-program student satisfaction and career success), highly-sought after research and technical skills, and project management experience.

This article provides a background to the problem of financing gold open access publication and reports on the experience of the researchers responsible for establishing the incubator as it leaves its experimental phase and becomes a center of the University.”

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0018.309

The Changing Publication Practices in Academia: Inherent Uses and Issues in Open Access and Online Publishing and the Rise of Fraudulent Publications

Posté le 20 juin 2015 par Hans Dillaerts

“Open access and online publishing present significant changes to the Australian higher education sector in a climate demanding increasing research outputs from academic staff. Today’s researchers struggle to discern credible journals from a new wave of ‘low credibility,’ counterfeit, and predatory journals. A New York Times article on the issue resulted in hundreds of anonymous posts, having a whistleblower effect. An analysis of reader posts, examined in this paper, demonstrated that fear and cynicism were dominant, and that unscrupulous publishing practices were often rewarded.

A lack of quality control measures to assist researchers to choose reputable journals and avoid fraudulent ones is becoming evident as universities’ funding and workforce development become increasingly dependent on research outputs. Online publishing is also redefining traditional notions of academic prestige. Adapting to the twenty-first century online publishing landscape requires the higher education sector to meet these challenges with a combination of academic rigour and innovative tools that support researchers, so as to maintain quality and integrity within changing academic publishing practice.”

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0018.308

Disrupting the subscription journals’ business model for the necessary large-scale transformation to open access

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“This paper makes the strong, fact-based case for a large-scale transformation of the current corpus of scientific subscription journals to an open access business model. The existing journals, with their well-tested functionalities, should be retained and developed to meet the demands of 21st century research, while the underlying payment streams undergo a major restructuring. There is sufficient momentum for this decisive push towards open access publishing. The diverse existing initiatives must be coordinated so as to converge on this clear goal.

The international nature of research implies that this transformation will be achieved on a truly global scale only through a consensus of the world’s most eminent research organizations. All the indications are that the money already invested in the research publishing system is sufficient to enable a transformation that will be sustainable for the future. There needs to be a shared understanding that the money currently locked in the journal subscription system must be withdrawn and re-purposed for open access publishing services.

The current library acquisition budgets are the ultimate reservoir for enabling the transformation without financial or other risks. The goal is to preserve the established service levels provided by publishers that are still requested by researchers, while redefining and reorganizing the necessary payment streams. By disrupting the underlying business model, the viability of journal publishing can be preserved and put on a solid footing for the scholarly developments of the future.”

URL : MPDL_OA-Transition_White_Paper

Open Access Article Processing Charges: DOAJ Survey May 2014

Posté le 20 avril 2015 par Hans Dillaerts

As of May 2014, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed close to ten thousand fully open access, peer reviewed, scholarly journals. Most of these journals do not charge article processing charges (APCs).

This article reports the results of a survey of the 2567 journals, or 26% of journals listed in DOAJ, that do have APCs based on a sample of 1432 of these journals. Results indicate a volatile sector that would make future APCs difficult to predict for budgeting purposes. DOAJ and publisher title lists often did not closely match.

A number of journals were found on examination not to have APCs. A wide range of publication costs was found for every publisher type. The average (mean) APC of $964 contrasts with a mode of $0. At least 61% of publishers using APCs are commercial in nature, while many publishers are of unknown types.

The vast majority of journals charging APCs (80%) were found to offer one or more variations on pricing, such as discounts for authors from mid to low income countries, differential pricing based on article type, institutional or society membership, and/or optional charges for extras such as English language editing services or fast track of articles. The complexity and volatility of this publishing landscape is discussed.”

URL : Open Access Article Processing Charges: DOAJ Survey May 2014

DOI :10.3390/publications3010001

Landscapes of Research: Perceptions of Open Access (OA) Publishing in the Arts and Humanities

Statut

“It is widely known now that scholarly communication is in crisis, resting on an academic publishing model that is unsustainable. One response to this crisis has been the emergence of Open Access (OA) publishing, bringing scholarly literature out from behind a paywall and making it freely available to anyone online. Many research and academic libraries are facilitating the change to OA by establishing institutional repositories, supporting OA policies, and hosting OA journals. In addition, research funding bodies, such as the Australian Research Council (ARC), are mandating that all published grant research outputs be made available in OA, unless legal and contractual obligations prevent this. Despite these broader changes, not all scholars are aware of the new publishing environment. In particular, the rate of adoption of OA models in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) has historically been lower than Science, Technology and Medicine (STM) disciplines. Nevertheless, some local and international OA exemplars exist in HSS. At Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia, the faculty-administered environmental humanities journal, Landscapes, was migrated to the institutional open access repository in 2013. Subsequently, researchers in the Faculty of Education and Arts were surveyed regarding their knowledge, understandings, and perceptions of OA publishing. The survey was also designed to elicit the barriers to OA publishing perceived or experienced by HSS researchers. This article will present the findings of our small faculty-based OA survey, with particular attention to HSS academics (and within this subject group, particular attention to the arts and humanities), their perceptions of OA, and the impediments they encounter. We argue that OA publishing will continue to transform scholarship within the arts and humanities, especially through the role of institutional repositories. The “library-as-publisher” role offers the potential to transform academic and university-specific publishing activities. However, the ongoing training of university researchers and personnel is required to bring into balance their understandings of OA publisher and the demands of the broader Australian and international research environment.”

URL : Landscapes of Research: Perceptions of Open Access (OA) Publishing in the Arts and Humanities

DOI : 10.3390/publications3020065

The “total cost of publication” in a hybrid open-access environment: Institutional approaches to funding journal article-processing charges in combination with subscriptions

Statut

“As open-access (OA) publishing funded by article-processing charges (APCs) becomes more widely accepted, academic institutions need to be aware of the “total cost of publication” (TCP), comprising subscription costs plus APCs and additional administration costs. This study analyzes data from 23 UK institutions covering the period 2007–2014 modeling the TCP. It shows a clear rise in centrally managed APC payments from 2012 onward, with payments projected to increase further. As well as evidencing the growing availability and acceptance of OA publishing, these trends reflect particular UK policy developments and funding arrangements intended to accelerate the move toward OA publishing (“Gold” OA). Although the mean value of APCs has been relatively stable, there was considerable variation in APC prices paid by institutions since 2007. In particular, “hybrid” subscription/OA journals were consistently more expensive than fully OA journals. Most APCs were paid to large “traditional” commercial publishers who also received considerable subscription income. New administrative costs reported by institutions varied considerably. The total cost of publication modeling shows that APCs are now a significant part of the TCP for academic institutions, in 2013 already constituting an average of 10% of the TCP (excluding administrative costs).”

URL : The “total cost of publication” in a hybrid open-access environment

DOI: 10.1002/asi.23446

Monographs and Open Access : A report to HEFCE

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“This report examines, and seeks to clarify, the range of issues that emerge when we think about the relationship between open access and monographs (including under this latter term other long scholarly publications). It arises from the immediate need of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), and its sister funding councils in the UK, to examine the issues for open access in relation to books in a context where both funding and research councils in the UK have already established open-access requirements for publications in journals and conference proceedings, but the issues are much greater than those of defining the practicalities of mandates and the sustainability of open-access models. Furthermore, although the principal focus of the report is defined by the culture and policy preoccupations of higher education in this country, the international character of research, publishing, and academic careers has to be acknowledged.”

URL : http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/pubs/indirreports/2015/monographsandopenaccess/2014_monographs.pdf