No-Fault Peer Review Charges: The Price of Selectivity Need Not Be Access Denied or Delayed :
Plans by universities and research funders to pay the costs of Open Access Publishing (“Gold OA”) are premature. Funds are short; 80% of journals (including virtually all the top journals) are still subscription-based, tying up the potential funds to pay for Gold OA; the asking price for Gold OA is still high; and there is concern that paying to publish may inflate acceptance rates and lower quality standards. What is needed now is for universities and funders to mandate OA self-archiving (of authors’ final peer-reviewed drafts, immediately upon acceptance for publication) (“Green OA”). That will provide immediate OA; and if and when universal Green OA should go on to make subscriptions unsustainable (because users are satisfied with just the Green OA versions) that will in turn induce journals to cut costs (print edition, online edition, access-provision, archiving), downsize to just providing the service of peer review, and convert to the Gold OA cost-recovery model; meanwhile, the subscription cancellations will have released the funds to pay these residual service costs. The natural way to charge for the service of peer review then will be on a “no-fault basis,” with the author’s institution or funder paying for each round of refereeing, regardless of outcome (acceptance, revision/re-refereeing, or rejection). This will minimize cost while protecting against inflated acceptance rates and decline in quality standards.
URL : http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/21348/
Archives des mots-clés : open access publishing
Factors influencing the adoption of open…
Factors influencing the adoption of open access scholarly communication in Tanzanian public universities :
Open access – a means for free availability of scholarly content via the Internet – is an emerging opportunity for wider and unlimited access to scholarly literature. Scholarly communication, through open access journals and self-arching, are the two main approaches of open access publishing. However, this mode of scholarly communication is not widely utilised in developing countries such as Tanzania. This paper discusses the factors that influence the adoption of open access for scholarly communication in Tanzanian public universities based on a study conducted from 2007 to 2010. A survey questionnaire targeted 544 researchers selected through stratified random sampling from a population of 1088
university researchers at six public universities in Tanzania. In addition, 69 policy makers from the six universities were interviewed. It was evident from the findings that the majority of both the policy makers and researchers were aware of open access. However, most of the researchers accessed free online content more (62%) than they disseminated their scholarly content (20%) through open access. Researchers’ Internet usage skills and self-efficacy, social influence, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and the respondents’ general perceptions about open access were identified as the positive factors likely to facilitate open access adoption in Tanzanian public universities. The current poor research conditions and researchers’ low Internet self-efficacy such as inadequate information search skills were cited as the main hindrances for researchers to use open access outlets to access scholarly content. Additionally, inadequate online publishing skills, and the slow Internet connectivity are the
main issues that deterred researchers to disseminate the research findings through open access outlets. The paper recommends that institutional policies on scholarly communication should be revised to incorporate the use of open access publishing. Furthermore, universities should accelerate the establishment of institutional repositories, advocacy campaigns and training directed to researchers, policy makers, readers and information managers of scholarly content, and the improvement of Internet speed at universities through subscription to more bandwidth so as to meet the demand from the scholarly community.
URL : http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/papers/ifla76/138-dulle-en.pdf
Open Journal Systems: A Complete Guide t…
Open Journal Systems: A Complete Guide to Online Publishing : http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/docs/userguide/2.3.1/index.html
MIT Libraries offer aid to MIT authors p…
MIT Libraries offer aid to MIT authors publishing in open-access journals :
The MIT Libraries have established a special fund, the MIT Open Access Article Publication Subvention Fund (OAAPSF), to support equity in open-access publication by providing funding to MIT authors who might not otherwise be able to cover publication fees. A subsidy of up to $1,000 per article is now available to faculty authors publishing in eligible journals.
The fund was created as a result of MIT’s commitment to the “Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity,” launched with four other founding universities last September. The goal of the compact is to allow subscription-based journals and open-access journals to compete on a more level playing field by providing equitable support for the processing-fee business model for open-access journals.
URL : http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/libraries-open-access-aid.html
Open Access to Scholarly Outputs in Spai…
Open Access to Scholarly Outputs in Spain : http://www.accesoabierto.net/sites/accesoabierto.net/files/abadal%20et%20al_oa%20spain%20granada%202010.pdf
The Impact Factor of Open Access journal…
The Impact Factor of Open Access journals: data and trends :
The aim of this preliminary work, focused on “Gold” Open Access, is to test the performance of Open Access journals with the most traditional bibliometric indicator – Impact Factor, to verify the hypothesis that
unrestricted access might turn into more citations and therefore also good Impact Factor indices. Other indicators, such as Immediacy Index and 5-year Impact Factor, will be tested too.
URL : http://dhanken.shh.fi/dspace/bitstream/10227/599/3/2giglia.pdf
Open access journal publishing in Ahmadu…
Open access journal publishing in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria :
Open Access has been identified as an initiative that can improve access and provide global visibility for research work conducted by researchers and scholars. This study examined scholarly publication, particularly open access journals in Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria. Survey research method was adopted for this study and purposive sampling technique was adopted to collect data using
questionnaire from twenty-one chief-editors of scholarly journals published in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. The study revealed, among others that only 2(9.5%) out of the 21(100%) of scholarly journals published in Ahmadu Bello University are open access journals. Lack of awareness of the potentials of open access journals, and concern over copyright issues are some of the challenges
identified by the study hindering the adoption and transition of closed journals to open access journals by publishers of scholarly journals in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. This study also highlights some of the strategies that can be adopted to promote open access journals amongst publishers of scholarly journals in Ahmadu Bello University and Nigeria at large.
URL : http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/papers/ifla76/138-gbaje-en.pdf