Archives des mots-clés : open access

Have the “mega-journals” reached the limits to growth?

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“A “mega-journal” is a new type of scientific journal that publishes freely accessible articles, which have been peer reviewed for scientific trustworthiness, but leaves it to the readers to decide which articles are of interest and importance to them. In the wake of the phenomenal success of PLOS ONE, several other publishers have recently started mega-journals. This article presents the evolution of mega-journals since 2010 in terms of article publication rates. The fastest growth seems to have ebbed out at around 35,000 annual articles for the 14 journals combined. Acceptance rates are in the range of 50–70%, and speed of publication is around 3–5 months. Common features in mega-journals are alternative impact metrics, easy reusability of figures and data, post-publication discussions and portable reviews from other journals.”

URL :  Have the “mega-journals” reached the limits to growth?

DOI : https://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.981

Study on Perspectives Regarding Deposit on Open Access Repositories in the Context of Public Universities in the Central-Eastern Region of Argentina

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“This article presents the results of a survey and qualitative study of needs and practices of open access scholarly works dissemination.The survey and study focused on different issues related to usability, navigation, and accessibility of institutional repositories, which have guided the design of an experimental prototype in the context of a regional project that joins three universities in Argentina. In such academic practices, the teaching community offers various types of production and simultaneous application areas for digital objects. Thus, there is a technological requirement to enable users to carry out their self-archiving process of different objects, in a user-friendly way, allowing them to upload these objects in various collections. A prototype was implemented and tested in order to obtain an initial assessment of the proposed model.”

URL : Study on Perspectives Regarding Deposit on Open Access Repositories in the Context of Public Universities in the Central-Eastern Region of Argentina

Related URL : http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/145

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

Related URL : http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0026-C274-7

Study of Open Access Publishing in Social Sciences and its Implications for Libraries

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The Open Access Movement (OAM), which started as a gradual realisation by authors mainly in biomedical sciences to make available results of public-funded research projects to the public without much barrier pertaining to cost, permission, copyright obligations, etc., gradually gained momentum across the world and India was no exception to it.

Though the movement was confined mainly to science, technology and medical fields in India, since last few years, a number of open access repositories and open access journals in Social Science subjects have started appearing.

The present study which is confined to the open access Social Science journals published from India as mentioned in the Directory of Open Access Journals, identified 60 open access Social Sciences journals in India.

The study also analysed the journals on the basis of certain parameters as to trend of open access journals in Social Sciences, and was found that most of open access journals in Social Sciences appeared between 2009 and 2014 and about half of the journals charge authors for publishing their papers in the journals and only a few are published under Creative Commons Attribution.

Lastly, the paper discusses about implications of open access publishing on Social Science research libraries made few suggestions towards encouraging open access publishing in Social Science subjects in India.

URL : Study of Open Access Publishing in Social Sciences and its Implications for Libraries

Related URL : http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/article/view/8720

It Takes More than a Mandate: Factors that Contribute to Increased Rates of Article Deposit to an Institutional Repository

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“INTRODUCTION

Many institutions have open access (OA) policies that require faculty members to deposit their articles in an institutional repository (IR). A clear motivation is that a policy will result in increased self-archiving. The purpose of this longitudinal study is to compare the impact of a campus-wide OA policy and mediated solicitation of author manuscripts, using quantitative analysis to determine the rate of article deposits over time.

METHODS

Metadata for faculty articles published by authors at Oregon State University between 2011 and 2014 was produced by integrating citation metadata from a bibliographic database and the IR. Author names, affiliations, and other metadata were parsed and matched to compare rates of deposit for three separate time periods relating to different OA promotional strategies.

RESULTS Direct solicitation of author manuscripts is more successful in facilitating OA than an OA policy—by number of articles deposited as well as the number of unique authors participating. Author affiliation and research areas also have an impact on faculty participation in OA.

DISCUSSION Outreach to colleges and departments has had a positive effect on rate of deposit for those communities of scholars. Additionally, disciplinary practice may have more influence on its members’ participation in OA.

CONCLUSION Until more federal policies require open access to articles funded by grants, or institutional policies are in place that require article deposit for promotion and tenure, policies will only be as effective as the library mediated processes that are put in place to identify and solicit articles from faculty.”

URL : It Takes More than a Mandate: Factors that Contribute to Increased Rates of Article Deposit to an Institutional Repository

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1208

Getting the Word Out Academic Libraries as Scholarly Publishers

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“In the past decade there has been an intense growth in the number of library publishing services supporting faculty and students. Unified by a commitment to both access and service, library publishing programs have grown from an early focus on backlist digitization to encompass publication of student works, textbooks, research data, as well as books and journals. This growing engagement with publishing is a natural extension of the academic library’s commitment to support the creation of and access to scholarship. This volume includes chapters by some of the most talented thinkers in this area of librarianship, exploring topics such as the economics of publishing and the challenges of collaboration, and surveying the service landscape for publishing in support of a variety of formats and methods. Edited by library publishing experts Maria Bonn, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Graduate School of Library and Information Science, and Mike Furlough, HathiTrust Digital Library, “Getting the Word Out” deepens current discussions in the field, and provides both decision makers and current practitioners with an introduction to the current state of the field and an investigation of its future prospects.”

URL : http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/publications/booksanddigitalresources/digital/9780838986981_getting_OA.pdf

Open Access Article Processing Charges: DOAJ Survey May 2014

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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