Article-level metrics at PLOS and beyond :
SPARC Europe’s Webcast: Jennifer Lin on Article Level Metrics from SPARC on Vimeo.
Étiquette : open access
Open Access Status of Journal Articles from ERC Funded Projects :
« The main objective of this analysis is to estimate the extent to which journal articles from ERC funded projects are available in an open access.
A list of 630 journal articles reported in 88 mid-term project reports formed the basis of this analysis. A web-based search to find openly accessible versions of these articles was undertaken from a computer network with no subscription linked to it. Articles were classified as available in open access if the web-based search yielded a copy of the journal article, an author personal copy or a pre-print.
The results show that 62 % of journal articles from ERC funded projects are available in open access. The share of articles in open access varies across research domains. It is close to 70 % in Life Sciences, 65 % in Physical Sciences and Engineering and nearer 50 % in Social Sciences and Humanities. A comparison with the data on open access status provided by the grant holders in their mid-term reports shows that self-reporting leads to an underestimation of the proportion of open access articles.
The potential policy implications of the results are highlighted in the last section of the report. They include among others, the idea of using soft measures to further encourage open access and seeking the cooperation of the libraries of organisations hosting ERC grantees to ensure that the ERC’s Open Access policy is well aligned with institutional policies and practices and does not place an undue burden on researchers. »
URL : http://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/document/file/open_access_study_status_journal_articles_ERC_funded_projects.pdf
Authors : Bo-Christer Björk, David Solomon
Background
In the past few years there has been an ongoing debate as to whether the proliferation of open access (OA) publishing would damage the peer review system and put the quality of scientific journal publishing at risk.
Our aim was to inform this debate by comparing the scientific impact of OA journals with subscription journals, controlling for journal age, the country of the publisher, discipline and (for OA publishers) their business model.
Methods
The 2-year impact factors (the average number of citations to the articles in a journal) were used as a proxy for scientific impact. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) was used to identify OA journals as well as their business model.
Journal age and discipline were obtained from the Ulrich’s periodicals directory. Comparisons were performed on the journal level as well as on the article level where the results were weighted by the number of articles published in a journal.
A total of 610 OA journals were compared with 7,609 subscription journals using Web of Science citation data while an overlapping set of 1,327 OA journals were compared with 11,124 subscription journals using Scopus data.
Results
Overall, average citation rates, both unweighted and weighted for the number of articles per journal, were about 30% higher for subscription journals. However, after controlling for discipline (medicine and health versus other), age of the journal (three time periods) and the location of the publisher (four largest publishing countries versus other countries) the differences largely disappeared in most subcategories except for journals that had been launched prior to 1996.
OA journals that fund publishing with article processing charges (APCs) are on average cited more than other OA journals. In medicine and health, OA journals founded in the last 10 years are receiving about as many citations as subscription journals launched during the same period.
Conclusions
Our results indicate that OA journals indexed in Web of Science and/or Scopus are approaching the same scientific impact and quality as subscription journals, particularly in biomedicine and for journals funded by article processing charges.
Software systems for increasing availability of scientific-research outputs :
« This paper describes the basic approaches for publishing scienti c-research outputs using modern ICT technologies and web applications such as institutional repositories, the NDLTD, and CRIS. Also, the CRIS which has been developed at the University of Novi Sad is described. That system uni es the mentioned approaches and it is compatible with all of them. »
URL : http://www.dmi.rs/NSJOM/Papers/42_1/NSJOM_42_1_037_048.pdf
Open Access to scholarly information in India: Trends and Developments :
« Purpose : Focuses on the Open Access initiatives and describes some of the current open access channels and the areas where India has made significant progress. Also discusses the significance of those trends for information access in developing countries like India including problems and possible solutions.
Design/methodology/approach : Analyzes and discusses several successful OA channels mainly in five areas. Highlights on some of the Indian OA journals and OA Archives in detail; secondly few Open Course Wares initiatives, Digital Library Projects, Meta data Harvesting Services have been discussed respectively. Lastly, the role of government; professional bodies and role of some of the open access advocates in our country have been discussed.
Findings : OA initiatives and OA channels are growing in India. Some suggestions for the development of OA have been made.
Originality/value : Paper will be useful to those who are not aware of the OA to knowledge movement or seek deeper knowledge about the current state of OA in Indian. Suggestions should be useful to the administrators, funding agencies, OA publishers and librarians in both developing and developed countries. »
URL : http://irjlis.com/pdf_v2n1_jun2012/9_IR009.pdf
The traditional forms of scientific publishing and peer review do not live up to all demands of efficient communication and quality assurance in today’s highly diverse and rapidly evolving world of science.
They need to be advanced and complemented by interactive and transparent forms of review, publication, and discussion that are open to the scientific community and to the public.
The advantages of open access, public peer review, and interactive discussion can be efficiently and flexibly combined with the strengths of traditional scientific peer review. Since 2001 the benefits and viability of this approach are clearly demonstrated by the highly successful interactive open access journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP, www.atmos-chem-phys.net) and a growing number of sister journals launched and operated by the European Geosciences Union (EGU, www.egu.eu) and the open access publisher Copernicus (www.copernicus.org).
The interactive open access journals are practicing an integrative multi-stage process of publication and peer review combined with interactive public discussion, which effectively resolves the dilemma between rapid scientific exchange and thorough quality assurance.
Key features and achievements of this approach are: top quality and impact, efficient self-regulation and low rejection rates, high attractivity and rapid growth, low costs, and financial sustainability.
In fact, ACP and the EGU interactive open access sister journals are by most if not all standards more successful than comparable scientific journals with traditional or alternative forms of peer review (editorial statistics, publication statistics, citation statistics, economic costs, and sustainability).
The high efficiency and predictive validity of multi-stage open peer review have been confirmed in a series of dedicated studies by evaluation experts from the social sciences, and the same or similar concepts have recently also been adopted in other disciplines, including the life sciences and economics.
Multi-stage open peer review can be flexibly adjusted to the needs and peculiarities of different scientific communities. Due to the flexibility and compatibility with traditional structures of scientific publishing and peer review, the multi-stage open peer review concept enables efficient evolution in scientific communication and quality assurance.
It has the potential for swift replacement of hidden peer review as the standard of scientific quality assurance, and it provides a basis for open evaluation in science. »
Repositioning academic repositories for better management through open access :
« This is a literature-based opinion paper which examines how digital technology through Open Access has changed the way knowledge that was hitherto hard to find and expensive is finding its way into university electronic repositories and bridging the distance between searching and retrieval. The paper examines opportunities available to scholars, researchers and institutions of higher learning through Open Access and Open Content using electronic repositories. In a number of African academic institutions of higher learning, starting and maintaining journals is becoming the order of the day. Once launched, these journals provide ready material for Open Access through repositories.
Due to the prohibitive price of books it is difficult to purchase all the available books on certain topics. Therefore Open Access on the internet and in repositories would be a good option since updated materials will be available. Open Access repositories and archives are economically sustainable because they are affordable. Depositing new articles takes a few minutes, and is done by individual authors, not archive managers. Open Access repositories and archives at universities only require server space. This benefits the institutions that host them by enhancing the visibility and impact of the articles, the authors, and the institution.
The paper argues that the current scholarly communication system needs urgent reforms to cope with the rapidly changing technological environment. Open Access and Open Content are free, immediate, and handle multiple users. On the other hand, electronic repositories can be set up
effortlessly.
The paper recommends that electronic Open Access institutional repositories are a must have for academic institutions and that researchers, institutions and funders need to be informed and trained on the benefits of using Open Access and Institutional repositories. Through this management of knowledge, scholars worldwide will access and benefit from each other’s findings. This is in line with the universal drive to share knowledge propelled by new technologies. »
URL : http://scecsal.viel.co.ke/index.php?title=File:REPOSITIONING_ACADEMIC_REPOSITORIES_FOR_BETTER_MANAGEMENT_THROUGH_OPEN_ACCESS.pdf