Archives des mots-clés : open access

Two-dimensional books for the new Open Access academic publishing

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Author : Fulvio Guatelli

Metadata have become a key element of scientific communication. Indeed, the content of a publication – that is, what we love, discuss and judge – is no longer the alpha and omega of a scientific publication nor its exclusive centre of gravity. Books are gradually taking the form of an iceberg, whose visible part is represented by the content, while the submerged part is constituted by metadata.

In the current communication approach of scientific research, metadata and dissemination go hand in hand, as metadata provide a huge contribution to the success of the research itself.

In this paper, I will illustrate how – in the field of today’s scholarly publishing – best practices, simple metadata, and cataloguing indicators such as DOI and ORCID are taking on the task that was once accomplished by chariots pulled by sturdy horses coming out of Aldo Manuzio’s workshop: spreading books and the discoveries of scientific research all over the world.

URL : Two-dimensional books for the new Open Access academic publishing

Original location : https://jlis.fupress.net/index.php/jlis/article/view/425

Library funding for open access at KU Leuven

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Authors : Demmy Verbeke, Laura Mesotten

As main buyers of scholarly literature, research libraries have always provided essential economic support for sustaining the market of academic publishing. With the switch to open access (OA), libraries are now faced with transitioning this support from the demand (subscriptions) to the supply (publications) side.

The way in which this is currently done, in general, risks strengthening the preponderance of the for-profit approach to scholarly communication. We therefore believe that it is essential to apply library budgets to foster a greater diversity.

That is exactly the purpose of the Fund for Fair Open Access, set up by KU Leuven Libraries in 2018, which is exclusively devoted to stimulating the development of non-profit and community-led initiatives.

This is achieved by library memberships to sustain open scholarship infrastructure, by supporting diamond OA programmes and by subsidizing OA books published by Leuven University Press.

In this article, we will demonstrate the accomplished successes of the fund and share some insights we have gathered along the way, such as our decision to cease financing article processing charges, even in a Fair OA business model.

URL : Library funding for open access at KU Leuven

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.565

Open access in the humanities, arts and social sciences: Complex perceptions of researchers and implications for research support

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Author : Niamh Quigley

Adoption of open access in the humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS) is a work in progress, with lower engagement in HASS than most of the natural sciences. HASS research impacts how we live, how we learn and how we see ourselves, and research institutions should encourage and enable their HASS research communities to increase the prevalence of open access research outputs.

Six experienced HASS researchers at a single academic institution in Perth, Australia, were interviewed to explore their perceptions and experiences of open access, and any barriers that they had encountered. Thematic analysis was used to code the transcribed interviews, and generate themes.

This study found a wide variance in the adoption of open access practices among HASS researchers. Some participants are publishing via APC-based gold open access (in DOAJ listed journals), while other participants encounter multiple barriers to sharing more of their work as open access.

Confusion about aspects of open access is evident. Even among participants who support open access, some have had poor experiences of open access publishing. This research also found that some participants hold extremely complex opinions on open access, which directly influence participants’ behaviour depending on which perspective they are considering.

These perspectives are: research supervisor, editorial role at journal, funding assessor and global citizen. Within HASS a diversity of behaviours exists around open access, and research institutions need to tailor their research support services around open access and scholarly publishing for different communities of researchers.

URL : Open access in the humanities, arts and social sciences: Complex perceptions of researchers and implications for research support

DOI : https://doi.org/10.53377/lq.10937

Academic Librarians, Open Access, and the Ethics of Care

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Author : Cara Bradley

This paper explores the value of applying the ethics of care to scholarly communications work, particularly that of open-access (OA) librarians. The ethics of care is a feminist philosophical perspective that sees in the personal a new way to approach other facets of life, including the political and the professional.

Care, in this context, is broadly construed as “a species of activity that includes everything we do to maintain, contain, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible” (Fisher & Tronto, 1990, p. 40). Joan Tronto outlined four elements of care: attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness, and highlighted the value of care beyond the domestic sphere (1993).

The ethics of care values care and relationships as instructive ways of framing and examining work, and has been applied in diverse disciplines, including education, nursing, social work, and even business. Several LIS professionals have considered the ethics of care in the context of library technologies (Henry, 2016) and digital humanities (Dohe, 2019), among others.

The ethics of care can also provide inspiration for OA librarians as we think about the scope and nature of our work. What could open access librarians learn from the ethics of care? How might our practice change or evolve with the ethics of care as an underpinning philosophy?

Who do we include in our circle of care while we undertake our work? The ethics of care provides a more expansive way to think about OA librarianship.

URL : Academic Librarians, Open Access, and the Ethics of Care

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.12914

Open access scientific journals: an analysis of the DOAJ catalogue

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Authors : Suênia Oliveira Mendes, Rosângela Schwarz Rodrigues

Introduction

The research aims to analyse the publishers, countries of publication, citation indexes, article processing charges, and their inter-relations, in the journals that make up the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), a global directory that offers scientific information in immediate and exclusive open access.

Method

Bibliographic, quantitative, and inferential study of 9,005 journals in the DOAJ, focusing on publishers, countries of publication, article processing charges, and citation indexes.

Analysis

Calculation of absolute and relative frequencies, measurement of central tendency, chi-squared test, and Mann-Whitney U test using the R statistical software (version 3.2.4) with a 95% confidence interval.

Results

Brazil is the country with the largest number of titles (10.9%), followed by the United Kingdom, which has a greater number of titles with article processing charges fees averaging US$ 1,474 for those that are DOAJ No Seal and US$ 862 for those that are certified DOAJ Seal. Europe has the greatest number of open access titles (47.6%).

The Hindawi Publishing Corporation, Elsevier, De Gruyter Open, BioMed Central, and Springer are the publishers with the greatest number of journals and a higher presence in citation indexes (Journal Citation Reports and SCImago Journal Rank). DOAJ Seal journals are correlated and more likely to have article processing charges fees.

Conclusions

In the consolidation of open access journals, commercial publishers and countries with a tradition of scientific publishing continue to gather the majority of journals. Thus, the oligopoly of commercial scientific publishers is maintained.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47989/irpaper911

Promoting a culture of openness: Institutional open access policy development and evaluation at a Canadian university

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Authors : Alison J. Moore, Jennifer Zerkee, Kate Shuttleworth, Rebecca Dowson, Gwen Bird

Institutional open access (OA) policies can act as a solid foundation on which to build university-wide support for open access. This is the first paper to reflect on the entire process of developing, implementing, and reviewing an institutional open access policy at a Canadian post-secondary institution.

Simon Fraser University (SFU) is one of a few Canadian universities with an institutional open access policy. As a leader in open access, SFU is well positioned to share observations of our experiences in the first three years of our OA policy.

Throughout this paper, we reflect on the role that the policy plays in the broader culture of openness at SFU and on the OA resources and supports provided to SFU researchers.

Other institutions may find our observations and adoption of the SOAR (strengths, opportunities, aspirations, results) appreciative inquiry framework useful as they explore future policy development or review and work to promote a culture of open access within their university community.

URL: Promoting a culture of openness: Institutional open access policy development and evaluation at a Canadian university

DOI : https://doi.org/10.21083/partnership.v16i1.6150

More readers in more places: the benefits of open access for scholarly books

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Authors : Cameron Neylon, Alkim Ozaygen, Lucy Montgomery, Chun-Kai (Karl) Huang, Ros Pyne, Mithu Lucraft, Christina Emery

Open access to scholarly contents has grown substantially in recent years. This includes the number of books published open access online. However, there is limited study on how usage patterns (via downloads, citations and web visibility) of these books may differ from their closed counterparts. Such information is not only important for book publishers, but also for researchers in disciplines where books are the norm.

This article reports on findings from comparing samples of books published by Springer Nature to shed light on differences in usage patterns across open access and closed books. The study includes a selection of 281 open access books and a sample of 3,653 closed books (drawn from 21,059 closed books using stratified random sampling).

The books are stratified by combinations of book type, discipline and year of publication to enable likewise comparisons within each stratum and to maximize statistical power of the sample.

The results show higher geographic diversity of usage, higher numbers of downloads and more citations for open access books across all strata. Importantly, open access books have increased access and usage for traditionally underserved populations.

URL : More readers in more places: the benefits of open access for scholarly books

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.558