Archives des mots-clés : open access

Value-added services in institutional repositories in Spanish public universities

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Authors : Andrés Fernández-Ramos, Leticia Barrionuevo

Introduction

The aim of the present study was to analyse the value-added services offered by institutional repositories in Spanish public universities.

Method

Information was collected on the main characteristics of repositories in Spanish public universities and the value-added services they offered, using a checklist with twenty-five items divided into three dimensions: information on the repository; information on the records; and instructions for use and dissemination.

Analysis

We determined the frequency of each value-added service in the repositories included in the study and analysed the main modalities in which these services were offered. We also analysed the similarity between repositories using multidimensional scaling methods.

Results

We found high variability between repositories and indicated that some value-added services were widely offered whereas others were only provided by a few repositories.

Conclusions

We believe that the provision of value-added services could have a direct impact on repository use because such services are related to many of the reasons that explain repository under-utilisation, such as low perceived usefulness, difficulties depositing work and lack of knowledge about what should or can be deposited.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.47989/irpaper895

An analysis of use statistics of electronic papers in a Korean scholarly information repository

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Authors : Jayhoon Kim, Su-yeong Bae, Hyekyong Hwang, Sung-Seok Ko

Introduction

This study aimed to analyse the current use status of Korean scholarly papers accessible in the repository of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information in order to assess the economic validity of the maintenance and operation of the repository.

Method

This study used the modified historical cost method and performed regression analysis on the use of Korean scholarly papers by year and subject area.

Analysis

The development cost of the repository and the use volumes were analysed based on 1,154,549 Korean scholarly papers deposited in the Institute repository.

Results

Approximately 86% of the deposited papers were downloaded at least once and on average, a paper was downloaded over twenty-six times. Regression analysis showed that the ratio of use of currently deposited papers is likely to decrease by 7.6% annually, as new ones are added.

Conclusions

The need to manage currently deposited papers for at least thirteen years into the future and provide empirical proof that the repository has contributed to Korean researchers conducting research and development in the fields of science and technology. The benefit-cost ratio was above nineteen, confirming the economic validity of the repository.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.47989/irpaper892

Requiem for impact factors and high publication charges

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Authors : Chris R Triggle, Ross MacDonald, David J. Triggle, Donald Grierson

Journal impact factors, publication charges and assessment of quality and accuracy of scientific research are critical for researchers, managers, funders, policy makers, and society. Editors and publishers compete for impact factor rankings, to demonstrate how important their journals are, and researchers strive to publish in perceived top journals, despite high publication and access charges.

This raises questions of how top journals are identified, whether assessments of impacts are accurate and whether high publication charges borne by the research community are justified, bearing in mind that they also collectively provide free peer-review to the publishers.

Although traditional journals accelerated peer review and publication during the COVID-19 pandemic, preprint servers made a greater impact with over 30,000 open access articles becoming available and accelerating a trend already seen in other fields of research.

We review and comment on the advantages and disadvantages of a range of assessment methods and the way in which they are used by researchers, managers, employers and publishers.

We argue that new approaches to assessment are required to provide a realistic and comprehensive measure of the value of research and journals and we support open access publishing at a modest, affordable price to benefit research producers and consumers.

URL : Requiem for impact factors and high publication charges

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2021.1909481

Open Research Data and Open Peer Review: Perceptions of a Medical and Health Sciences Community in Greece

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Authors : Eirini Delikoura, Dimitrios Kouis

Recently significant initiatives have been launched for the dissemination of Open Access as part of the Open Science movement. Nevertheless, two other major pillars of Open Science such as Open Research Data (ORD) and Open Peer Review (OPR) are still in an early stage of development among the communities of researchers and stakeholders.

The present study sought to unveil the perceptions of a medical and health sciences community about these issues. Through the investigation of researchers‘ attitudes, valuable conclusions can be drawn, especially in the field of medicine and health sciences, where an explosive growth of scientific publishing exists.

A quantitative survey was conducted based on a structured questionnaire, with 179 valid responses. The participants in the survey agreed with the Open Peer Review principles. However, they ignored basic terms like FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and appeared incentivized to permit the exploitation of their data.

Regarding Open Peer Review (OPR), participants expressed their agreement, implying their support for a trustworthy evaluation system.

Conclusively, researchers need to receive proper training for both Open Research Data principles and Open Peer Review processes which combined with a reformed evaluation system will enable them to take full advantage of the opportunities that arise from the new scholarly publishing and communication landscape.

URL : Open Research Data and Open Peer Review: Perceptions of a Medical and Health Sciences Community in Greece

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9020014

Open Access Models, Pirate Libraries and Advocacy Repertoires: Policy Options for Academics to Construct and Govern Knowledge Commons

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Author : Melanie Dulong de Rosnay

In this article, I propose exploring open access publishing through the lenses of Knowledge Commons. Instead of focusing on users’ rights to access and reuse the output under open copyright licensing conditions, I study the governance of the academic publishing ecosystem, and its political economy, technical and labour infrastructure. Based on selected examples, I discuss how they comply with the concept of the commons.

I use analytical frameworks from the Ostromian literature of the governance of Knowledge Commons to provide insights on the various steps of academic publishing work as a process. I then analyse a scope of open access publishing projects, including gold, green, diamond, platinum and pirate libraries. Finally, I draw from practices a repertoire of advocacy actions and I make recommendations for academics to develop policies supporting Academic Commons.

URL : Open Access Models, Pirate Libraries and Advocacy Repertoires: Policy Options for Academics to Construct and Govern Knowledge Commons

DOI : https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.913

What happens when a journal converts to Open Access? A bibliometric analysis

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Authors : Fakhri Momeni, Philipp Mayr, Nicholas Fraser, Isabella Peters

In recent years, increased stakeholder pressure to transition research to Open Access has led to many journals converting, or ‘flipping’, from a closed access (CA) to an open access (OA) publishing model.

Changing the publishing model can influence the decision of authors to submit their papers to a journal, and increased article accessibility may influence citation behaviour. In this paper we aimed to understand how flipping a journal to an OA model influences the journal’s future publication volumes and citation impact.

We analysed two independent sets of journals that had flipped to an OA model, one from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and one from the Open Access Directory (OAD), and compared their development with two respective control groups of similar journals. For bibliometric analyses, journals were matched to the Scopus database.

We assessed changes in the number of articles published over time, as well as two citation metrics at the journal and article level: the normalised impact factor (IF) and the average relative citations (ARC), respectively. Our results show that overall, journals that flipped to an OA model increased their publication output compared to journals that remained closed.

Mean normalised IF and ARC also generally increased following the flip to an OA model, at a greater rate than was observed in the control groups. However, the changes appear to vary largely by scientific discipline. Overall, these results indicate that flipping to an OA publishing model can bring positive changes to a journal.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.14522

Only two out of five articles by New Zealand researchers are free-to-access: a multiple API study of access, citations, cost of Article Processing Charges (APC), and the potential to increase the proportion of open access

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Authors : Richard Kenneth Alistair White, Anton Angelo, Deborah Jane Fitchett, Moira Fraser, Luqman Hayes, Jess Howie, Emma Richardson, Bruce Duncan White

We studied journal articles published by researchers at all eight of New Zealand universities in 2017 to determine how many were freely accessible on the web. We wrote software code to harvest data from multiple sources, code that we now share to enable others to reproduce our work on their own sample set.

In May 2019, we ran our code to determine which of the 2017 articles were open at that time and by what method; where those articles would have incurred an Article Processing Charge (APC) we calculated the cost if those charges had been paid.

Where articles were not freely available we determined whether the policies of publishers in each case would have allowed deposit in a non-commercial repository (Green open access). We also examined citation rates for different types of access. We found that, of our 2017 sample set, about two out of every five articles were freely accessible without payment or subscription (41%).

Where research was explicitly said to be funded by New Zealand’s major research funding agencies, the proportion was slightly higher at 45%. Where open articles would have incurred an APC we estimated an average cost per article of USD1,682 (for publications where all articles require an APC, that is, Gold open access) and USD2,558 (where APC payment is optional, Hybrid open access) at a total estimated cost of USD1.45m.

Of the paid options, Gold is by far more common for New Zealand researchers (82% Gold, 18% Hybrid). In terms of citations, our analysis aligned with previous studies that suggest a correlation between publications being freely accessible and, on balance, slightly higher rates of citation.

This is not seen across all types of open access, however, with Diamond OA achieving the lowest rates. Where articles were not freely accessible we found that a very large majority of them (88% or 3089 publications) could have been legally deposited in an institutional repository.

Similarly, only in a very small number of cases had a version deposited in the repository of a New Zealand university made the difference between the publication being freely accessible or not (125 publications).

Given that most New Zealand researchers support research being open, there is clearly a large gap between belief and practice in New Zealand’s research ecosystem.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.23.164004