Opening up the Library: Transforming our Policies, Practices and Structures

Authors : Joanna Ball, Graham Stone, Sarah Thompson

Momentum is building in the transition to open access for monographs, with a number of funders developing policies and mandates in recent years.

The article argues that while libraries play an instrumental role in driving a transition to open science within their institutions this is not reflected in libraries’ approaches to collection development, which are still predicated on purchased content.

Libraries are keen to demonstrate that their purchased content is relevant to users, often promoting ‘expensive’ purchased collections over open content. Rather than relegating open to a less-visible second place, the article calls for libraries to acquire and promote open content alongside, and where appropriate with higher priority, than paid-for content.

In order to facilitate a transition to open access for monographs, cultural change and leadership is required within libraries to reimagine themselves around open content as the norm, with policies, practices and structures that communicate, enable and promote this shift. The article calls for a collaborative international approach.

URL : Opening up the Library: Transforming our Policies, Practices and Structures

Original location : https://www.liberquarterly.eu/article/10.18352/lq.10360/

OAI-PMH à « l’heure du web sémantique » : bilans et perspectives

Auteur/Author : Vincent de Lavenne de la Montoise

À l’approche du vingtième anniversaire du protocole OAI-PMH, et dans un environnement web qui a subi de profondes évolutions (technologiques et d’usages), quelle est l’actualité de l’échange de données ? Comment se sont construits les usages des professionnel le s en la matière ? Sont ils adaptés aux défis actuels ?

Ce travail se propose d’analyser l’exposition et l’échange de données sous un angle historique, avant d’essayer de comprendre les enjeux actuels qui détermineront quelle(s) solution(s) techniques choisir.

URL : OAI-PMH à « l’heure du web sémantique » : bilans et perspectives

Original location : https://www.enssib.fr/bibliotheque-numerique/documents/69909-oai-pmh-a-l-heure-du-web-semantique.pdf

Preprints in motion: tracking changes between posting and journal publication

Authors : Jessica K Polka, Gautam Dey, Máté Pálfy, Federico Nanni, Liam Brierley, Nicholas Fraser, Jonathon Alexis Coates

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, preprints in the biomedical sciences are being posted and accessed at unprecedented rates, drawing widespread attention from the general public, press and policymakers for the first time.

This phenomenon has sharpened longstanding questions about the reliability of information shared prior to journal peer review. Does the information shared in preprints typically withstand the scrutiny of peer review, or are conclusions likely to change in the version of record?

We assessed preprints that had been posted and subsequently published in a journal between 1st January and 30th April 2020, representing the initial phase of the pandemic response. We utilised a combination of automatic and manual annotations to quantify how an article changed between the preprinted and published version.

We found that the total number of figure panels and tables changed little between preprint and published articles. Moreover, the conclusions of 6% of non-COVID-19-related and 15% of COVID-19-related abstracts undergo a discrete change by the time of publication, but the majority of these changes do not reverse the main message of the paper.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.20.432090

Publishing at any cost: a cross-sectional study of the amount that medical researchers spend on open access publishing each year

Authors : Mallory K. Ellingson, Xiaoting Shi, Joshua J. Skydel, Kate Nyhan,Richard Lehman, Joseph S. Ross, Joshua D. Wallach

Objective

To estimate the financial costs paid by individual medical researchers from meeting the article processing charges (APCs) levied by open access journals in 2019.

Design

Cross-sectional analysis.

Data sources

Scopus was used to generate two random samples of researchers, the first with a senior author article indexed in the ‘Medicine’ subject area (general researchers) and the second with an article published in the ten highest-impact factor general clinical medicine journals (high-impact researchers) in 2019.

For each researcher, Scopus was used to identify all first and senior author original research or review articles published in 2019. Data were obtained from Scopus, institutional profiles, Journal Citation Reports, publisher databases, the Directory of Open Access Journals, and individual journal websites.

Main outcome measures

Median APCs paid by general and high-impact researchers for all first and senior author research and review articles published in 2019.

Results

There were 241 general and 246 high-impact researchers identified as eligible for our study. In 2019, the general and high-impact researchers published a total of 914 (median 2, IQR 1–5) and 1471 (4, 2–8) first or senior author research or review articles, respectively. 42% (384/914) of the articles from the general researchers and 29% (428/1471) of the articles from the high-impact medical researchers were published in fully open access journals.

The median total APCs paid by general researchers in 2019 was US$191 (US$0–US$2500) and the median total paid by high-impact researchers was US$2900 (US$0–US$5465); the maximum paid by a single researcher in total APCs was US$30115 and US$34676, respectively.

Conclusions

Medical researchers in 2019 were found to have paid between US$0 and US$34676 in total APCs. As journals with APCs become more common, it is important to continue to evaluate the potential cost to researchers, especially on individuals who may not have the funding or institutional resources to cover these costs.

URL : Publishing at any cost: a cross-sectional study of the amount that medical researchers spend on open access publishing each year

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-047107

Transparency to hybrid open access through publisher-provided metadata: An article-level study of Elsevier

Authors : Najko Jahn, Lisa Matthias, Mikael Laakso

With the growth of open access (OA), the financial flows in scholarly journal publishing have become increasingly complex, but comprehensive data and transparency into these flows are still lacking.

The opaqueness is especially concerning for hybrid OA, where subscription-based journals publish individual articles as OA if an optional fee is paid. This study addresses the lack of transparency by leveraging Elsevier article metadata and provides the first publisher-level study of hybrid OA uptake and invoicing.

Our results show that Elsevier’s hybrid OA uptake has grown steadily but slowly from 2015-2019, doubling the number of hybrid OA articles published per year and increasing the share of OA articles in Elsevier’s hybrid journals from 2.6% to 3.7% of all articles.

Further, we find that most hybrid OA articles were invoiced directly to authors, followed by articles invoiced through agreements with research funders, institutions, or consortia, with only a few funding bodies driving hybrid OA uptake.

As such, our findings point to the role of publishing agreements and OA policies in hybrid OA publishing. Our results further demonstrate the value of publisher-provided metadata to improve the transparency in scholarly publishing by linking invoicing data to bibliometrics.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.04789

Which aspects of the Open Science agenda are most relevant to scientometric research and publishing? An opinion paper

Authors : Lutz Bornmann, Raf Guns, Michael Thelwall, Dietmar Wolfram

Open Science is an umbrella term that encompasses many recommendations for possible changes in research practices, management, and publishing with the objective to increase transparency and accessibility.

This has become an important science policy issue that all disciplines should consider. Many Open Science recommendations may be valuable for the further development of research and publishing but not all are relevant to all fields.

This opinion paper considers the aspects of Open Science that are most relevant for scientometricians, discussing how they can be usefully applied.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_e_00121

Implementing the Global University Publications Licence: a new open scholarship model for advocating change

Authors : Jiafeng Zhou, Ke Wu, Neil Smyth

Universities want a voluntary, non-exclusive licence from authors to disseminate publications. This practitioner case study explores an innovative model to communicate and advance open and equitable scholarship through the implementation of the Global University Publications Licence at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China.

This article explains the licensing policy and key influences, including, the copyright law of the People’s Republic of China and the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).

The University approved the Global University Publications Licence, with implementation from 1 August 2019. It is available in Chinese and English. Since implementation, the University has retained rights for 74% of research publications submitted. 100% of those publications are available through the University with a CC-BY licence and zero embargo.

The open scholarship model provides an equitable approach to versions and citation. The article concludes by suggesting university libraries can exploit copyright law in China to progress open scholarship strategies, including recognition of employers as authors of works, a priority right to the exploitation of works and an embargo protection of two years after the completion of the work.

The author’s final version of publications can be open, discoverable, cited and preserved through trusted universities with global reputations for high-quality research.

URL : Implementing the Global University Publications Licence: a new open scholarship model for advocating change

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.531