Archives des mots-clés : open access

How is open access publishing going down with early career researchers? An international, multi-disciplinary study

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Authors : David Nicholas, Hamid R. Jamali, Eti Herman, Jie Xu, Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri, Anthony Watkinson, Blanca Rodríguez-Bravo, Abdullah Abrizah, Marzena Świgoń, Tatiana Polezhaeva

This study explores early career researchers’ (ECRs) appreciation and utilisation of open access (OA) publishing. The evidence reported here results from a questionnaire-based international survey with 1600 participants, which forms the second leg and final year of a four year long, mixed methods, longitudinal study that sought to discover whether ECRs will be the harbingers of change when it comes to scholarly communications.

Proceeding from the notion that today’s neophyte researchers, believed to hold millennial values of openness to change, transparency and sharing, may be best placed to power the take-up of OA publishing, the study sought to discover: the extent to which ECRs publish OA papers; the main reasons for their doing or not doing so; and what were thought to be the broader advantages and disadvanta-ges of OA publishing.

The survey data is presented against a backdrop of the literature-based evidence on the subject, with the interview stage data providing contextualisation and qualitative depth. The findings show that the majority of ECRs published in OA journals and this varied by discipline and country.

Most importantly, there were more advantages and fewer disadvantages to OA publishing, which may be indicative of problems to do with cost and availability, rather than reputational factors.

Among the many reasons cited for publishing OA the most important one is societal, although OA is seen as especially benefiting ECRs in career progression. Cost is plainly considered the main downside.

URL : How is open access publishing going down with early career researchers? An international, multi-disciplinary study

Alternative location : http://www.elprofesionaldelainformacion.com/contenidos/2020/nov/nicholas-herman-jamali-xu-boukacem-watkinson-rodriguez-abrizah-swigon-polezhaeva.pdf

Open Academic Book Publishing during COVID-19 Pandemic: A View on Romanian University Presses

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Authors : Mariana Cernicova-Buca, Katalin Luzan

In the context of the 2020 public health crisis that discourages exchanges of physical objects in society, university-led publishing needed to rethink its operations. Worldwide the opening of quality scholarly content proved to be a solution.

University presses reacted rapidly and offered books according to the open access model. The present research aimed to map the editorial landscape of Romanian university presses, to identify the main features displayed online by the university presses parented by public universities and to highlight the readiness of these players to further open access academic books, especially in the time of the COVID-19 crisis.

The quantitative approach investigated the availability of e-books in the university presses’ portfolios, including the alignment to the open access scholarship movement, the use of social media accounts to promote the presses and the response of the presses to the challenges of the health crisis.

Out of the 46 active university presses, only six had open book titles in their portfolios and only one genuinely responded actively to the challenges posed by the need for electronic formats in 2020. Unless Romanian university presses modernize and restructure their modus operandi, they can prove irrelevant in the post-crisis period.

URL : Open Academic Book Publishing during COVID-19 Pandemic: A View on Romanian University Presses

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications8040049

Swedish researchers’ responses to the cancellation of the big deal with Elsevier

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Authors: Lisa Olsson, Camilla Lindelöw, Lovisa Österlund, Frida Jakobsson

In 2018, the Swedish library consortium, Bibsam, decided to cancel big deal subscriptions with Elsevier. Many researchers (n = 4,221) let their voices be heard in a survey on the consequences of the cancellation.

Almost a third of them (n = 1,241) chose to leave free-text responses to the survey question ‘Is there anything you would like to add?’. A content analysis on these responses resulted in six themes and from these, three main conclusions are drawn.

First, there is no consensus among researchers on whether the cancellation was for good or evil. The most common argument in favour of the cancellation was the principle. The most common argument against cancellation was that it harms researchers and research.

A third of the free-text responses expressed ambivalence towards the cancellation, typically as a conflict between wanting to change the current publishing system and simultaneously suffering from the consequences of the cancellation.

The general support for open access in principle reveals a flawed publishing system, as most feel the pressure to publish in prestigious journals behind paywalls in practice. Second, it was difficult for researchers to take a position for or against cancellation due to their limited knowledge of the ongoing work of higher education institutions and library consortia.

Finally, there are indications that the cancellation made researchers reflect on open access and to some extent alter their publication pattern through their choice of copyright licence and publication channel.

URL : Swedish researchers’ responses to the cancellation of the big deal with Elsevier

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.521

Open Science for private Interests? How the Logic of Open Science Contributes to the Commercialization of Research

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Author : Manuela Fernández Pinto

Financial conflicts of interest, several cases of scientific fraud, and research limitations from strong intellectual property laws have all led to questioning the epistemic and social justice appropriateness of industry-funded research.

At first sight, the ideal of Open Science, which promotes transparency, sharing, collaboration, and accountability, seems to target precisely the type of limitations uncovered in commercially-driven research.

The Open Science movement, however, has primarily focused on publicly funded research, has actively encouraged liaisons with the private sector, and has also created new strategies for commercializing science.

As a consequence, I argue that Open Science ends up contributing to the commercialization of science, instead of overcoming its limitations. I use the examples of research publications and citizen science to illustrate this point.

Accordingly, the asymmetry between private and public science, present in the current plea to open science, ends up compromising the values of transparency, democracy, and accountability.

URL : Open Science for private Interests? How the Logic of Open Science Contributes to the Commercialization of Research

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2020.588331

How is open access accused of being predatory? The impact of Beall’s lists of predatory journals on academic publishing

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Authors : Franciszek Krawczyk, Emanuel Kulczycki

The aim of this paper is to investigate how predatory journals are characterized by authors who write about such journals. We emphasize the ways in which predatory journals have been conflated with—or distinguished from—open access journals.

We created a list of relevant publications on predatory publishing using four databases: Web of Science, Scopus, Dimensions, and Microsoft Academic.

We included 280 English-language publications in the review according to their contributions to the discussions on predatory publishing. Then, we coded and qualitatively analyzed these publications.

The findings show the profound influence of Jeffrey Beall, who composed and maintained himself lists of predatory publishers and journals, on the whole discussion on predatory publishing.

The major themes by which Beall has characterized predatory journals are widely present in non-Beall publications. Moreover, 122 papers we reviewed combined predatory publishing with open access using similar strategies as Beall.

The overgeneralization of the flaws of some open access journals to the entire open access movement has led to unjustified prejudices among the academic community toward open access.

This is the first large-scale study that systematically examines how predatory publishing is defined in the literature.

URL : How is open access accused of being predatory? The impact of Beall’s lists of predatory journals on academic publishing

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2020.102271

Connecting the Knowledge Commons — From Projects to Sustainable Infrastructure

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Authors : Leslie Chan, Pierre Mounier

The question of sustainability in the open access movement has been widely debated, yet satisfactory answers have yet to be generated:
How do we move from an approach entirely based on temporary projects to an approach based on community-based sustainable infrastructure?
What kinds of social and technical infrastructures could support the Knowledge Commons?
What values and services are being delivered, by which stakeholders, and for whom?
What governance and financial models are possible?
Given the global nature of scholarly communication, how do we ensure that the designs of the Commons are inclusive of voices from the global South?

This volume collects nine selected papers presented at ELPUB2018 Conference in June 2018 in Toronto. Each paper was carefully selected, reviewed and edited to bring to an international audience the latest contributions from researchers and experts in the field.

In addition to the technical issues related to interoperability of systems, research workflow, content preservation, and other services, the selected papers address the design and implementation of a community-based research communication infrastructure.

ELPUB Conference has featured research results in various aspects of digital publishing for over two decades, involving a diverse international community of librarians, developers, publishers, entrepreneurs, administrators and researchers across the disciplines in the sciences and the humanities.

URL : http://books.openedition.org/oep/8999

Institutional Repositories for Public Engagement : Creating a Common Good Model for an Engaged Campus

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Authors : Erik A. Moore, Valerie M. Collins, Lisa R. Johnston

Most higher-education institutions strive to be publicly engaged and community centered. These institutions leverage faculty, researchers, librarians, community liaisons, and communication specialists to meet this mission, but they have largely underutilized the potential of institutional repositories.

Academic institutions can use institutional repositories to provide open access and long-term preservation to institutional gray literature, research data, university publications, and campus research products that have tangible, real-world applications for the communities they serve.

Using examples from the University of Minnesota, this article demonstrates how making this content discoverable, openly accessible, and preserved for the future through an institutional repository not only increases the value of this publicly-engaged work but also creates a lasting record of a university’s public engagement efforts and contributes to the mission of the institution.

URL : Institutional Repositories for Public Engagement : Creating a Common Good Model for an Engaged Campus

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21900/j.jloe.v1i1.472