Étiquette : open access

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EN

Publishing bibliographical data on open-access literature in Ancient Greek and Latin: challenges, constraints, progression

Authors : Julie Giovacchini, Laurent Capron

We present here both some of our thoughts on methodology in relation to the specific constraints that complexify the ways of structuring and accessing bibliographical data in the Sciences of Antiquity, and the solutions adopted by the IPhiS-CIRIS project for dealing with these constraints.

The project began in 2014 in a general scientific environment that was still being standardised and structured, with digital bibliographical resources in this disciplinary field becoming increasingly numerous, although of uneven quality and hard to access and/or private.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03242823

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EN

Do authors of research funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research comply with its open access mandate?: A meta-epidemiologic study

Authors : Michael A. Scaffidi, Karam Elsolh, Juana Li, Yash Verma, Rishi Bansal, Nikko Gimpaya, Vincent Larivière, Rishad Khan, Samir C. Grover

Background

Since 2008, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has mandated that studies it funds either in whole or in part are required to publish their results as open access (OA) within 12 months of publication using either online repositories and/or OA journals.

Yet, there is evidence that authors are poorly compliant with this mandate. Specifically, there has been an apparent decrease in OA publication after 2015, which coincides with a change in the OA policy during the same year.

One particular policy change that may have contributed to this decline was lifting the requirement that authors deposit their article in an OA repository immediately upon publication.

We investigated the proportion of OA compliance of CIHR-funded studies in the period before and after the policy change of 2015 with manual confirmation of both CIHR funding and OA status.

Methods and findings

We identified CIHR-funded studies published between the years 2014 to 2017 using a comprehensive search in the Web of Science (WoS). We took a stratified random sample from all four years (i.e. 2014 to 2017), with 250 studies from each year.

Two authors independently reviewed the final full-text publications retrieved from the journal web page to determine to confirm CIHR funding, as indicated in the acknowledgements or elsewhere in the paper.

For each study, we also collected bibliometric data that included citation count and Altmetric attention score Statistical analyses were conducted using two-tailed Fisher’s exact test with relative risk (RR). Among the 851 receiving CIHR funding published from 2014 to 2017, the percentage of CIHR-funded studies published as OA significantly decreased from 79.6% in 2014 to 70.3% in 2017 (RR = 0.88, 95% CI: 0.79–0.99, P = 0.028).

When considering all four years, there was no significant difference in the percentage of CIHR-funded studies published as OA in both 2014 and 2015 compared to both 2016 and 2017 (RR = 0.97, 95% CI: 0.90–1.05, P = 0.493). Additionally, OA publications had significantly higher citation count (both in year of publication and in total) and higher attention scores (P<0.05).

Conclusions

Overall, we found that there was a significant decrease in the proportion of CIHR funded studies published as OA from 2014 compared to 2017, though this difference did not persist when comparing both 2014–2015 to 2016–2017.

The primary limitation was the reliance of self-reported data from authors on CIHR funding status. We posit that this decrease may be attributable to CIHR’s OA policy change in 2015.

Further exploration is warranted to both validate these studies using a larger dataset and, if valid, investigate the effects of potential interventions to improve the OA compliance, such as use of a CIHR publication database, and reinstatement of a policy for authors to immediately submit their findings to OA repositories upon publication.

URL : Do authors of research funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research comply with its open access mandate?: A meta-epidemiologic study

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256577

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EN

Impacts of genre and access on science discussions: ‘The New Reddit Journal of Science’

Authors : Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder, Alexander Mahmou-Werndli

Which genre of science writing contributes most to public understanding, and how does that understanding happen? Working within a science in society approach, this paper examines public engagement with science as it occurs in the comments and discussion boards of r/science.

Researchers use content analysis to identify relevant concept categories and code comments for interaction with science content.

The resulting data are analyzed by genre (scientific news journalism, press release, and research article) and open access status, revealing differences in public engagement with implications for science communicators and scholars seeking to understand how the public interacts with science news.

URL : Impacts of genre and access on science discussions: ‘The New Reddit Journal of Science’

DOI : https://doi.org/10.22323/2.20050204

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EN

Faculty Use of Open-Access Journals: A Case Study of Faculty Publications and Cited References at a California University

Author : Kendall Faulkner

Many in the library world see open-access (OA) publishing as the way of the future, necessary to combat ever-rising costs, expand knowledge and information production, and level the playing field for researchers and students across the world.

However, ingrained notions of the publishing process in academia, and concerns over OA journals’ quality and costs often make researchers less enthusiastic. This study takes a close look at faculty habits at the college-department level by reviewing faculty publishing habits and cited references in those publications.

Results show that the faculty in the Psychology Department at California State University, Los Angeles regularly publish at all OA levels, but utilize formal self-archiving less than what is found in their cited references. Furthermore, the department faculty cite fully OA (Gold) journals less than they publish in them.

URL : Faculty Use of Open-Access Journals: A Case Study of Faculty Publications and Cited References at a California University

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9030039

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EN

Who are the users of national open access journals? The case of the Finnish Journal.fi platform

Authors : Janne Pölönen, Sami Syrjämäki, Antti-Jussi Nygård, Björn Hammarfelt

In this paper we study the diversity of users of open access articles on the Finnish Journal.fi platform. This platform hosts around hundred open access journals from Finland publishing in different fields and mainly Finnish and English languages.

The study is based on an online survey, conducted on 48 journals during Spring 2020, in which visitors were asked to indicate their background and allow their location and download behaviour be tracked. Among 668 survey participants, the two largest groups were students (40%) and researchers (36%), followed by private citizens (8%), other experts (7%) and teachers (5%).

Other identified user categories include journalists, civil servants, entrepreneurs and politicians. While new publications attract a considerable share of the views, there is still a relatively large interest, especially among students, in older materials.

Our findings indicate that Finnish language publications are particularly important for reaching students, citizens, experts and politicians. Thus, open access to publications in national languages is vital for the local relevance and outreach of research.

URL : Who are the users of national open access journals? The case of the Finnish Journal.fi platform

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1405

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EN

Why Open Access: Economics and Business Researchers’ Perspectives

Authors : Carmen López-Vergara, Pilar Flores Asenjo, Alfonso Rosa-García

Public research policies have been promoting open-access publication in recent years as an adequate model for the dissemination of scientific knowledge. However, depending on the disciplines, its use is very diverse.

This study explores the determinants of open-access publication among academic researchers of economics and business, as well as their assessment of different economic measures focused on publication stimulus.

To do so, a survey of Spanish business and economics researchers was conducted. They reported an average of 19% of their publications in open-access journals, hybrids or fully Gold Route open access. Almost 80% of the researchers foresee a future increase in the volume of open-access publications.

When determining where to publish their research results, the main criterion for the selection of a scientific journal is the impact factor. Regarding open access, the most valued aspect is the visibility and dissemination it provides.

Although the cost of publication is not the most relevant criterion in the choice of a journal, three out of four researchers consider that a reduction in fees and an increase in funding are measures that would boost the open-access model.

URL : Why Open Access: Economics and Business Researchers’ Perspectives

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9030037

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EN

Preprints in times of COVID19: the time is ripe for agreeing on terminology and good practices

Authors : Raffaella Ravinetto, Céline Caillet, Muhammad H. Zaman, Jerome Amir Singh, Philippe J. Guerin, Aasim Ahmad, Carlos E. Durán, Amar Jesani, Ana Palmero, Laura Merson, Peter W. Horby, E. Bottieau, Tammy Hoffmann, Paul N. Newton

Over recent years, the research community has been increasingly using preprint servers to share manuscripts that are not yet peer-reviewed. Even if it enables quick dissemination of research findings, this practice raises several challenges in publication ethics and integrity.

In particular, preprints have become an important source of information for stakeholders interested in COVID19 research developments, including traditional media, social media, and policy makers.

Despite caveats about their nature, many users can still confuse pre-prints with peer-reviewed manuscripts. If unconfirmed but already widely shared first-draft results later prove wrong or misinterpreted, it can be very difficult to “unlearn” what we thought was true. Complexity further increases if unconfirmed findings have been used to inform guidelines.

To help achieve a balance between early access to research findings and its negative consequences, we formulated five recommendations: (a) consensus should be sought on a term clearer than ‘pre-print’, such as ‘Unrefereed manuscript’, “Manuscript awaiting peer review” or ‘’Non-reviewed manuscript”; (b) Caveats about unrefereed manuscripts should be prominent on their first page, and each page should include a red watermark stating ‘Caution—Not Peer Reviewed’; (c) pre-print authors should certify that their manuscript will be submitted to a peer-review journal, and should regularly update the manuscript status; (d) high level consultations should be convened, to formulate clear principles and policies for the publication and dissemination of non-peer reviewed research results; (e) in the longer term, an international initiative to certify servers that comply with good practices could be envisaged.

URL : Preprints in times of COVID19: the time is ripe for agreeing on terminology and good practices

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-021-00667-7