Archives des mots-clés : open access

New academic journals: an international overview of indexing and access models

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Authors : Rosangela Rodrigues, Cristóbal Urbano, Patrícia Neubert, José Miguel Rodríguez-Gairín, Marta Somoza-Fernández

Introduction

An international analysis of academic journals newly created in the period from 2011 to 2020 according to type of publisher, place of publication, their relationship with open access, and their indexing in databases.

Studies of the issues of concentration of journal publisher ownership, uses of metrics, and access to titles reveal a changing landscape that is nevertheless still dominated by large commercial oligopolies. One notable trend is the creation of new titles in various configurations.

Method

To assess the global scenario, we analyse titles created from 2011 to 2020, focusing on indexing and access models. The methodology is multidimensional, predominantly bibliometric and quantitative. The data were collected from Crossref and other databases and processed with the resources of the Information Matrix for the Analysis of Journals.

Results

The findings confirm the expansion of the periodical publishing market, of which the academic journal market represents a small fraction (7.29%). Of thdatabases may be considered academic based on indexing in some database, most are open access, indicated by their presence in the Directory of Open Access Journals (55.21%).

The analysis of publisher type confirmed the predominance of commercial publishers (44.57%), followed by universities (30.08%). The largest proportion of the titles are in the health field, compatible with the existing distribution of fields, followed by journals in the multidisciplinary and education fields.

Conclusion

In the expansion of the publishing market, academic journals represent a small fraction of the total. The main sources of new titles in open access with no processing charges for authors are universities in countries that are not home to large commercial publishers (Indonesia, Brazil, and Spain), all with government subsidies.

URL : New academic journals: an international overview of indexing and access models

Original URL : https://informationr.net/infres/article/view/466

DOI : https://doi.org/10.47989/ir284466

Going Open Access: The Attitudes and Actions of Scientific Journal Editors in China

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Authors : Wenqi Fu, Jie Xu, Qing Fang, Jingjia Ding, Hanqing Ma

This study aims to investigate the attitudes and actions of scientific journal editors in China towards open access. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 Chinese editors from various scientific journals during September and October of 2022.

The results indicate that the editors generally possess knowledge of open access and have implemented an appropriate open access model for their respective journals. However, the Chinese-language journal editors expressed a lack of motivation to adopt open access, unless there is a reform in the mechanism of academic publishing or a policy is imposed.

On the other hand, the English-language journal editors acknowledged that they have no other choice but to adopt open access. This study helps us learn about Chinese editors’ understanding and attitudes towards open access, the current status of open access in China’s scientific journals, and the mechanisms of academic publishing in China.

URL : Going Open Access: The Attitudes and Actions of Scientific Journal Editors in China

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications12010001

The Future of Data in Research Publishing: From Nice to Have to Need to Have?

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Authors : Christine L. Borgman, Amy Brand

Science policy promotes open access to research data for purposes of transparency and reuse of data in the public interest. We expect demands for open data in scholarly publishing to accelerate, at least partly in response to the opacity of artificial intelligence algorithms.

Open data should be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR), and also trustworthy and verifiable. The current state of open data in scholarly publishing is in transition from ‘nice to have’ to ‘need to have.’

Research data are valuable, interpretable, and verifiable only in context of their origin, and with sufficient infrastructure to facilitate reuse. Making research data useful is expensive; benefits and costs are distributed unevenly.

Open data also poses risks for provenance, intellectual property, misuse, and misappropriation in an era of trolls and hallucinating AI algorithms. Scholars and scholarly publishers must make evidentiary data more widely available to promote public trust in research.

To make research processes more trustworthy, transparent, and verifiable, stakeholders need to make greater investments in data stewardship and knowledge infrastructures.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.b73aae77

Applying Librarian- Created Evaluation Tools to Determine Quality and Credibility of Open Access Library Science Journals

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Authors : Maggie Albro, Jessica L. Serrao, Christopher D. Vidas, Jenessa M. McElfresh, K. Megan Sheffield, Megan Palmer

This article explores the application of journal quality and credibility evaluation tools to library science publications. The researchers investigate quality and credibility attributes of forty-eight peer-reviewed library science journals with open access components using two evaluative tools developed and published by librarians.

The results identify common positive and negative attributes of library science journals, compare the results of the two evaluation tools, and discuss their ease of use and limitations. Overall, the results show that while library science journals do not fall prey to the same concerning characteristics that librarians use to caution other researchers, there are several areas in which publishers can improve the quality and credibility of their journals.

URL : https://preprint.press.jhu.edu/portal/sites/default/files/06_24.1albro.pdf

Scientific collaboration on open science in the field of Information Science

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Authors : Lígia Parreira Muniz Gäal, César Antonio Pereira

Introduction

Open Science is a movement largely based on knowledge sharing and its discussion has been carried out by several areas, including Information Science. Scientific collaboration has potential to benefit science in several ways, however, little is known about country collaboration in this area.

Objective

Therefore, the objective of this work is to analyze scientific cooperation between countries on the subject of Open Science in the field of Information Science.

Methodology

The network analysis method (co-authorship between countries) and the frequency of keywords were used to identify the most discussed subjects.

Results

The results showed that England has a central position in the scientific collaboration network. However, it is necessary to improve communication to avoid loss of quality in the information transmission.

Conclusion

The Open Access theme is still the most evident, however, topics such as research data management have gained notoriety in discussions on Open Science in the field of Information Science.

URL : Scientific collaboration on open science in the field of Information Science

DOI : https://doi.org/10.20396/rdbci.v21i00.8673825

Clickbait or conspiracy? How Twitter users address the epistemic uncertainty of a controversial preprint

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Authors : Mareike Bauer, Maximilian Heimstädt, Carlos Franzreb, Sonja Schimmler

Many scientists share preprints on social media platforms to gain attention from academic peers, policy-makers, and journalists. In this study we shed light on an unintended but highly consequential effect of sharing preprints: Their contribution to conspiracy theories. Although the scientific community might quickly dismiss a preprint as insubstantial and ‘clickbaity’, its uncertain epistemic status nevertheless allows conspiracy theorists to mobilize the text as scientific support for their own narratives.

To better understand the epistemic politics of preprints on social media platforms, we studied the case of a biomedical preprint, which was shared widely and discussed controversially on Twitter in the wake of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Using a combination of social network analysis and qualitative content analysis, we compared the structures of engagement with the preprint and the discursive practices of scientists and conspiracy theorists.

We found that despite substantial engagement, scientists were unable to dampen the conspiracy theorists’ enthusiasm for the preprint. We further found that members from both groups not only tried to reduce the preprint’s epistemic uncertainty but sometimes deliberately maintained it.

The maintenance of epistemic uncertainty helped conspiracy theorists to reinforce their group’s identity as skeptics and allowed scientists to express concerns with the state of their profession.

Our study contributes to research on the intricate relations between scientific knowledge and conspiracy theories online, as well as the role of social media platforms for new genres of scholarly communication.

URL : Clickbait or conspiracy? How Twitter users address the epistemic uncertainty of a controversial preprint

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231180575

Communication Scholarship and the Quest for Open Access

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Authors : Preston Carmack, Michael R. Kearney, Abbey N. McCann

The advent of black, green, and gold open access publication models poses unique questions for scholars of communication. Plato’s (1956) classic critique of writing in the legend of Theuth and Thamus warned that the printed word “rolls about all over the place, falling into the hands of those who have no concern with it” (pp. 69–70).

More than two 2 millennia later, scholars and administrators at all levels of the discipline face just such a phenomenon. As scholars of cyberspace debate whether “information wants to be free” (Levy, 2014), a communication perspective involves consideration of the importance of authorship and attribution amid an ever-shifting array of digital publishing options and subversions.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the ongoing transformation of academic publishing by examining black, green, and gold open access models, the responses of the communication discipline, and ongoing questions surrounding the nature and extent of accessibility.

As access options for research and publication continue to evolve, this study hopes to provide coordinates for administrators seeking to navigate questions concerning the what, how, and why of communication scholarship in a digital age.

URL : Communication Scholarship and the Quest for Open Access

Original location : https://stars.library.ucf.edu/jaca/vol40/iss1/1/