Incentives to Open Access: Perspectives of Health Science Researchers

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

Technological development has transformed academic publication over the past two decades and new publication models, especially Open Access, have captured an important part of the publishing market, traditionally dominated by the Subscription publication model.

Although Health Sciences have been one of the leading fields promoting Open Access, the perspectives of Health Science researchers on the benefits and possibilities of Open Access remain an open question.

The present study sought to unveil the perspective of researchers on scientific publication decisions, in terms of the Subscription and Open Access publication model, Gold Road.

With this aim, we surveyed Spanish researchers in Health Sciences. Our findings show that the value of publishing in Open Access journals increases as the experience of the researcher increases and the less she/he values the impact factor.

Moreover, visibility and dissemination of the results are the main determinants of publication when choosing an Open Access journal as the first option. According to the response of the researchers, the reduction of fees and the increase in financing are important economic incentive measures to promote the Open Access publication model. It is widely accepted that the volume of Open Access publications will increase in the future.

URL : Incentives to Open Access: Perspectives of Health Science Researchers

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications8020029

Toward Easy Deposit: Lowering the Barriers of Green Open Access with Data Integration and Automation

Author : Hui Zhang

This article describes the design and development of an interoperable application that supports green open access with long-term sustainability and improved user experience of article deposit.

The lack of library resources and the unfriendly repository user interface are two significant barriers that hinder green open access.

Tasked to implement the open access mandate, librarians at an American research university developed a comprehensive system called Easy Deposit 2 to automate the support workflow of green open access.

Easy Deposit 2 is a web application that is able to harvest new publications, to source manuscripts on behalf of the library, and to facilitate self-archiving to a university’s institutional repository.

The article deposit rate increased from 7.40% to 25.60% with the launch of Easy Deposit 2. The results show that a computer system can implement routine tasks to support green open access with success.

Recent developments in digital repository provide new opportunities for innovation, such as Easy Deposit 2, in supporting open access.

Academic librarians are vital in promoting “openness” in scholarly communication, such as transparency and diversity in the sharing of publication data.

URL : Toward Easy Deposit: Lowering the Barriers of Green Open Access with Data Integration and Automation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications8020028

Science Communication and Open Access: The Critique of the Political Economy of Capitalist Academic Publishers as Ideology Critique

Author : Manfred Knoche

Starting from a theoretical and methodological foundation of an academic ideology critique, the production, distribution and valorisation of science communication will be analysed in exemplary fashion.

The focus is on the criticism of publishing houses’ business models in the sphere of open Access publishing. These models are propagated and implemented by science and politics.

Thus, academic publications continue to be traded as commodities. The existing relationships of power and domination are thereby reproduced. In contrast, the emancipatory potential of non-commercial science communication based on the digitalisation of production and distribution is shown.

URL : Science Communication and Open Access: The Critique of the Political Economy of Capitalist Academic Publishers as Ideology Critique

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v18i2.1183

Copyright in the Scientific Community. The Limitations and Exceptions in the European Union and Spanish Legal Frameworks

Author : Itziar Sobrino-García

The increase of visibility and transfer of scholar knowledge through digital environments have been followed by the author’s rights abuses such as plagiarism and fraud. For this reason, copyright is increasingly a topic of major importance since it provides authors with a set of rights to enable them to utilize their work and to be recognized as the creators.

The new research methods linked to technological advances (such as data mining) and the emergence of systems such as Open Access (OA) are currently under debate.

These issues have generated legislative changes at the level of the European Union (EU) and its Member States. For this reason, it is relevant that the researchers know how to protect their work and the proper use of another’s work.

Consequently, this research aims to identify the limitations of copyright in the EU and as a specific case in Spain, within the framework of scientific research. For this, the changes in the European and Spanish copyright regulations are analyzed.

The results confirm new exceptions and limitations for researchers related to technological evolution, such as data mining. Additionally, the article incorporates several guidelines and implications for the scientific community.

URL : Copyright in the Scientific Community. The Limitations and Exceptions in the European Union and Spanish Legal Frameworks

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications8020027

Availability of research articles for the public during pandemic – a case study

Author : Augustine Joshua Devasahayam

The coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) disease has affected millions of lives, forcing most of us to stay at home and work. However, there is an immediate need to conduct research on potential drugs against COVID-19.

In this article, the extent to which major publishers have provided access for the public to read research articles relevant to potential drug candidates for the COVID-19 disease are presented.

A systematic search of five electronic databases (Elsevier’s ScienceDirect, Taylor & Francis, SpringerLink, Wiley, and New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)) was conducted on April 12-17, 2020. The total number of research articles containing terms ‘Ribavirin’, ‘Remdesivir’, ‘Hydroxychloroquine OR Chloroquine’, ‘Favipiravir’, ‘Lopinavir OR Ritonavir’, ‘Sarilumab’, and ‘Tocilizumab’, available for the public to read for free were determined.

In this study, there was a lack of full access to research articles related to potential drugs of COVID-19 in commercial academic databases, except for ‘Remdesivir’ and ‘Favipiravir’ from NEJM.

URL : Availability of research articles for the public during pandemic – a case study

DOI : http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10340

Open Access and Altmetrics in the pandemic age: Forescast analysis on COVID-19 literature

Authors : Daniel Torres-Salinas, Nicolas Robinson-Garcia, Pedro A. Castillo-Valdivieso

We present an analysis on the uptake of open access on COVID-19 related literature as well as the social media attention they gather when compared with non OA papers.

We use a dataset of publications curated by Dimensions and analyze articles and preprints. Our sample includes 11,686 publications of which 67.5% are openly accessible.

OA publications tend to receive the largest share of social media attention as measured by the Altmetric Attention Score. 37.6% of OA publications are bronze, which means toll journals are providing free access.

MedRxiv contributes to 36.3% of documents in repositories but papers in BiorXiv exhibit on average higher AAS. We predict the growth of COVID-19 literature in the following 30 days estimating ARIMA models for the overall publications set, OA vs. non OA and by location of the document (repository vs. journal).

We estimate that COVID-19 publications will double in the next 20 days, but non OA publications will grow at a higher rate than OA publications. We conclude by discussing the implications of such findings on the dissemination and communication of research findings to mitigate the coronavirus outbreak.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.23.057307

From Open Access to Open Science: The Path From Scientific Reality to Open Scientific Communication

Authors : Christian Heise, Joshua M. Pearce

Although opening up of research is considered an appropriate and trend-setting model for future scientific communication, it can still be difficult to put open science into practice. How open and transparent can a scientific work be?

This article investigates the potential to make all information and the whole work process of a qualification project such as a doctoral thesis comprehensively and freely accessible on the internet with an open free license both in the final form and completely traceable in development.

The answer to the initial question, the self-experiment and the associated demand for openness, posed several challenges for a doctoral student, the institution, and the examination regulations, which are still based on the publication of an individually written and completed work that cannot be viewed by the public during the creation process.

In the case of data and other documents, publication is usually not planned even after completion. This state of affairs in the use of open science in the humanities will be compared with open science best practices in the physical sciences.

The reasons and influencing factors for open developments in science and research are presented, empirically and experimentally tested in the development of the first completely open humanities-based PhD thesis.

The results of this two-part study show that it is possible to publish everything related to the doctoral study, qualification, and research process as soon as possible, as comprehensively as possible, and under an open license.

URL : From Open Access to Open Science: The Path From Scientific Reality to Open Scientific Communication

DOI : From Open Access to Open Science: The Path From Scientific Reality to Open Scientific Communication