Archives des mots-clés : open access

The fundamental problem blocking open access and how to overcome it: the BitViews project

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Authors : Camillo Lamanna, Manfredi La Manna

In our view the fundamental obstacle to open access (OA) is the lack of any incentive-based mechanism that unbundles authors’ accepted manuscripts (AMs) from articles (VoRs).

The former can be seen as the public good that ought to be openly accessible, whereas the latter is owned by publishers and rightly paywall-restricted. We propose one such mechanism to overcome this obstacle: BitViews.

BitViews is a blockchain-based application that aims to revolutionize the OA publishing ecosystem. Currently, the main academic currency of value is the citation. There have been attempts in the past to create a second currency whose measure is the online usage of research materials (e.g. PIRUS).

However, these have failed due to two problems. Firstly, it has been impossible to find a single agency willing to co-ordinate and fund the validation and collation of global online usage data. Secondly, online usage metrics have lacked transparency in how they filter non-human online activity.

BitViews is a novel solution which uses blockchain technology to bypass both problems: online AMS usage will be recorded on a public, distributed ledger, obviating the need for a central responsible agency, and the rules governing activity-filtering will be part of the open-source BitViews blockchain application, creating complete transparency.

Once online AMS usage has measurable value, researchers will be incentivized to promote and disseminate AMs. This will fundamentally re-orient the academic publishing ecosystem.

A key feature of BitViews is that its success (or failure) is wholly and exclusively in the hands of the worldwide community of university and research libraries, as we suggest that it ought to be financed by conditional crowdfunding, whereby the actual financial commitment of each contributing library depends on the total amount raised.

If the financing target is not reached, then all contributions are returned in full and if the target is over-fulfilled, then the surplus is returned pro rata.

URL : The fundamental problem blocking open access and how to overcome it: the BitViews project

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.488

 

Monitoring agreements with open access elements: why article-level metadata are important

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Authors : Mafalda Marques, Saskia Woutersen-Windhouwer, Arja Tuuliniemi

Agreements with open access (OA) elements (e.g. agreements with APC discounts, offsetting agreements, read and publish agreements) have been increasing in number in the last few years.

With more agreements including some form of OA, consortia and academic institutions need to monitor the number of OA publications, the costs and the value of these agreements. Publishers are therefore required to account for the articles published OA to consortia, academic institutions and research funders.

One way publishers can do so is by providing regular reports with article-level metadata. This article uses the Knowledge Exchange (KE) and the Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges (ESAC) initiative recommendations as a check-list to assess what article-level metadata consortia request from publishers and what metadata publishers deliver to consortia.

KE countries’ agreements with major publishers were analysed to assess how far consortia and publishers are from requesting and providing article-level metadata. The results from this research can be used as a benchmark to determine how major publishers were performing until early 2019 and prior to Plan S coming into effect in 2021.

A recommendation is made that publishers use the article-level metadata check-list as a template to provide the metadata recommended by KE and ESAC.

URL : Monitoring agreements with open access elements: why article-level metadata are important

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.489

Mapping the Publishing Challenges for an Open Access University Press

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Authors : Megan Taylor

Managing a New University Press (NUP) is often a one-person operation and, with limits on time and resources, efficiency and effectiveness are key to having a successful production process and providing a high level of author, editor and reader services.

This article looks at the challenges faced by open access (OA) university presses throughout the publishing journey and considers ways in which these challenges can be addressed. In particular, the article focuses on six key stages throughout the lifecycle of an open access publication: commissioning; review; production; discoverability; marketing; analytics.

Approached from the point of view of the University of Huddersfield Press, this article also draws on discussions and experiences of other NUPs from community-led forums and events.

By highlighting the issues faced, and the potential solutions to them, this research recognises the need for a tailored and formalised production workflow within NUPs and also provides guidance how to begin implementing possible solutions.

URL : Mapping the Publishing Challenges for an Open Access University Press

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7040063

Defining predatory journals and responding to the threat they pose: a modified Delphi consensus process

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Authors : Samantha Cukier, Manoj M. Lalu, Gregory L. Bryson, Kelly D. Cobey, Agnes Grudniewicz, David Moher

Background

Posing as legitimate open access outlets, predatory journals and publishers threaten the integrity of academic publishing by not following publication best practices. Currently, there is no agreed upon definition of predatory journals, making it difficult for funders and academic institutions to generate practical guidance or policy to ensure their members do not publish in these channels.

Methods

We conducted a modified three-round Delphi survey of an international group of academics, funders, policy makers, journal editors, publishers and others, to generate a consensus definition of predatory journals and suggested ways the research community should respond to the problem.

Results

A total of 45 participants completed the survey on predatory journals and publishers. We reached consensus on 18 items out of a total of 33, to be included in a consensus definition of predatory journals and publishers.

We came to consensus on educational outreach and policy initiatives on which to focus, including the development of a single checklist to detect predatory journals and publishers, and public funding to support research in this general area.

We identified technological solutions to address the problem: a ‘one-stop-shop’ website to consolidate information on the topic and a ‘predatory journal research observatory’ to identify ongoing research and analysis about predatory journals/publishers.

Conclusions

In bringing together an international group of diverse stakeholders, we were able to use a modified Delphi process to inform the development of a definition of predatory journals and publishers.

This definition will help institutions, funders and other stakeholders generate practical guidance on avoiding predatory journals and publishers.

URL : Defining predatory journals and responding to the threat they pose: a modified Delphi consensus process

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1101/19010850

Repositories for academic products/outputs: Latin American and Chilean visions

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Authors : Leandro Torres, Ricardo Hartley

Open access policies have been progressing since the beginning of this century. Important global initiatives, both public and private, have set the tone for what we understand by open access.

The emergence of tools and web platforms for open access (both legal and illegal) have placed the focus of the discussion on open access to knowledge, both for academics and for the general public, who finance such research through their taxes, particularly in Latin America.

This historically unnoticed discussion must, we believe, be discussed publicly, given the characteristics of the Latin American scientific community, as well as its funding sources.

This article includes an overview of what is meant by open access and describes the origins of the term, both in its philosophical sense and in its practical sense, expressed in the global declarations of Berlin and Bethesda.

It also includes the notion of open access managed (or not) by some reputable institutions in Chile, such as CONICYT (National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research) and higher education institutions reputed nationally, such as the Universdad de Chile and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Various Latin American initiatives related to open access (Scielo, Redalyc, among others) are described, as well as the presence of Chilean documents in those platforms.

The national institutional repositories are listed, as well as their current status and a discussion about what open access has implied in Latin America and its importance for the replicability of the investigations carried out locally.

Finally, we describe some governmental initiatives (mainly legislative) at the Latin American level and propose some recommendations regarding the promotion and implementation of repositories for the access to scientific data (for access and replication purposes) of the national research.

URL : Repositories for academic products/outputs: Latin American and Chilean visions

DOI : https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.19976.1

Does the use of open, non-anonymous peer review in scholarly publishing introduce bias? Evidence from the F1000 post-publication open peer review publishing model

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Authors : Mike Thelwall, Verena Weigert, Liz Allen, Zena Nyakoojo, Eleanor-Rose Papas

This study examines whether there is any evidence of bias in two areas of common critique of open, non-anonymous peer review – and used in the post-publication, peer review system operated by the open-access scholarly publishing platform F1000Research.

First, is there evidence of bias where a reviewer based in a specific country assesses the work of an author also based in the same country? Second, are reviewers influenced by being able to see the comments and know the origins of previous reviewer?

Scrutinising the open peer review comments published on F1000Research, we assess the extent of two frequently cited potential influences on reviewers that may be the result of the transparency offered by a fully attributable, open peer review publishing model: the national affiliations of authors and reviewers, and the ability of reviewers to view previously-published reviewer reports before submitting their own.

The effects of these potential influences were investigated for all first versions of articles published by 8 July 2019 to F1000Research. In 16 out of the 20 countries with the most articles, there was a tendency for reviewers based in the same country to give a more positive review.

The difference was statistically significant in one. Only 3 countries had the reverse tendency. Second, there is no evidence of a conformity bias. When reviewers mentioned a previous review in their peer review report, they were not more likely to give the same overall judgement.

Although reviewers who had longer to potentially read a previously published reviewer reports were slightly less likely to agree with previous reviewer judgements, this could be due to these articles being difficult to judge rather than deliberate non-conformity.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.03379

Open Systems Pharmacology community – an open access, open source, open science approach to modeling and simulation in pharmaceutical sciences

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Authors : Jörg Lippert, Rolf Burghaus, Andrea Edginton, Sebastian Frechen, Mats Karlsson, Andreas Kovar, Thorsten Lehr, Peter Milligan, Valerie Nock, Sergej Ramusovic, Matthew Riggs, Stephan Schaller, Jan Schlender, Stephan Schmidt, Michaël Sevestre, Erik Sjögren, Juri Solodenko, Alexander Staab, Donato Teutonico

Systems Pharmacology integrates structural biological and pharmacological knowledge and experimental data enabling dissection of organism and drug properties and providing excellent predictivity.

The development of systems pharmacology models is a significant task requiring massive amounts of background information beyond individual trial data. Qualification of models needs repetitive demonstration of successful predictions.

Open Systems Pharmacology is a community that develops, qualifies and shares professional open source software tools and models in a collaborative open science way.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/psp4.12473