Étiquette : open access

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EN

Researcher’s Perceptions on Publishing “Negative” Results and Open Access

Authors : Lucía Echevarría, Alberto Malerba, Virginia Arechavala-Gomeza

Scientific advance is based on reproducibility, corroboration, and availability of research results. However, large numbers of experimental results that contradict previous work do not get published and many research results are not freely available as they are hidden behind paywalls.

As part of COST Action “DARTER”, a network of researchers in the field of RNA therapeutics, we have performed a small survey among our members and their colleagues to assess their opinion on the subject of publishing contradictory or ambiguous results and their attitude to open access (OA) publishing.

Our survey indicates that, although researchers highly value publication of “negative” results, they often do not publish their own, citing lack of time and the perception that those results may not be as highly cited. OA, on the other hand, seems to be widely accepted, but in many cases not actively sought by researchers due to higher costs associated with it.

URL : Researcher’s Perceptions on Publishing “Negative” Results and Open Access

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1089/nat.2020.0865

Catégories
EN

International authorship and collaboration across bioRxiv preprints

Authors : Richard J Abdill, Elizabeth M Adamowicz, Ran Blekhman

Preprints are becoming well established in the life sciences, but relatively little is known about the demographics of the researchers who post preprints and those who do not, or about the collaborations between preprint authors.

Here, based on an analysis of 67,885 preprints posted on bioRxiv, we find that some countries, notably the United States and the United Kingdom, are overrepresented on bioRxiv relative to their overall scientific output, while other countries (including China, Russia, and Turkey) show lower levels of bioRxiv adoption.

We also describe a set of ‘contributor countries’ (including Uganda, Croatia and Thailand): researchers from these countries appear almost exclusively as non-senior authors on international collaborations.

Lastly, we find multiple journals that publish a disproportionate number of preprints from some countries, a dynamic that almost always benefits manuscripts from the US.

URL :  International authorship and collaboration across bioRxiv preprints

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.58496

Catégories
EN

Building trust in preprints: recommendations for servers and other stakeholders

Authors : Jeffrey Beck, Christine Ferguson, Kathryn Funk, Brooks Hanson, Melissa Harrison, Michele Ide-Smith, Rachael Lammey, Maria Levchenko, Alex Mendonça, Michael Parkin, Naomi Penfold, Nicole Pfeiffer, Jessica Polka, Iratxe Puebla, Oya Y Rieger, Martyn Rittman, Richard Sever, Sowmya Swaminathan

On January 20 and 21, 2020, ASAPbio, in collaboration with EMBL-EBI and Ithaka S+R, convened over 30 representatives from academia, preprint servers, publishers, funders, and standards, indexing and metadata infrastructure organisations at EMBL-EBI (Hinxton, UK) to develop a series of recommendations for best practices for posting and linking of preprints in the life sciences and ideally the broader research community.

We hope that these recommendations offer guidance for new preprint platforms and projects looking to enact best practices and ultimately serve to improve the experience of using preprints for all.

URL : Building trust in preprints: recommendations for servers and other stakeholders

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/8dn4w

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EN

The Adoption of Open Access Journals for Publishing Management Research: A Review of the Literature and the Experience of the University of the West Indies

Authors : Haven Allahar, Ron Sookram

The article reviews the literature in the field of academic journal publishing highlighting the phenomenon of the recent entry of Internet-driven open access journals into a field dominated by the traditional subscription journals.

The article has a twofold purpose of gaining an understanding of the main features and characteristics of the open access journal system through a review of the literature; and assessing the extent of adoption of open access by researchers in the management discipline through a review of the management publications by the University of the West Indies (UWI) researchers.

A sequential exploratory strategy of two phases was used. The first phase focused on the collection of secondary data on journal publishing and the second involved reviewing the publishing record of the UWI with particular reference to management research.

The main finding is that open access was not fully embraced as a publishing outlet because of academic resistance derived from questions of acceptability, and the existence of a system that assigns greater recognition to the established subscription journals.

The article concludes that open access journals have grown in respectability and quality and are a good option for publishing management research by authors located in developing regions, provided the operational characteristics of this mode of publishing are understood and caution in journal selection is exercised.

URL : https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1254820

Catégories
EN

Publishing at Any Cost? The Need for the Improvement of the Quality of Scholarly Publications

Authors : Maria José Sá, Carlos Miguel Ferreira, Ana Isabel Santos, Sandro Serpa

At a time of great dynamism among publishers of scientific publications, with the inevitability of Open Access and the ease of publishing online at low cost, it is possible to find publications with different levels of scientific respectability.

In this context, the improvement of the quality of scholarly publications emerges as a critical element for publishers, authors and academic institutions, as well as for society in general.

This opinion piece discusses Open Access journals with different levels of quality, focusing on the following quality-promoting measures: blacklists, author’s preparation, and institutional prevention.

The analysis allows concluding that the open review will be one of the key elements in the process of clarification and promotion of the level of quality and consequent scientific respectability of each of the Journals, of the thousands currently existing, a number that is likely to increase.

URL : https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1250057

Catégories
EN

Investigating academic library responses to predatory publishing in the United States, Canada and Spanish-speaking Latin America

Authors : Jairo Buitrago-Ciro, Lynne Bowker

Purpose

This is a comparative investigation of how university libraries in the United States, Canada and Spanish-speaking Latin America are responding to predatory publishing.

Design/methodology/approach

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings was used to identify the top ten universities from each of the US and Canada, as well as the top 20 Spanish-language universities in Latin America.

Each university library’s website was scrutinized to discover whether the libraries employed scholarly communication librarians, whether they offered scholarly communication workshops, or whether they shared information about scholarly communication on their websites. This information was further examined to determine if it discussed predatory publishing specifically.

Findings

Most libraries in the US/Canada sample employ scholarly communication librarians and nearly half offer workshops on predatory publishing. No library in the Latin America sample employed a scholarly communication specialist and just one offered a workshop addressing predatory publishing.

The websites of the libraries in the US and Canada addressed predatory publishing both indirectly and directly, with US libraries favoring the former approach and Canadian libraries tending towards the latter. Predatory publishing was rarely addressed directly by the libraries in the Latin America sample; however, all discussed self-archiving and/or Open Access.

Research limitations/implications

Brazilian universities were excluded owing to the researchers’ language limitations. Data were collected between September 15 and 30, 2019, so it represents a snapshot of information available at that time.

The study was limited to an analysis of library websites using a fixed set of keywords, and it did not investigate whether other campus units were involved or whether other methods of informing researchers about predatory publishing were being used.

Originality/value

The study reveals some best practices leading to recommendations to help academic libraries combat predatory publishing and improve scholarly publishing literacy among researchers.

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/10393/40733

Catégories
EN

A Provisional System to Evaluate Journal Publishers Based on Partnership Practices and Values Shared with Academic Institutions and Libraries

Author : Rachel Caldwell

Background

Journals with high impact factors (IFs) are the “coin of the realm” in many review, tenure, and promotion decisions, ipso facto, IFs influence academic authors’ views of journals and publishers. However, IFs do not evaluate how publishers interact with libraries or academic institutions.

Goal

This provisional system introduces an evaluation of publishers exclusive of IF, measuring how well a publisher’s practices align with the values of libraries and public institutions of higher education (HE). Identifying publishers with similar values may help libraries and institutions make strategic decisions about resource allocation.

Methods

Democratization of knowledge, information exchange, and the sustainability of scholarship were values identified to define partnership practices and develop a scoring system evaluating publishers. Then, four publishers were evaluated. A high score indicates alignment with the values of libraries and academic institutions and a strong partnership with HE.

Results

Highest scores were earned by a learned society publishing two journals and a library publisher supporting over 80 open-access journals.

Conclusions

Publishers, especially nonprofit publishers, could use the criteria to guide practices that align with mission-driven institutions. Institutions and libraries could use the system to identify publishers acting in good faith towards public institutions of HE.

URL : A Provisional System to Evaluate Journal Publishers Based on Partnership Practices and Values Shared with Academic Institutions and Libraries

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications8030039