Étiquette : open access

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Evolving library practice toward the sustainability of supporting open access

Authors : Maureen P Walsh, Miranda Bennett, Matthew W Goddard, Joshua Shelly

This paper is based on the Evolving Library Practice toward the Sustainability of Supporting Open Access panel presented at the 2024 NISO Plus Global/Online conference on September 17, 2024, and brings together four perspectives on how academic research library practices are evolving in response to developments in the global open access landscape.

The authors discuss current pain points in library support of open access publishing and explore how we might collectively work toward scalable and sustainable open access workflows.

URL : Evolving library practice toward the sustainability of supporting open access

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/18758789251339911

 

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EN

The African Platform for Open Scholarship Advancing Diamond Open Access and Inclusivity

Authors : Reggie Raju, Saiansha Maharaj

Geographic, language, peer review, and editorial biases have to be navigated by Global South authors to get published. Initially, the open access movement was praised for bridging the information access divide.

However, commercial publishers have hijacked the philanthropic ethos, turning it into a business model. Publishing charges add to the aforementioned biases, consolidating the exclusion of Global South scholarship. The African Platform for Open Scholarship developed by the University of Cape Town (UCT) counters these biases by offering free publishing infrastructure to advance the publishing of African scholarship without compromising academic rigor.

The platform adopts the diamond open access model to demarginalize Global South scholarship. Further, there is a discussion on the challenges and opportunities associated with creating an inclusive and equitable scholarly communication ecosystem. This paper focuses on UCT’s use of the platform to transition its commercial publishing arm (UCT Press) and to grow UCT Libraries Press. The paper will use exemplars to demonstrate the positive impact of these initiatives on the growth of diamond open access.

URL : The African Platform for Open Scholarship Advancing Diamond Open Access and Inclusivity

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18278

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EN

Implementation of Transformative Agreements at the University of Chicago Library: A Case Study

Authors : Jessica Harris, Greg Fleming, Jennifer Hart, Adrian K. Ho, Barbara Kern,
Catherine Mardikes, Debra A. Werner

The University of Chicago Library created a working group, composed of librarians across the library, to engage in dedicated and focused work around transformative agreements, including understanding how they work and how the library should be engaging with them in a complex open access (OA) landscape.

The working group was charged with specific tasks, including determining challenges and opportunities around transformative agreements, developing criteria for determining when to use the library’s OA fund to pursue an agreement, conducting ongoing assessments of the agreements, and developing a set of recommendations to communicate this out to our wider campus community.

The group’s work included piloting several transformative agreements and establishing a rubric to evaluate these agreements. The creation of the group allowed the library to gain valuable knowledge and expertise, engage actively in new models for supporting OA, and start critical conversations on campus.

The group continues the work, with the ultimate goal of affordable OA publishing and communicating the value of OA with researchers and campus partners, as well as positioning the library as a campus leader in OA.

URL : Implementation of Transformative Agreements at the University of Chicago Library: A Case Study

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18265

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EN

Unequal Access, Unequal Impact? The Role of Open Access Policies in Publishing and Citation Trends Across Three Countries

Authors : Shlomit Hadad, Daphne R. Raban, Noa Aharony

This bibliometric study investigates Open Access (OA) publication and citation trends in Austria, Israel, and Mexico from 2010 to 2020—three countries with comparable research output but differing OA infrastructures.

(1) Background: The study examines how national OA policies, funding mechanisms, and transformative agreements (TAs) shape publication and citation patterns across disciplines.

(2) Methods: Using Scopus data, the analysis focuses on four broad subject areas (health, physical, life, and social sciences), applying both three-way ANOVA and a Weighted OA Citation Impact index that adjusts citation shares based on the proportional representation of each subject area in national research output. An OA Engagement Score was also developed to assess each country’s policy and infrastructure support.

(3) Results: OA publications consistently receive more citations than closed-access ones, confirming a robust OA citation advantage. Austria leads in both OA publication volume and weighted impact, reflecting its strong policy frameworks and TA coverage. Israel, while publishing fewer OA articles, achieves high citation visibility in specific disciplines. Mexico demonstrates strengths in repositories and Diamond OA journals but lags in transformative agreements.

(4) Conclusions: National differences in OA policy maturity, infrastructure, and publishing models shape both visibility and citation impact. Structural limitations and indexing disparities may further affect how research from different regions and disciplines is represented globally, emphasizing the need for inclusive and context-sensitive frameworks for evaluating OA engagement.

URL : Unequal Access, Unequal Impact? The Role of Open Access Policies in Publishing and Citation Trends Across Three Countries

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications13020020

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EN

Geographical and disciplinary coverage of open access journals: OpenAlex, Scopus, and WoS

Authors : Abdelghani Maddi, Marion Maisonobe, Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri

This study aims to compare the geographical and disciplinary coverage of OA journals in three databases: OpenAlex, Scopus and the Web of Science (WoS). We used the Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources (ROAD), provided by the ISSN International Centre, as a reference to identify OA active journals (as of May 2024). Among the 62,701 active OA journals listed in ROAD, the WoS indexes 6,157 journals, Scopus indexes 7,351, while OpenAlex indexes 34,217.

A striking observation is the presence of 24,976 OA journals exclusively in OpenAlex, whereas only 182 journals are exclusively present in the WoS and 373 in Scopus. The geographical analysis focuses on two levels: continents and countries. As for disciplinary comparison, we use the ten disciplinary levels of the ROAD database. Moreover, our findings reveal a similarity in OA journal coverage between the WoS and Scopus. However, while OpenAlex offers better inclusivity and indexing, it is not without biases.

The WoS and Scopus predictably favor journals from Europe, North America and Oceania. Although OpenAlex presents a much more balanced indexing, certain regions and countries remain relatively underrepresented. Typically, Africa is proportionally as under-represented in OpenAlex as it is in Scopus, and some emerging countries are proportionally less represented in OpenAlex than in the WoS and Scopus.

These results underscore a marked similarity in OA journal indexing between WoS and Scopus, while OpenAlex aligns more closely with the distribution observed in the ROAD database, although it also exhibits some representational biases.

URL : Geographical and disciplinary coverage of open access journals: OpenAlex, Scopus, and WoS

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320347

 

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EN

Does open access foster interdisciplinary citations? Decomposing open access citation advantage

Authors : Kai Nishikawa, Akiyoshi Murakami

The existence of an open access (OA) citation advantage—that is, whether OA increases citations—has been a topic of interest for many years. Although numerous studies have focused on whether OA increases citations, expectations for OA go beyond that. One such expectation is the promotion of knowledge transfer across various fields.

This study aimed to clarify what effects OA, particularly gold OA, has on knowledge transfer across fields. Specifically, we measure the effect of OA on interdisciplinary and within-discipline citation counts by decomposing an existing OA citation advantage metric.

OA increased both interdisciplinary and within-discipline citations in many fields studied, and only interdisciplinary citations in chemistry, computer science, and clinical medicine. In these three fields, clinical medicine showed a tendency toward interdisciplinary citations, independent of journal or paper.

These findings suggest that OA fosters knowledge transfer across disciplines.

URL : Does open access foster interdisciplinary citations? Decomposing open access citation advantage

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-025-05297-z

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EN

The time for action is now: Equity and sustainability for diamond publishing in Aotearoa New Zealand

Authors : Luqman Hayes, Craig Murdoch

Diamond open access journals make a significant contribution to scholarship globally while enduring a precarious existence due to a lack of funding. The purpose of this study was to identify the necessary characteristics of a shared service that would deliver improved sustainability for diamond journals in Aotearoa New Zealand.

We conducted semi-structured interviews with several of the editors of journals hosted by Tuwhera, Auckland University of Technology’s diamond hosting service. We sought to understand their experiences, both positive and negative, via thematic analysis of the interview transcripts. These themes indicate that our diamond journal editors face significant burdens due to lack of funding, which threaten the unique contribution they make as journals of and from Aotearoa.

We conclude that a shared open infrastructure is the most appropriate way to ensure the sustainability of diamond journals in Aotearoa, but that it must be accompanied by shared services that address the administrative and journal production load currently experienced by editors.

We propose that such an endeavor should be funded by shifting a small percentage of existing library subscription expenditure from profit-making publishers to diamond journals.

URL : The time for action is now: Equity and sustainability for diamond publishing in Aotearoa New Zealand

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18311