Open Access publishing practice in geochemistry: overview of current state and look to the future

Authors : Olivier Pourret, Andrew Hursthouse, Dasapta Erwin Irawan, Karen Johannesson, Haiyan Liu, Marc Poujol, Romain Tartèse, Eric D. van Hullebusch, Oliver Wiche

Open Access (OA) describes the free, unrestricted access to and re-use of research articles. Recently, a new wave of interest, debate, and practice surrounding OA publishing has emerged.

In this paper, we provide a simple overview of the trends in OA practice in the broad field of geochemistry. Characteristics of the approach such as whether or not an article processing charge (APC) exists, what embargo periods or restrictions on self-archiving’ policies are in place, and whether or not the sharing of preprints is permitted are described.

The majority of journals have self-archiving policies that allow authors to share their peer reviewed work via green OA without charge. There is no clear relationship between journal impact and APC.

The journals with the highest APC are typically those of the major commercial publishers, rather than the geochemistry community themselves. The rise in OA publishing has potential impacts on the profiles of researchers and tends to devolve costs from organizations to individuals.

Until the geochemistry community makes the decision to move away from journal-based evaluation criteria, it is likely that such high costs will continue to impose financial inequities upon research community.

However, geochemists could more widely choose legal self-archiving as an equitable and sustainable way to disseminate their research.

URL : Open Access publishing practice in geochemistry: overview of current state and look to the future

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e03551

Prevalence of Potentially Predatory Publishing in Scopus on the Country Level

Authors : Tatiana Savina, Ivan Sterligov

We present the results of a large-scale study of potentially predatory journals (PPJ) represented in the Scopus database, which is widely used for research evaluation. Both journal metrics and country, disciplinary data have been evaluated for different groups of PPJ: those listed by Jeffrey Beall and those delisted by Scopus because of “publication concerns”.

Our results show that even after years of delisting, PPJ are still highly visible in the Scopus database with hundreds of active potentially predatory journals. PPJ papers are continuously produced by all major countries, but with different shares. All major subject areas are affected. The largest number of PPJ papers are in engineering and medicine.

On average, PPJ have much lower citation metrics than other Scopus-indexed journals. We conclude with a brief survey of the case of Kazakhstan where the share of PPJ papers at one time amounted to almost a half of all Kazakhstan papers in Scopus, and propose a link between PPJ share and national research evaluation policies (in particular, rules of awarding academic degrees).

The progress of potentially predatory journal research will be increasingly important because such evaluation methods are becoming more widespread in times of the Metric Tide.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.08283

Publications numériques scientifiques universitaires internationales : Disruption, quels acteurs,quels projets ?

Auteur/Author : Appoline Romanens

Les enseignants-chercheurs d’aujourd’hui se heurtent à des APC, ont besoin de logiciels de PAO, avec un DMP pour apparaître dans la base de données du DOAJ, ou espérer rentrer dans celle duWoS.

Tous ces termes nous semblent éloignés du jargon du Journal des Sçavans, première manifestation de la compilation des pensées de la recherche scientifique.

Pourtant ils sont le signe d’une évolution du médium qui porte l’article académique scientifique aujourd’hui, le web de données, dans lequel toute publication scientifique se doit d’être réticulée pour survivre au publish or perish.

Afin de comprendre ce nouveau jargon de la recherche scientifique, qui témoigne de profonds changements dans le rapport qu’entretient l’enseignant-chercheur, l’éditeur puis le lecteur par rapport au texte, ce mémoire explore la notion de disruption dans le processus de création, relecture et édition puis publication et diffusion d’un article.

Outre un développement basé sur les théories de l’économie du document et de l’article scientifique, ce mémoire apporte deux études de cas qui rendent compte du phénomène de disruption dans les publications scientifiques, et propose à partir de ce corpus une ouverture sur ses enjeux actuels et futurs.

URL : Publications numériques scientifiques universitaires internationales : Disruption, quels acteurs,quels projets ?

Original location : https://www.enssib.fr/bibliotheque-numerique/notices/69398-publications-numeriques-scientifiques-universitaires-internationales-disruption-quels-acteurs-quels-projets

Why we publish where we do: Faculty publishing values and their relationship to review, promotion and tenure expectations

Authors : Meredith T. Niles, Lesley A. Schimanski, Erin C. McKiernan, Juan Pablo Alperin

Using an online survey of academics at 55 randomly selected institutions across the US and Canada, we explore priorities for publishing decisions and their perceived importance within review, promotion, and tenure (RPT).

We find that respondents most value journal readership, while they believe their peers most value prestige and related metrics such as impact factor when submitting their work for publication.

Respondents indicated that total number of publications, number of publications per year, and journal name recognition were the most valued factors in RPT.

Older and tenured respondents (most likely to serve on RPT committees) were less likely to value journal prestige and metrics for publishing, while untenured respondents were more likely to value these factors.

These results suggest disconnects between what academics value versus what they think their peers value, and between the importance of journal prestige and metrics for tenured versus untenured faculty in publishing and RPT perceptions.

URL : Why we publish where we do: Faculty publishing values and their relationship to review, promotion and tenure expectations

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228914

Demarcating Spectrums of Predatory Publishing: Economic and Institutional Sources of Academic Legitimacy

Author : Kyle Sile

The emergence of Open Access (OA) publishing has altered incentives and opportunities for academic stakeholders and publishers. These changes have yielded a variety of new economic and academic niches, including journals with questionable peer review systems and business models, commonly dubbed ‘predatory publishing.’ Empirical analysis of the Cabell’s Journal Blacklist reveals substantial diversity in types and degrees of predatory publishing.

While some blacklisted publishers produce journals with many severe violations of academic norms, ‘grey’ journals and publishers occupy borderline or ambiguous niches between predation and legitimacy.

Predation in academic publishing is not a simple binary phenomenon and should instead be perceived as a spectrum with varying types and degrees of illegitimacy. Conceptions of predation are based on overlapping evaluations of academic and economic legitimacy.

High institutional status benefits publishers by reducing conflicts between – if not aligning – professional and market institutional logics, which are more likely to conflict and create illegitimacy concerns in downmarket niches.

High rejection rates imbue high-status journals with value and pricing power, while low-status OA journals face ‘predatory’ incentives to optimize revenue via low selectivity.

Status influences the social acceptability of profit-seeking in academic publishing, rendering lower-status publishers vulnerable to being perceived and stigmatized as illegitimate.

URL : https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/6r274/

Funding Sources for Open Access Article Processing Charges in the Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities in the United States

Authors : Melissa H. Cantrell, Juleah A. Swanson

Article processing charges (APCs) are one method of many to ensure open access to research literature, but studies that explore the funding sources for such payments, especially as related to open access publications in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, have been limited.

This study seeks to understand the range of funding sources that are available and used by faculties in these disciplines to pay for APCs associated with publishing in open access journals, as well as attitudes towards and awareness of available institutional funds that may inflect future engagement with open access publishing.

The authors distributed a survey to faculty who had an open access journal article published in 2017 from three doctoral granting, high research activity universities in the United States.

Twenty-two scholars participated in the final survey, ten of whom indicated that they paid an APC for their publication. While the results cannot make generalizations about funding sources, they do suggest that both the prevalence of APCs as well as attitudes about open access engagement may be influenced by disciplinary self-identification.

This research contributes to discussions around the future of open access funding models as well as to disciplinary outreach regarding APC funding for journal publications.

URL : Funding Sources for Open Access Article Processing Charges in the Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities in the United States

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications8010012

Autoréflexivité scientifique : mise en place de conditions productivistes dans la pratique de la publication scientifique

Auteur/Author : Alma Liliana Díaz-Martínez

Cet article analyse le rôle des publications dans un contexte marqué par la logique productiviste du système d’évaluation de la recherche scientifique au Mexique.

Il aborde la notion d’autoréflexivité critique à partir du concept de rationalité communicationnelle d’Habermas et étudie un corpus composé de chercheurs en sciences sociales membres du Système national de chercheurs (SNI) de l’Université nationale autonome du Mexique (Unam), en utilisant l’analyse du discours dans une perspective herméneutique.

Si les résultats confirment l’existence d’une autoréflexion critique de la part des chercheurs vis-à-vis de l’exigence institutionnelle de publication, ils montrent également à quel point cette norme a été intériorisée comme partie intégrante de la pratique scientifique.

URL : https://lesenjeux.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/2019/dossier/06-autoreflexivite-scientifique-mise-en-place-de-conditions-productivistes-dans-la-pratique-de-la-publication-scientifique