Étiquette : Scholarly Publishing

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Invasion of the journal snatchers: How indexed journals are falling into questionable hands

Authors: Alberto Martín-Martín, Emilio Delgado López-Cózar

In recent years, a substantial number of established journals have received buyout offers from obscure entities, with some journals being acquired. Despite mounting circumstantial evidence of irregular behaviour exhibited by these journals post-acquisition, comprehensive analyses on this matter are lacking. To address this gap, this article examines the practices of Oxbridge Publishing House Ltd., a company registered in the UK in 2022.

Through an analysis of publicly available documentation, it becomes apparent that this entity is part of a complex network of recently established companies. Since 2020 this network has acquired, with the help of intermediary firms, at least 36 scholarly journals originally published in countries such Spain (7), United Kingdom (7), USA (5), India (4), Turkey (4), among others.

Targeting journals indexed in prestigious scientific databases like Web of Science and Scopus, many of these journals see significant transformations upon acquisition, such as the introduction or substantial escalation of publication fees, often coupled with increases in publication volumes. This increase stems from a surge in contributions originating outside the journal’s original academic community. Their disregard for proper publishing standards is evident in their widespread use of fake DOIs or the appropriation of DOIs from unrelated documents.

Drawing parallels to the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, we refer to journals caught in this predicament as pod journals. This type of predatory publishing practice not only contributes to over-publication but also disenfranchises legitimate academic communities and poses a threat to academic bibliodiversity.

URL : Invasion of the journal snatchers: How indexed journals are falling into questionable hands

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14766415

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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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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

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From Fees to Free: Comparing APC-Based and Diamond Open Access Journals in Engineering

Authors : Luís Eduardo Pilatti, Luiz Alberto Pilatti, Gustavo Dambiski Gomes de Carvalho, Luis Mauricio Martins de Resende

This study analyzes the impact of different Open Access (OA) publication models in engineering, comparing journals that charge Article Processing Charges (APCs) with those operating under the Diamond OA model.

A total of 757 engineering OA journals, comprising 504 APC-based and 253 Diamond OA journals, were examined using bibliometric data from 2020 to 2023. The analysis focused on four key metrics: CiteScore, total citations, number of published articles, and the percentage of cited articles. The results indicate that APC-based journals dominate the upper quartiles (Q1 and Q2) regarding absolute citation counts, primarily driven by high-volume mega-journals such as IEEE Access.

However, Diamond OA journals exhibit a higher proportion of cited articles (88.8% compared to 83.4% in APC-based journals) within the top 10% category. Despite their benefits in providing cost-free dissemination, Diamond OA journals account for only 8.4% of the 3012 active engineering journals indexed in Scopus, highlighting sustainability and visibility challenges.

The findings suggest that, while APC-based journals achieve higher absolute citation counts, editorial reputation and visibility strategies significantly influence citation performance.

This study contributes to the ongoing discussion on the financial sustainability and equity of OA publishing in engineering.

URL : From Fees to Free: Comparing APC-Based and Diamond Open Access Journals in Engineering

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications13020016

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Tailoring Scientific Knowledge: How Generative AI Personalizes Academic Reading Experiences

Author : Anna Małgorzata Kamińska

The scientific literature is expanding at an unprecedented pace, making it increasingly difficult for researchers, students, and professionals to extract relevant insights efficiently.

Traditional academic publishing offers static, one-size-fits-all content that does not cater to the diverse backgrounds, expertise levels, and interests of readers. This paper explores how generative AI can dynamically personalize scholarly content by tailoring summaries and key takeaways to individual user profiles.

Nine scientific articles from a single journal issue were used to create the dataset, and prompt engineering was applied to generate tailored insights for exemplary personas: a digital humanities and open science researcher, and a mining and raw materials industry specialist. The effectiveness of AI-generated content modifications in enhancing readability, comprehension, and relevance was evaluated.

The results indicate that generative AI can successfully emphasize different aspects of an article, making it more accessible and engaging to specific audiences. However, challenges such as content oversimplification, potential biases, and ethical considerations remain.

The implications of AI-powered personalization in scholarly communication are discussed, and future research directions are proposed to refine and optimize AI-driven adaptive reading experiences.

URL : Tailoring Scientific Knowledge: How Generative AI Personalizes Academic Reading Experiences

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications13020018

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Open and impactful academic publishing

Authors : Rosaria Ciriminna, Giovanna Li Petri, Giuseppe Angellotti, Rafael Luque, Mario Pagliaro

Introduction

The advantages of self-archiving research articles on institutional repositories or personal academic websites are numerous and relevant for society and individual researchers. Yet, self-archiving has been adopted by a small minority of active scholars.

Methods

Aiming to further inform educational work on open and impactful academic publishing in the digital era, we posed selected questions to Stevan Harnad 30 years after his « subversive proposal » to maximize research impact by self-archiving scholarly articles in university-hosted or disciplinary online repositories to make published articles openly available.

Results and discussion

Self-archiving is even more needed today than it was when Professor Harnad called for it when the World Wide Web was in its infancy; OA academic publishing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for impactful research; self-archiving on a personal academic website is often more effective than in institutional repositories.

URL : Open and impactful academic publishing

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2025.1544965

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Open access, open infrastructures, and their funding: Learning from histories to more effectively enhance diamond OA ecologies for books

Authors  : Kira Hopkins, Kevin Sanders

The decade since the “Bottlenecks in the Open Access System” special issue of JLSC in 2014 has been an expansive one for open access (OA) and OA books in particular. The creation of a scholarly publishing ecosystem that enables works to be freely accessible for readers has been successful in many ways.

However, the underlying politics and economics of OA scholarly publishing often remain opaque or under-interrogated (Lawson et al., 2015). The problems with journal OA funding, specifically regarding inequality of access to publishing, discussed by Bonaccorso et al. (2014) in their contribution to that issue, have also increased and become entrenched as we discuss below.

This entrenchment has been largely via the growth and consolidation of gold OA, “transformative” agreements, and read-and-publish journal deals, which have effectively, and unnecessarily, commodified OA publications. We would argue that this is in direct tension with some of the foundations of contemporary OA.

OA was explicitly described from early principles as not a business model and as aiming to reduce financial barriers from authors, libraries, and other groups (Suber, 2024). We would like to note that, while the main focus of this paper is books, we begin with a discussion of journals. This is because we are focusing on the history, development, and critiques of OA fundings in the intervening ten years following the “Bottlenecks” special issue.

OA journal publishing has been at the forefront of discussions of OA funding, and it has dominated the last decade, and more, of this discussion; it would therefore be remiss of us not to discuss this history, the resulting current landscape of inequity, and the potential ramifications if this were to be transferred to OA books, a more nascent field in general.

URL : Open access, open infrastructures, and their funding: Learning from histories to more effectively enhance diamond OA ecologies for books

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18284