Étiquette : Scholarly Publishing

Catégories
EN

The Costs of Open and Closed Access: Using the Finnish Research Output as an Example

Authors : Jyrki Ilva, Markku Antero Laitinen, Jarmo Saarti

The Open Access movement in scientific publishing has been gathering momentum in the European Union and its member states, partly due to the policies of some of its main research funders.

Already we have seen encouraging research results on the effects of openness on the dissemination of scientific outputs. As business models of Open Access publishing are still under development, the aim of our paper is to assess the statistical tools and data that the Finnish libraries currently have for comparing the costs associated with different modes of disseminating scientific publications.

We will also analyse the potential costs associated with Open Access publishing models and compare them with the current cost structure of – mostly – paywalled (PW) access.

The discussion will include a description of current Finnish Open Access policies and their funding models. The financial analysis will be based on the statistical data found in the national Research Library Statistics database and the Finnish National Research Publications database, Juuli.

We will discuss the alternatives on how best to develop statistical tools to estimate the true costs of scientific publishing.

URL : The Costs of Open and Closed Access: Using the Finnish Research Output as an Example

DOI : http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10137

Catégories
EN

Agreements between Industry and Academia on Publication Rights : A Retrospective Study of Protocols and Publications of Randomized Clinical Trials

Authors : Benjamin Kasenda, Erik von Elm, John J. You, Anette Blümle, Yuki Tomonaga, Ramon Saccilotto et al.

Background

Little is known about publication agreements between industry and academic investigators in trial protocols and the consistency of these agreements with corresponding statements in publications.

We aimed to investigate (i) the existence and types of publication agreements in trial protocols, (ii) the completeness and consistency of the reporting of these agreements in subsequent publications, and (iii) the frequency of co-authorship by industry employees.

Methods and Findings

We used a retrospective cohort of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) based on archived protocols approved by six research ethics committees between 13 January 2000 and 25 November 2003.

Only RCTs with industry involvement were eligible. We investigated the documentation of publication agreements in RCT protocols and statements in corresponding journal publications. Of 647 eligible RCT protocols, 456 (70.5%) mentioned an agreement regarding publication of results. Of these 456, 393 (86.2%) documented an industry partner’s right to disapprove or at least review proposed manuscripts; 39 (8.6%) agreements were without constraints of publication.

The remaining 24 (5.3%) protocols referred to separate agreement documents not accessible to us. Of those 432 protocols with an accessible publication agreement, 268 (62.0%) trials were published. Most agreements documented in the protocol were not reported in the subsequent publication (197/268 [73.5%]).

Of 71 agreements reported in publications, 52 (73.2%) were concordant with those documented in the protocol. In 14 of 37 (37.8%) publications in which statements suggested unrestricted publication rights, at least one co-author was an industry employee.

In 25 protocol-publication pairs, author statements in publications suggested no constraints, but 18 corresponding protocols documented restricting agreements.

Conclusions

Publication agreements constraining academic authors’ independence are common. Journal articles seldom report on publication agreements, and, if they do, statements can be discrepant with the trial protocol.

URL : Agreements between Industry and Academia on Publication Rights : A Retrospective Study of Protocols and Publications of Randomized Clinical Trials

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002046

Catégories
EN

A Vision for Open Cyber-Scholarly Infrastructures

Author : Costantino Thanos

The characteristics of modern science, i.e., data-intensive, multidisciplinary, open, and heavily dependent on Internet technologies, entail the creation of a linked scholarly record that is online and open.

Instrumental in making this vision happen is the development of the next generation of Open Cyber-Scholarly Infrastructures (OCIs), i.e., enablers of an open, evolvable, and extensible scholarly ecosystem.

The paper delineates the evolving scenario of the modern scholarly record and describes the functionality of future OCIs as well as the radical changes in scholarly practices including new reading, learning, and information-seeking practices enabled by OCIs.

URL : A Vision for Open Cyber-Scholarly Infrastructures

Alternative location : http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/4/2/13

Catégories
EN

Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Electronic Publishing

Editors : Fernando Loizides, Birgit Schmidt

The field of electronic publishing has grown exponentially in the last two decades, but we are still in the middle of this digital transformation. With technologies coming and going for all kinds of reasons, the distribution of economic, technological and discursive power continues to be negotiated.

This book presents the proceedings of the 20th Conference on Electronic Publishing (Elpub), held in Göttingen, Germany, in June 2016.

This year’s conference explores issues of positioning and power in academic publishing, and it brings together world leading stakeholders such as academics, practitioners, policymakers, students and entrepreneurs from a wide variety of fields to exchange information and discuss the advent of innovations in the areas of electronic publishing, as well as reflect on the development in the field over the last 20 years.

Topics covered in the papers include how to maintain the quality of electronic publications, modeling processes and the increasingly prevalent issue of open access, as well as new systems, database repositories and datasets. This overview of the field will be of interest to all those who work in or make use of electronic publishing.

URL : Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Electronic Publishing

Alternative location : http://ebooks.iospress.nl/ISBN/978-1-61499-648-4

Catégories
EN

Demographics of scholarly publishing and communication professionals

Authors : Albert N. Greco, Robert M. Wharton, Amy Brand

Scholarly publishing plays a pivotal role in the dissemination of research. While a great deal is known about the companies active in this sector, we need to know more about the employees of the firms that edit, produce, market, and distribute today’s scholarly books and journals.

To achieve this goal, the researchers conducted an international survey in late 2014 and early 2015 of approximately 6,121 scholarly publishing employees in 33 nations. The researchers received 828 usable questionnaires.

Some of the substantive findings about the respondents include: 90.79% identified themselves as white; 85.07% worked in scholarly publishing for more than 5 years; 60% held graduate or professional degrees; and 49% worked in editorial departments.

Key suggestions include the need for annual surveys of this type and that the majority of scholarly publishing firms need to address the issue of diversity.

URL : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/leap.1017/full

Catégories
EN

Small scholar-led scholarly journals: Can they survive and thrive in an open access future?

Author : Heather Morrison

This article presents early results of a research project designed to further our understanding of how to ensure that small scholar-led journals can survive and thrive in a global open access knowledge commons.

This phase of the research focuses on generation of ideas through interviews and focus groups with 15 participants involved in producing small scholar-led journals that either are or would like to become open access.

Although a couple of journals reported that they could survive in an open access future based on existing resources, most were concerned about survival and none expressed confidence that they could thrive in an open-access future.

These journals are far more diverse than one might imagine. Comparing the costs of article production from one journal with another might not make sense. A number of avenues for further research are discussed.

URL : Small scholar-led scholarly journals: Can they survive and thrive in an open access future?

Alternative location : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/leap.1015/full

Catégories
EN

A longitudinal study of independent scholar-published open access journals

Authors : Bo-Christer Björk, Cenyu Shen, Mikael Laakso

Open Access (OA) is nowadays increasingly being used as a business model for the publishing of scholarly peer reviewed journals, both by specialized OA publishing companies and major, predominantly subscription-based publishers.

However, in the early days of the web OA journals were mainly founded by independent academics, who were dissatisfied with the predominant print and subscription paradigm and wanted to test the opportunities offered by the new medium.

There is still an on-going debate about how OA journals should be operated, and the volunteer model used by many such ‘indie’ journals has been proposed as a viable alternative to the model adopted by big professional publishers where publishing activities are funded by authors paying expensive article processing charges (APCs).

Our longitudinal quantitative study of 250 ‘indie’ OA journals founded prior to 2002, showed that 51% of these journals were still in operation in 2014 and that the median number of articles published per year had risen from 11 to 18 among the survivors.

Of these surviving journals, only 8% had started collecting APCs. A more detailed qualitative case study of five such journals provided insights into how such journals have tried to ensure the continuity and longevity of operations.

URL : A longitudinal study of independent scholar-published open access journals

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1990