OAPEN-UK: an Open Access Business Model for Scholarly Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences

This paper presents the initial findings of OAPEN-UK, a UK research project gathering evidence on the social and technological impacts of an open access business model for scholarly monographs in the humanities and social sciences.

URL : http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/13912/

A comparison of subscription and open access journals…

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A comparison of subscription and open access journals in construction management and related fields :

“The Internet has profoundly changed the technical infrastructure for the publishing of scientific peer reviewed journals. The traditional business model of selling the content to subscribers is increasingly being challenged by Open Access journals, which are either run at low cost by voluntary academics or which sell dissemination services to authors. In addition authors in many fields are taking advantage of the legal possibilities of uploading free manuscript versions to institutional or subject-based repositories, in order to increase readership and impact. Construction Management is lagging behind many other fields in utilising the potential of the web for efficient dissemination results, in particular to academics outside the leading universities in industrialised countries. This study looks closer at the current publishing situation in construction management and related fields and compares empirical data about 16 OA journals and 16 traditional subscription journals. Of the articles published in 2011 in the subscription journals only 9 % could be found as OA copies. The overall OA availability (including article in OA journals) was 14 % for Construction Management and Economics and 29 for construction IT scholarship.”

URL : http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/AJCEB/article/view/27

The Hybrid Model for Open Access Publication of…

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The Hybrid Model for Open Access Publication of Scholarly Articles – a Failed Experiment? :

“Mainstream scholarly publishers have since 2004 started to offer authors in subscription journals the possibility to free their individual articles from access barriers against a payment (hybrid OA). This has been marketed as a possible gradual transition path between subscription and open access to the scholarly journal literature, and the publishers have pledged to decrease their subscription prices in proportion to the uptake of the hybrid option. The number of hybrid journals has doubled in the past couple of years and is now over 4,300, and the number of such articles was around 12,000 in 2011. On average only 1-2 % of eligible authors utilize the OA option, due mainly to the generally high price level of typically 3,000 USD. There are, however, a few publishers and individual journals with a much higher uptake. This article takes a closer look at the development of hybrid OA and discusses, from an author-centric viewpoint, the possible reasons for the lack of success of this business model.”

URL : http://www.openaccesspublishing.org/hybrid/hybrid.pdf

Scientific Utopia I Opening scientific communication Existing…

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Scientific Utopia: I. Opening scientific communication :

“Existing norms for scientific communication are rooted in anachronistic practices of bygone eras, making them needlessly inefficient. We outline a path that moves away from the existing model of scientific communication to improve the efficiency in meeting the purpose of public science – knowledge accumulation. We call for six changes: (1) full embrace of digital communication, (2) open access to all published research, (3) disentangling publication from evaluation, (4) breaking the “one article, one journal” model with a grading system for evaluation and diversified dissemination outlets, (5) publishing peer review, and, (6) allowing open, continuous peer review. We address conceptual and practical barriers to change, and provide examples showing how the suggested practices are being used already. The critical barriers to change are not technical or financial; they are social. While scientists guard the status quo, they also have the power to change it.”

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.1055

Intended and Unintended Consequences of a Publish-or-Perish Culture: A Worldwide Survey

How does publication pressure in modern-day universities affect the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards in science? By using a worldwide survey among demographers in developed and developing countries, we show that the large majority perceive the publication pressure as high, but more so in Anglo-Saxon countries and to a lesser extent in Western Europe. However, scholars see both the pros (upward mobility) and cons (excessive publication and uncitedness, neglect of policy issues, etc.) of the so-called ‘publish-or-perish’ culture.

By measuring behavior in terms of reading and publishing, and perceived extrinsic rewards and stated intrinsic rewards of practicing science, it turns out that publication pressure negatively affects the orientation of demographers towards policy and knowledge of the population facts. There are no signs that the pressure affects reading and publishing outside the core discipline.

URL : http://ssrn.com/abstract=1983205

Journal Article Publishing The Review Process Ethics Publishing…

Journal Article Publishing: The Review Process, Ethics, Publishing Contracts, Open Access, and the Kitchen Sink

Journal Article Publishing: The Review Process, Ethics, Publishing Contracts, Open Access, and the Kitchen Sink from APECS Webinars on Vimeo.

“Submitting work to peer-reviewed journals is a daunting prospect for many young scientists. In this webinar, Caroline Sutton (co-founder of Co-Action Publishing) and Helle Goldman (Chief Editor of the journal Polar Research) demystify the process by explaining what happens to a manuscript after it’s submitted, focussing on how submissions are evaluated. This webinar introduces a range of topics connected to journal article publishing, including single-blind versus double-blind review, tips for authors submitting manuscripts, ethical issues (plagiarism, salami slicing, duplicate publication), understanding the fine print in publishers’ contracts, open access publishing and how authors benefit from it.”