Étiquette : scientific communication

Publié le

Academic Quality or Commercial Concern? The Role of APCs in Open-Access Communication Studies Journals

Author : Burak Ili

Despite the positive effects of the open access (OA) movement on academic publishing, commercial publishers’ profit-driven policies continue to prevail, making the publishing process increasingly difficult for many researchers, particularly those from developing countries. T

his study critically examines open-access Q1 and Q2 journals listed in the Scimago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) within the field of Media and Communication Studies.

Despite the OA movement’s goal of increasing access to information, the capitalist academic publishing model transforms knowledge production into a commercial activity through article processing charges (APCs). The research reveals that high APCs demanded by high-impact journals represent a significant barrier, especially for researchers with limited financial and institutional support.

This situation underscores the urgent need for institutional reform in the structure of academic publishing, particularly within the field of Media and Communication Studies.

The proposed reforms should focus on critical areas such as increased support for OA models, freeing journals and editorial boards from Western monopolies, fairly compensating the labour of reviewers and editors, and offering greater language support.

Steps taken in this direction will contribute to the creation of a more transparent, fair, and inclusive structure for academic production and sharing processes.

URL : Academic Quality or Commercial Concern? The Role of APCs in Open-Access Communication Studies Journals

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v23i1.1547

Publié le

The business of transformative agreement

Author : Reece Steinberg

What can transformative agreements (TA) tell us about the future of Open Access (OA)? To investigate and analyze the business model of big publishers driving these agreements, this article uses a case study of the publisher Wiley, a business model canvas, and a decision matrix. The study uncovers motivations for moving to this model and effects to libraries and research spread unequally among institutions and globally.

This has implications for the work of liaison librarians – the frontline with researchers, as well as library leadership, university leadership and others concerned with equitable access to publishing, and diversity of research.

URL : The business of transformative agreement

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2025.103020

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DeepGreen—A Data Hub for the Distribution of Scholarly Articles From Publishers to Open Access Repositories in Germany

Authors: Tomasz Stompor, Heinz Pampel, Julia Boltze-Fütterer, Beate Rusch

  • DeepGreen is an automated delivery service for open access articles. Originally conceived to take advantage of the so-called open access component—a secondary publication right in Alliance and National licences in Germany to promote green open access—it aims to streamline open access processes by automating the distribution of full-text articles and metadata from publishers to repositories.
  • The service, developed by a consortium and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in its initial phase, has successfully established itself as a national service, facilitating open access content distribution and contributing to Germany’s open access infrastructure.
  • As of December 2024, DeepGreen distributes articles from 14 publishers to 84 institutional repositories and 6 subject-specific repositories.
  • This article describes the role of the DeepGreen service in Germany, its collaboration with publishers and the potential of automated processes for storing articles in open access repositories, which, as publicly owned institutional infrastructures, ensure sustainable access and provide secure, redundant storage.

URL : DeepGreen—A Data Hub for the Distribution of Scholarly Articles From Publishers to Open Access Repositories in Germany

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.70000

Publié le

Research on Research Visibility

Authors : Enrique Orduña-Malea, Cristina I. Font-Julián

This editorial explores the significance of research visibility within the evolving landscape of academic communication, mainly focusing on the role of search engines as online meta-markets shaping the impact of research. With the rapid expansion of scientific output and the increasing reliance on algorithm-driven platforms such as Google and Google Scholar, the online visibility of scholarly work has become an essential factor in determining its reach and influence.

The need for more rigorous research into academic search engine optimization (A-SEO), a field still in its infancy despite its growing relevance, is also discussed, highlighting key challenges in the field, including the lack of robust research methodologies, the skepticism within the academic community regarding the commercialization of science, and the need for standardization in reporting and measurement techniques.

This editorial thus invites a multidisciplinary dialogue on the future of research visibility, with significant implications for academic publishing, science communication, research evaluation, and the global scientific ecosystem.

URL : Research on Research Visibility

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1344/bid2024.53.01

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Moving Open Repositories out of the Blind Spot of Initiatives to Correct the Scholarly Record

Author : Frédérique Bordignon

Open repositories were created to enhance access and visibility of scholarly publications, driven by open science ideals emphasising transparency and accessibility. However, they lack mechanisms to update the status of corrected or retracted publications, posing a threat to the integrity of the scholarly record. To explore the scope of the problem, a manually verified corpus was examined: we extracted all the entries in the Crossref × Retraction Watch database for which the publication date of the corrected or retracted document ranged from 2013 to 2023.

This corresponded to 24,430 entries with a DOI, which we use to query Unpaywall and identify their possible indexing in HAL, an open repository (second largest institutional repository worldwide). In most cases (91%), HAL does not mention corrections. While the study needs broader scope, it highlights the necessity of improving the role of open repositories in correction processes with better curation practices.

We discuss how harvesting operations and the interoperability of platforms can maintain the integrity of the entire scholarly record. Not only will the open repositories avoid damaging its reliability through ambiguous reporting, but on the contrary, they will also strengthen it.

URL : Moving Open Repositories out of the Blind Spot of Initiatives to Correct the Scholarly Record

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1655

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The Impact of Print-on-Demand on Spanish University Presses

Authors : Marta Magadán-Díaz, Jesús I. Rivas-García

The university book plays a crucial role in disseminating research and teaching, but its usage has declined due to a preference for journal articles and digital materials. This article examines how Spanish university presses are employing Print-on-Demand (POD) to adapt to changes in the publishing market, enhancing flexibility, reducing costs and optimising the production of monographs and academic books. POD enables publishers to print copies based on actual demand, minimising the risk of overproduction and storage costs.

This model has transformed the publishing supply chain, offering efficient solutions for managing the lifecycle of books, from their launch to potential delisting. University presses are also using innovations in digital printing to respond swiftly to fluctuations in the academic market. This study adopts a qualitative approach to examine how POD affects scholarly publishers’ efficiency, longevity and production strategies, proposing that this technology is crucial for the future sustainability and competitiveness of the sector. The flexibility of POD is vital in environments where demand is unpredictable, and scholarly publishers must manage financial resources carefully.

URL : The Impact of Print-on-Demand on Spanish University Presses

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1658

Publié le

Beyond the Lens: Quantifying the Impact of Scientific Documentaries through Amazon Reviews

Authors : Jill Naiman, Aria Pessianzadeh, Hanyu Zhao, AJ Christensen, Alistair Nunn, Shriya Srikanth, Anushka Gami, Emma Maxwell, Louisa Zhang, Sri Nithya Yeragorla, Rezvaneh Rezapour

Engaging the public with science is critical for a well-informed population. A popular method of scientific communication is documentaries. Once released, it can be difficult to assess the impact of such works on a large scale, due to the overhead required for in-depth audience feedback studies. In what follows, we overview our complementary approach to qualitative studies through quantitative impact and sentiment analysis of Amazon reviews for several scientific documentaries.

In addition to developing a novel impact category taxonomy for this analysis, we release a dataset containing 1296 human-annotated sentences from 1043 Amazon reviews for six movies created in whole or part by a team of visualization designers who focus on cinematic presentations of scientific data. Using this data, we train and evaluate several machine learning and large language models, discussing their effectiveness and possible generalizability for documentaries beyond those focused on for this work.

Themes are also extracted from our annotated dataset which, along with our large language model analysis, demonstrate a measure of the ability of scientific documentaries to engage with the public.

Arxiv : https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.08705