Open Science Practices Adopted by Latin American & Caribbean Open Access Journals

Authors : Andre Appel, Ivonne Lujano, Sarita Albagli

The objective of this study is to investigate how Open Science (OS) values and practices have influenced open access (OA) journals publishers in Latin American and the Caribbean (LA&C) countries.

Our key research question is: to what extent are these practices being adopted by LA&C journals? In order to address this question, we conducted a survey with a sample of LA&C journals listed on the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) database.

The results reveal that many journals are somewhat aware of or informed about most of open science practices being discussed, but just some of them have already successfully adopted those practices.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01800164v3

Inequality in Knowledge Production: The Integration of Academic Infrastructure by Big Publishers

Authors : Alejandro Posada, George Chen

This paper attempts to illustrate the implications of a simultaneous redirection of the big publishers’ business strategy towards open access business models and the acquisition of scholarly infrastructure utilizing the conceptual framework of rent-seeking theory.

To document such a transformation, we utilized financial databases to analyze the mergers and acquisitions of the top publicly traded academic publishers. We then performed a service analysis to situate the acquisitions of publishers within the knowledge and education life-cycles, illustrating what we term to be their vertical integration within their respective expansion target life-cycles.

Implications of higher education institutions’ increased dependency towards the companies and increased influence by the companies on the institution and individual researcher were noted from the vertical integration of products.

Said vertical integration is analyzed via a rent theory framework and described to be a form of rent-seeking complementary to the redirection of business strategies to open access. Finally, the vertical integration is noted to generate exclusionary effects upon researchers/institutions in the global south.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01816707

Global Scholarly Collaboration: from Traditional Citation Practice to Direct Communication

Authors : Sergey Parinov, Victoria Antonova

The development of recent research information systems allows a transformation of citations in the full text of research papers into interactive elements. Such interactivity in some cases works as an instrument of direct scholarly communications between citing and cited authors.

We discuss this challenge for research e-infrastructure development including opportunities for improvements in research cooperation and in collaboration mechanisms for the global research community.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01816700

The State of The Art in Peer Review

Author : John Tennant

Scholarly communication is in a perpetual state of disruption. Within this, peer review of research articles remains an essential part of the formal publication process, distinguishing it from virtually all other modes of communication.

In the last several years, there has been an explosive wave of innovation in peer review research, platforms, discussions, tools, and services. This is largely coupled with the ongoing and parallel evolution of scholarly communication as it adapts to rapidly changing environments, within what is widely considered as the ‘open research’ or ‘open science’ movement.

Here, we summarise the current ebb and flow around changes to peer review and consider its role in a modern digital research and communications infrastructure and discuss why uptake of new models of peer review appears to have been so low compared to what is often viewed as the ‘traditional’ method of peer review.

Finally, we offer some insight into the potential futures of scholarly peer review and consider what impacts this might have on the broader scholarly research ecosystem.

DOI : https://dx.doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/C29TM

Simplifying OA Policy Compliance for Authors Through a Publisher- Repository Partnership

Authors : Mariya Maistrovskaya, Judy Hum-Delaney

In April of 2015, Canadian Science Publishing (CSP) in partnership with the University of Toronto Libraries launched an automated manuscript deposit service. Upon author’s opt-in, an automated workflow transfers their accepted manuscript from the publisher system into the University of Toronto research repository, TSpace, where it is made openly available with a reference to the final version on the journal website.

This free service is available to authors publishing their work in CSP’s NRC Research Press journals and is of particular interest to grant recipients looking to comply with the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications that came into effect in 2015.

This paper provides an overview of the partnership and the workflow that makes over 1,200 manuscripts openly available annually. It also shares the script that can be adopted by other libraries and publishers looking to provide automated deposit service to authors for the purpose of funder mandate compliance, green OA, or preservation.

URL : https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01816819v1

Unbundling Open Access dimensions: a conceptual discussion to reduce terminology inconsistencies

Authors : Alberto Martín-Martín, Rodrigo Costas, Thed N. van Leeuwen, Emilio Delgado López-Cózar

The current ways in which documents are made freely accessible in the Web no longer adhere to the models established Budapest/Bethesda/Berlin (BBB) definitions of Open Access (OA). Since those definitions were established, OA-related terminology has expanded, trying to keep up with all the variants of OA publishing that are out there.

However, the inconsistent and arbitrary terminology that is being used to refer to these variants are complicating communication about OA-related issues. This study intends to initiate a discussion on this issue, by proposing a conceptual model of OA.

Our model features six different dimensions (authoritativeness, user rights, stability, immediacy, peer-review, and cost). Each dimension allows for a range of different options. We believe that by combining the options in these six dimensions, we can arrive at all the current variants of OA, while avoiding ambiguous and/or arbitrary terminology.

This model can be an useful tool for funders and policy makers who need to decide exactly which aspects of OA are necessary for each specific scenario.

URL : Unbundling Open Access dimensions: a conceptual discussion to reduce terminology inconsistencies

Alternative location : https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.05029

La circulation internationale des savoirs communicationnels entre cadrages disciplinaires et pratiques situées

Auteur/Author : Sarah Cordonnier

L’internationalisation académique et la circulation internationale des savoirs sont toujours présentées comme désirables, sans que leurs conditions de félicité soient explicitées. Il en découle des injonctions contradictoires souvent pénalisantes pour les (aspirants) chercheurs.

Les sciences consacrées à la communication fournissent des outils pour élucider les formes spécifiques de l’échange international et ses entraves, ainsi qu’un terrain d’observation remarquable.

L’enquête socio-discursive proposée dans l’article montre d’abord comment elles sont régies par un discours constituant paradoxal, fondé sur l’inachèvement, et ensuite comment l’expérience internationale de chercheurs et d’étudiants des sciences consacrées à la communication est contrainte par ce cadre tout en contribuant à l’amender.

URL : https://lesenjeux.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/2017-supplementB/07-Cordonnier/