Étiquette : scientific communication

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EN

On the Marginal Cost of Scholarly Communication

We assessed the marginal cost of scholarly communication from the perspective of an agent looking to start an independent, peer-reviewed scholarly journal. We found that various vendors can accommodate all of the services required for scholarly communication for a price ranging between $69 and $318 per article.

In contrast, if an agent had access to software solutions replacing the services provided by vendors, the marginal cost of scholarly communication would be reduced to the cloud infrastructure cost alone and drop to between $1.36 and $1.61 per article.

Incidentally, DOI registration alone accounts for between 82% and 98% of this cost. While vendor cost typically decreases with higher volume, new offerings in cloud computing exhibit the opposite trend, challenging the notion that large volume publishers benefit from economies of scales as compared to smaller publishers.

Given the current lack of software solutions fulfilling the functions of scholarly communication, we conclude that the development of high quality “plug-and-play” open source software solutions would have a significant impact in reducing the marginal cost of scholarly communication, making it more open to experimentation and innovation.

URL : https://research.science.ai/article/on-the-marginal-cost-of-scholarly-communication

Catégories
EN

Democratic Potential of New Models of Scholarship and the Crisis of Control

This paper frames the serials crisis as a loss of control over libraries’ collections and development budgets. While libraries have always had to contend with budget constraints, for many the rising cost of serials has become prohibitive, impeding on scholarship itself as librarians are forced to cut journal subscriptions.

Open Access (OA) journals hold the potential to partially alleviate the crisis, but a lasting solution might lie in altering expectations of scholars. Our critique of the dissemination of scholarly research looks to both Marxian economic theory and later critical theory, but finds both inadequate for a pragmatic solution to the crisis; instead, we adopt Deweyan democratic theory to argue in favour of public scholarship aided by librarians and vetted by scholarly societies.

URL : Democratic Potential of New Models of Scholarship and the Crisis of Control

Alternative location : http://www.mediatropes.com/index.php/Mediatropes/article/view/26418

Catégories
EN

Big Publishers, Bigger Profits: How the Scholarly Community Lost the Control of its Journals

Despite holding the potential to liberate scholarly information, the digital era has, to the contrary, increased the control of a few for-profit publishers. While most journals in the print era were owned by academic institutions and scientific societies, the majority of scientific papers are currently published by five for-profit publishers, which often exhibit profit margins between 30%-40%.

This paper documents the evolution of this consolidation over the last 40 years, discusses the peculiar economics of scholarly publishing, and reflects upon the role of publishers in today’s academe.

URL : Big Publishers, Bigger Profits: How the Scholarly Community Lost the Control of its Journals

Alternative location : http://www.mediatropes.com/index.php/Mediatropes/article/view/26422

Catégories
EN

Availability of Open Access Books in DOAB: An Analytical Study

This paper discusses the availability of open access books which are available in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB). The relevant data has been collected from the open access directory from http://www.openbooks.org/ on 25 October 2015.

Among the 3379 books, 1584 (46.88 %) books are published in English which includes 445 books which have no licenses, 83 books have CC BY; 153 books have CC-BY-NC; 814 books have CC-BY-NC-ND; 36 books have CC-BY-NC-SA; 24 books have CC-BY-ND and 29 books have CC-BY-SA licenses.

It is found that 21 books have not mentioned its authors in the directory.

URL : Availability of Open Access Books in DOAB: An Analytical Study

Alternative location : http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/article/view/9440

Catégories
FR

Anatomie et nouvelle organologie de l’édition ouverte

Cet article réinterroge le concept d’édition ouverte en proposant plusieurs pistes pour dépasser les habituels débats sur les modèles économiques. Nous voulons montrer l’intérêt d’examiner quelles sont les conditions d’ouverture désirées afin d’envisager une nouvelle organologie du système de publication scientifique.

L’objectif étant de penser le chercheur non pas comme un simple lecteur de documents, mais davantage comme un légiste qui puisse procéder à une ouverture et un examen approfondi.

URL : http://rfsic.revues.org/1871

Catégories
FR

Les pratiques de recherche documentaire, de publication et de diffusion scientifique des productions de la recherche à l’Université Paris-Sud : questionnaire à destination des chercheurs, enseignants-chercheurs et doctorants

Il s’agit de l’analyse détaillée des réponses à une enquête en ligne à destination des chercheurs, enseignants-chercheurs et doctorants de l’université Paris-Sud sur leurs pratiques de recherche documentaire, de publication et d’archivage de leurs productions scientifiques.

Cette enquête a été réalisée du 3 février au 7 avril 2015 dans le cadre du projet du Schéma Directeur numérique de l’université Paris-Sud de réservoir des productions de la recherche à des fins d’archivage systématique, de diffusion et de valorisation.

URL : Les pratiques de recherche documentaire, de publication et de diffusion scientifique des productions de la recherche à l’Université Paris-Sud

Alternative location : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/hal-01292693v1

Catégories
EN

Open Access, Open Science, Open Society

Open Access’ main goal is not the subversion of publishers’ role as driving actors in an oligopolistic market characterised by reduced competition and higher prices. OA’s main function is to be found somewhere else, namely in the ability to subvert the power to control science’s governance and its future directions (Open Science), a power that is more often found within the academic institutions rather than outside.

By decentralising and opening-up not just the way in which scholarship is published but also the way in which it is assessed, OA removes the barriers that helped turn science into an intellectual oligopoly even before an economic one. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate that Open Access is a key enabler of Open Science, which in turn will lead to a more Open Society.

Furthermore, the paper argues that while legislative interventions play an important role in the top-down regulation of Open Access, legislators currently lack an informed and systematic vision on the role of Open Access in science and society. In this historical phase, other complementary forms of intervention (bottom-up) appear much more “informed” and effective.

This paper, which intends to set the stage for future research, identifies a few pieces of the puzzle: the relationship between formal and informal norms in the field of Open Science and how these impact on intellectual property rights, the protection of personal data, the assessment of science and the technology employed for the communication of science.

URL : http://ssrn.com/abstract=2751741