Étiquette : scientific communication

Catégories
EN

Retrospective analysis of the quality of reports by author-suggested and non-author-suggested reviewers in journals operating on open or single-blind peer review models

Objectives

To assess whether reports from reviewers recommended by authors show a bias in quality and recommendation for editorial decision, compared with reviewers suggested by other parties, and whether reviewer reports for journals operating on open or single-blind peer review models differ with regard to report quality and reviewer recommendations.

Design

Retrospective analysis of the quality of reviewer reports using an established Review Quality Instrument, and analysis of reviewer recommendations and author satisfaction surveys.

Setting

BioMed Central biology and medical journals. BMC Infectious Diseases and BMC Microbiology are similar in size, rejection rates, impact factors and editorial processes, but the former uses open peer review while the latter uses single-blind peer review. The Journal of Inflammation has operated under both peer review models.

Sample

Two hundred reviewer reports submitted to BMC Infectious Diseases, 200 reviewer reports submitted to BMC Microbiology and 400 reviewer reports submitted to the Journal of Inflammation.

Results

For each journal, author-suggested reviewers provided reports of comparable quality to non-author-suggested reviewers, but were significantly more likely to recommend acceptance, irrespective of the peer review model (p<0.0001 for BMC Infectious Diseases, BMC Microbiology and the Journal of Inflammation). For BMC Infectious Diseases, the overall quality of reviewer reports measured by the Review Quality Instrument was 5% higher than for BMC Microbiology (p=0.042). For the Journal of Inflammation, the quality of reports was the same irrespective of the peer review model used.

Conclusions

Reviewers suggested by authors provide reports of comparable quality to non-author-suggested reviewers, but are significantly more likely to recommend acceptance. Open peer review reports for BMC Infectious Diseases were of higher quality than single-blind reports for BMC Microbiology. There was no difference in quality of peer review in the Journal of Inflammation under open peer review compared with single blind.

URL : Retrospective analysis of the quality of reports by author-suggested and non-author-suggested reviewers in journals operating on open or single-blind peer review models

DOI : 10.1136/bmjopen-2015-008707

Catégories
FR

Publier : à quel prix ? Étude sur la structuration des coûts de publication pour les revues françaises en SHS

La publication d’articles dans des revues scientifiques est un enjeu fort pour les institutions de recherche françaises car il s’agit bien d’un vecteur essentiel de la visibilité des travaux des chercheurs et qu’il est fondamental de maximiser l’impact de ces travaux. Cette publication a un coût pour les institutions publiques, que ce soit pour le financement du processus éditorial et de production, ou pour l’achat en bibliothèques et la mise à disposition auprès des chercheurs.

Cet article présente les résultats de l’enquête sur les coûts éditoriaux des revues scientifiques menée par le groupe édition de BSN de mars 2014 à janvier 2015 avec pour objectif de collecter une information récente et représentative de la diversité des situations, au sujet des coûts éditoriaux des revues de recherche, afin de faire un état des lieux complet et à jour.

URL : http://rfsic.revues.org/1716

Catégories
EN

‘Predatory’ open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics

Background

A negative consequence of the rapid growth of scholarly open access publishing funded by article processing charges is the emergence of publishers and journals with highly questionable marketing and peer review practices. These so-called predatory publishers are causing unfounded negative publicity for open access publishing in general. Reports about this branch of e-business have so far mainly concentrated on exposing lacking peer review and scandals involving publishers and journals. There is a lack of comprehensive studies about several aspects of this phenomenon, including extent and regional distribution.

Methods

After an initial scan of all predatory publishers and journals included in the so-called Beall’s list, a sample of 613 journals was constructed using a stratified sampling method from the total of over 11,000 journals identified. Information about the subject field, country of publisher, article processing charge and article volumes published between 2010 and 2014 were manually collected from the journal websites. For a subset of journals, individual articles were sampled in order to study the country affiliation of authors and the publication delays.

Results

Over the studied period, predatory journals have rapidly increased their publication volumes from 53,000 in 2010 to an estimated 420,000 articles in 2014, published by around 8,000 active journals. Early on, publishers with more than 100 journals dominated the market, but since 2012 publishers in the 10–99 journal size category have captured the largest market share. The regional distribution of both the publisher’s country and authorship is highly skewed, in particular Asia and Africa contributed three quarters of authors. Authors paid an average article processing charge of 178 USD per article for articles typically published within 2 to 3 months of submission.

Conclusions

Despite a total number of journals and publishing volumes comparable to respectable (indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals) open access journals, the problem of predatory open access seems highly contained to just a few countries, where the academic evaluation practices strongly favor international publication, but without further quality checks.

URL : ‘Predatory’ open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics

Alternative location : http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/13/230

Catégories
FR

Estimation des dépenses de publication de l’Inra dans un modèle théorique « Gold Open Access »

L’étude publiée ici est le résultat d’une simulation menée à l’Institut national de la recherche agronomique (Inra) et dont l’objectif principal était de déterminer quels auraient été les coûts de diffusion en libre accès des articles publiés par ses équipes de recherche sur l’année 2011 selon un modèle Gold Open Access (ou « voie dorée ») dans lequel le financement est assuré par les auteurs et leurs établissements.

Les auteurs de l’étude comparent ensuite ces résultats avec les coûts en abonnements supportés par l’Inra. À l’instar des estimations récentes de Wouter Gerritsma (Wageningen UR Library) au sujet de ce que coûterait le passage intégral au Gold Open Access aux Pays-Bas (wowter.net/2014/03/05/costsgoing-gold-netherlands), la publication de ces résultats a pour objectif d’alimenter la réflexion collective sur l’opportunité de s’orienter vers ce nouveau modèle de diffusion.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01097171/

Catégories
EN

Converting STEM Doctoral Dissertations into Patent Applications: A Study of Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, and Chemical Engineering Dissertations from CIC Institutions

Doctoral candidates may request short-term embargoes on the release of their dissertations in order to apply for patents. This study examines how often inventions described in dissertations in chemical engineering, chemistry, physics, and mathematics are converted into U.S. patent applications, as well as the relationship between dissertation approval dates and patent application filing dates.

Dissertations approved in 2008 by the 13 Committee on Institutional Cooperation universities provided the sample populations. Authors were searched as inventors in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Applications Full-text database to identify relevant patent applications. The number of dissertations yielding applications varied by discipline. Mathematics had none; chemical engineering had the most.

The majority of applications in chemical engineering and chemistry were filed either prior to or in the same month as the dissertation approval dates; all of those in physics were filed after them. These results will be of interest to librarians, administrators, advisors, and anyone else associated with determining and approving embargoes for dissertations, as well as science and engineering librarians working with graduate students interested in patenting the results of their research.

URL : http://www.istl.org/15-summer/refereed3.html

Catégories
EN

The presence of High-impact factor Open Access Journals in Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine (STEM) disciplines

The present study means to establish to what extent high-quality open access journals are available as an outlet for publication, by examining their distribution in different scientific disciplines, including the distribution of those journals without article processing charges.

The study is based on a systematic comparison between the journals included in the DOAJ, and the journals indexed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) Science edition 2013, released by Thomson Reuters.

The impact factor of Open Access (OA) journals was lower than those of other journals by a small but statistically significant amount. Open access journals are present in the upper quartile (by impact factor) of 85 out of 176 (48.8%) categories examined. There were no OA journals with an Impact Factor in only 16 categories (9%).

URL : The presence of High-impact factor Open Access Journals in Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine (STEM) disciplines

Alternative location : http://leo.cineca.it/index.php/jlis/article/view/11257

Catégories
Non classé

Barriers to Open Access Publishing: Views from the Library Literature

The library and information science (LIS) community has an active role in supporting access to information and, therefore, is an important stakeholder in the open access conversation. One major discussion involves the barriers that have hindered the complete transition to open access in scientific publications.

Building upon a longitudinal study by Bo-Christer Björk that looked at barriers to the open access publishing of scholarly articles, this study evaluates the discussion of those barriers in the LIS literature over the ten year period 2004–2014, and compares this to Björk’s conclusions about gold open access publishing. Content analysis and bibliometrics are used to confirm the growth of the discussion of open access in the past ten years and gain insight into the most prevalent issues hindering the development of open access.

URL : Barriers to Open Access Publishing: Views from the Library Literature

DOI : 10.3390/publications3030190