The Publishers' Pushback against NIH's Public Access and Scholarly Publishing Sustainability

Last September, US Congressman John Conyers introduced the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act. John Willinsky explains how the bill's Orwellian title obscures its true aim: to derail the new policy implemented by the National Institutes of Health to open access to publicly funded research, amid talk of sustainability that cuts both ways

JOAL Special issue on "Open Science and Data Protection" Part I Commentary: On Not Taking Open for Granted

Part I of this special double-issue on "Open Science and Data Protection" from the Journal of Open Access to Law (Vol 11, No 1) presents four papers that grapple with the larger picture of today’s digital-era move to open science

What Those Responsible for Open Infrastructure in Scholarly Communication Can Do about Possibly Predatory Practices

This chapter presents a three-phase analysis of 521 journals that use the open source publishing platform Open Journal Systems (OJS) while appearing on Beall’s list of predatory publishers and journals and/or inCabells Predatory Reports, both which purport to identify journals that charge authors article processing fees (APC) to publish in the pretense of a peer-reviewed journal. In 2020, 25,671 journals were actively using OJS, with 81.3 percent in the Global South, representing a great growth in global research activities. As members of the Public Knowledge Project, which develops this freely available publishing platform, the authors feel a responsibility to explore what platform developers can do to address both the real problem of duplicitous journals and the over-ascription of the “predatory” label to publishers and journals. represented by the authors of this chapter, Drawing on data from the beacon is a part of OJS, the chapter represents an assessment and intervention In the first phase, the researchers reached out to 50 publishers and 51 journals that use OJS and appear on Beall’s list offering to assist in improving their journal quality. The response from 14 publishers (28.0 percent) among publishers and two journals (3.9 percent) among standalone journals demonstrated a likely misanalysis as “predatory” along multiple dimensions from financial model to peer-review evidence. The second phase, devoted to assessing the degree to which journals using OJS are implicated in this issue, revealed that 2.0 percent of the journals using OJS are on one or both lists. The two phases point to how the identification issue is not that of Beall or Cabells International, but results from a journal tradition of asking readers to take on trust the adherence to scholarly standards. Amid the increase in research and open access to it, the third phase of this study introduces PKP’s new technical strategy for verifying and communicating standards adherence to the public. Work has begun on systems involving trade organizations, such ORCiD and Crossref, for authenticating journal practices (including editorial oversight, peer review, research funding, and data management), while communication strategies include adapting and testing with students and professionals the familiar Nutrition Facts label used with packaged foods. The goal is to provide a publicly accessible industry standard for more reliably assessing journal quality

The Publication Facts Label: Ascertaining a Publication’s Adherence to Scholarly Standards

This is a case study of a digital innovation aimed at increasing researchers’, professionals’, and the general public’s ability to approach research publications with a ready method of checking its compliance with the features that set scholarly publishing apart from other sources of information. More specifically, the innovation consists of generating a “publication facts label” (PFL) for articles and journals, which records their adherence to eight elements that reflect scholarly publishing standards. The label conveys data and links for publisher identity, scholarly editorial oversight, article acceptance rates, journal indexing, expert peer review, competing interests, data availability, and research funding (Fig. 1). The PFL is modeled on the United States nutrition facts label that, since 1996, has appeared on food products, proving itself an effective science communication strategy with adoptions around the world in different formats (Christof et al., 2018; Post et al., 2010). At this point, the PFL is being developed as an open source software project by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) at Simon Fraser University for use with its Open Journal Systems. In this case study, we present the rationale, design, and assessment strategies involved in PFL development and piloting. Although the PFL is still at an early stage, we consider the lessons already learned from this approach worth introducing into the industry’s current emphasis on ways to improve research integrity

Delayed Open Access – an overlooked high-impact category of openly available scientific literature

Delayed open access (OA) refers to scholarly articles in subscription journals made available openly on the web directly through the publisher at the expiry of a set embargo period. Though a substantial number of journals have practiced delayed OA since they started publishing e-versions, empirical studies concerning open access have often overlooked this body of literature. This study provides comprehensive quantitative measurements by identifying delayed OA journals, collecting data concerning their publication volumes, embargo lengths, and citation rates. Altogether 492 journals were identified, publishing a combined total of 111 312 articles in 2011. 77,8 % of these articles were made open access within 12 months from publication, with 85,4 % becoming available within 24 months. A journal impact factor analysis revealed that delayed OA journals have on average twice as high average citation rates compared to closed subscription journals, and three times as high as immediate OA journals. Overall the results demonstrate that delayed OA journals constitute an important segment of the openly available scholarly journal literature, both by their sheer article volume as well as by including a substantial proportion of high impact journals.peerReviewe

Medindo, classificando, apoiando e fortalecendo a publicação científica em acesso aberto no Brasil

This study assesses the extent and nature of open access scholarly publishing in Brazil, one of the world’s leaders in providing universal access to its research and scholarship. It utilizes Brazil’s Qualis journal evaluation system, along with other relevant data bases to address the association between scholarly quality and open access in the Brazilian context. Through cross tabulation among these various data sets, it is possible to arrive at a reasonably accurate picture of journals, systems, ratings, and disciplines. The study establishes reliable measures and counts of Brazilian scholarly publications, the proportion and types of open access, and journals ratings and by disciplinary field. It finds that the better the Brazilian journal, the more likely it is to be open access. It also finds that Qualis ranks Brazilian journals lower overall than the international journals in which Brazilian authors publish, most notably in the field of the biological sciences. The study concludes with a consideration of the policy implications for building on the country’s global leadership in open access to strengthen the quality of its global contribution to knowledge. Este estudio analiza la naturaleza y el alcance de las publicaciones de acceso abierto en Brasil, uno de los líderes mundiales a nivel de acceso abierto a la investigación. En es estudio se utiliza el sistema Brasilero de evaluación de revistas Qualis junto con otras bases de datos pertinentes para explorar la relación entre la calidad académica y el acceso abierto en el contexto brasileño. Al cruzar estos diversos conjuntos de datos, se obtiene un panorama razonable de las revistas, sistemas, evaluaciones y disciplinas. El estudio establece medidas y conteos de las publicaciones académicas brasileñas, la proporción y tipos de acceso abierto así como sus evaluaciones por disciplina. Entre los hallazgos queda claro que cuanto mejor sea la evaluación de las revista brasileña, más probable es que sea de acceso abierto. También se encuentra que, dentro del sistema Qualis, las revistas brasileñas son evaluadas por debajo de las revistas internacionales en las que publican autores brasileños, sobre todo en el campo de las ciencias biológicas. El estudio concluye con una consideración sobre las consecuencias de las políticas que pueden capitalizar sobre el liderazgo global del país en el acceso abierto para fortalecer la calidad de su contribución al conocimiento mundial. Este estudo avalia a extensão e a natureza da publicação científica em Acesso Aberto no Brasil, um dos países líderes no mundo na disponibilização de acesso universal à pesquisa e ao conhecimento. É utilizado o Sistema Qualis de Avaliação de Periódicos, juntamente com outras relevantes bases de dados para abordar a associação entre a qualidade da produção científica e o acesso aberto dentro do contexto brasileiro. Por meio de tabulação cruzada entre os vários conjuntos de dados, é possível chegar a um panorama razoavelmente preciso em termos do número de periódicos, sistemas, classificações e áreas de atuação. O estudo apresenta uma confiável medida e contagem do número de publicações científicas no Brasil, a proporção e o tipo de acesso aberto e as classificações dos periódicos por áreas temáticas. É constatado que quanto melhores classificados os periódicos científicos, maiores as chances de que estes estejam em acesso aberto. Também mostra que o sistema Qualis classifica periódicos brasileiros de modo inferior, se comparado com as classificações dadas para as revistas internacionais em que autores brasileiros publicam, principalmente no campo das ciências biológicas. Por fim, são  traçadas considerações sobre as implicações políticas para a construção de liderança mundial do país em acesso aberto, com vistas à reforçar a qualidade da sua contribuição global para o conhecimento

Open access in humanities and social sciences: visions for the future of publishing

For this month's column, the editors are gearing up for the Library Publishing Forum, which will be held March 29?30, 2015, at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. We have interviewed the forum's keynote speakers, Martin Paul Eve and John Willinsky, who will share their vision of open access in the humanities and social sciences as well as their thoughts on future developments

The Academic Library in the Face of Cooperative and Commercial Paths to Open Access

This paper sets out the place of the academic library within the digital-era developments of open access to research and scholarship. It analyzes how this development, now that open access is becoming a scholarly norm and common goal for scholarly publishing, is taking two forms, both of which are about making the move, if not a flip, from the subscription model for the circulation of journals to that of open access. The paper sets out the terms and instances of the two paths to open access. The one is a commercialization of open access publishing dominated by the large corporate academic publishers that are pursuing open access on their own terms through the article processing charge (APC) and in relation to the acquisition and development of scholarly communication infrastructure. The other, older tradition, if still on a smaller scale, is one of cooperation and collaboration, growing out of the commons that the library has always represented, involving libraries, journals, and archives, as well as open source tool and platform development. There is some crossover between the two paths, between library consortia and corporate publishers, and this paper encourages librarians to consider how they might take advantage of the market for publishing services that the two paths are creating amid the move to universal open access as a scholarly norm