Supporting researchers in the publication process with open, algorithm-based tools

There is a whole range of web-based services out there designed to assist researchers in the publication process - in their role as authors, editors, reviewers - at its various stages. Few of those, however, are inherently aligned with the needs and interests of the research community: the underlying procedures and data sources are not transparent and the source code not publicly available, their sustainability perspective is unclear, they are often provided by commercial actors. In our talk, we present two approaches with which we want to do things differently: B!SON, an open journal recommender that is already available, and our ideas for a reviewer recommender, based on the preliminary work and procedures from the B!SON development. B!SON is a tool for identifying suitable Open Access journals for a manuscript, developed and pro- vided by TIB (Technische Informationsbibliothek) and SLUB (Saxonian State and University Library Dresden). It uses community-based, open data sources, discloses its recommendation algorithm based on semantic and bibliometric similarity detection, handles user data sensitively and has been designed with sustainability in mind. The simple user interface, with input fields for a manuscript's title, ab- stract and references, provides users with a list of Open Access journals in which similar research has been published. For each journal listed, a similarity score is provided, along with the underlying articles where similarity was found, to make the recommendation verifiable. With the development of B!SON, we primarily aim at supporting researchers in their decision-making process and promote open access publishing options. At the same time, however, we want to support libraries as well as other institutions providing publishing advice, but also journals and publishers, especially smaller ones. With our new project we want to build on the semantic and bibliometric similarity detection of B!SON while applying the same principles of openness in the development, but investigate a different use case: the need for an open tool for reviewer search, especially in the emerging landscape of Open Access journals run by the scientific community. Providing a tool to better manage the peer review process that can be integrated into existing publication infrastructures will support these infrastructures and the publications appearing there, and eventually enhance their reputation and attractiveness. Its use carries the potential to promote a faster, appropriate and less biased review process. In addition to reducing the workload for the selection of reviewers by editors, this can increase the confidence of authors in community-based open access publications and ultimately the quality of these publications. Furthermore, such a tool, which draws on large data corpora of already published literature and other scientific output, makes it easier to find reviewers for innovative and unique as well as inter- or transdisciplinary topics for the respective sub-disciplines than is possible with manual searches, and it can also provide initial indications of possible conflicts of interest. Presentation for a talk held at MaRDI Minisymposium "Towards a digital infrastructure for mathematical research" on September 25, 2023

B!SON - algorithmenbasiertes Empfehlungssystem für Open-Access-Zeitschriften

Um Forschende bei der Identifizierung geeigneter Open-Access-Zeitschriften für ihre Forschungsergebnisse zu unterstützen, haben TIB und SLUB Dresden im Rahmen der BMBF-geförderten Richtlinie "Beschleunigung der Transformation zu Open Access" und in Zusammenarbeit mit vielen Partnereinrichtungen B!SON als offenen und unabhängigen Dienst entwickelt. Ausgehend von einem zu veröffentlichenden Manuskript kommen semantische und bibliometrische Verfahren zum Einsatz, um inhaltlich passende und qualitätsgesicherte Open-Access-Zeitschriften vorzuschlagen. Im Gegensatz zu ähnlichen Angeboten setzt B!SON dabei auf eine offene und nachhaltige Infrastruktur: Der Dienst bezieht die für die Ähnlichkeitsbestimmung benötigten Metadaten von den Partnern DOAJ und OpenCitations; der Quellcode ist unter einer freien Lizenz veröffentlicht. In unserem Kolloquiumsvortrag stellen wir den B!SON Journal Recommender als zentrales Projektergebnis vor und geben Einblicke in die zum Einsatz kommenden technischen Verfahren sowie einen Ausblick auf weitere Planungen im Umfeld des Projekts

Open-Access-Transformation in Brandenburg: Eine partizipativ erarbeitete Strategie geht in die Implementierungsphase

Im Beitrag werden a) Einblicke in den Prozess gegeben, der 2019 zur Open-Access-Strategie des Landes Brandenburg geführt hat, b) die wesentlichen Aussagen, Leitprinzipien, Ziele und Maßnahmen des Strategiepapiers und das Umsetzungskonzept, speziell zur Vernetzungs- und Kompetenzstelle, vorgestellt, c) Ausblicke auf die konkreten kommenden Unterstützungsstrukturen gegeben, die die Brandenburger Einrichtungen in die Lage versetzen sollen, die Leitprinzipien der Strategie mit Leben zu füllen und ihre Ziele zu erreichen.In the paper, a) insights are provided into the process that led to the Brandenburg Open Access Strategy in 2019, b) the main statements, guiding principles, goals and measures of the strategy paper and the implementation concept, especially for the networking and competence centre, are presented, c) outlooks are given on the concrete upcoming support structures that should enable Brandenburg institutions to fill the guiding principles of the strategy with life and achieve their goals

B!SON - algorithmenbasiertes Empfehlungssystem für Open-Access-Zeitschriften

Um Forschende bei der Identifizierung geeigneter Open-Access-Zeitschriften für ihre Forschungsergebnisse zu unterstützen, haben TIB und SLUB Dresden im Rahmen der BMBF-geförderten Richtlinie "Beschleunigung der Transformation zu Open Access" und in Zusammenarbeit mit vielen Partnereinrichtungen B!SON als offenen und unabhängigen Dienst entwickelt. Ausgehend von einem zu veröffentlichenden Manuskript kommen semantische und bibliometrische Verfahren zum Einsatz, um inhaltlich passende und qualitätsgesicherte Open-Access-Zeitschriften vorzuschlagen. Im Gegensatz zu ähnlichen Angeboten setzt B!SON dabei auf eine offene und nachhaltige Infrastruktur: Der Dienst bezieht die für die Ähnlichkeitsbestimmung benötigten Metadaten von den Partnern DOAJ und OpenCitations; der Quellcode ist unter einer freien Lizenz veröffentlicht. In unserem Kolloquiumsvortrag stellen wir den B!SON Journal Recommender als zentrales Projektergebnis vor und geben Einblicke in die zum Einsatz kommenden technischen Verfahren sowie einen Ausblick auf weitere Planungen im Umfeld des Projekts

LEIBNIZ-FONDS REVISITED. Open-Access-Publikationsfonds der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft: zentraler Service, dezentrale Finanzierung, Opt-In

[no abstract available

Der Publikationsfonds für Open-Access-Monografien Brandenburg - der erste seiner Art auf Bundeslandebene

Seit Herbst 2021 steht Angehörigen der acht Hochschulen des Landes Brandenburg ein landesweiter Publikationsfonds für Open-Access-Monografien zur Verfügung. Dieser wird vom Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur Brandenburg (MWFK) bereitgestellt, von der Vernetzungs- und Kompetenzstelle Open Access Brandenburg (VuK) koordiniert und gemeinsam mit der AG Publikationsfonds für Open-Access-Monografien Brandenburg weiterentwickelt. Im Poster werden Förderziele und -kriterien sowie der Workflow zwischen Autor:innen, VuK, Bibliotheken und Verlagen dargestellt. Zusätzlich gibt das Poster einen zahlenmäßigen Überblick zur bisherigen Nutzung des Fonds und stellt Herausforderungen und Erfahrungen aus einem Jahr Publikationsfonds-Betrieb dar (Stand Juni 2022). Gestaltung: Nora Ancheva, https://www.togettr.d

B!SON: A Tool for Open Access Journal Recommendation

Finding a suitable open access journal to publish scientific work is a complex task: Researchers have to navigate a constantly growing number of journals, institutional agreements with publishers, funders’ conditions and the risk of Predatory Publishers. To help with these challenges, we introduce a web-based journal recommendation system called B!SON. It is developed based on a systematic requirements analysis, built on open data, gives publisher-independent recommendations and works across domains. It suggests open access journals based on title, abstract and references provided by the user. The recommendation quality has been evaluated using a large test set of 10,000 articles. Development by two German scientific libraries ensures the longevity of the project

Comparing different search methods for the open access journal recommendation tool B!SON

Finding a suitable open access journal to publish academic work is a complex task: Researchers have to navigate a constantly growing number of journals, institutional agreements with publishers, funders’ conditions and the risk of predatory publishers. To help with these challenges, we introduce a web-based journal recommendation system called B!SON. A systematic requirements analysis was conducted in the form of a survey. The developed tool suggests open access journals based on title, abstract and references provided by the user. The recommendations are built on open data, publisher-independent and work across domains and languages. Transparency is provided by its open source nature, an open application programming interface (API) and by specifying which matches the shown recommendations are based on. The recommendation quality has been evaluated using two different evaluation techniques, including several new recommendation methods. We were able to improve the results from our previous paper with a pre-trained transformer model. The beta version of the tool received positive feedback from the community and in several test sessions. We developed a recommendation system for open access journals to help researchers find a suitable journal. The open tool has been extensively tested, and we found possible improvements for our current recommendation technique. Development by two German academic libraries ensures the longevity and sustainability of the system.German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)/Projekt DEAL/16TOA034A/E

Workshop-Bericht "Journals in der Open-Access-Transformation"

In einem virtuellen Workshop diskutierten die fünf vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) geförderten Projekte B!SON, CODRIA, KOALA, OPTIMETA und Scholar-led Plus ihre Zwischenergebnisse mit der Fachöffentlichkeit

B!SON - an open tool to help researchers find suitable Open Access journals for their work

The poster presents key facts on B!SON, an open recommendation service for Open Access journals. There is a whole range of web-based services designed to help researchers find a suitable journal for their findings. Few of them, however, are inherently oriented towards the needs and interests of the research community: they are often provided by commercial actors, only include journals of one single (major) publisher, the procedures for the recommendations are not transparent, the source code is not publicly available, their sustainability is unclear or they are merely aggregated journal lists with advanced filter functions. B!SON has set out to do things differently: It is a tool developed and provided by two major German academic libraries - TIB (Technische Informationsbibliothek) and SLUB (Saxonian State and University Library Dresden). It includes only genuine Open Access journals, uses only community-based, open data sources from DOAJ and OpenCitations, discloses its recommendation algorithm based on semantic and bibliometric methods, handles user data sensitively and has been designed with sustainability in mind. B!SON's simple user interface with input fields for a manuscript's title, abstract and references provides users with a list of DOAJ-listed journals in which similar research has been published. A similarity score is provided for each journal listed, along with the underlying articles where similarity was found, to make the recommendation verifiable