Scientific journals, overlays and repositories: a case study of costs and sustainability issues

Publishing scientific research is an area of study that attracts interest from various stakeholders such as publishers, academic and research staff, libraries and funders. In the past decade increased journal subscription fees prompted calls for cheaper and more efficient means of accessing the scientific literature. Factors such as the expansion of digital repositories, the introduction of open source journal management software, an increasing awareness within the scholarly community at large of the issues around open access, and an increasing readiness within the publishing community to experiment with new models, suggest that the circumstances may now be right for new models of scientific publishing to be explored, as well as potential business models and sustainable solutions around them. This paper explores some of the issues around the costs and sustainability of a prospective journal model known as the overlay journal. We present estimates of initial start up costs for such a model, discuss the factors that would influence scientists in deciding whether to publish in a journal overlaid onto a public repository; and report their views on the relative importance of different features and functions of a journal in terms of funding priorities

Exploring aspects of scientific publishing in astrophysics and cosmology: the views of scientists

Scientists in astrophysics and cosmology make much use of the arXiv repository. Concerns raised by scientists in those fields about publication costs and delays, and the transparency and validity of the peer review process, raised questions about levels of satisfaction with existing publishing models. This paper discusses the results from a community survey in the fields of astrophysics and cosmology, conducted as part of an investigation into the feasibility of an "overlay journal" model in these disciplines. Six hundred and eighty three (683) researchers provided information about their academic/research background, their research practices, and their attitudes, both as producers and consumers of information, to the traditional journal publishing system, and gave their reaction to the overlay publication model. The survey results indicate that scientists in these disciplines are, in general, favourably disposed towards new publishing models, although some important caveats and concerns, particularly regarding quality, were highlighted

Investigating overlay journals: introducing the RIOJA Project

Introduces the RIOJA (Repository Interface to Overlaid Journal Archives) project, a 1-year partnership between UCL (University College London), Imperial College London, and the Universities of Glasgow, Cambridge and Cornell. The project will work with the Astrophysics community to investigate aspects of overlay journals. For the purposes of the project, an overlay journal is defined as an open access, quality-assured journal whose content is held on one or more repositories

Publishing scientific research: is there ground for new ventures?

This paper highlights some of the issues that have been reported in surveys carried out by the RIOJA (Repository Interface for Overlaid Journal Archives) project (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ls/rioja). Six hundred and eighty three scientists (17% of 4012 contacted), and representatives from publishing houses and members of editorial boards from peer-reviewed journals in astrophysics and cosmology provided their views regarding the overlay journal model. In general the scientists were disposed favourably towards the overlay journal model. However, they raised several implementation issues that they would consider important, primarily relating to the quality of the editorial board and of the published papers, the speed and quality of the peer review process, and the long-term archiving of the accepted research material. The traditional copy-editing function remains important to researchers in these disciplines, as is the visibility of research in indexing services. The printed volume is of little interest

The DART-Europe project: towards developing a European theses portal

This paper will report on the new European theses project DART-Europe. The purpose of this project is to align institutional and national e-theses developments across Europe with the wider open archives movement by the construction of a European portal for research theses, thus enabling a global view of European institutional research assets. This project is driven through an innovative partnership between an information provider and an international body of university libraries and open access consortia. The project’s goal is to explore the creation of a European model for the deposit, discovery, use and long-term care of research theses in an open access environment. The paper will outline the projected outcomes of DART-Europe, which is an active group of institutions in addition to a technical service. To this end, DART-Europe is engaged with disciplines and institutions that are widening the definition of research by redefining the formats of theses. For institutions and countries without a repository infrastructure, DART-Europe will enable the creation of a depository. Institutions and countries with a repository infrastructure can engage with DART-Europe to deliver their e-theses. DART-Europe acts as a technology bridge for researchers between those who have existing infrastructures and those who do not. The DART-Europe architecture assumes free at point of use access to full text theses, whether held on the DART-Europe server or by institutional repositories. This paper will provide session attendees with the current progress of this initiative, including a report on the 5 strands of the project, including: architecture; creation of a management tool kit; content acquisition; digital preservation and an investigation of business models

Open Access in UCL: a new paradigm for London's Global University in research support

Open Access provides an opportunity for researchers to disseminate their research globally, but it comes with challenges. This article looks at the various ways in which UCL (University College London) has addressed those challenges, by investing in Open Access activities at the university

Cored in the act: The use of models to understand core myopathies

The core myopathies are a group of congenital myopathies with variable clinical expression - ranging from early-onset skeletal-muscle weakness to later-onset disease of variable severity - that are identified by characteristic 'core-like' lesions in myofibers and the presence of hypothonia and slowly or rather non-progressive muscle weakness. The genetic causes are diverse; central core disease is most often caused by mutations in ryanodine receptor 1 (RYR1), whereas multi-minicore disease is linked to pathogenic variants of several genes, including selenoprotein N (SELENON), RYR1 and titin (TTN). Understanding the mechanisms that drive core development and muscle weakness remains challenging due to the diversity of the excitation-contraction coupling (ECC) proteins involved and the differential effects of mutations across proteins. Because of this, the use of representative models expressing a mature ECC apparatus is crucial. Animal models have facilitated the identification of disease progression mechanisms for some mutations and have provided evidence to help explain genotype-phenotype correlations. However, many unanswered questions remain about the common and divergent pathological mechanisms that drive disease progression, and these mechanisms need to be understood in order to identify therapeutic targets. Several new transgenic animals have been described recently, expanding the spectrum of core myopathy models, including mice with patient-specific mutations. Furthermore, recent developments in 3D tissue engineering are expected to enable the study of core myopathy disease progression and the effects of potential therapeutic interventions in the context of human cells. In this Review, we summarize the current landscape of core myopathy models, and assess the hurdles and opportunities of future modeling strategies

Analysis of the complete genome sequence of Cucumber mosaic virus strain K

The complete genome sequence of Cucumber mosaic virus strain K was determined by deep RNA sequencing. The tripartite genome consists of a 3,382-nucleotide (nt) RNA1, a 3,050-nt RNA2, and a 2,218-nt RNA3 segment. Phylogenetic analysis placed RNA1 and RNA2 in subgroup IB. However, RNA3 grouped with subgroup IA isolates, indicating a likely recombination event. © 2018 Moyle et al