The Workshop on Alternative Open Access Publishing Models organized by the European Commission in October 2015 convened experts to discuss the future of open access as preferable publication model of research results, especially those financed by public funds. The meeting’s approach prioritized issues beyond the mere access to publications and resulted in fairer and more transparent alternative models aimed at increasing the dissemination and use of research by academia and other sectors of society. … Read More →
Open Access in Latin America free of predatory journals
Low quality non peer reviewed open access journals called ‘predatory’ compromise the credibility of open access publishing and cause damage to this business model’s reputation. A detailed study analyzes these journals and their publishers, including geographic location and authors’ profile. … Read More →
France prepares bill to regulate open access
France is preparing a bill to regulate open access to scientific research results financed with public funds. The text of the law, however, does not agree with what the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) believes it benefits the scientific community, the French and the world society. The project is available for public consultation and any Internet user can suggest changes that will impact on the way research is conveyed digitally. Your feedback is very important, vote you too. … Read More →
The publishing proposal of the Open Library of Humanities [Originally published in The Impact Factor Blog]
The Open Library of Humanities (openlibhums.org) is no longer a project. On September 28th, 2015 the mega-journal for humanities and the social sciences came into existence, and at the same time a new funding model. … Read More →
The favourable perception of open access increases among researchers
A research conducted by the Nature Publishing Group indicates that the perception of open access (OA) publishing is rapidly changing among researchers. In 2014, 40% of authors who have not published in OA journals declared themselves concerned about the quality of publications, a percentage which fell to 27% in 2015. The NPG supports OA publications and recognizes its importance, publishing 56% of the articles in this format. … Read More →
What is holding back the transition to open access if it does not cost more?
Transition to Article Processing Charge supported open access from a closed access subscription system is far from straightforward, even if the cost of such an open access system is the same, or even less. There are glimmers of hope, though, in an approach that may help to overcome the hurdles, by taking a large-scale, even nationwide, approach as opposed to the usual one where each individual institution has to weigh up the costs and benefits. … Read More →
Can monies spent globally on journal subscriptions be completely transitioned to an OA business model to free the journals?
The recent rapid growth in open access publishing, and the clear benefits that open access presents to society as a whole leads to the question: can all subscription based scientific journals in the world be transitioned to open access in a sustainable way? Is there enough money currently in the system for such a transition, and would there be any economic impact? A recent eye-opening study published by the Max Planck Digital Library delves into this issue and provides some very concrete answers based on real expenditures in subscriptions and on the real costs of open access services. … Read More →
Study highlights academic journal publication models in Brazil and Spain
Brazil and Spain have a commanding profile in academic output in their respective regions, and possess great potential in the field of scholarly publishing. Notwithstanding the differences in the history of scientific development between the two countries, both have a similar number of journals in the Web of Science database and have developed successful open access models. This article highlights a study carried out by researchers from those two countries and gives an outline of these programs and the reasons behind their success. … Read More →
How much does it cost to publish in Open Access?
Open Access (OA) publication has become the accepted way of providing society with an idea of the public funds used to finance research. Open Access publication does not have a zero cost attached to it. It is however, put forward as a more economical model than journals which are financed by subscriptions. This post analyzes the financing of OA publication and puts forward business models which are seen as sustainable. … Read More →
UNESCO Guidelines provide a detailed review of Open Access
UNESCO has recently published the UNESCO Policy guidelines for the development and promotion of open access, whose objective is to promote Open Access in its Member States. The Guidelines contribute to the understanding of the most important aspects of Open Access so that countries and their institutions may choose appropriate policies and link them to their national research systems. … Read More →
Open access articles are here to stay: in less than 10 years nearly 50% of articles worldwide can be accessed this way
Publication sponsored by the European Commission, which highlights the role of SciELO in Brazil and the southern hemisphere, estimates that 50% of scholarly articles in the world are available in open access. Researchers like Stevan Harnad calculate this rate by 32%. Methodological differences explain the discrepancy, but the results achieved in a decade show no reversal on this trend. … Read More →
Open Access and a call to prevent the looming crisis in science
The number of retracted articles has recently been on the rise. Björn Brembs identifies this tendency as a reflection of an imminent crisis in science whose origin is found in the reward and marketing system of researchers which pressures them to publish in high impact journals. The adoption of open access platforms is a way to prevent this crisis. … Read More →
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