On the 20th anniversary of the BOAI, when the concept of “open access” was coined, the Open Access Initiative announces new international recommendations that aim to dismantle inequalities and achieve greater equity and inclusiveness in creating, contributing to, accessing, and benefiting from knowledge. … Read More →
Measuring and comparing Brazilian and Latin-American universities in terms of academic and industry related knowledge production
The use of the multidimensional academic ranking U-Multirank to compare academic and industry-related knowledge production of Brazilian Universities with other Latin American countries, shows that, while Brazil leads in number of academic publications, Chile is ahead in both citation numbers and patents awarded, with Brazil lagging behind in these Indicators’ world averages. … Read More →
Accelerating Plan S: open access agreements with smaller publishers
Open Access (OA) agreements between consortia, libraries and smaller independent publishers are increasingly being used around the world, reflected by the growing number of published OA articles. A recent report from the Association of Learned & Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), of which SciELO is a member, shows the progress being made in other regions of the world. On the other hand, Latin America, a pioneer in OA journals, does not suffer from these limitations, but for small publishers in many countries there is still a long way to go. … Read More →
DOAJ to lead a collaboration to improve the preservation of open access journals [Originally published in ISSN.org in November/2020]
DOAJ, CLOCKSS Archive, Internet Archive, Keepers Registry/ISSN International Centre and Public Knowledge Project (PKP) have agreed to partner to provide an alternative pathway for the preservation of small-scale, APC-free, Open Access journals. … Read More →
Notice to mariners – times have changed
Open access… and everything. Finally, what happened 20 years ago and felt like a utopia of copyright pirates is becoming irreversible, like a tsunami. Publishers and scientific information cannot ignore the theme of open access, so that they can compete and don’t stay out of this market. Things are changing and there’s no going back. … Read More →
A look at peer review of grant proposals
The scholarly peer review tracking platform Publons has launched the Grant Review in Focus on project assessment and identification for funding. Four thousand and seven hundred researchers were interviewed as well as data extracted from Web of Science. … Read More →
Launch of the Global Alliance of Open Access Scholarly Communication Platforms to democratize knowledge [Originally published in UNESCO’s website in April/2019]
Open access to scientific knowledge gained significant momentum with the alliance of 6 web-based journal publishing platforms from four continents – AJOL from Africa, AmeliCA from Latin America and Global South, Érudit from Canada, J-STAGE from Japan, OpenEdition from France and the SciELO Network that operates in Latin America, South Africa, Spain and Portugal. The Global Alliance of Open Access Scholarly Communication (GLOALL) was conceived during the SciELO 20 Years Week and formally launched on April 8 in the session dedicated to the dissemination of scientific information of the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS). The session and the launching of the GLOALL were promoted by UNESCO. The alliance defends geographic, thematic and cultural bibliodiversity in the development of the global flow of scientific information. … Read More →
Is a dramatic boost to open access imminent? I think so!
Recent developments, such as Plan S, a funder mandate for grantees to publish their findings with open access, as well as the growth in preprints – in terms of number of articles posted as well as preprint services becoming available – are bound to have a major impact on the amount of new scientific journal literature being openly and freely accessible by anyone, anywhere. … Read More →
From star peer reviewers to ghost peer reviewers – Part II
Open reviews and the emergence of platforms such as Publons, which publish these activities and integrate them into other academic tasks, open the possibility of the emergence of a new aspect of bibliometrics and certainly a new and prestigious market. … Read More →
From star peer reviewers to ghost peer reviewers – Part I
Peer review is an integral part of scholarly publishing and is carried out globally by most researchers in developed countries. To what extent researchers from emerging countries participate and which measures of their performance are reported in the result of the largest survey on peer review conducted so far. This note is the first of two on the subject. … Read More →
Administration of research data in France’s CNRS
The paper discussed here presents the results of a national CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) survey answered by 432 directors of public research laboratories in France on the opinions and behavior of experienced scientists about research data management (RDM). … Read More →
Plan S — and Article Processing Charges (APCs)
Recently, in Europe, a plan has been launched to accelerate the transition to open access. It is called Plan S. Its key principle is stated as follows: “After 1 January 2020 scientific publications on the results from research funded by public grants provided by national and European research councils and funding bodies, must be published in compliant Open Access Journals or on compliant Open Access Platforms.” Some issues are highlighted, especially the issue of the cost of APCs, and some suggestions for possible improvement of Plan S are given. … Read More →
Geo for All – Open Principles in GeoEducation and Science
Central to Geo for All mission is the belief that knowledge is a public good and Open Principles in Education will provide great opportunities for everyone. The key ingredients that make Open Geospatial Science possible are enshrined in Open Principles, i.e: Open Source geospatial software, Open data, Open standards, Open educational resources, and Open access to research publications. … Read More →
Peer review: journal recommendation to reviewers
Despite undergoing transformations to become more sustainable, fast, and efficient, peer review is the process that contributes to increasing the quality and reliability of scholarly communication. Few journals, however, provide their reviewers with detailed instructions on how to carry out this assessment in accordance with their editorial policy, which reduces the effectiveness and efficiency of the process. … Read More →
The Center for Open Science, alternative to Elsevier, announces new preprint services [Originally published in Ithaka S+R blog in August/2017]
As commercial providers buy and build their way into the institutional repository and preprint marketplace, the not-for-profit Center for Open Science (COS) is offering an alternative by expanding what it calls the preprint services it powers through its platform. … Read More →
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