OATP primary |
- Independent Peer Review Manifesto | Open Scholar C.I.C.
- Open Access Policy Guidelines for Research Performing Organizations
- Practicing open data: publishing court decisions in Germany | space for transparency
- Out now: Publication on The Role of Open Data in Sustainable Transport - SUTP
- Open Access and Research Data management: Horizon 2020 and Beyond in Ireland. : OpenAIRE blog
- When Pragmatism Collides With Fundamentalism-PLOS Hikes Publication Fees | The Scholarly Kitchen
- Opinion: A New Era in Science Publishing?
- Celebrate Opentober at Morgan Library | SOURCE
- Supporting institutions with open access implementation | Jisc
- AACSB and the Importance of Open Access
- Peer review: are you actually volunteering your time? — Medium
- Manar Al-Athar
| Independent Peer Review Manifesto | Open Scholar C.I.C. Posted: 30 Sep 2015 07:44 AM PDT " ... There is still, however, a serious obstacle blocking progress towards a truly open and democratic system of knowledge creation and exchange. At present, the formal evaluation of research output is exclusively controlled by academic journals that are also responsible for access to knowledge. Journal dominance over both, research evaluation and publication has led to an accumulation of influence that is limiting academia. Questionable measures of journal impact have become synonymous with prestige and are so pervasive that our academic worth as individuals is now being judged based upon where we publish instead of what we publish ... Since the problem has its roots in the combined power of evaluation and publication under a single authority (journals), the solution lies in separating these powers. Although the majority of researchers feel that journals are essential to scholarly communication, more and more voices are being raised and are questioning the way journal peer review is used to certify the validity and quality of our work. Indeed, there is a growing conviction among scholars that scientific progress and society would benefit from the open and transparent scrutiny of original ideas, results, data and code by the entire academic community, whose collective wisdom can lead to a more accurate and objective evaluation. To achieve immediate, free, journal-independent, open and transparent peer review, we propose the following four complementary strategies ..." |
| Open Access Policy Guidelines for Research Performing Organizations Posted: 30 Sep 2015 06:47 AM PDT "The present guidelines aim to assist in the development of efficient Open Access policies among Research Performing Organisations. They have been prepared by the National Documentation Centre and SPARC Europe as part of the work of the PASTEUR4OA project. They provide the context, the process and a model policy that will enable the institutions to devise and implement their own Open Access policy. The proposed policy draws heavily on the UNESCO Open Access policy development guidelines, the MedOANet guidelines for Open Access, PASTEUR4OA work on the efficiency of existing Open Access policies, and the RECODE project policy recommendations for Open Access policies to research data. The proposed policy aims at aligning institutional policies with the 2012 Recommendation of the European Commission and the Horizon 2020 requirements. It follows current good practices in institutional and funder policies, as they emerged from PASTEUR4OA research on policy efficiency, suggesting and obligatory and non-waivable deposit in repositories as the most successful way leading to the growth of Open Access to scientific information...." |
| Practicing open data: publishing court decisions in Germany | space for transparency Posted: 30 Sep 2015 01:21 AM PDT "In Germany, we have been pushing for the publication of court decisions that include the names of the guilty parties particularly when it comes to naming those involved in foreign bribery. A 1993 study found that only 0.5 per cent of all court decisions are published. Even at the level of federal courts, the publication rate ranges only between 2 per cent (Federal Patent Court) and 44 per cent (Federal Tax Court). While results will have improved since then, Germany is far from publishing all court decisions at all levels. A decision of the Federal Administrative Court (Bundesverwaltungsgericht) of 1997 held that publication of court decisions is a constitutionally mandated task of the judiciary and therefore of every court. All decisions, whose publication the general public could have an interest in, have to be published. With this qualification, not all decisions have to be published, but with a rising public interest in court decisions and open data, more and more decisions will. In addition, decisions 'are to be prepared for delivery to the public by anonymization'. This is apparently because naming and shaming is frowned upon in Germany ..." |
| Out now: Publication on The Role of Open Data in Sustainable Transport - SUTP Posted: 30 Sep 2015 01:20 AM PDT "Today, innovative solutions in transport are mainly driven by digital applications. Data, collected by apps themselves or by third parties, is often publicly available and can be used through interfaces in other apps. Governments and organisations generate data in the form of documents, databases, records, transcripts, etc., but historically this information has not always been available or open to the broader public. Opening data to the public can drive internal efficiency, spark community engagement and fuel a civic tech ecosystem. A lack of knowledge and clarity can create hesitation and wariness towards opening data when, in fact, open data may help to make governments more transparent and efficient and could unlock the potential of official data to enable new services that, in turn, improve life of citizens. Public transport users increasingly demand smarter cities that provide digital information, particularly real-time updates on their journeys. The concept of smart cities revolves around a more integrated approach of data and urban transport provision. Open data can save both time and money in collecting such information about routes. This publication introduces the role of open data in sustainable transport – stressing challenges and opportunities and exemplifies the usage of open data in the context of developed and developing cities. Please download here ..." |
| Open Access and Research Data management: Horizon 2020 and Beyond in Ireland. : OpenAIRE blog Posted: 30 Sep 2015 01:15 AM PDT "In April of this year University College Cork (UCC) hosted a 2-day training event focusing on Open Access Data in Horizon 2020. The event was sponsored by FOSTER and organized jointly by UCC Boole Library and Repository Network Ireland. Day one was aimed at researchers and others who were interested in developing Horizon 2020 proposals ... The day gave attendees an overview of open data in Horizon 2020 (Martin Donnelly). Jonathan Tedds demonstrated how the work of his research team benefits from the use of open data. Joe Doyle from enterprise Ireland discussed intellectual property and how Open Access can benefit innovation. In the afternoon Martin Donnelly gave a 2nd presentation on how to develop data management plans. Finally there were 3 case studies. Brian Clayton, Peter Mooney & Evelyn Flanagan all gave examples on how research data is currently being managed in Ireland ..." |
| When Pragmatism Collides With Fundamentalism-PLOS Hikes Publication Fees | The Scholarly Kitchen Posted: 30 Sep 2015 01:13 AM PDT "For the first time since 2009, the Public Library of Science announced that they were hiking the price of publishing in PLOS ONE by $145, from $1350 to $1495–an increase of 11%. Compared to increases in the costs of living or higher education in the United States, this rate hike barely covers inflation. So, why did such a small price increase arouse such a negative reaction from open access advocates? In the following public Twitter exchange, Michael Eisen, who sits on PLOS' Board of Directors, defends the publisher's price hike, justifying their decision on the growing costs of publishing. If you didn't know Michael Eisen, you might be convinced that the responses were coming from the Director of Public Relations at a large commercial publishing house ... Now granted, PeerJ does not charge $99 per paper, but applies membership fees starting at $99 per author, so the comparison is not accurate. However, the argument that open access publishing can be done much cheaper is shared by many OA advocates. If you look at the PLOS' latest financial statement, it appears that PLOS operates more like a commercial publisher than a charity. In 2014, the not-for-profit publisher made $4.9 million surplus on $48.5 million in revenue. The vast majority of this revenue came from article processing fees for papers published in PLOS ONE, which numbered more than 33,000. PLOS' profit margins are some of the highest in the industry, making one wonder why such a profitable non-for-profit needed to raise rates. I should note that PLOS is only raising its publication fees for PLOS ONE and leaves its other journals untouched, in spite of the fact that current article processing charges (APCs) do not cover their operating expenses, according to Eisen. Profits from PLOS ONE continue to subsidize PLOS' more selective titles ..." |
| Opinion: A New Era in Science Publishing? Posted: 30 Sep 2015 01:11 AM PDT "RIO takes its place among a series of ongoing developments that are making science publishing more open and transparent. This may be a great opportunity for researchers to place more emphasis on the pure acquisition and sharing of knowledge. In today's impact factor-dominated scientific community this primary purpose of research too often takes the back seat ... The rise of open access journals pioneered by PLOS that allow free access to all publications has led to a greater accessibility of research articles. In addition to open access, the journal eLife has recently introduced a new and improved way of peer-reviewing and publishing with online-only publication that offers full use of digital media. The founders of RIO now offer an open-access publishing platform that transcends the limitations of the classic research journals. A similar concept was already introduced in 2013 by the publishing network ScienceOpen that publishes research articles, reviews and even conference posters that are reviewed post-publishing in an open online system. What makes RIO distinct from ScienceOpen is that they aim to publish all research output including data, protocols as well as research ideas and proposals. However, a major obstacle might be that researchers may not be willing to share their proposals due to the constant fear of competition. At the moment, I don't see my colleagues sharing their ideas and research plans even at small scientific meetings so I find it hard to imagine that they would be willing to share their proposals publicly. Sharing research ideas early would ideally foster more collaboration and reduce competition to make scientific research more efficient. But is the scientific community ready for such a development? In my opinion, publishing all scientific outputs such as protocols and also so-called negative data will greatly enhance research efficiency by enabling researchers to learn from the experience as well as the mistakes of others ..." |
| Celebrate Opentober at Morgan Library | SOURCE Posted: 30 Sep 2015 01:08 AM PDT "Opentober is the Morgan Library's celebration of Open Access and the open movement in higher education. Join us to celebrate at these events throughout October. All Opentober events take place in the Event Hall in Morgan Library ..." |
| Supporting institutions with open access implementation | Jisc Posted: 30 Sep 2015 01:05 AM PDT "Open access (OA) to research publications brings with it significant benefits for UK institutions, researchers and research funders. After several years of concerted effort to implement OA in the UK following the Finch report in 2012 and in consultation with a range of other sector bodies - eg the Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL), Research Libraries UK (RLUK), the Association of Research Managers and Administrators) ARMA and the UK Council of Research Repositories (UKCoRR) - we have learned, and continue to learn, a great deal about what works well, and what works less well. In this webinar we'll present these learnings in the context of Jisc's OA services, both current and future, and how these services can support institutions with OA implementation ..." |
| AACSB and the Importance of Open Access Posted: 30 Sep 2015 01:00 AM PDT "There is no doubt that The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) is one of the leading and most respected organizations when it comes to academia worldwide. The association is coming upon their 100th anniversary and has provided advances in education since it's inception. In order for a university to be accredited by this institution, they must uphold to certain standards outlined by AACSB listed on their website. One of the most important standards for a business school to be eligible for accreditation by AACSB is assessing the impact of their academic activities. There are three popular ways for a university to prove the impact of their professor's research. The first is having published in highly recognized, peer-reviewed journals. It is clear that peer-review is a necessity when it comes to publishing quality research, but what exactly does 'highly recognized' mean? While on the surface this may seem like a worthy goal, there are problems with this assessment ... The second way for schools to sight the impact of their intellectual contributions are by citation counts; but this method has major flaws. Impact factors are calculated annually as the mean number of citations to articles published in any given journal in the two preceding years (Vanclay). Many researchers have found flaws in the calculations used to compute these impact factors such as this professor in Australia who wrote an entire paper on the topic ... The final way a school can determine the impact of their contributions is through download rates for electronic journals. This is where open access becomes so important. Journal hosting software counts every time an article is downloaded and is extremely accurate. Since there is no charge for a researcher to view a paper published in an open access journal, more people are able to download the information and use it in their own research. Another reason download rates are more accurate than other impact factors are they keep track of one specific article. The impact factor of an entire journal is a false way of measuring the citations of one article and citation counts are clearly more correct ... Based on the three most common metrics used by schools to assess the impact factor of their activities for AACSB, we believe that citation rates are the most accurate metric ..." |
| Peer review: are you actually volunteering your time? — Medium Posted: 30 Sep 2015 12:55 AM PDT " ... In the industry that is scholarly communication, notions of journal or content brands, as much as they are claimed and protected by publishers, are only ever created and maintained in partnership with the editors and reviewers who handle the editorial functions at the journal — who enable the creation of a product which, in the subscription model, can be sold. But the point of this post is that this is a different kind of volunteering — when someone else is commercially charging for your services, and improving their brand via your services ... While we aim to help challenge this, at Collabra it is much more nuanced than simply getting paid. What Collabra actually does is allow reviewers (and editors for that matter) to make decisions over a portion of the revenue that the journal earns from its Article Processing Charges, after we (UC Press) have covered our costs. (This classic chart to the left is a reminder of the process, and check out the original below!) One of the decision options for reviewers and editors is that they can elect to pay themselves. (Note: a big difference from 'getting paid.') And the other two decisions involve paying these earnings forward, either to our waiver fund, or to their institution's open access fund, if it has one. And that's the volunteering part — reviewers and editors have actively decided, with either of these two latter options, to volunteer their time ..." |
| Posted: 28 Sep 2015 07:44 AM PDT "The Manar al-Athar website, based at the University of Oxford, aims to provide high resolution, searchable images for teaching, research, and publication. These images of archaeological sites, with buildings and art, will cover the areas of the former Roman empire which later came under Islamic rule, such as Syro-Palestine/the Levant, Arabia, Egypt, North Africa and Spain. The chronological range is from Alexander the Great (i.e., from about 300 BC) through, the Islamic period to the present. It is the first website of its kind providing such material labelled jointly in both Arabic and English. We will also be publishing related material, both online and on paper, in English and Arabic." |
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