1. More Scholarly Communications Consolidation as Institutional Repository Provider DuraSpace Merges into Lyrasis
Green open access, and in particular the role of institutional repositories in serving up preprints and other journal article artifacts, is going through some substantial transitions. An important development for institutional repositories and related library systems, this is also yet another example of organisational consolidation among membership organisations in the library community in particular, notes Roger C. Schonfeld, in his post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog.
The blog post says (quote): Open source is not by any means to be dismissed. At the same time, open source is no panacea. To whatever extent the DuraSpace offerings have kept up with contemporary needs and expectations, it is clear that open source models, when adapted to suit the needs of the scholarly communication sector, seem to optimise for community control over marketplace agility. The OLE library systems initiative fell behind in both architecture and execution in the period when the marketplace was shifting to cloud-based multi-tenant models and the collaboration possibilities that they enabled. It was eventually folded into the FOLIO initiative, with more centralised leadership and a hybrid-commercial development sprint, which even so has yet to be brought into production by a major library let alone a consortium............ (Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2. Scientific societies worry Plan S will make them shutter journals, slash services
An existential threat. That's what scientific societies supported by journal subscriptions call Plan S. Less drastic impacts on societies' bottom lines might still force them to sell their journals to commercial publishers and cut back on activities supported by publishing, such as professional training and public outreach, discusses Jeffrey Brainard, in his post in the Science Blog.
The blog post says (quote): Scientific publishing needs "a radical program" to promote full and immediate open access because progress has been too slow. The open-access movement began about 15 years ago, but by 2016, only about 20 percent of newly published research articles were open access. Plan S's requirements will disproportionately hurt the selective journals that many societies publish. Such journals typically have high costs per article, reflecting expenses for reviewing papers that are rejected; publishers worry Plan S's fee cap, which has yet to be set, will be too low to cover the average cost per paper. What's more, the societies typically have lower profit margins and a smaller economy of scale than do the commercial publishers that publish the majority of all journal articles. The largest, Elsevier, based in Amsterdam, publishes more than 2500 journal titles; scientific societies each publish at most a few dozen............(Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3. Now is the time to update our understanding of scientific impact in light of open scholarship
Change is necessary to motivate academics to focus on actual impact - instead of the outdated assumptions behind the measurement of impact - and now is the time to renegotiate academic impact in light of open scholarship. In their post in the LSE Impact of Social Science Blog, Sascha Friesike, Benedikt Fecher and Gert. G. Wagner outline three systemic shifts in scholarly communication that render traditional bibliometric measures of impact outdated and call for a renewed debate on how they understand and measure research impact.
The blog post says (quote): While it seems impossible to capture the full picture of research impact, it is absurd that they are neglecting valid and important pathways to scientific and societal impact. Impact is not monolithic; it comes in different shapes, differs across disciplines, and is subject to change in part due to modern communication technology. In an academic world that is increasingly adopting open scholarship, bibliometric impact measures assess a shrinking section of the actual impact that is happening. Impact assessment needs to capture the bigger picture of scholarship, including new research practices (data sharing), alternative research products (software), and different forms of expertise (conceptual, empirical, technical, managerial). They believe that open scholarship is a suitable framework to assess research............(Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
4. The quest to topple science-stymying academic paywalls
Science is built, enhanced, and developed through the open and structured sharing of knowledge. Yet some publishers charge so much for subscriptions to their academic journals that even the libraries of the world's wealthiest universities can no longer afford their prices. Those publishers' profit margins rival those of the most profitable companies in the world, even though research is largely underwritten by governments, and the publishers don't pay authors and researchers or the peer reviewers who evaluate those works, notes Joi Ito, in his post in the Wired Blog.
The blog post says (quote): One of the main pillars of academic reputation is authorship, which has become increasingly problematic as science has become more collaborative. Who gets credit for research and discovery can have a huge impact on researchers and institutions. But the order of author names on a journal article has no standardised meaning. It is often determined more by seniority and academic culture than by actual effort or expertise. As a result, credit is often not given where credit is due. With electronic publishing, they can move beyond a "flat" list of author names, in the same way that film credits specify the contributions of those involved, but they have continued to allow the constraints of print guide their practices. They can also experiment with and improve peer review to provide better incentives, processes, and fairness............(Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
5. Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace
If ever there was a time for society publishers to start advocating for themselves, that time is now. In her post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog, Angela Cochran challenges society publishers to find their voice in affecting policy decisions that relate to their programs.
The blog post says (quote): They are a commercial publisher with 1,000 journals – then the numbers change significantly allowing the commercial publishers to make the journals with the highest participation of cOAlitionS funded papers OA while still enjoying the support of subscription and hybrid journals to support the overall program. Further, commercial publishers may be able to strike a deal on capped APCs that would not be financially feasible for society publishers. Their size also gives them the advantage in negotiating "transformative" deals with libraries and consortia, who generally do not have the time or motivation to negotiate with smaller publishers. The bottom line is that a proposal like Plan S benefits publishers with enormous scale and does irreparable harm to publishers, mostly societies that do not. The results of this kind of behaviour (again this is only realised with large scale adoption of Plan S) are likely to be that more societies will be forced to partner with commercial publishers in order to protect income and member benefits (frequently the journal) and be able to take advantage of scale............(Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
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