Webinar: Researcher Focus 1: Researcher Needs, Common Values and Practices, June 29, 2021 at 3pm (BST) | OASPA

OASPA is pleased to announce the first in a series of webinars focused on the needs of the researcher. This webinar brings together a cross-disciplinary panel of researchers to discuss what unites them in terms of their motivations and values around open research and open access, and how and if this is enabled in practice. Panellists will also consider if their perceptions change depending on their role (author, reviewer, evaluator, educator, reader) and discuss the choices they currently make when disseminating their work and if and how they would like these to change in the future.

The webinar will be chaired by Curtis Brundy and we welcome our panellists Michelle Arkin, Melodee Beals, Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou and Zulidyana D. Rusnalasari.

The panellists will each speak for approximately 10 minutes each, and then we will open it up to questions from the audience and for panel discussion.

Please join us live for this free webinar and to contribute to the discussion by registering here.

Guest post: The Fully OA agreement – an essential component of a diverse open access world – OASPA

“Much of the recent effort to transition scholarly publishing to open access1 (OA) has focused on ‘Transformative Agreements’2 that incentivize change among subscription or mixed-model publishers3. Supporting such publishers to transition to OA is important to transform the system of scholarly publishing. However, it is equally important to support existing fully OA publishers – who already deliver open content by default in ways that comply with Plan S and fulfill its original principles and spirit – and to recognize the centrality of their role in normalizing OA and bringing it to the mainstream. 

As fully OA publishers, we welcome the pivotal role institutions and libraries are playing in supporting open access, and we look forward to co-creating the systems and publishing agreements that will enable them to support their authors in publishing OA. …

Most fully OA publishers have published open access since their founding. While we have costs associated with developing new OA models, we do not have costs or issues related to transitioning from subscription publishing to a new publishing model. Moreover, we are confident in the efficiencies that our full focus on OA allows, and in the transparency of our finances. While Article Processing Charges (APCs) still dominate the OA business model, we have been instrumental in developing and experimenting with a myriad of other potential ways to support OA, including institutional agreements and membership-style models. We have also pioneered many of the important innovations in scholarly publishing that have developed alongside OA, such as article-level metrics, preprint facilitation, open data facilitation, peer review innovations, rapid publication, and waiver programs. We have also helped focus attention on the methodological and ethical rigor of research. In short, fully OA publishers are an instrumental and essential component of the scholarly publishing landscape. We add diversity and author choice and publish OA to serve our research communities without being compelled by a changing scholarly publishing landscape.

In this light, we encourage and propose a greater focus on “Fully OA” publishing agreements (sometimes referred to as “Pure Publish” agreements). While much time and energy is by necessity devoted to Transformative Agreements and transforming subscription models, we propose a balanced approach whereby institutions also partner with fully OA publishers to fulfill their open research strategies and serve the needs of their research and teaching communities. We are certain that libraries do not want authors to be forced (or simply habituated) into NOT choosing a fully OA publisher simply because institutional agreements exist only with transitioning subscription or mixed-model publishers. …”

Attracting new users or business as usual? A case study of converting academic subscription-based journals to open access | Quantitative Science Studies | MIT Press

Abstract:  This paper studies a selection of 11 Norwegian journals in the humanities and social sciences and their conversion from subscription to open access, a move heavily incentivized by governmental mandates and open access policies. By investigating the journals’ visiting logs in the period 2014–2019, the study finds that a conversion to open access induces higher visiting numbers; all journals in the study had a significant increase, which can be attributed to the conversion. Converting a journal had no spillover in terms of increased visits to previously published articles still behind the paywall in the same journals. Visits from previously subscribing Norwegian higher education institutions did not account for the increase in visits, indicating that the increase must be accounted for by visitors from other sectors. The results could be relevant for policymakers concerning the effects of strict policies targeting economically vulnerable national journals, and could further inform journal owners and editors on the effects of converting to open access.

 

 

Attracting new users or business as usual? A case study of converting academic subscription-based journals to open access | Quantitative Science Studies | MIT Press

Abstract:  This paper studies a selection of 11 Norwegian journals in the humanities and social sciences and their conversion from subscription to open access, a move heavily incentivized by governmental mandates and open access policies. By investigating the journals’ visiting logs in the period 2014–2019, the study finds that a conversion to open access induces higher visiting numbers; all journals in the study had a significant increase, which can be attributed to the conversion. Converting a journal had no spillover in terms of increased visits to previously published articles still behind the paywall in the same journals. Visits from previously subscribing Norwegian higher education institutions did not account for the increase in visits, indicating that the increase must be accounted for by visitors from other sectors. The results could be relevant for policymakers concerning the effects of strict policies targeting economically vulnerable national journals, and could further inform journal owners and editors on the effects of converting to open access.

 

 

3 ways that preprints help researchers in agricultural and plant sciences – The CABI Blog

“The use of preprints (pre-peer reviewed versions of scholarly papers) has accelerated in the last few years with many researchers now sharing their latest work with the scientific community before or in parallel to publication with a journal. After a slower start compared to other research fields, adoption of preprints in the plant sciences and agriculture is growing well.

As part of this growing trend, CABI relaunched agriRxiv (pronounced agri-archive and previously known as AgriXiv) in 2020 as a platform for posting preprints. agriRxiv makes preprints across agriculture and allied sciences available to researchers and gives those who wish to share their papers online an opportunity to gain valuable feedback before submitting a final version to a journal and formal peer-review….”

Frontiers | Behavioral Reluctance in Adopting Open Access Publishing: Insights From a Goal-Directed Perspective | Psychology

Abstract:  Despite growing awareness of the benefits of large-scale open access publishing, individual researchers seem reluctant to adopt this behavior, thereby slowing down the evolution toward a new scientific culture. We outline and apply a goal-directed framework of behavior causation to shed light on this type of behavioral reluctance and to organize and suggest possible intervention strategies. The framework explains behavior as the result of a cycle of events starting with the detection of a discrepancy between a goal and a status quo and the selection of behavior to reduce this discrepancy. We list various factors that may hinder this cycle and thus contribute to behavioral reluctance. After that, we highlight potential remedies to address each of the identified barriers. We thereby hope to point out new ways to think about behavioral reluctances in general, and in relation to open access publishing in particular.

 

Why Should Researchers Publish Open Access Papers Related to COVID-19? – Enago Academy

“Since the start of the pandemic, a substantial amount of literature related to COVID-19 is already available as open access and more publishers are adopting open access policies to disseminate authentic and trustworthy scientific information. This worldwide barrier-free visibility has helped academics with more citations for their work. This demonstrably also leads to increase in newer advances in COVID-19 related research.

In this article, we will provide an overview on why researchers should make their COVID-19 research papers open access and also discuss the implications of this paradigm shift on academic research….”

What happens when a journal converts to Open Access? A bibliometric analysis

Abstract:  In recent years, increased stakeholder pressure to transition research to Open Access has led to many journals converting, or ‘flipping’, from a closed access (CA) to an open access (OA) publishing model. Changing the publishing model can influence the decision of authors to submit their papers to a journal, and increased article accessibility may influence citation behaviour. In this paper we aimed to understand how flipping a journal to an OA model influences the journal’s future publication volumes and citation impact. We analysed two independent sets of journals that had flipped to an OA model, one from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and one from the Open Access Directory (OAD), and compared their development with two respective control groups of similar journals. For bibliometric analyses, journals were matched to the Scopus database. We assessed changes in the number of articles published over time, as well as two citation metrics at the journal and article level: the normalised impact factor (IF) and the average relative citations (ARC), respectively. Our results show that overall, journals that flipped to an OA model increased their publication output compared to journals that remained closed. Mean normalised IF and ARC also generally increased following the flip to an OA model, at a greater rate than was observed in the control groups. However, the changes appear to vary largely by scientific discipline. Overall, these results indicate that flipping to an OA publishing model can bring positive changes to a journal.

 

We Answer Your Questions About OER — Observatory of Educational Innovation

“According to UNESCO, Open Educational Resources (OER) are didactic learning or research materials published with intellectual property licenses that facilitate their use and adaptation free of charge. The Observatory of Educational Innovation of Tecnologico de Monterrey transmitted a webinar where we spoke with a professor specialized in this subject. The speaker, Antonio Canchola, answered questions from the audience wanting to learn more about OER.

Open educational resources vaulted to relevance in a UNESCO debate in 2002, where a committee met to promote their use in educational institutions worldwide. The advantages of OER are innumerable, starting with the visibility it gives to teachers who share their teaching work; they do not need a diploma or specialization to publish them. They can be informal contributions related to home cooking, carpentry, or even scientific studies. Professor Canchola describes OER as “the spirit of sharing” because they are created with a genuine intention to help other people. Some of the most famous OER that anyone can find on the internet are Frida Kahlo’s voice and Stephen Hawking’s thesis. The modern era of digitalization helps make these historical treasures accessible.  

OER can be found in both institutional or non-institutional repositories. For example, in Tec’s repository of open educational resources, RITEC can find work by students and other community members. The YouTube platform is one of the most famous repositories. Thanks to these resources, anyone can become a global partner. Professor Canchola emphasizes the need to license our contribution with a Creative Commons license to protect us as authors and establish what can be done with the resources we create: using, adapting, or marketing them or using them for other works and applications.

OER are the best examples of the push for social equity, the democratization of knowledge, and accessibility to free online resources. Our responsibility as teachers is to educate about this subject because there is an infinite library at our students’ disposal that many do not know exists….”
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