Morrison, H., Borges, L., Zhao, X., Kakou, T. L., & Shanbhoug, A. N. (2022). Change and growth in open access journal publishing and charging trends 2011–2021. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 1– 13. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24717

OA version is available through the University of Ottawa institutional repository here: https://ruor.uottawa.ca/handle/10393/44191

Housekeeping: effective Nov. 7, 2022, SKC posts are no longer available via Twitter.

Sous la direction d’Isaac Bazié, Jean Ouédraogo et Alain Joseph Sissao

Pour accéder au livre en version html, cliquez ici.
Pour télécharger le PDF (à venir)

Penser les passages dans les littératures et cultures africaines se veut l’aboutissement de réflexions critiques autour d’une esthétique qui sans être nouvelle, connaît d’heureuses et éclairées interprétations. Les passages convoquent inéluctablement les théoriciennes et théoriciens du roman dont Bertrand Westphal et Mikhaïl Bakhtine et avec eux des considérations géocritiques et chronotopiques. Les auteurs et autrices des études proposées manient avec une grande originalité l’application de ces théories aux textes et aux contextes spécifiquement africains.

La notion de passage dans cette perspective permet d’en appréhender la fécondité dans les littératures et les cultures africaines. Les contributions lèvent le voile sur les tendances générales des champs littéraires ou sur les poétiques particulières pour étudier des passages de nature esthétique et formelle, culturelle et ritualisée.

Dans la diversité des propos, ce sont les manifestations de ces passages marquant les sociétés africaines qui affleurent, qu’elles soient de nature esthétique, politique, sociale ou culturelle. Les transitions, heureuses ou malheureuses, issues des champs des réalités africaines trouvent donc leur écho critique dans les pratiques d’écriture qui sous-tendent les réflexions de cet ouvrage.

ISBN version imprimée : 978-2-924661-74-1
ISBN PDF : 978-2-924661-73-4

DOI (à venir)

180 pages
Couverture réalisée par Kate McDonnell, photographie de Florence Piron
Date de publication : décembre 2021

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Tables des matières

Introduction

Isaac Bazié, Jean Ouédraogo et Alain Joseph Sissao

1. Essai de géohistoire du champ littéraire

David N’goran

2. Roman francophone et cultures africaines : disjonctions, passages et reconfigurations

Alain Joseph Sissao

3. Lire à travers l’œil du masque

Isaac Bazié

4. Du clos à l’ouvert : prolégomènes à l’esthétique de l’espace de transit

Timbo Adler Vivien Yro

5. Territoire et espace dans la littérature burkinabé

Salaka Sanou

6. Expérience de l’ailleurs et passage de l’enfance à l’âge adulte dans les contes négro-africains

Jacques Raymond Koffi Kouacou

7. Le fragment comme lieu de mémoire dans « Les propos abracadabrants d’un colonisé » d’Alain Mabanckou

Yelly Kady Ouattara Kignaman-Soro

8. D’un genre l’autre

Yannick Martial Ndong Ndong

9. Les formes sophistiquées des romans de Mamadou Mahmoud N’Dongo

Sonia Le Moigne-Euzenot

10. Formes et enjeux des passages dans « 5 Octobre An Zéro » d’Apedo-Amah

Paméssou Walla

11. Pratiques énonciatives et passages générationnels dans les dramaturgies contemporaines burkinabè

Mamadou Bayala

Sous la direction de Florence Piron et Élisabeth Arsenault

Pour accéder au livre en version html, cliquez ici.

Ce livre/site est composé d’une série de courts chapitres synthétiques, accompagnés de références commentées, qui nourriront la réflexion des lecteurs et lectrices sur le type de recherche qu’ils et elles souhaitent faire et qui les accompagneront dans la rédaction de leur projet de recherche en mode « formation à distance ».

Un projet soutenu par l’APSOHA, l’ASBC, l’UQTR et le CIRAM de l’Université Laval.

Couverture réalisée par Kate McDonnell, huile sur toile du peintre néerlandais Piet Mondrian : « De rode boom (Arbre rouge) », 1908-10. Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evening;_Red_Tree

Date de publication : novembre 2021

***

Tables des matières

Préface – Élisabeth Arsenault (à venir)

Introduction – Florence Piron

Module 1 : Pour quoi et pour qui faire de la recherche?

1. Science, colonialisme et extraversion (histoire décoloniale de la science) – Jacques Michel Gourgues
2. Connaissance, engagement, intérêts et positionnement axiologique (bousculer le positivisme institutionnel) – Olivier Leclerc
3. Les impacts et effets de la recherche scientifique sur la société (intro aux STS) – Mélissa Lieutenant-Gosselin (à venir)
4. L’analyse des politiques publiques de l’enseignement supérieur – Jean Bernatchez
5. Responsabilité sociale des universitaires et développement local durable : la recherche participative communautaire – Budd Hall et Rajesh Tandon
6. Utilisation et mobilisation des connaissances – Jean Ramdé

Module 2 : Du mémoire au projet de recherche, en passant par la thèse : les métiers de la recherche

7. Les conditions de la recherche dans les universités des Suds et du Nord – Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou (à venir)
8. Réduisez les incertitudes! Faire une thèse ou un mémoire : vocation à la recherche, recherche d’un grade et choix de l’université – Dali Serge Lida
9. De l’idée de la thèse à la soutenance : les étapes et les formats, suivi d’une chronique d’une expérience personnelle à l’Université Yaoundé 1 – Abdoulaye Anne et Alassa Fouapon
10. S’organiser : faire un chronogramme, s’adapter aux contraintes de la réalité et s’autoévaluer sans souffrir – Alessandra Banci (à venir)
11. Les métiers de la recherche : enquêter, écrire, publier, communiquer, évaluer, enseigner, former – Francesco Cavatorta (à venir)
12. Monter un projet de recherche et le faire financer – Judicaël Alladatin, Mahutin Anselme Houessigbede, Abdoul Kafid Toko Koutogui, Appoline Mêvognon Fonton, Augustin Gnanguenon et Lucien Médard Dahouè

Module 3 : Lire des textes de sciences sociales et humaines et organiser ses lectures

13. Pourquoi et comment lire de la recherche en sciences humaines et sociales? – Élisabeth Arsenault, Rency Inson Michel et Bi Vagbé Gethème Irié
14. Quoi lire? Intégrer des textes des pays des Suds dans les bibliographies – Isaline Bergamaschi (à venir)
15. Faire une recherche documentaire dans le web scientifique libre – Audrey Groleau
16. La place de la recension des écrits dans la recherche – Zakari Liré (à venir)
17. Construire une fiche de lecture – Sylvette Piga Bahiré et Abdoulaye Anne
18. Un logiciel de gestion bibliographique : Zotero

Module 4 : Choisir une posture éthique et une approche théorique

19. Définir une posture de recherche, entre constructivisme et positivisme – Maryvonne Charmillot
20. Production des connaissances et critique décoloniale – Raewyn Connell
21. La critique féminisme du positivisme institutionnel – (à venir)
22. Le pluriversalisme et les épistémologies des Suds et des peuples autochtones – Sambou Ndiaye (à venir)
23. Intégrer des savoirs locaux non scientifiques des femmes et des hommes dans la recherche (éviter les injustices épistémiques) – Isabel Heck et Baptiste Godrie
24. De la pluridisciplinarité à l’interdisciplinarité : une méthodologie ancrée – Fernand Bationo
25. Cadres théoriques et valeurs

Module 5 : Écrire en sciences sociales et humaines

26. Le je, le nous, la neutralité, la narrativité, la démonstration et l’écriture épicène : trouver sa voix – Priscilla Boyer
27. Réflexivité et savoirs situés – Marie-Claude Bernard
28. L’art de citer et le plagiat – Gilbert Willy Tio Babena
29. Les outils de travail : écriture numérique collaborative et logiciels libres – Djossè Roméo Tessy
30. Le plurilinguisme en science : pourquoi pas? – Léonie Tatou (à venir)
31. Du plan au brouillon : l’essentiel pour structurer ses idées et éviter le syndrome de la page blanche – Frédérick Madore et Andrée-Ann Brassard
32. Les outils d’aide à l’écriture : orthographe et syntaxe – Léonie Tatou
33. Le contenu et le style d’une bibliographie – Bernard Pochet (à venir)

Module 6 : Construire une problématique de recherche et l’utiliser

34. Qu’est-ce qu’une problématique de recherche? – (à venir)
35. Analyser et opérationnaliser un concept – Marie Brossier (à venir)
36. Analyse critique d’un article et d’un débat – Sivane Hirsch
37. L’art de la démonstration en sciences sociales – Baptiste Godrie
38. Quelle est la place du contexte dans une recherche? – Estelle Kouokam Magne
39. Pourquoi et comment faire un terrain? – Lara Gautier et Oumar Mallé Samb

Module 7 : Approches méthodologiques et stratégies d’enquête

40. L’approche qualitative et ses principales stratégies d’enquêtes – Honorine Pegdwendé Sawadogo
41. Le journal de bord comme outil de terrain – Alice Vanlint
42. L’approche participative, la recherche-action et leurs principales stratégies d’enquête et d’inclusion des groupes subalternisés – Baptiste Godrie et Isabel Heck
43. L’approche quantitative et statistique et ses principales stratégies d’enquête – Judicaël Alladatin, Talagbé Gabin Akpo et Mohamadou Salifou
44. Les approches inspirées des épistémologies autochtones et relationnelles et leurs principales stratégies d’enquête – Noémie Gonzalez
45. Les approches au design complexe et leurs principales stratégies d’enquêtes – Valéry Ridde
46. Les outils numériques d’enquête – Célya Gruson Daniel

Module 8 : Stratégies d’analyse des informations collectées

47. Saturation, triangulation et catégorisation des données collectées – Honorine Pegdwendé Sawadogo
48. Analyse de la singularité : récits de vie, histoire orale et méthode clinique – Jean Jacques Demba et Marie-Claude Bernard
49. Analyse itérative et théorie/théorisation enracinée – Raquel Fernandez-Iglesias (à venir)
50. Analyse de contenu (documentaire, entrevues, etc.) – Marietou Niang (à venir)
51. L’art de l’interprétation des résultats – Pietro Marzo
52. Les outils numériques d’analyse de données (logiciels, bases de données) – Célya Gruson Daniel

Module 9 : Considérations déontologiques et juridiques

53. La conduite responsable en recherche, l’éthique et les rapports avec les participant-e-s – Laurent Jérôme (à venir)
54. L’intégrité en recherche : résister aux conflits d’intérêts, fraudes, pots de vin et autres formes de corruption de la recherche – Neïla Abtroun Sihem et Bryn William Jones
55. Le droit d’auteur, la signature et la propriété intellectuelle – Marc Couture
56. La gestion et l’ouverture des données de la recherche – Matthieu Noucher
57. Faire de la recherche dans un partenariat nord-sud – Valéry Ridde

Module 10 : Diffusion et restitution des savoirs créés

58. Diffusion et restitution des savoirs créés – Maryvonne Charmillot
59. Écrire et publier un article scientifique – Gilbert Willy Tio Babena
60. La publication et la diffusion en libre accès – Marc Couture
61. Présentation PowerPoint, vidéos, théâtre et affiches scientifiques – Zein Fakih (à venir)
62. Les dispositifs de médiation science-société – Mélody Faury
63. Créer des ressources éducatives libre avec Wikipédia – Marie Martel
64. Évaluation de l’impact d’une recherche – Nelson Sylvestre (à venir)

Information pour les personnes inscrites à la formation en ligne

• Le fonctionnement de la formation à distance
• Un projet pédagogique basé sur le partage des savoirs
• Formation et gestion des équipes

The Sustaining the Knowledge Commons project was made possible through a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2014 – 2016) and a SSHRC Insight Grant (2016 – 2021). SSHRC has graciously granted a one-year extension for project completion due to COVID. Between now and spring 2022, the work of SKC will focus on completing projects already started, blog wrap-up, and a final report and summary. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the SKC team over the years, read, shared and/or commented on posts.

Please join us for a launch of the book “Global University Rankings”. The session will be recorded and made available for later viewing. I briefly introduced the book and my chapter in it in this post: https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2021/08/03/irrational-rationality-critique-of-metrics-based-evaluation-of-researchers-and-universities/

by : Xuan Zhao & Heather Morrison

Abstract

The 2021 DOAJ (The Directory of Open Access Journals) publisher group comprises a large number of very small publishers (typically with only one journal), and very few large publishers. Our purpose is to demonstrate publishers’ long-tail tendency and reveal its connection with the tendency of APC (article processing charge) or NO APC publications. As a result, we ascertain a “long-tail” of publisher size in all three groups and a “the smaller, the NO-APCer” tendency.

Introduction

Why does the relation between OA-APC (open access-) and publisher size need to be brought to the forefront? To answer this question, we need to understand a bit more about the context of OA publishing activities. As illustrated by Crow (2006), Edgar & Willinsky (2010) and Morrison (2012), from the mid-20^th century onwards, the components of scholarly publishing began to shift: non-profit university and society publishers started to lose ground, while commercial publishers stepped into an era of rapid development. Unlike for-profit publishers with more robust survivability in commercialization, non-profit publishers, especially the smaller ones, are facing various internal and external challenges: “market consolidation”, “aggressive pricing”, “flat library budgets”, “migration to online distribution”, “structural constraints”, “undercapitalization”, etc., listed Crow [1]. We emphasize the “smaller ones” because “the vast majority of society and non–profit publishers run independent and very small journal publishing operations” [2]. Thus, the limitations mentioned above concern the plight of most society and non-profit publishers, especially for small publishers who prioritize academic quality or social needs, to the extent that they cannot balance profit and non-profit.

Several scholars proposed various recommended schemes. For example, Crow [3] suggests publishing cooperatives, which would allow small non-profit publishers “to remain independent while operating collectively to overcome both structural and strategic disadvantages”. Another solution is offered by Edgar & Willinsky (2010) and Morrison (2012): open access. Many studies have shown that open access could bring “growth
rates in new titles, participation rates from developing countries, and extremely low operating budgets”, and maximize “access to research and scholarship, as an alternative to traditional scholarly society and commercial publishing routes” [4].

Although the transition from offline to online open access publishing requires a human and material investment, it is increasingly an attractive option in the context of today’s widespread web presence. Until recent years, in addition to the large commercial publishers who dominate the major publishing markets, the global OA market is “marked by a very long-tail and extensive involvement by very small, often university or society publishers”, as Morrison pointed out in 2018 [5]. In Gold Open Access Journals 2011-2015. Crawford (2016) found that small journals are less likely to charge through abundant materials about the correlation between journal size, tendencies to charge/non-charge, and amounts of charges. In other words, the larger the journal, the higher the APC. We would like to corroborate these statements with our research of DOAJ 2021 metadata.

Definitions & Explanation

In this study, we consider DOAJ publishers who released 10 or fewer journals (at the time of being sampled) as relatively “small” publishers and those who released more than 100 journals as rather “large” publishers. The rest are grouped as “medium” publishers with 11-100 journals. These definitions only aim to better distinguish publishers of different sizes in our data scope.

We divide the DOAJ publishers into three primary groups: all publishers’ group, APC charging publishers’ group and NO APC publishers’ group. We use “mixed publishers” to describe publishers that appeared in both APC and NO APC lists. Our research is carried out from three aspects: observation of the three primary groups, observation of the “non-mixed” publishers’ group and observation of the “mixed” publishers’ group.

The data in this project was initially downloaded from DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) metadata (15,691 journals, 4,292 APC journals, 11,399 NO APC journals), then cleaned up by our SKC (Sustaining the Knowledge Commons) team. The clean-up work revolved around correcting the wrong position of the data and creating a modified publisher name column for this exercise. During the work, we realized that creating a consistent publisher name list was challenging. As reported in Some Limitations of DOAJ Metadata for Research Purposes (Zhao, Borges & Morrison, 2021), there were a large number of variations and inconsistencies of publisher names, such as duplicates with differences in punctuation and/or characters (e.g. “Abant İzzet Baysal Üniversitesi” vs. “Abant İzzet Baysal University”), extra spaces at the beginning or the end of names (e.g. “Abant İzzet Baysal University” vs. “Abant İzzet Baysal University⎕”), invalid URLs, etc. More details can be found in the open dataset “DOAJ_metadata_2021_01_05_with_SKC_clean_up” (Zhao, Borges & Morrison, 2021).  

This research is only for the journals and publishers listed in DOAJ as of Jan.5, 2021. There are other fully open access journals and publishers not listed in DOAJ, or previously listed but then de-listed for some unknown reasons. We understand that it is challenging to create a precise list of publishers because of the complexity of publishers’ backgrounds (Morrison, 2019). In this study, we concentrate more on the trends rather than precise details. What’s more, we focus solely on whether the journals or publishers charge APC, not how much is charged.

Observation of the three primary groups

First, we separate the DOAJ publishers into three groups: all publishers’ group (Table 1 & Chart 1), APC’s group (Table 2 & Chart 2) and NO APC’s group (Table 3 & Chart 3).

Table 1 – ALL DOAJ publishers’ group (2021)

(Total DOAJ journals’ number: 15,691)

Chart 1 – ALL DOAJ publishers’ group (2021)

Table 2 – DOAJ APC group (2021)

(Total count of DOAJ APC journals: 4,292)

Chart 2 – DOAJ APC group (2021)

Table 3 – DOAJ NO APC group (2021)

(Total count of DOAJ NO APC journals: 11,399)

Chart 3 – DOAJ NO APC group (2021)

Individually, each group shows an evident “long-tail”. In the ALL publishers’ group (see Table 1 & Chart 1), among the 6,804 publishers identified in DOAJ, 1,349 published APC journals, and 5,807 published NO APC journals (the numbers do not add up to 6,804 because some of them are “mixed” publishers). 77% of this group are small publishers with only one journal publication. The small publishers still occupy the main part in the other two groups (see Table 2,3 & Chart 2,3), 76% for the APC group and 78% for the NO APC group.

In the second place, a comparison between APC and NO APC groups can be made. Although small publishers occupy a similar share in each of the three groups, we can notice a big difference in their numbers. As illustrated in Table 4 & Chart 4 below:

Table 4 – DOAJ ALL publishers – APC group vs NO APC group (2021)

Chart 4 – DOAJ ALL publishers – APC group vs NO APC group (2021)

In the range of “publishers with 1 journal”, the number of NO APC publishers (4,568) is about 4 times that of the APC publishers (1,034); in the range of 2-10, NO APC publishers are about 3 times more than the other; in the field of 11-25, the number is about 4 times more. However, for the publishers with 51+ journals, the number of APC publishers is more or equal to NO APC publishers. In the largest publishers’ range (200+ journals), there are 4 charging publishers and only 1 non-charging publisher.

Thus, without considering the “mixed” publishers’ situation, we assume that even both APC and NO APC groups showed a “long-tail” (76% of 1-journal-publishers in the APC group, and 78% of which in the NO APC group), small DOAJ publishers seemed more likely to publish non-charging journals; large DOAJ publishers seemed more likely to publish charging journals. We boldly name this tendency as “the smaller, the NO-APCer’ trend.

Besides, it is essential to notice some exceptions. Some large publishers release more NO APC journals (details in Table 7): Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications has 46 APC journals and 161 NO APC journals; SpringerOpen has 96 APC journals and 114 NO APC journals; Sciendo has 44 APC journals and 257 NO APC journals. We will discuss more in the following sections.

Observation of the “non-mixed” publishers’ group

We identify 352 duplicated publishers by comparing the APC / NO APC group, which means 352 “mixed” publishers. For making the research results more rigorous, we exclude the “mixed” group and study the rest of the publishers. We find that the tendencies of “long-tail” and “the smaller, the NO-APCer” are still evident in the “non-mixed” group. Please see Table 5 & Chart 5 below:

Table 5 – “Non-mixed” publishers – APC group vs NO APC group (2021)

Chart 5 – “Non-mixed” publishers – APC group vs NO APC group (2021)

Among 6,452 identified “non-mixed” publishers, 82% are small publishers with only 1 journal. Comparing with the 77% 1-journal-publishers in the ALL publishers’ group (Table 1 & Chart 1), 82% is a similar “long-tail”.

“The smaller, the NO-APCer” trend is also evident. If we compare the percentages of APC and NO APC groups in this chart, 69% of 1-journal-publishers are non-charging, which is way more than 13% charging 1-journal-publishers.

Observation of the “mixed” publishers’ group

We study this group separately because, from the research above, we know that almost all the large DOAJ publishers (100+ journals) are “mixed” (except for Hindawi Limited with 229 journals which is a pure APC publisher based on our data scale). We are curious about whether the “long-tail” and “the smaller, the NO-APCer” trend also existed in this group.

The first discovery is an explicit “long-tail” because 75% of the “mixed” publishers are small. Please see Chart 6 below:

Chart 6 – DOAJ “mixed” publishers’ long-tail analysis (2021)

Then we see a recognizable “the smaller, the NO-APCer” trend. After a comparison between the count of APC journals and the count of NO APC journals published by the same “mixed” publisher, we identify three relations: “number of APC journals = number of NO APC journals”, “number of APC journals > number of NO APC journals” and “number of APC journals < number of NO APC journals”.

We consider the inequivalence (“>” and “< “) between the counts of APC journals and the counts of NO APC journals as “active” tendency indicators and the equivalence relation (“=”) as “inactive” elements. Thus, to highlight the tendency, we exclude all the “=” and only concentrate on”>” and “< “. By this step, Table 6 below has been created:

Table 6 – DOAJ “mixed” publishers’ trends (2021)

For those who release 3 journals, other than the 101-200 group who publishes more APC journals than NO APC journals, and the 200+ group with an “inactive” “=”, the other publishers with less journal volume are biased toward NO APC publication. At this point, we confirm “the smaller, the NO-APCer” trend in the “mixed” publishers’ group.

For further discussion, if we investigate the large “mixed” publishers’ group (100+ journals), as shown in Table – 7 below:

Table 7 – Investigation of “Mixed” Publishers with 100+ journals (2021)

In this group, 6 of them publish more APC journals than NO APC journals, while 3 of them publish more NO APC journals. The difference in counts of journals of those 6 publishers could be significant. For example, Wiley (133 charging journals > 8 non-charging journals), Taylor & Francis Group (143 charging journals > 21 non-charging journals), SAGE Publishing (151 charging journals > 23 non-charging journals), etc. Because of these enormous differences of counts, even though there are 166 “mixed” publishers publish more non-charging journals, which is way more than the other 92 who release more charging journals, the count of non-charging journals in total (2,608) is still very close to that of charging journals in total (2,583).

Discussion

APC trends can also be analyzed in terms of other influencing factors: publisher type, subject of journal, country of publication, etc. Researchers can perform more diverse analyses based on more layers of data, just as Crawford (2016) did. In in-progress research of SKC, Morrison and the research team (Morrison & al., 2021) investigated APC by publisher type (government, institute, non-profit, independent, society or institution, university press, commercial, society, university) according to DOAJ data in 2019. As a result, universities published the most significant number of no-fee journals (7,857, 75% of the 10,463 no-fee journals in total), and the society publishers came second (1,414). Commercial publishers stood out by having much more charging journals than no-fee journals (1,575 vs 275). Combined with our study, it can be speculated that most small DOAJ publishers are university or society publishers with a no-fee tendency. This discovery corroborates Morrison’s thoughts in 2018 (Morrison, 2018b). Besides, the tendency to charge fees of commercial publishers coincides with our study of large publishers’ group.

In addition, we must admit that if the amount of APC is included in the scope of the study, the results may change somewhat. Because some publishers charge modestly and some ask for very high prices (especially for-profit high prices), and it is unfair to mix them without careful investigation (Crawford, 2011). For publishers in the charging group, their listing does not mean that their fees are necessarily unreasonable. Therefore, it is necessary to emphasize that our study concentrates more on the rough trends of charging/no charging based on publisher size as a division.

For a more in-depth discussion, we add the perspective of longitudinal analysis. We focus our discussion on two contrasting groups, large and small publishers. From our study, we know that almost all the large DOAJ publishers (100+ journals) are “mixed”, and most of them are commercial publishers, including the four largest traditional commercial publishers (Elsevier, SpringerNature, which includes SpringerOpen and BMC, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley). Based on the research of the SKC (Morrison, 2018a), Elsevier, as the world’s largest scholarly publisher, are “mixed” by having a large number of non-charging journals in 2017. But despite attempts at strategies, Elsevier lost many non-charging journals produced in partnership with societies and universities in 2018. Now, as we can see in our study, they may have fewer non-charging journals.

From this point, we speculate that some publishers can conduct relatively more non-charging publications is probably because that they got support from universities and governments. For example, the large “mixed” publisher Sciendo has much more non-charging journals than charging journals based on our data. According to Pashaei & Morrison (2019), Sciendo added more than 300 OA journals in 2019, most of which were “published through collaboration with different universities and academic societies and institutions in Europe”. A recent study of OA diamond journals [6] also confirmed that the economy of these journals “largely depends on volunteers, universities and government” (Bosman, Frantsvåg, Kramer, Langlais & Proudman, 2021).

Even large publishers with relatively financial solid resources may losing journals due to financial problems or other reasons, so that we can imagine the more difficult situation for small publishers, especially for those with only 1 journal. Perhaps, the small non-profit publishers with limited financial resources should explore the possibilities of more no charging OA models, instead of going with the flow and just raising prices in the for-profit competition. It is important to maintain operations while guarding the freedom and fairness of academic publishing. Based on the current situation, we need more patience to establish a healthy competitive publishing environment.

Not only do small publishers need to figure out how to grow in the long run and attract more authors and readers, but authors can also reach out to small publishers and discover their value, and same for readers. Here comes another purpose of our study: to call attention to small publishers and encourage interaction between authors, readers, funding sources and small publishers. There are often misunderstandings between these groups that are harmful to the OA movement, as discussed by Peter Suber in an interview (Hulagabali & Suber, 2019). For example, “most OA journals charge APCs” and “most OA journals are low in quality”, which are widespread but not true. Our study helps to dispel these misunderstandings by demonstrating that many journals are entirely free and that many exist for academic purposes: just because they are small does not mean they are not of high quality.

In addition to the issues above, small publishers also face other challenges. For example, in terms of longevity of data preservation, small publishers are more likely to lose long-term access (Crawford, 2011, p. 32). On this point, DOAJ published an article in 2020 announcing that they would collaborate with the CLOCKSS Archive, Internet Archive, Keepers Registry/ISSN International Centre and Public Knowledge Project (PKP) to improve the preservation of small OA journals.

Conclusion

From the three observations above, we can conclude that no matter the “mixed” publishers are included or excluded in our research’s scale, the “long-tail” and “the smaller, the NO-APCer” trends are always evident. Small non-profit publishers, with such a large number, need to look for various breakthroughs if they want to survive and grow.

Notes

1. Crow, 2006, “The market context for society publishers”.
2. Crow, 2006, “The market context for society publishers”, with reference to the Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory in 2005, http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/
3. Crow, 2006, “Abstract”.
4. Edgar & Willinsky, 2010, p. 1.
5. Morrison, 2018b, “Abstract”.
6. As indicated in The OA Diamond Journals Study. Part 1: Findings. Jeroen Bosman, Jan Erik Frantsvåg, Bianca Kramer, Pierre-Carl Langlais, Vanessa Proudman. (2021, March 9). http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4558704. p. 8. “OA diamond journals” are “journals that publish without charging authors and readers, in contrast to APC Gold OA or subscription journals”.

References

Bosman, J., Frantsvåg, J., Kramer, B., Langlais, P.-C., & Proudman, V. (2021). OA Diamond Journals Study. Part 1: Findings. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4558704

Crawford, W. (2011). Open access: what you need to know now. American Library Association.

Crawford, W. (2020). Gold Open Access Journals 2011 – 2015. https://waltcrawford.name/goaj1115.pdf

Crow, R. (2006). Publishing cooperatives: An alternative for not-for-profit publishers. First Monday, 11(9). https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1396/1314

Directory of Open Access Journals. https://doaj.org/

Directory of Open Access Journals. DOAJ to lead a collaboration to improve the preservation of open access journals. DOAJ News Service. https://blog.doaj.org/2020/11/05/doaj-to-lead-a-collaboration-to-improve-the-preservation-of-open-access-journals/

Edgar, B. D., & Willinsky, J. (2010). A survey of the scholarly journals using open journal systems. Scholarly and Research Communication. https://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/24

Hulagabali, S. C., & Suber, P. (2019), Peter Suber: The largest obstacles to open access are unfamiliarity and misunderstanding of open access itself. Open Interview. https://openinterview.org/2019/06/29/peter-suber-the-largest-obstacles-to-open-access-are-unfamiliarity-and-misunderstanding-of-open-access-itself/

Morrison, H. (2012). Freedom for scholarship in the internet age [Simon Fraser University]. http://summit.sfu.ca/item/12537 

Morrison, H. (2018a). Elsevier in 2018: Decrease in number of fully OA journals. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2018/12/13/elsevier-in-2018-decrease-in-number-of-fully-oa-journals/

Morrison, H. (2018b). Global OA APCs (APC) 2010–2017: Major Trends (L. Chan & P. Mounier, Trans.). ELPUB 2018. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01816699

Morrison, H. (2019). Publisher: N/A, or the complexity of understanding “the publisher” (method notes). Sustaining the Knowledge Commons. 2019. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/08/22/publisher-n-a-or-the-complexity-of-understanding-the-publisher-method-notes/

Morrison, H. & al. (2021). A comparison of open access journals using article processing charges in 2011 and 2021. (In progress)

Pashaei, H., & Morrison, H. (2019). De Gruyter and Sciendo Open Access journals expanding in 2019. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/10/16/de-gruyter-and-sciendo-open-access-journals-expanding-in-2019/

Zhao, X., Borges, L., & Morrison, H. (2021). Some limitations of DOAJ metadata for research purposes. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2021/02/10/some-limitations-of-doaj-metadata-for-research-purposes/

Open data references:

Directory of Open Access Journals; Zhao, X., Borges, L., & Morrison, H. (2021). “DOAJ_metadata_2021_01_05_with_SKC_clean_up”, Scholars Portal Dataverse, V1. https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/G5LEXG

by: Xuan Zhao & Heather Morrison

Abstract

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ, http://doaj.org/) is an essential world-wide open access service (16,134 journals listed, as of March 29, 2021), which promotes quality, peer-reviewed open access journals. The journals included can get higher and broader visibility. To make the most of this service, journal editors need to pay attention to the accuracy of their entries in the DOAJ metadata (journal-title, publisher information, location information, subject, language, URLs, etc.). This post aims to explain the benefits for journals of improving the quality of metadata and what journal editors can do. 

Our discussion is mainly based on recent research of the Sustaining the Knowledge Commons team and cites some other researchers’ findings. 

For journals, what are the benefits of improving the DOAJ metadata?

As detailed on the DOAJ website (DOAJ, https://doaj.org/apply/why-index/), there are five benefits for journals indexed in DOAJ, and accordingly, five reasons to improve the metadata: 

1. “Reputation and prominence”

“DOAJ is the most important community-driven, open access service in the world and has a reputation for advocating best practices and standards in open access. By indexing your journal in DOAJ, its reputation and prominence will be enhanced.”

We assume that journals with accurate and precise entries can give a serious and active impression, helping them maintain the reputation. 

2. “Standards and best practice”

“DOAJ’s basic criteria for inclusion have become the accepted way of measuring an open access journal’s adherence to standards in scholarly publishing. We can help you adopt a range of ethical and quality standards, making your journals more attractive publishing channels. DOAJ is committed to combatting questionable publishers and questionable publishing practices, helping to protect researchers from becoming trapped by unethical journals.”

As open access journals are listed in a quality standards system like DOAJ, it is important to make sure that their information is correct to distinguish them from the questionable journals undoubtedly. 

3. “Funding and compliance”

“Open access publication funds often require that authors who want funding must publish in journals that are included in DOAJ. Indexing in DOAJ makes your journals compliant with many initiatives and programmes around the world, for example Plan S in Europe or Capes/Qualis in Brazil.”

With correct entries in metadata, the DOAJ journals can be more easily discovered by foundations, related programmes and organizations.

4. “Discoverability and visibility”

“DOAJ metadata is free for anyone to collect and use, which means it is easily incorporated into search engines and discovery services. It is then propagated across the internet. If you provide us with article metadata for your journal, this will be supplied to all the major aggregators and the many research organisations and university library portals who use our widgets, RSS feeds, API and other services. Indexing your journal in DOAJ is likely to increase traffic to your website and give greater exposure to your published content. Levels of traffic to a journal website typically increase threefold after inclusion in DOAJ. Your journal’s visibility in search engines, such as Google, will improve.”

Indexing journals in DOAJ means they are more easily discovered and cited by other researchers. Correcting metadata will help raise the chances that people working in the same area will find the relevant research they need.

5. “International coverage”

“Our database includes more open access journals from a diverse list of countries than any of the other major indexing services. We have a global editorial team via a network of Managing Editors, Ambassadors and volunteers, so we will do our best to offer local support in your language. We promise you that information about your journal will be seen around the world.”

The DOAJ journals are aimed at readers from all over the world and may be seen by people who are not proficient in the journals’ language. In this case, journal editors need to ensure the correctness of data entry so that readers can read with confidence. 

What’s more, a higher quality database will be more valuable for researchers and promote the entire OA ecosystem. Especially for services like university libraries, which tend to keep up with the latest content and take advantage of metadata corrections. 

In brief, keeping the entries of DOAJ metadata correct reinforces the advantages for journals mentioned above and benefits the users of DOAJ. 

As journal editors, what can we do?

As demonstrated in a study of the SKC (Zhao, Borges & Morrison, 2021), “as of January 5, 2021, only 30% of DOAJ journals have a ‘last update’ date within the previous year (2020)”, which means only 30% of DOAJ journals fully or partially updated their information in DOAJ system. To make the best use of DOAJ, journal editors should regularly check their entries to ensure that their data is correct and up to date. For example, if journal URLs are not kept up to date, an incorrect URL means, at best, that the journal cannot be found. Crawford (2016), in a study of DOAJ journals, found journals flagged that were as malware (or as containing malware) by Mal- warebytes, Windows Defender, McAfee Site Advisor or Office 2013. 

Most of the visible inconsistencies in the metadata are input errors or location errors (listed below). Most of the input errors are “small differences in punctuation and/or characters, extra spaces at the beginning and/or at the end”, as reported by SKC (Zhao, Borges & Morrison, 2021). Combined with the findings of Crawford (2016), we list the data to be modified by categories as follows:

• Input error or location error in:

wrong column, journal title, special character, keywords, copyright information URL, plagiarism information URL, URL for journal’s instructions for authors, other submission fees information URL, preservation services, preservation service: national library, preservation information URL, deposit policy directory, persistent article identifiers, URL for journal’s open access statement, etc. 

• Publisher name duplicates:

Extra space or short of space, minor detail (e.g. non-English character in one but not the other), minor difference in punctuations and/or characters (e.g. “Abant İzzet Baysal Üniversitesi” vs. “Abant İzzet Baysal University”), abbreviation in one but not the other (e.g. “Asociación Interuniversitaria de Investigación Pedagógía” vs. “Asociación Interuniversitaria de Investigacion Pedagogica (AIDIPE)”), etc.

• “APC-charging journals that don’t clearly state the amount charged” (Crawford, 2016)

Sometimes it is hard to indicate “who is the publisher”. We list some situations below:

• When there are branch publishers under one publisher, and all of them are recorded in DOAJ, especially when their journals’ websites do not have any clear indications ;
• When a publisher has more than one active names (perhaps due to different sponsors of one publisher, or the nature of commercial publishers), but their journals’ websites do not have any clear indications ;
• When journals changed their websites but didn’t renew the URLs in the DOAJ database;
• Invalid URLs;
• Unmatched publisher name/journal name and URLs.

DOAJ also provides article-level search and is working to encourage more journals to provide article-level metadata. It makes both the journal-level and article-level metadata available for anyone to download. (DOAJ, https://doaj.org/docs/public-data-dump/) Thus, it would be better if journal editors can ensure the correctness of the articles’ information. 

References

Crawford, W. (2016). Gold Open Access Journals 2011 – 2015. https://waltcrawford.name/goaj1115.pdf

Directory of Open Access Journals. Retrieved March 29, 2021, from http://doaj.org/

Public data dump. Directory of Open Access Journals. Retrieved March 29, 2021, from https://doaj.org/docs/public-data-dump/

Why index your journal in DOAJ? Directory of Open Access Journals. Retrieved March 29, 2021, from https://doaj.org/apply/why-index/

Zhao, X., Borges, L., & Morrison, H. (2021). Some limitations of DOAJ metadata for research purposes. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2021/02/10/some-limitations-of-doaj-metadata-for-research-purposes/

by: Xuan Zhao, Luan Borges, & Heather Morrison

Abstract

The Directory of Open Access Journals http://doaj.org is an excellent service that fulfills many important functions, in particular facilitating access to a vetted collection of over 15,000 freely available peer-reviewed journals. The DOAJ search services and metadata download are very useful for researchers as well. The purpose of this post is to alert researchers to some of the limitations of the DOAJ metadata that researchers need to take into account to avoid drawing erroneous conclusions. First, when downloading DOAJ metadata, it is necessary to open the .csv file in Unicode in order to retain non-English characters. We open in Open Office for this reason, then save as an excel file. The nature of the metadata means that some data is inserted in the wrong column; clean-up, as discussed below, is necessary before data analysis. When journal editors or others working on their behalf enter metadata into DOAJ, research is not the primary purpose of this exercise; for this reason, in-depth assessment and corrections may be necessary before analysis. Below, we present publisher size analysis as an example of what researchers may encounter. Finally, because the main purpose of DOAJ is connecting readers with content, the metadata of interest to a particular research project may not be up to date. As demonstrated below, as of Jan. 5, 2021, only 30% of DOAJ journals have a “last update” date within the previous year (2020). We do not know whether the “last update” date reflects a full or partial metadata review. We illustrate the potential impact on research results with the example of the SKC longitudinal APC study. Of the 4,292 DOAJ journals that responded “yes” to the APC question, only 30% have a last update date of 2020 or 2021. Even with this 30% of journals, we have no way of knowing whether the APC status and/or amount per se was updated, or only other unrelated metadata. This means that if we compare 2019 prices obtained from publisher websites in 2019 with 2021 DOAJ APC metadata, we will almost certainly get incorrect results, for example falsely assuming that matching APC amounts means no change in the prices. DOAJ provides rich and useful metadata for the researcher and the research question “is this journal listed in DOAJ?” is of value in and of itself. For this reason, we intend to continue using DOAJ metadata in addition to data derived from other sources, particularly data derived directly from publisher websites.

Details

Correcting for displaced observations

As previously mentioned, the first step to confidently use the DOAJ metadata for analysis and research is identifying and correcting data inserted in the wrong column, herein also called displaced observations. 

Below we can see an example of a displaced observation from the DOAJ metadata. Column BB has no assigned variable while containing some observations, apparently displaced one column to the right. 

Users may follow different steps to correct for displaced data. Here we explain in more detail how we have identified these displacements and corrected them.  

Before proceeding with any analysis, it is important to get familiarized with the DOAJ metadata first. We recommend users to read the DOAJ Guide to applying, available online, because the metadata reflects responses to questions asked in the application process. The DOAJ metadata, as of 5 Jan. 2021, possesses 53 variables ranging from Journal Title to Country to Most recent article added. It may be helpful to start correcting observations from variables with easily identifiable responses, such as « Country » or « Country of Publisher », or variables that allow only two types of answers (i.e Yes or No), such as Author holds copyright without restrictions and APC. It is recommended to create a pivot table to identify displaced observations, repeating this process until no observations are identified in a wrong column. 

When cleaning-up the DOAJ metadata, users will notice that in some cases only one observation was displaced; in other cases, an entire row was displaced beginning on a specific variable. In the example highlighted in yellow below, all observations beginning at variable Publisher were displaced one column to the right. 

Data entry inconsistencies

When correcting for displaced observations, we have also identified some inconsistencies in the way observations are registered in the DOAJ metadata. The table below lists the main visible inconsistencies found for some variables. In the majority of instances, the inconsistencies will not impact DOAJ users looking up information for a particular journal. However, it is important to take into account these inconsistencies before proceeding to any automated statistical analysis. For example, DOAJ metadata as is can be used to identify the number of journals with persistent article identifiers, but automated counting of DOI v. ARK or other approaches would require some advance data manipulation.

Publisher’s names duplicates investigation and clean-up

The purpose of this project is preparation to develop a rough picture of publisher size to compare with Solomon & Björk’s findings (2012). In order to better perform publisher size analysis, we have specifically investigated the publisher duplicates and corrected most of the obvious errors, such as small differences in punctuation and/or characters, extra spaces at the beginning and/or at the end, and minor differences in entering the publisher name when it is the same, etc. (Please see examples in Table 4 – Investigative Strategies – Publisher Names Duplicates).

The process of clean-up was divided into three stages. Firstly, we created a pivot table for the publisher column to identify the entries in rows which were slightly different but weren’t gathered. Secondly, when potential duplicates were found, we conducted an investigation to confirm duplicates and/or to decide which name to keep (in priority order: use the name with the most journal entries; correct name with obvious typo; use the first name listed). Please see the investigative strategies below:

Thirdly, after identifying inconsistencies in publisher names, we created a table (please see Table 5 – Corrections Gathering – Publisher Names Duplicates) to register all the corrections on the variable Publisher. About 500 inconsistencies were corrected. Thus, the number of publishers in the pivot table has decreased from 7218 entries (data resource: pivot table based on DOAJ metadata) to 6804 entries (data resource: pivot table based on the cleaned-up version of database).

As illustrated in the two tables above, there were different types of data inconsistencies. In order to respect metadata to the greatest extent, we acted prudently when making decisions. In some minor variation cases, we tried to click on the URLs to check publisher websites and to collect convincing evidence. However, we met some intricate complex challenges.

One of the challenges was the language. Due to the massiveness and the wide-range of publishers (124 countries, 80 languages, DOAJ, 7 Feb. 2021) [https://doaj.org/], we were unable to identify all of the sources of information. Besides, when there were invalid URLs or unmatched information, it was difficult to seek out any precision. What’s more, among 7218 entries of publisher names, some of the potential duplicates weren’t gathered because of their different beginning words. For example, “Editora da Universidade Estadual de Maringá (Eduem)” vs. “Eduem – Editora da Universidade Estadual de Maringá” and “Academica Brâncuşi” vs. “Editura Academica Brâncuşi”. They were usually far apart and hard to be detected. More details can be found in the Table 6 below:

Unmatched publisher names (examples):

Invalid URLs (examples):

Given the barriers and challenges mentioned above, we can draw a conclusion to the limitations of publisher names clean-up project. Precision is not possible in this project because the question “who is the publisher” is complex. Instead of making any definitive claims about publisher size, we are primarily interested in whether the long tail effect (a few big publishers, a few more middle-sized, most very small) reported by Solomon & Björk (2012) can still be observed in DOAJ in 2021.

DOAJ metadata update analysis

The following analysis was conducted to determine whether DOAJ metadata on article processing charges (APCs) – charging status and amount – would be sufficient for SKC’s longitudinal study on APC trends over time. The answer is clearly no. The metadata for the vast majority of journals in DOAJ (overall and APC charging) has not been updated for more than a year, and it is unknown whether the most recent update would have included an update to APC or other metadata. We will continue to use DOAJ metadata as it is rich and the question “is this journal listed in DOAJ” is of value in and of itself, however for price comparisons we cannot rely on this data as it would likely result in erroneous conclusions.

DOAJ journals by year of last update.

This chart illustrates the percentage of DOAJ journals last update by year. Detailed figures are in the table below. Note that just under half the journals were last updated 2 or more years ago (2018 or earlier).

DOAJ APC charging journals by year of last update

The chart above illustrates the percentage of journals that answered “yes” to the DOAJ question about charging APCs by year of last update. The table below provides the detailed figures. Note that only 30% of DOAJ journals that charge APCs were updated in the past year (2020 or 2021). It is also unknown whether in these cases the last update was a thorough review of the metadata, or might have been an update of non-APC data.

References

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) online: https://doaj.org/

Solomon, D. J., & Björk, B. (2012). A study of open access journals using article processing charges. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(8), 1485–1495. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.22673

Autrice : Zeïnabou Assoumi Sow

Traducteurs : Maru et Hamma Bukari

Livre bilingue publié avec le soutien financier de l’Organisation internationale de la Francophonie

Noy, dow innde kiite potinol hakkeeji nder tewto anndal, reenirta, darjina ɗee annde tawaangaaje e ɗemle wurooje ɗe duuniyaaru fuu, ɓuri hewde ɗe anndaaka, ɗe caanaaka? Jiiɗe lugginɗinoowo annde mo Niijer Zeynabu Aasumi Soo ngoni watta nder yaynaare iri oo anndaaɗo sanne mo filla annde pillaaka mo fulɓe : taalol. Dewtere ndee ndelle no kawri taali 18, kokkaaɗi he fulfulde e he faransiire, keɓaaɗi to fulɓe Gaawooɓe, keddiiɓe nder egga hoɗaaɓe gorgal Niijer. Taali ɗin ɗowtiraama tinndinirde jannde ƴoogunde nder weeyo finaa-tawaa mo ngool lenyol ngol saahel, ɓurde fuu no nagge e kulle ɗeya nji’iretee e ko ɗe coomi.

***

ISBN version imprimée : 978-2-924661-99-4
ISBN PDF : 978-2-924661-97-0
ISBN ePub : 978-2-925128-03-8

DOI : à venir
250 pages
Couverture réalisée par Kate McDonnell, photographie de Patrick Delmas à Diffa
Date de publication : Janvier 2021

Décoloniser les sciences sociales. Descolonizar las ciencias sociales.

Six textes d’Orlando Fals Borda, choisis et traduits sous la direction de Liliana Diaz (Université Laval) et Baptiste Godrie (CREMIS et Université de Montréal)

Avec Paulo Freire, Orlando Fals Borda (1925-2008), est l’un des pères fondateurs des approches décoloniales latino-américaines en sciences sociales. Pourtant, alors que le premier est une figure familière du paysage des sciences sociales francophones, le second est quasiment inconnu. Cette anthologie francophone, la première à ce jour, propose cinq textes, publiés entre 1968 et 2003, en plus d’une conférence inédite prononcée en 1966. Elle vise à présenter la proposition épistémologique de Fals Borda d’une science latino-américaine émancipée des cadres théoriques européens et nord-américains, et orientée vers la production partagée des connaissances entre universitaires et mouvements sociaux pour favoriser la transformation de la société vers une plus grande justice sociale. Chaque texte est présenté dans sa version espagnole originale et dans sa traduction française, avec une brève mise en contexte permettant de situer celui-ci dans l’œuvre de l’auteur. Une introduction présente la thématique de l’anthologie et la trajectoire intellectuelle de Fals Borda.

***

Junto con Paulo Freire, Orlando Fals Borda (1925-2008) fue uno de los padresfundadores de los enfoques descoloniales latinoamericanos en las ciencias sociales. Sinembargo, mientras que el primero es una figura familiar en el panorama francés de lasciencias sociales, el segundo es casi desconocido. Esta antología francófona, la primera hasta la fecha, ofrece cinco textos publicados entre 1968 y 2003, además de una conferencia inédita realizada en 1966. Su objetivo es presentar la propuesta epistemológica de Fals Borda de una ciencia latinoamericana emancipada de los marcos teóricos europeo y norteamericano, y orientada a la producción de conocimientos compartida entre los académicos y los movimientossociales para promover la transformación de la sociedad hacia una mayor justicia social. Cada texto se presenta en su versión original en español y en su traducción al francés, conuna breve contextualización que permite ubicarlo en el trabajo del autor. Una introducción presenta el tema de la antología y la trayectoria intelectual de Fals Borda.

ISBN version imprimée / edición impresa : 978-2-924661-99-4
ISBN PDF : 978-2-924661-97-0
ISBN ePub : 978-2-925128-03-8

DOI : à venir
238 pages
Couverture réalisée par Kate McDonnell, photographie tirée de ce documentaire sur Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfaZNTrfSNQ
Date de publication : septembre 2020

DOI : pronto
230 páginas
Portada dirigida por Kate McDonnell, fotografía de este documental en Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfaZNTrfSNQ
Fecha de publicación: septiembre de 2020

Table des matières / Índice

Cross-posted from The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics

While many aspects of our lives and activities have slowed down during the COVID pandemic, this has not been the case with open access! The OA initiatives tracked through this series continue to show  strong growth on an annual and quarterly basis. Important milestones are being reached, and others will be coming soon.

Highlights

The Directory of Open Access Journals now lists over 15,000 fully open access, peer reviewed journals, having added 379 journals (> 4 per day) in the past quarter, and now provides searching for over 5 million articles at the article level.

A PubMed search for “cancer” limited to literature from the past 5 years now links to full-text for over 50% of the articles.

The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine now cross-searches over 8,000 repositories and will soon surpass the milestone of a quarter billion documents.

Anyone worried about running out of cultural materials during the pandemic will be relieved to note that the Internet Archive has exceeded a milestone of 6 million movies in addition to over 27 million texts (plus audio, concerts, TV, collections, webpages, and software).

Analysis of quarterly and annual growth for 39 indicators from 10 services reflecting open access publishing and archiving (Internet Archive, Bielefeld Academic Search Engine, Directory of Open Access Books, bioRxiv, PubMedCentral, PubMed, SCOAP3, Directory of Open Access Journals, RePEC and arXiv) demonstrates ongoing robust growth beyond the baseline growth of scholarly journals and articles of 3 – 3.5 per year. Growth rates for these indicators ranged from 4% – 100% (doubling). 26 indicators had a growth rate of over 10%, 15 had a growth rate of over 20%, and 6 had a growth rate of over 40%. The full list can be found in this table.

Thank you to everyone in the open access movement for continuing the hard work that makes this growth possible.

The open data edition is available here:   

Morrison, Heather, 2020, “Dramatic Growth of Open Access Sept. 30, 2020”, https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/AVBOW6, Scholars Portal Dataverse, V2 

This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series.  

Cite as: Morrison, H. (2020). Dramatic Growth of Open Access September 30, 2020. The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics https://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2020/10/dramatic-growth-of-open-access.html

Six textes d’Orlando Fals Borda, choisis et traduits sous la direction de Liliana Diaz et Baptiste Godrie

Avec Paulo Freire, Orlando Fals Borda (1925-2008), est l’un des pères fondateurs des approches décoloniales latino-américaines en sciences sociales. Pourtant, alors que le premier est une figure familière du paysage des sciences sociales francophones, le second est quasiment inconnu. Cette anthologie francophone, la première à ce jour, propose cinq textes, publiés entre 1968 et 2003, en plus d’une conférence inédite prononcée en 1966. Elle vise à présenter la proposition épistémologique de Fals Borda d’une science latino-américaine émancipée des cadres théoriques européens et nord-américains, et orientée vers la production partagée des connaissances entre universitaires et mouvements sociaux pour favoriser la transformation de la société vers une plus grande justice sociale. Chaque texte est présenté dans sa version espagnole originale et dans sa traduction française, avec une brève mise en contexte permettant de situer celui-ci dans l’œuvre de l’auteur. Une introduction présente la thématique de l’anthologie et la trajectoire intellectuelle de Fals Borda.

***

Junto con Paulo Freire, Orlando Fals Borda (1925-2008) fue uno de los padresfundadores de los enfoques descoloniales latinoamericanos en las ciencias sociales. Sinembargo, mientras que el primero es una figura familiar en el panorama francés de lasciencias sociales, el segundo es casi desconocido. Esta antología francófona, la primera hasta la fecha, ofrece cinco textos publicados entre 1968 y 2003, además de una conferencia inédita realizada en 1966. Su objetivo es presentar la propuesta epistemológica de Fals Borda de una ciencia latinoamericana emancipada de los marcos teóricos europeo y norteamericano, y orientada a la producción de conocimientos compartida entre los académicos y los movimientossociales para promover la transformación de la sociedad hacia una mayor justicia social.Cada texto se presenta en su versión original en español y en su traducción al francés, conuna breve contextualización que permite ubicarlo en el trabajo del autor. Una introducción presenta el tema de la antología y la trayectoria intelectual de Fals Borda.

ISBN version imprimée / edición impresa : 978-2-924661-99-4
ISBN PDF : 978-2-924661-97-0
ISBN ePub : 978-2-925128-03-8

DOI : à venir
230 pages
Couverture réalisée par Kate McDonnell, photographie tirée de ce documentaire sur Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfaZNTrfSNQ
Date de publication : septembre 2020

DOI : pronto
230 páginas
Portada dirigida por Kate McDonnell, fotografía de este documental en Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfaZNTrfSNQ
Fecha de publicación: septiembre de 2020

Table des matières / Índice

Notre Tanoh Laurent Kakou a créé un blog pour son propre projet de recherche en libre accès, C.A.S.A.D.: Centre d’Accès aux Savoirs d’Afrique et de sa Diaspora.

Quelques articles seront familiers aux lecteurs de Soutenir les savoirs communs, le travail de l’équipe; d’autres sont nouveau recherche fait par Tanoh. La vidéo Qu’est-ce que la revue Afroscopie?, un entretien avec Benoit Awazi, est éclairante pour quiconque s’intéresse à la recherche en Afrique francophone.

Merci et félicitations à notre Tanoh Laurent Kakou, candidat au doctorat en communication (et diplômé d’ÉSIS), qui a réussi son examen de synthèse cet été! Meilleurs voeux à Tanoh et sa recherche.

English

Our Tanoh Laurent Kakou has created a blog for his own research project in open access, C.A.S.A.D.: Centre d’Accès aux Savoirs d’Afrique et de sa Diaspora.

Some articles will be familiar to readers of Sustaining the knowledge commons, as the work of the team; others are new research projects by Tanoh. The video Qu’est-ce que la revue Afroscopie?, an interview with Benoit Awazi, is enlightening for anyone who is interested in research in francophone Africa.

Thank you and congratulations to our Tanoh Laurent Kakou, a doctoral candidate in communication (and graduate of ÉSIS) on passing his comprehensive exam this summer! Best wishes to Tanoh and his research.

Français

What is MediArXiv?

MediArXiv is a community-run open archive for media, film, and communication studies. MediArXiv was initiated by Open Access in Media Studies and founded in 2019. The preprint server is governed by a 16-member Steering Committee of academics and librarians from around the world. MediArXiv provides a non-profit platform for media, film, and communication scholars to upload their working papers, preprints, accepted manuscripts (post-prints), and published manuscripts. The mission of MediArXiv is to open up media, film, and communication research to a broader readership and to help build the future of scholarly communication. We receive submissions from around the world, which we moderate in 11 languages.

What is the legal status of MediArXiv?

MediArXiv is a registered non-profit corporation in the state of Pennsylvania, with 501(c)(3) status. We have partnered with the Center for Open Science, a nonprofit organization who operates the Open Science Framework upon which MediArXiv is hosted and developed. All of our operating documentation is available to the public on Github, openly licensed.

Operating MediArXiv incurs expenses. Minor expenses include registration of the domain name and shared hosting. Further, as of 2020, the Center for Open Science is requesting that their partnering preprint servers contribute towards the expenses of operating the server, including developer maintenance, DOI minting, hosting, and overhead, on a cost recovery basis. With this in mind, MediArXiv is creating a Membership Circle, formed of organizations interested in supporting open dissemination of media scholarship.

What is the request?

We are asking for $500.00 annually from each member organization. Renewals will be invoiced on an annual basis. In exchange, we will feature your organization on our website and social media channels (unless you ask us not to). Thank you for your consideration!

Ready to join?

Great! Please send an email to mediarxiv@mediarxiv.com to get started. Invoices can be paid via ACH bank transfer or credit card.

By Anqi Shi & Heather Morrison

Abstract

307 SpringerOpen titles for which we have data on journals that were fully open at some point from 2010 to the present were studied, with a primary focus on pricing and status changes from 2019 – 2020 and a secondary focus on longitudinal status changes. Of the 307 titles, 226 are active, fully open access and are still published by SpringerOpen, 40 have ceased publication, 19 were transferred to another publisher, and 18 formerly open access journals are now hybrid. 6 of these journals transitioned from free to hybrid in the past year. An additional 2 journals were not found. An additional 2 journals were not found. Of the 226 active journals published by SpringerOpen, 51% charge APCs. The average APC is 1,233 EUR, an increase of 3% over the 2019 average. 46.5% of the 101 journals for which we have 2019 and 2020 data did not change in price; 13.9% decreased in price; and 39.6% increased in price. The extent of change in price was substantial, ranging from a 50% price drop to a 94% price increase.

Detail – download the PDF: springer open 2019-2020

Data (for DOAJ 2016 – 2019 data for journals that are now hybrid see columns BV – ): Springeropen_2019_2020

Sous la direction de Hanane El Bachir et Pascal Laborderie

Né d’un projet de recherche multidisciplinaire, ce livre s’intéresse à la manière dont les publics méditerranéens, en particulier en Algérie et en France, reçoivent et utilisent des images médiatiques, qu’elles soient prétexte à polémique ou favorisent les échanges. Les études proposées analysent ainsi la réception de productions variées (bande dessinée, dessin d’actualité, film, web film) dans des contextes divers (école, université, festival, cinéma, télévision, presse écrite, web news, réseaux sociaux). Elles éclairent la manière dont ces publics construisent leur identité culturelle et se représentent les rapports Nord-Sud au travers de six thèmes : les conflits, les formes récentes d’esclavagisme, les migrations, les langues, les rapports femmes-hommes ainsi que le rôle des associations et des institutions publiques dans la coopération et les échanges interculturels entre la France et l’Afrique du Nord.

ISBN version imprimée : 978-2-924661-83-3
ISBN ePub : 978-2-924661-84-0
DOI :

206 pages
Couverture réalisée par Kate McDonnell, photos des auteurs et autrices
Date de publication : mai 2020

Table des matières

Introduction

مقدمة

1. Étude comparative de la réception d’une bande dessinée chez des étudiant-e-s d’Algérie et de France

2. La réception des caricatures traitant de l’esclavage en Libye dans les réseaux sociaux et la presse électronique maghrébine

3. Web films et réceptions : l’arabe est-il la langue du paradis ?

4. Cinéma, colonialisme et anticolonialisme dans les revues de ciné-clubs confessionnelles ou laïques en France dans l’après Seconde Guerre mondiale

5. Échange des flux d’information entre les deux rives du bassin méditerranéen

6. De la distribution commerciale dans la valorisation des films tunisiens en Tunisie et en Europe : regards croisés

7. Bejaia Doc : co-construction d’un regard documentaire sur l’Algérie d’aujourd’hui

8. Les films associatifs autobiographiques des migrant-e-s et l’espace de réception des foyers parisiens

9. La COPEAM et la promotion de la parité femmes-hommes dans le secteur audiovisuel du bassin méditerranéen

10. Les étudiant-e-s de l’Université de M’sila regardent La Bataille d’Alger

Autrices et auteurs

Annexes : Comité scientifique, traductions, remerciements et sources

À propos des Éditions science et bien commun

Pour acheter le livre, choisissez le tarif en fonction de l’endroit où le livre devra être expédié. Des frais de 15 $ sont ajoutés pour le transport. Le ePub (pour lire sur une tablette ou un téléphone) revient à 16 $ et est expédié par courriel.

Abstract

Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), initiated in 1999 by Tsinghua University and Tsinghua Tongfang Co., Ltd., is both the largest institutional repository in China and a near-monopoly provider of for-pay academic databases with a higher profit margin than Elsevier or Wiley, among other services. With promotion and support from the government, CNKI keeps developing its track towards open access [1]. CNKI offers free access to millions of documents ranging from dissertations and academic articles to popular and party journals. The COAA, Chinese Open Access Aggregator, launched in 2019, makes available more than 10,000 open access journals, although foreign scholars may find it difficult to benefit from this due to the language. CNKI has played an important role in making works on COVID-19 freely available, as well as in expanding access to subscribers at home during lock-down.

Details

CNKI stands for Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, it was initiated by Tsinghua University and Tsinghua Tongfang Co., Ltd. and was founded in June 1999. According to Tongfang ’s annual report, the company officially opened the world ’s largest Chinese knowledge portal ‘CNKI (cnki.net) database’ in 2004, informally known as ‘Zhiwang’. CNKI is currently China’s largest integrator of academic electronic resources, including more than 95% of officially published Chinese academic resources.

At the end of 2017, CNKI had more than 20,000 institutional users, more than 20 million individual registered users, full-text downloads amounted to 2 billion pages per year and more than 150,000 online users. The market share of CNKI in Chinese undergraduate colleges is 100%. [2]

As most students know, the best way to access databases outside school is VPN. However, in some inconvenient situations like during the COVID-19 lockdown time in China, you cannot use VPN in some places. Some major Chinese database vendors provided recent limited-time free services. According to the Central China Normal University Library announcement, during the COVID-19 epidemic period (the service period is tentatively from February 1 to March 3, 2020), CNKI provides 4 free services including CNKI database literature acquisition, research learning, and collaborative scientific research services (CNKI OKMS platform). (English translation by the author) At the same time, the school’s students are offered a new online entrance to access CNKI database.[3]

For Chinese readers, CNKI developed a special database online platform to release and promote the latest COVID-19 related study results. You can notice the platform name in red font on the homepage. The platform includes 2,256 journals in total, including 23 non-Chinese journals.[4]

At the same time, CNKI announced that there is free access given by the CNKI OKMS platform, helping uninterrupted research team communication during the special times. The “OKMS Huizhi” is an Office Software for Collaborative Research.

Ms. Dai also stresses that the “OKMS Huizhi” platform was launched in May 2019, and it is now free because of the COVID-19 epidemic situation so that everyone can research from home. Before June 1, the “OKMS Huizhi” platform will be open for free. (English translation by the author) [5]

Besides the limited free access due to the COVID-19 pandemic period, CNKI started to open a variety of continuous services, for example, full-text open access to some Chinese published literature.

The target of this service is the whole country of China, which started in November 2015. The types of documents served include academic journals, conference papers, doctoral dissertations, master’s theses, and newspapers.

The free service scope of 2020 is all documents published by CNKI in 2011 and before, including 40.89 million articles published in 11,402 journals from 1911 to 2011, accounting for about 59.8% of all documents. These include academic journals; culture, art, and other popular journals; party construction, political newspapers, and other party and government journals; higher education, vocational education, and other educational journals; economic information journals. From 2000-2011 CNKI published 188,000 doctoral dissertations, 1.51 million ancillary papers, 4.17 million conference papers, accounting for 45.6%, 38.1%, and 67.4% respectively, as well as, 18.15 million articles from more than 400 newspapers from 2001 to 2019, totaling 64,908 million articles. (English translation by the author) [6]

For Chinese authors, there is a free service that started in September 2019, aiming at the authors who have Chinese publications collected in CNKI database. On this online free author service platform, authors can download own published documents for free, manage academic achievements, obtain academic evaluation reports, track academic frontier developments, and achieve online journal submission.[7] For English readers, CNKI keeps updating its oversea website. At the time this blog post is written, the open-access (OA) online-first publishing of COVID-19 platform is officially online to serve [http://new.oversea.cnki.net/index/] which includes 2,288 China journals and 25 foreign journals.

What is more, CNKI Open Access Aggregator (COAA) is introduced to foreign scholars. CNKI Open Access Aggregator, COAA in short, was launched in 2019 and currently has more than 10,000 open access journals covering all fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and humanities.

According to the COAA platform introduction on their webpage, it will continue to expand the coverage of open resources from now on, increase open access books, papers, conference papers, etc., to provide users with a large number of open access resources. The journal covers 100 countries and regions on five continents, covering 100 disciplines and covering 70 languages. (English translation by the author) [8] Unfortunately, the homepage and all the instructions are in Chinese. The language barrier could be a difficulty for non-Chinese scholars.

Besides all the effort CNKI has made to develop open-access (OA), there are many challenges it is facing. One survey of Chinese readers conducted by Wen revealed the fact that 94.5 percent of the respondents were ignorant of the existence of OA journals.[9] As we mentioned before, the market share of CNKI in Chinese undergraduate colleges is 100% which keeps CNKI the Chinese world of academic publishing in a monopolistic stranglehold. According to Wang Yiwei’s article on July 24, 2019, CNKI has posted an average annual profit margin of nearly 60%in the past decade which almost doubled the figure of Wiley [10].

At the end of 2018, the Taiyuan University of Technology, a university located in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, China, put a notice regarding the suspension of access to “CNKI” in 2019 on their school website[11] and the next day the school library published that the budget for the usage contract with CNKI was 588,000 yuan (about $85,500). [12]

The cancellation due to high fees happens around the world. For example, SUNY (State University of New York System) subscribed to approximately 250 titles in Elsevier instead of the whole database in 2020 and this approach will save SUNY institutions $7 million annually. [13]

CNKI, which has been developed with the strong support of the government, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and other departments, could assume more social responsibilities through open-access (OA) instead of taking advantage of its leading enterprises to gain more economic benefits. As the quick development of online services is being promoted by the national government during the COVID-19 pandemic period, it is believed that open-access (OA) is to become the future of academic library exchanges in China.

References:

[1] Zhong, Jing, and Shuyong Jiang. 2016. “Institutional Repositories in Chinese Open Access Development: Status, Progress, and Challenges.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 42 (6): 739–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2016.06.015.

[2] 谭捷,张李义 & 饶丽君. (2010).中文学术期刊数据库的比较研究. 图书情报知识(04),4-13. doi:10.13366/j.dik.2010.04.015. https://kns8.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFD2010&filename=TSQC201004005&v=MDAwNDFyQ1VSN3FmWStSbUZpL2tVcjNOTVQ3YWJiRzRIOUhNcTQ5RllZUjhlWDFMdXhZUzdEaDFUM3FUcldNMUY=

[3] Central China Normal University Library Announcement (2020). 疫情期间限时免费数据库使用攻略. http://lib.ccnu.edu.cn/info/1071/4595.htm

[4] CNKI 2.0 homepage. https://kns8.cnki.net/nindex/

[5] 本王整理(2020-02-04). 刚刚！中国知网道歉了，并对免费服务项目做出说明. http://www.ecorr.org/news/industry/2020-02-04/176080.html

[6]《中国学术期刊（光盘版）》电子杂志社有限公司(2020-02-01). 关于中国知网免费服务项目的说明. https://piccache.cnki.net/index/images2009/other/2020/freeservice.html

[7] open-access author service platform. https://expert.cnki.net/Register/AuthorPlat

[8] COAA platform introduction (2019). http://coaa.discovery.cnki.net/public/about

[9] Wen (2008) citation: as cited in Hu (2012).Hu, Dehau. 2012. “The Availability of Open Access Journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences in China.” Journal of Information Science 38 (1): 64–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551511428919.

[10] Wang Yiwei(2020-06-24). Publish or Perish: How China’s Elsevier Made its Fortune. https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1004345/publish-or-perish-how-chinas-elsevier-made-its-fortune

[11] Zhang shumei (2018-12-28). Notice on suspending access to “CNKI series database” in 2019 http://www2017.tyut.edu.cn/info/1026/11127.htm

[12] Tendering and Procurement Center (2018-12-29). 2019 Electronic Periodical Database Renewal Service Project Transaction Announcement http://cgzb.tyut.edu.cn/info/1076/3542.htm

[13] Big Deal Cancellation Tracking. https://sparcopen.org/our-work/big-deal-cancellation-tracking/

Cite as: Shi, A. (2020). [ CNKI free services during COVID-19 and OA long-term practice ]. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons. [https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2020/05/05/cnki-free-services-during-covid-19-and-oa-long-term-practice/].

Abstract

During the lockdown of the entire country, China is bravely fighting against COVID-19. Many database vendors, publishers, and Internet companies announced to offer free access to academic resources to help students and researchers get the resources they need from home. Most of the publishers offered free access to everyone for a limited time and to decide whether to extend the period or not depend on the COVID-19 situation while some publishers announced open access from the announcement date indefinitely. At the same time, they are using technology to provide a convenient communication platform for researchers and provide an effective channel for up-to-date publication of results and new ideas of COVID-19 for the public.

Here we use the open-access platform ‘Sciencepaper Online’ [http://www.paper.edu.cn/] as a case study. The review and release period of papers online related to COVID-19 has been significantly reduced to 3 working days and all documents have been open for free in full text indefinitely from the start of February. Meanwhile, it works with other publishers and opens a separate area for Novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP), providing preprinted copies of relevant research results for free submission, publishing, browsing, downloading.

Detail

The outbreak of pandemic caused by COVID-19 has already affected people’s daily life worldwide. On January 27^th, 2020, the Chinese Ministry of Education decided to delay the start of the spring semester in 2020. Due to the lockdown, all the universities and schools in China have closed. However, all the classes and teaching still need to continue at home. Classes from primary schools to Universities are all changed to online teaching. Limited resources and communication channels put great pressure on students, teachers, and researchers. According to the guidance and organization of the Ministry of education, lots of databases, publishers, and internet firms were offering free access to their website or launching a mobile application to giving academic resources for a limited time. However, open access has been going on in China for a long time. As a leading provider of open access in China, Sciencepaper Online is playing an important academic intermediary in this incident.

Brief introduction

According to the Sciencepaper online website, Sciencepaper Online is an academic institutional repository established in 2003 initiated by the Ministry of Education and hosted by the Science and Technology Development Center of the Ministry of Education. This platform is dedicated to providing scientific researchers with rapid paper publication and free access services. It is the first online academic open-access (OA) journals platform in China and the leading international peer-reviewed platform for online preprinted papers. (English translation by the author)

Since its publication in August 2006, Sciencepaper Online opened its Weibo account to give more up-to-date information about the platform for more people in 2011. Weibo is a popular social media platform in China similar to Twitter. According to the ASKCI Consulting company report, Weibo has more than 330 million users by the end of 2018. In 2016, Sciencepaper Online launched a mobile application to help scholars have more flexible access to open access resources the platform offers. On March 27th,  2019, Sciencepaper Online formally signed ‘Expression of Interest in the Large-scale Implementation of Open Access to Scholarly Journals’ The signing of OA 2020 initiative is not only an affirmation of the open-access concept but also a mark that China Sciencepaper Online will contribute to the open-access of global academic scholarly journals.

According to the Sciencepaper online webpage—introduction, the four main purposes of Sciencepaper Online are elaborating Academic Views, Exchanging Innovative Ideas, Protecting Intellectual Properties, and Fast Sharing Science Papers. After several years of development, it became a one-stop scientific research service platform with papers, journals, scholars, and communities as the four core sections, and rapid positioning of resources through disciplines, institutions, full-text search, and other methods. The submitted papers are reviewed and released on the site after 7 business days (start from the date of the last submission) if the paper is within the scope of Sciencepaper Online’s subject categories, in-line with the national laws/regulations and meeting our formatting requirements. No Service Fee Is Charged for releasing on this site. Today the website hosts 39 specialized fields according to the Classification and code of disciplines. According to standards press of China, Classification and code of disciplines specify the principles, basis, and coding methods of subject classification. The classification objects of this standard are disciplines, which are different from professions and industries. It also specifies that this standard cannot replace various viewpoints in literature, information, book classification, and academics. (English translation by the author) [http://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=4C13F521FD6ECB6E5EC026FCD779986E]

Contribution

In the view of the difficulty in publishing papers in general, the communication among scholars of different languages is narrow, Sciencepaper Online creates a fast, convenient communication platform to promote the latest study results and communication between scholars without delay. After the outbreak of COVID-19 in China, the Sciencepaper Online platform promises to significantly shorten the review and publication time from 7 business days to 3 days for papers related to the COVID-19 epidemic for basic medicine, clinical medicine, biology, pharmacy, Chinese medicine, and traditional Chinese medicine, preventive medicine, hygiene, and other disciplines.  Sciencepaper Online releases relevant research and shares the research results as quickly as possible. Together with other publishers, a special website releases to the public providing relevant study results about COVID-19 [http://cajn.cnki.net/gzbd/brief/Default.aspx]. The site offers three versions which are simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, and English. Considered some people may have no access to computers during the self-quarantine time, it launched the mobile application simultaneously. Meanwhile, as the first preprinted scientific paper and open access website in China, the platform has over 100,000 preprinted papers and a total of 1.2 million-plus scientific papers in the library. All documents are open for free in full text indefinitely from the start of February 2020.

Challenges

It is a good strategy to open full-text access during the urgent worldwide pandemic time. However, open access (OA) as a long-time movement needs more detailed consideration. Although the site has both the Chinese and the English versions, the English version contains around 5,900 English papers (5,992 papers) which are quite small compared to the 1.2 million-plus scientific papers in the Chinese version. Another challenge is that much of China’s scientific output is still locked behind paywalls.

” The Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) funds about 70% of Chinese research articles published in international journals, but China has to buy these back with full and high prices,”

Schiermeier, Q. (2018). China backs bold plan to tear down journal paywalls. Nature, 564(7735), 171+. Retrieved from https://link-gale-com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/apps/doc/A573293271/AONE?u=otta77973&sid=AONE&xid=e7ceabd1

Zhang said at the Open Access 2020 conference (Harnack House, Berlin, 3–4 December 2018). It would take a lot of effort to deal with the copyright issues both nationally and internationally.

Conclusion

During the COVID-19 epidemic, more and more scientific research workers joined the epidemic prevention and control actions, with a rigorous academic attitude to study prevention and control strategies and measures, hoping to use the “Sciencepapers Online” platform for fast and free publication. Making the latest research results publicly available and sharing them with relevant people who are concerned about the epidemic nationwide and even worldwide. Through the efforts of each of us and each department, we will accelerate the study of effective methods to contain the epidemic, improve the knowledge level of virus awareness, reduce panic among the people and contribute meager to epidemic prevention and control.

References

Sciencepaper online: http://www.paper.edu.cn/ (Chinese version) http://en.paper.edu.cn/ (English version)

Description of Science paper online: http://en.paper.edu.cn/en_about_us

OA2020. “Expression of interest in the large-scale implementation of open access to scholarly journals.”  https://oa2020.org/mission/. Accessed 16 Apr. 2020.  

Ministry of education guidance of organization and management of online teaching during the pandemic: http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengceku/2020-02/05/content_5474733.htm

Announcement of free access during COVID-19 pandemic: http://www.paper.edu.cn/community/wesciDetail/NQj2Y9wNMbDVgV0u

Schiermeier, Q. (2018). China backs bold plan to tear down journal paywalls. Nature, 564(7735), 171+. Retrieved from https://link-gale-com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/apps/doc/A573293271/AONE?u=otta77973&sid=AONE&xid=e7ceabd1   

Cite as: Shi, A. (2020). [China and open access: Sciencepaper Online]. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons. [https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2020/04/23/china-and-open-access-sciencepaper-online/].

Sous la direction d’Isaac Bazié et Salaka Sanou

Comment lire et comprendre les pratiques culturelles africaines? Comment mobiliser les savoirs sur l’Afrique, ses arts et ses cultures sans verser dans la réification ou le folklorisme? Profondément novateur, cet ouvrage collectif mobilise les outils théoriques des cultural studies pour proposer un généreux panorama de l’étude de la culture en Afrique. Il rassemble des textes d’auteurs et d’autrices d’Afrique de l’Ouest, théoriques ou descriptifs, qui mettent en lumière la réévaluation passionnante des modes d’appréhension des pratiques et objets en contexte africain que proposent les études culturelles africaines. L’épilogue qui clôt le livre n’est donc point fermeture, mais plutôt ouverture sur les enjeux relatifs à ce nouveau champ d’études, plein de promesses pour rendre compte de l’extraordinaire créativité des cultures africaines.

ISBN ePub : 978-2-924661-82-6
ISBN pour l’impression : 978-2-924661-81-9
231 pages
Date de publication : juin 2019

DOI : 10.5281/zenodo.3470395

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Table des matières

Auteurs : Collectif d’écriture sous la direction de Vijonet Demero et Samuel Regulus

Date de parution : 27 octobre 2017

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Résumé :

Comment le protestantisme s’est-il développé en Haïti? Quelle est la contribution du protestantisme à l’histoire et à la société haïtienne? Comment se situent les églises réformées face aux enjeux de la sécularisation et de la mondialisation? Aborder ces questions sans complaisance est essentiel pour l’avenir du protestantisme en Haïti et c’est ce que propose ce livre issu du colloque du Bicentenaire du protestantisme organisé par l’Institut universitaire de Formation des Cadres (INUFOCAD) du 15 au 17 août 2016 à Port-au-Prince, sous les auspices de la Fédération protestante d’Haïti.

Illustration de couverture : design de Djossè Roméo Tessy, photographie d’Anderson Pierre

• ISBN ePub : 978-2-924661-32-1
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Thank you to Heather Staines from MIT’s Knowledge Futures Group for initiating this discussion in response to an invitation to participate in an open peer review process of the OA Main 2019 dataset and its documentation on the SCHOLCOMM list (the invitation was also sent to GOAL and the Radical Open Access List) and for permission to post her e-mails on Sustaining the Knowledge Commons.

Original e-mail (Heather Morrison to SCHOLCOMM, Jan. 7, 2020):

greetings,

** January 15 suggested deadline **

This is a reminder that open peer review is being sought for the Sustaining the Knowledge Common’s project OA main 2019 dataset and its documentation. For those who may not have time for a thorough peer review, a set of 6 questions is provided and responses to any of the questions would be welcome. This is an opportunity to participate in an experimental approach to two innovations in scholarly communication: a particular approach to open peer review, and peer review of a dataset and its documentation. The latter is considered important to encourage and reward researchers for data sharing.

Although full open peer review is the default, if anyone would like to remain anonymous this should be reasonably easy to accommodate by having a friend or colleague forward your comments with an indication of their anonymity.

January 15 is the deadline but if anyone interested would like to participate and needs more time, just let me know. Thank you to those who have already provided comments.

Details and materials can be found here:

https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/20/oa-main-2019-dataset-documentation-and-open-peer-review-invitation/

best,

Dr. Heather Morrison
Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa
Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l’Information, Université d’Ottawa
Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC Insight Project
sustainingknowledgecommons.org
Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca
https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706
[On research sabbatical July 1, 2019 – June 30, 2020]

Heather Staines, first response, Jan. 8, 2020:

Hi Heather:

I took a look at your open peer review survey. Very interesting!

I did a blog post during peer review week on collaborative community review. I thought you might find it interesting: https://thecommons.pubpub.org/pub/ek9zpak0/branch/1?access=fsivw788

[image omitted]

Collaborative Community Review on PubPub · The Knowledge Futures Commonplace
thecommons.pubpub.org

I interviewed the authors of three MIT Press books (coming 2020) who used open peer review on our open source platform, PubPub. If this would ever be helpful for you in pursuing future surveys or experiences, please do let me know.

Thanks,

Heather [Staines]
MIT Knowledge Futures Group

Heather Morrison response, Jan. 8, 2020:

Thank you, your blog post is very interesting.

I see tremendous potential for online collaborative writing and annotations. For example, last year I had students write crowdsourced online essays in class; students were asked to find one interesting recent article on privacy, prepare notes, and write a collaborative “current issues in privacy” in class. I have participated in online annotation peer review in the past.

However, I have some concerns about the annotation and collaborative writing approaches to peer review. My reasons, in case this is of interest:

An annotation approach, in my experience, invites and encourages wordsmithing and focus on minor issues and makes it difficult to contribute at a deeper level (e.g. issues of substance, critique of fundamental underlying ideas).

Depending on the project, individual, and group, the optimal approach might be collaborative writing or individual voice. In the area of open access and scholarly communication, I have a unique perspective and consider this my most important contribution. This gets lost in collaborative writing. For this reason, I write as an individual (or co-author as supervisor with students) in this area.

Although in the past I have participated in the online annotation approach to open peer review, I have been disappointed because my comments (well-thought-out comments by an expert in the field) have been ignored, not only dismissed but not even acknowledged in the final version. This is a waste of my time, and I argue that it is not appropriate to present a final version under such circumstances as having passed a peer review process. Also, in recent years I have noticed a tendency to require reviewers to agree to open licensing conditions that I have object to; this for me is sufficient reason not to participate. [A brief explanation of several key lines of argument on this topic can be found here].

One of my reasons and incentives for open peer review is to claim credit for this work; for example, this published peer review is an example of what I would like to gain from open peer review:
[Morrison, H. (2019). Peer review of Pubfair framework. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons. Retrieved from https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/09/24/peer-review-of-pubfair-framework/]

This is not for everyone, and I would not want to do this with every review, but occasional publication of such reviews opens up possibilities for study of the peer review process and allows me to appropriately claim my careful work in this area.

In the process of transforming scholarly communication I see fundamental questions about why we approach things the way we do, and how we might do things better, that I would like to see opened up for discussion. My blogpost / open invitation approach is deliberate; I consider development of platforms / checklist approaches as premature. This is developing technical solutions when, to me, we should be figuring out what the problems are.

This discussion should be part of the open peer review process. I am thinking of posting this response to my blog. May I post your e-mail as well?

best,

Dr. Heather Morrison
[signature]

Heather Staines, second response, Jan. 8, 2020:

Hi again:

Thank you for the quick and thoughtful response. Given some of your perspectives, you may also be interested in this companion piece, also from Peer Review Week, Making Peer Review More Transparent https://thecommons.pubpub.org/pub/kzujjdx8

I agree with you that there are challenges around an annotation-based approach. Prior to my role here at KFG, I was Head of Partnerships at Hypothesis (so I’m all about the annotation!). I continue to watch the evolution of annotation in the peer review space. Have you seen the Transparent Review in Preprints project: https://www.cshl.edu/transparent-review-in-preprints/?

I’m fine with your posting my previous (and current) emails, along with your responses. I hope we might cross paths sometime to discuss it further.

Thanks,

Heather [Staines]

[square brackets indicates minor changes from original e-mails]

Sous la direction de Marie-Claude Bernard, Geneviève Tschopp et Aneta Slovik

Les récits de vie sont bien connus en recherche. Ils permettent de construire une vision fine et subtile du monde vécu, de la société vue de l’intérieur. Mais ils sont utilisés dans bien d’autres milieux, notamment en formation professionnelle, dans des interventions visant la transformation sociale ou dans le champ de l’éducation. Les seize chapitres de cet ouvrage proposent d’explorer de tels usages des pratiques biographiques et autobiographiques dans des contextes variés. Les auteurs et les autrices, venant des deux côtés de l’Atlantique (Suisse, Pologne, France, Allemagne, Portugal, Cameroun, Gabon, Brésil et Canada), témoignent ainsi de la diversité et de la fécondité de ces pratiques. Cet ouvrage est le fruit d’un partenariat de trois années entre l’Université de Basse-Silésie (Pologne), l’Université de Tours (France) et l’Université Laval (Québec, Canada).

Publications associées :

• Slowik, A., Rywalski, P. et de Souza E.C. (coord.) (2019). Approches (auto)biographiques et nouvelles épreuves de transitions. Construire du sens avec des parcours de vie. Paris : L’Harmattan.
• Slowik, A., Breton, H. et Pineau, G. (coord.) (2019). Récits de vie et approches biographiques. Histoire et vitalité d’un paradigme en sciences sociales. Paris : L’Harmattan.

ISBN PDF : 978-2-921559-38-6
ISBN version imprimée : 978-2-924661-88-8
ISBN ePub : 978-2-924661-90-1
DOI : 10.5281/zenodo.3473735
318 pages
Couverture réalisée par Kate McDonnell à partir d’un tableau de Charlotte Salomon, Collection Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam © Charlotte Salomon Foundation Charlotte Salomon ®
Date de publication : octobre 2019

Table des matières

De nos jours, les sites web constituent des supports importants pour la diffusion d’information. Les entreprises s’attèlent à donner une visibilité à leurs produits. Les plateformes sont les lieux où les compagnies proposent une variété de produits. L’industrie de l’information en Afrique dans leur conversion au numérique utilise des plateformes pour proposer des services. C’est l’exemple de Sabinet qui est une plateforme hybride qui publie des revues africaines en ligne depuis 2001 (Sabinet, 2019). Elle commercialise trois Produits:

• Service bibliothécaire: Catalogage – l’interconnexion – gestion des bibliothèques, etc.  
• Service d’information: 500 revues en ligne – 150 000 articles spécialisées de recherche complétée, de thèses & de Mémoires – Articles de médias et textes législatifs, etc.
• Service de numérisation: Du scannage à la gestion des données.

La collection est composée de 10 suivantes disciplines: Business and Finance, Education, Labour, Law, Medicine and Health, Science – Technology and Agriculture, Religion, Social Sciences and Humanities et Juta’s Law Journals (Sabinet, (c), 2019).

Notre objectif dans ce travail est de présenter le fonctionnement de Sabinet en suivant les quatre principaux éléments de critères d’évaluations pour les ressources électroniques sur le Web de The Charleston Advisor (2019) (Contenu, Tarif, Options du contrat / caractéristiques, Possibilité de recherche) (The Charleston Advisor, 2019).

Nous allons découvrir le contenu de Sabinet en présentant dans un premier temps, le service bibliothécaire, le service d’information et le service de numérisation. Dans un deuxième temps, nous indiquons les dispositions contractuelles notamment, les dispositions relatives aux prêts entre bibliothèques, redistribution des informations, ou autres questions particulières qui accompagnent les différents services que Sabinet offre à ses clients. Notamment l’interface utilisateur et le moteur de recherche ainsi que quelles conditions d’accès aux produits.

1 – Présentation de Sabinet

Sabinet est une entreprise de l’industrie de l’information en Afrique du Sud. Sa mission est de faciliter l’accès à l’information et de faire en sorte que les bibliothèques en Afrique. La compagnie fonctionne par actionnariat (Institutions 49%, Personnel 37%, Fiducie 9%, Particuliers 5%). Le conseil d’administration est composé de 10 membres et une équipe de gestion de 8 membres. 213 éditeurs issus de 12 pays publient 500 revues (350 000 articles). De ses 500 revues, 164 sont en accès libre, 336 revues sont accédées par souscription (Sabinet, (b), 2019).

Nombre de revues par pays

L’un des services que propose Sabinet à ses clients est la gestion des bibliothèques. Ce qui lui permet le catalogage et l’interconnexion.

Services aux bibliothèques

Sabinet fournit une variété de services à tous les types de bibliothèques. Elle offre le catalogage et l’acquisition de l’information pour les bibliothèques pour simplifier et soutenir leur processus de développement de leurs collections. Sabinet propose des services aux bibliothèques incluant l’interconnexion et les systèmes de gestion des bibliothèques. Elle procure des plateformes de collaboration de ressources entre les bibliothèques. Un service de partage de ressources basé sur le Web pour les bibliothèques de l’Afrique australe, «the ReQuest interlending service» facilite l’accès aux ressources hébergées par les bibliothèques, en permettant l’emprunt et le prêt entre les institutions. Le prêt inter-bibliothèque «WorldShare» d’OCLC relie les utilisateurs aux collections de milliers de bibliothèques via le plus grand réseau de prêts inter-bibliothèques au monde. Sabinet est un site de partage de documents d’échange d’articles. Elle fournit un emplacement unique et sécurisé où les bibliothèques de prêt du monde entier peuvent placer les documents. Hormis le service aux bibliothèques, Sabinet gère également un service d’information dans lequel les éditeurs peuvent publier leurs revues.

Services d’information

            Sabinet offre des revues en ligne provenant ou se rapportant à l’Afrique. Ce service est l’une des collections les plus complètes et consultables en ligne en texte intégral. Elle contient du contenu juridique sud-africain, ainsi qu’un service d’archivage des médias (SA Media). SA Media est un service de recherche de nouvelles et de coupures de presse qui couvre rétrospectivement les principales publications en Afrique du Sud, de 1978 à nos jours. La collection de presses SA Media comprend plus de 4,5 millions d’articles. Avec une moyenne de 2 500 nouveaux articles ajoutés chaque semaine, SA Media est un outil de recherche qui donne accès aux publications traditionnelles locales (Sabinet, (f) 2019).

Collection

La collection de Sabinet est composée de 10 disciplines. Les champs de African Journal Archive (181) et de (Social Sciences and Humanities (159)) arrivent en tête du nombre des catégories de sujet et sont toutes évalués par les pairs (peer reviews). Sabinet s’adresse spécifiquement aux chercheurs et aux bibliothèques. Cette compagnie soutient les écoles secondaires et primaires à travers des dons de livres spécialisés. Dans ce contexte, Sabinet propose de numériser les documents papier des différentes institutions ou compagnies pour leur donner une visibilité en ligne.

Numérisation

Sabinet offre un service de numérisation personnalisé pour les besoins des bibliothèques. L’équipe chargée de la numérisation dispose d’un équipement de pointe qui leur permet de créer des répliques électroniques parfaites du matériel d’origine. Environ 13 000 pages A4 détachées ainsi que 1 200 pages liées peuvent être numérisées quotidiennement (Sabinet, (h) 2019). Sabinet dispose d’un système (CONTENTdm®) qui donne accès aux collections numériques sur le Web, plus rapidement. Il peut gérer tout format – archives d’histoire locale, journaux, livres, cartes, bibliothèques de diapositives ou audio / vidéo.  Ce système fournit une solution complète pour les archives historique, les bibliothèques de diapositives, les articles «nés-numériques», les journaux, les livres, les lettres, les cartes, les thèses et les dissertations électroniques et les fichiers audio / vidéo. Il permet l’interopérabilité. Autrement dit, il est compatible avec les systèmes existants, locaux, régionaux, nationaux et internationaux. Il est compatible aux normes ISO, notamment : Unicode, Z39.50, Dublin Core®, XML, JPEG2000, etc. (Sabinet, (i) 2019).

Ces services ont pour objectif de fournir et de garantir les meilleures conditions de travail pour les usagers. Les dispositions techniques de navigation et d’accès à la documentation sont proposées à tous les souscripteurs qui souhaitent travailler avec Sabinet.

2 – Dispositions contractuelles

La plateforme Sabinet est hybride, certains articles sont payants. L’accès aux documents payants est soit par abonnement soit directement (open accès). Pour gérer le flux de clients, une souscription avec un «username» et un mot de passe sont exigés. Il y a un panier dans lequel tout souscripteur peut collectionner les articles qu’il souhaite acheter (Sabinet (e), 2019). Le système de fonctionnement de Sabinet est entièrement basé sur des logiciels et des technologies Open Source. Par exemple, Counter fournit le code de pratique qui permet aux éditeurs et aux fournisseurs de signaler l’utilisation de leurs ressources électroniques de manière cohérente. Cela permet aux bibliothèques de comparer les données reçues de différents éditeurs et de fournisseurs. Counter maintient les registres de conformité qui répertorient les éditeurs et les fournisseurs qui ont passé une vérification indépendante de leurs statistiques d’utilisation.

EZproxy est un autre outil qui est installé sur un serveur. Il sert d’intermédiaire entre l’usager et le fournisseur de ressources numériques. L’adresse du serveur sur lequel est installé EZproxy est déclarée auprès des fournisseurs de contenus qui autorisent alors l’accès à tout utilisateur arrivant depuis ce serveur. L’authentification est confiée à l’établissement responsable d’EZproxy, via un annuaire LDAP. EZproxy fonctionne en modifiant dynamiquement les URL dans les pages Web fournies par le fournisseur. Il configure l’accès pour que l’interaction et l’engagement des utilisateurs avec la bibliothèque soient les mêmes, où qu’ils se trouvent et quand ils choisissent de travailler.

 Le processus d’installation est sécurisé pour les utilisateurs, il n’est pas nécessaire pour les utilisateurs de modifier les paramètres de leur navigateur ou de reconfigurer leur PC. L’utilisateur se connecte au contenu sans de multiples barrières. Le mot de passe est supprimé. EZproxy peut être configuré avec les principaux services d’authentification – LDAP, SIP et Shibboleth, de sorte que l’utilisateur n’ait pas à se souvenir de plusieurs mots de passe.

Les services de ce site sont compatibles avec les produits du «link resolvers/OpenURL» et des principaux systèmes de bibliothèque, y compris ceux de Serials Solutions, ExLibris, EBSCO et OCLC. Le «link resolvers/OpenURL» permet aux systèmes de bibliothèque de se lier au niveau de l’article du journal (ou aux titres de livres) en utilisant une syntaxe OpenURL. L’utilisation de cette méthode est avantageuse, en particulier lors de la liaison avec un contenu récemment publié puisqu’il ne nécessite pas que l’article soit préalablement téléchargé (Sabinet, (g) 2019). 

Cette initiative internationalement acceptée facilite l’enregistrement et la déclaration des statistiques d’utilisation en ligne de manière cohérente et crédible. Le service devient plus simple pour les clients afin de comprendre et d’analyser comment les livres électroniques et d’autres matériaux électroniques sont utilisés. Lorsque les rapports d’utilisation ont les mêmes types de données et sont formatés de la même manière, ils peuvent être comparés les uns aux autres et peuvent être automatiquement récupérés dans les systèmes locaux (NISO, 2019).

Outre ces dispositions techniques, Sabinet propose aux utilisateurs un moteur de recherche performant qui facilite la navigation.

L’interface utilisateur et le moteur de recherche

Le site web de Sabinet demande une inscription pour naviguer sans restrictions. Au niveau de la principale page qui est intitulée «Sabinet : Faciliting Access to Information», six (6) menus permettent de se connecter et de visiter le site. L’onglet «Home» raccourcit l’accès à cinq (5) menus. Par exemple, «About» présente entre autres la mission, l’équipe dirigeante, etc. «Products and Services» énumère le programme de ses trois services en l’occurrence : Library Solutions, Information Services and Digitization. Ensuite, le «Support» définit les différentes informations les politiques d’accès, d’authentification et des pratiques de prêts entre les autres bibliothèques. «New and Events» fournit les informations sur les activités et communications du site. Quant à «Corporate Social Investment», il décrit le projet de Sabinet.

En plus de ces menus sur la page, trois services (African Studies Collection, Online journal, News Services) sont proposés. African Studies Collection est une collection d’un large éventail de revues spécialisées, de médias et de contenus législatifs émanant du continent africain. Online journal propose des revues en ligne en provenance ou à destination de l’Afrique. Sabinet propose un nouveau service (News Services) personnalisé de recherche d’informations en ligne et de coupures de presse pour répondre aux divers besoins.

Ce nouveau service comprend:

La nouvelle base de données de African News Agency (ANA). Elle comprend : des rapports en texte intégral de novembre 2015 à ce jour sur l’actualité sud-africaine et africaine. Elle donne accès aux articles de presse importants de l’ancienne SAPA (ANA est le nouveau nom de SAPA). Ces articles  sont issus de cinq disciplines clés: la politique, l’économie, les entreprises et les marchés, le sport ainsi que l’actualité générale (qui comprend le mode de vie, les célébrités, les tribunaux et la criminalité). Les nouvelles des agences suivantes sont diffusées via l’Agence de presse africaine: ANA, ANA-Xinhau, ANA-dpa international et ANA-Associated Press.

Pour obtenir des informations sur les éditeurs, la collection, les publications, etc., il faut se rendre à la page intitulée «Sabinet African Journals» avec 7 menus : 

• le menu «A-Z Publications» donne la liste des revues ou bien montre comment soumettre un article;
• le menu «Collections» donne la liste des collections principales;
• le menu «Open Access» indique les revues Open Access; de la politique d’accès, etc.
• le menu «Publishers» dresse la liste des éditeurs;
• le menu «For Librarians» présente les politiques d’accession aux informations pour les bibliothécaires;
• l’onglet «Help» revient sur les conditions de souscription et du guide des utilisateurs;
• enfin, le menu «Shopping Cat» permet de réserver les articles que l’on souhaite avoir.

En plus de ces menus sur la page, un autre onglet situé au-dessus de la bande à menus donne accès à «Advanced Search». Elle permet de filtrer les recherches par collection, par date, etc. (Sabinet, (d), 2019). Les utilisateurs de la bibliothèque peuvent récupérer des articles ou des chapitres de livres via un prêt entre bibliothèques. Cette possibilité d’accès est possible grâce à un dispositif technique diversifié, mais aussi, à un modèle d’affaires que propose Sabinet.

Tarification

Le modèle d’affaires de Sabinet est basé sur trois possibilités d’accès à la collection. Il y a premièrement, des abonnés et deuxièmement des non-abonnés. Les abonnés ont accès à l’intégralité des revues et les non-abonnés payent pour accéder à des contenus. Troisièmement, on trouve les revues à accès libre. Les revues en accès libres sont divisées en trois modes d’accès : le «Gold Open Access» est dépourvu de toutes restrictions. Le «Green Open Access» est un accès semi-libre. Les éditeurs facturent des frais d’abonnement pour les récents numéros pendant une période donnée. Ensuite, l’accès devient gratuit.

Le troisième mode d’accès libre est «Article level Open Access». Ici, certains articles sont libres d’accès et d’autres sont payants. Pour soumettre un article à Sabinet, l’organisation demande à tout souscripteur de contacter directement un éditeur via leur site pour effectuer l’envoi. Il est accessible par ordinateur PC ou Machintosh. L’essentiel de sa clientèle est composé de bibliothèques locales et internationales, ainsi que des organismes publics et privés (Sabinet, (e) 2019). Les revenus de Sabinet proviennent aussi des frais de souscription ou des abonnements des bibliothèques.

       Modèle d’affaires

CONCLUSION

Sabinet a pour mission de promouvoir l’accès à l’information des recherches en Afrique. Dans ce sens, la plateforme remplit parfaitement ses objectifs. Elle diffuse 500 revues dont plus 164 en accès libre, 336 par souscription avec des frais pour le téléchargement. La grande partie des revues est issue de l’Afrique du Sud avec 184 sur 213 éditeurs. Sabinet offre une variété de services avec d’importantes possibilités d’accès. Cependant, l’accès renferme des imperfections qui ne facilitent pas l’utilisation des services. Une des  particularités est que les menus de l’interface ne donnent pas accès facilement aux revues. La fonctionnalité «Home» propose cinq menus dans lesquels il faut aller chercher pour trouver la liste des revues, des éditeurs, etc. De plus, l’on ne peut pas obtenir ces revues par pays sur une facette. Sabinet est une compagnie qui offre également d’autres services payants comme la numérisation, le catalogage, des documents des bibliothèques, etc.  Cependant, les frais de publication ou autres frais de service ne sont pas affichés.

Les produits compétitifs de Sabinet sont leurs trois services phares, notamment : la numérisation, le service d’information et le service aux bibliothèques. Ces produits permettent de soutenir leurs différents projets de bienfaisance aux établissements scolaires, à la création de l’emploi  et à la diffusion des produits de recherches de l’Afrique (Sabinet, (f), 2019). 

Références

NISO, (2019). How the Information world Connects – SUSHI FAQs: General Questions http://www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi/faq/general/#q4

Sabinet,  (2019) (a). Sabinet : Facilitating Access to Information. https://sabinet.co.za/

Sabinet,  (2019) (b). Ownership. https://www.sabinet.co.za/index.php/ownership

Sabinet, (2019) (c).Collection Contents

http://journals.co.za/content/collection/african-journal-archive

Sabinet,  (2019) (d).  Sabinet African Journals. https://journals.co.za/

https://sabinet.co.za/index.php/information-services/online-journals/sa-epublications

Sabinet,  (2019) (e). EZproxy https://www.sabinet.co.za/library-solutions/authentication-management

Sabinet, (2019) (f). SA Media https://www.sabinet.co.za/information-services/news-research-services/sa-media

Sabinet, (2019) (g). Librarian FAQ. shttp://journals.co.za/librarians-faq

Sabinet, (2019) (h). Scannage services. https://sabinet.co.za/digitisation/scanning-services

Sabinet, (2019) (i). About Digitisation. https://sabinet.co.za/digitisation/about-digitisation

The Charleston Advisor, (2019) (j). TCA Scoring Guide.

OA APC longitudinal survey 2019

Summary

This post presents results of the 2019 OA APC longitudinal survey and extends an invitation to participate in an open peer review process of the underlying data and its documentation. One thing that is not changing is that most OA journals in DOAJ do not charge APCs: 10,210 (73%) of the 14,007 journals in DOAJ as of Nov. 26, 2019 do not have APCs. The global average APC in 2019 is 908 USD. This figure has changed little since 2010, however this consistency masks considerably underlying variation. For example, the average APC in 2019 for the 2010 sample has increased by 50%, a rate three times the inflation rate for this time frame. The tendency to charge or not to charge, how much is charged and whether prices are increasing or decreasing varies considerably by journal, publisher, country of publication, language and currency. One surprise this year was the top 10 countries by number of OA journals in DOAJ. As usual, Europe, the US and Latin America are well represented, but Indonesia is now the second largest country in DOAJ and Poland, Iran, and Turkey are among the top 10, perhaps reflecting the work of the DOAJ ambassadors. Pricing per journal shows mixed trends; most journals did not change price between 2018 and 2019, but there were price decreases as well as increases. The UK’s Ubiquity Press as having a relatively low APC (a fraction of Oxford’s, another UK-based publisher) and no price increases.

Overview

The Sustaining the Knowledge Commons team has been gathering data on OA APCs since 2014 and merging data from DOAJ and other researchers into the main dataset. Singh & Morrison (2019) note that the majority of fully OA journals do not charge; of those that do, the global average APC is 908 USD, a figure that has changed very little since 2010. In contrast, the mode (most common APC) shows quite a bit of variation and the maximum has been increasing for both APC and APPC (article page processing charge). This suggests that there is something else going on.

Shi & Morrison’s (2019) findings illustrate that charging trends can vary considerable by publisher. 4 pairs of publishers and sub-publishers are compared. Two Wolters Kluwer imprints, Medknow and Lippincott, are quite different in APCs. Medknow journals tend not to charge, and those that have APCs tend to have relatively low APCs. Lippincott journals tend to charge, at above-average rates. Two universities, Indonesia’s Universitas Negeri Semerang (UNS) (now one of the largest publishers in DOAJ) and Oxford are compared. Oxford is one of the world’s oldest publishers, is UK based, and tends to charge APCs at above-average rates. UNS appears to be a newcomer to online publishing, uses the open source Open Journal System; UNS journals tend not to charge, and when they do charge, prices are relatively low. Oxford was also compared with another UK-based publisher, Ubiquity Press. Ubiquity Press is a new not-for-profit designed to produce OA works and also to achieve cost efficiency. It appears that Ubiquity is having success with the latter, as their average APC is a fraction of that of Oxford. MDPI and Hindawi are compared; both are new commercial APC-based publishers, but the average APC is much higher for Hindawi than for MDPI. This evidence supports the hypothesis that the global average APC masks considerable variation based on publisher history and strategy.

Avasthi & Morrison (2019) explore one of these publishers, Medknow, in more depth, and ask whether this approach is the best for India, the original home of the publisher before acquisition by Wolters Kluwer. It appears that the reason most Medknow journals do not have publication charges is because of numerous partnerships between Wolters Kluwer and scholarly societies and universities. Medknow has expanded beyond India, and has grown quite a bit in both 2018 and 2019. The number of “title not found” and a couple of “risky URL” (a code for when the URL on the publisher’s website leads to a website that is clearly not a journal and gives the appearance of a possible scam) raises some questions about whether the quality of service these journals receive are what they expect and deserve through a partnership with one of the world’s oldest EU-based commercial scholarly publishers.

Pashaei & Morrison (2019a) compare APCs by original currency. Over half of APC charging journals have USD as original currency, and 5 currencies account for more than 90% of APCs. Average prices by currency are translated into USD, and these prices vary quite a bit. APCs in GBP and more than twice as high as APCs in EUR.

Pashaei & Morrison (2019b) compare APCs (pricing and tendency to charge) by language. The tendency to charge varies quite a bit by language (first language listed in DOAJ). For example, 98% of journals in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Czech do not have publication fees, while about a third of journals in English or Persian have APCs. The average APC for English-language journals is more than 3 times the second highest language-basis APC (Catalan).

Pashaei & Morrison (2019c) studied the correlation of country in DOAJ, OA journal publishing, and APC. As expected, Europe, the US, and Latin America are well represented in DOAJ. There were some surprises. Indonesia is now the second largest country in DOAJ, and Poland, Iran, and Turkey, are among the top 10. This may reflect the work of the DOAJ ambassadors’ program. Tendency to charge and average APC both vary quite a bit depending on the publisher in question.

Morrison (2019a) studied charging trends for journals with APC amounts for both 2018 and 2019 and found considerable variation. Most of these journals did not change in APC, but many decreased prices and many more increased prices. The tendency to increase prices was more marked for journals listed in DOAJ as of Jan. 31, 2019. An analysis of trends and average APCs for publisher with 2 or more journals in this set revealed very different patterns. A few publishers did not increase prices. Ubiquity Press stands out as having a relatively low price and no price increase. For some publishers, tendency to decrease and increase prices cancel each other out. 6 publishers had average price increases of more than 10%: Wolters Kluwer Medknow, MDPI, Oxford, Elsevier, BioMedCentral, and Frontiers.

Morrison (2019b) studied status and charging trends for journals included in Solomon & Björk’s (2012) 2010 study, limited to a sample of journals listed in DOAJ and charging APCs at that time. The majority of these journals are still active and charging. The average APC has increased in this time frame by 50%, more than 3 times the inflation. Not all journals have increased in price; some decreased and others remained the same price. Nearly a quarter of these journals have ceased or are not found. Most of this attrition appears to be due to new OA APC-based commercial publishers with a start-up strategy of publishing a wide range of journals, then retiring unsuccessful journals.

Full documentation, link to open dataset, and invitation to participate in open peer review

Morrison, H. et al. (2019). OA Main 2019: Dataset, documentation and open peer review invitation. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/20/oa-main-2019-dataset-documentation-and-open-peer-review-invitation/

Dataset: Morrison, Heather, et al. 2019, “OA APC longitudinal study dataset 2019”, https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/0DIPGE, Scholars Portal Dataverse, V1

Cite as: Morrison, H. et al. (2019). OA APC longitudinal survey 2019. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/27/oa-apc-longitudinal-survey-2019/

References

Avasthi, N & Morrison, H (2019). Medknow 2019 – is this the best for India? Sustaining the Knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/23/medknow-2019-is-this-the-best-for-india/

Morrison, H. (2019a). APC price changes 2019 – 2018 by journal and by publisher. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/26/apc-price-changes-2019-2018-by-journal-and-by-publisher/

Morrison, H. (2019b). 2010 – 2019 APC update. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/26/2010-2019-apc-update/

Pashaei, H. & Morrison, H. (2019a). Open Access in 2019: Original currencies for article processing charge. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/26/open-access-in-2019-original-currencies-for-article-processing-charge/

Pashaei, H. & Morrison, H. (2019b). DOAJ 2019: Language analysis. Sustaining the knowledge commons.  https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/26/doaj-2019-language-analysis/

Pashaei, H. & Morrison, H. (2019c). Open Access in 2019: Which countries are the biggest publishers of OA journals? Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/26/open-access-in-2019-which-countries-are-the-biggest-publishers-of-oa-journals/

Shi, A & Morrison, H. (2019). APCs comparisons among different publishers in 2019. Sustaining the knowledge https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/26/apcs-comparisons-among-different-publishers-in-2019/

Singh, S. & Morrison, H. (2019). OA journals non-charging and charging central trends 2010 – 2019. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/23/oa-journals-non-charging-and-charging-central-trends-2010-2019/

Solomon, D. J. and Björk, B. (2012), A study of open access journals using article processing charges. J Am Soc Inf Sci Tec, 63: 1485-1495. doi:10.1002/asi.22673

2010 – 2019 APC update

by Heather Morrison

Summary

This is an update of the 2010 study of Solomon & Björk (2012) of a sample of 1,046 journals charging APCs listed in DOAJ at that time. 74% of these journals are still active and actively charging publication fees. The average APC reported by Solomon & Björk was 906 USD; the average in 2019 for the 739 journals for which we have APC data for both years is 1,363 USD. This represents a 50% price increase during this time frame, an increase that is 3 times the inflation rate. Not all journals increased in price; some decreased or remained the same price. Nearly a quarter of the journals (23%) are ceased or not found. Most of this attrition rate can be attributed to new OA APC-based commercial publishers with a start-up strategy involving roll-out of a broad range of journals, with unsuccessful journals being retired.

Download PDF:  2010 update

Research question: what is the status, charging tendency (to charge or not to charge) and pricing trends of these journals?

Method

A subset of the OA Main 2019 Dataset (Morrison et al., 2019) containing Solomon & Björk’s 2010 data was used as the basis for this study. This sample was compared with the 2010 data and journals missing from OA Main (due to having been dropped from DOAJ prior to our study) were added to complete the sample. The current status of journals was developed using a pivot table. Pricing trends for 739 journals (tendency to increase or decrease in price) that are still charging APCs was calculated separately for journals with matching original currency (to avoid conflation with currency fluctuations) and non-matching currency in USD. An attempt was made to estimate APC for the 31 journals currently charging APPC but abandoned as the results did not match the APC trends and there is not enough detail in the 2012 study to be certain that the method of estimating APC was correct.

Results

Status

As illustrated in the following table and chart, the majority (779 or 74%) of the 2010 journals are still active and actively charging publication fees. 242 (23%) titles are ceased or not found. 25 (2%) have a status of other. Of these, 8 journals are now non-charging (no publication fee), for 11 journals it was not possible to determine whether or not there is a charge (no cost found), 2 journals are now hybrid, 3 are inactive, and one has been merged with another journal.

Active APC journals: trends analysis

The average APC reported by Solomon & Björk (2012) for 2010 was 906 USD. 779 of these journals are still active and charging publication fees; of these, 739 are still charging APCs and we were able to identify the amount. The average APC for these 739 journals in 2019 is 1,363 USD. This represents a 50% increase in the average APC for this group of journals. According to the Bank of Canada (n.d.) currency calculator, the cumulative inflation rate from 2010 – 2019 is 16.35% An average increase of 50% is more than 3 times the inflation rate.

Pricing direction trend

Not all journals increased in price. As the following table illustrates, 75% of journals increased in price, 18% decreased in price and 8% had no change in price. Where possible, original currency was used to avoid conflation with currency fluctuations.

Ceased / title not found analysis

Ceased journals

Based on knowledge of the history of pioneering APC OA based publishers, a publisher type analysis was conducted of the 210 ceased journals. 199 or 95% of these journals were developed by such publishers that pursued a strategy of starting out their business with a broad range of journals, then dropping journals that were not successful. 7 or 3% of these journals were started by publishers that have been acquired by other publishers that did not continue all of the others. No pattern was discerned for 4 (2%) of the journals.

Title not found

A similar analysis was conducted on the 32 “title not found” journals. There was some overlap in the results; Bentham Open, one of the publishers with a broad range of journals start-up strategy, accounts for half of the total, with BioMedCentral accounting for 3 of the titles.

References

Bank of Canada (n.d.) Currency calculator. https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/

Morrison, H. et al. (2019). OA Main 2019: Dataset, documentation and open peer review invitation. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/20/oa-main-2019-dataset-documentation-and-open-peer-review-invitation/

Solomon, D. J. and Björk, B. (2012), A study of open access journals using article processing charges. J Am Soc Inf Sci Tec, 63: 1485-1495. doi:10.1002/asi.22673

Cite as:  Morrison, H. (2019). 2010 – 2019 APC update. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/26/2010-2019-apc-update/

by Heather Morrison

Abstract

Pricing trends for 2018 – 2019 were compared on a per-journal and per-publisher basis. In contrast to the relatively unchanging global average APC, per-journal and per-publisher shows a mixture of trends. Most journals did not change in price from 2018 to 2019; 13% increased in price, 25% decreased. Journals included in DOAJ showed a greater tendency to increase in price (37%). Average price changes per publisher ranged from 0 (no change) to a 34% average increase in price. In some cases, price increases and decreases cancel each other out resulting in an average of 0 (no change) masking considerable change at the per-journal level. Only 2 publishers have APPCs; these have similar average prices. Average APC price by publisher ranges from 246 to 2,851 USD. UK-based not-for-profit publisher Ubiquity Press stands out as having the second-lowest average APC of 536 USD with no price increases.

Context

As reported by Singh & Morrison (2019), the global average APC has shown little change between 2010 and 2019, but variation in the mode and a constant increase in maximum APC and APPC, along with case studies by the SKC team, suggests that this does not give the whole picture of what is happening. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether change in APC or APPC is more obvious at the per-journal or per-publisher level.

Research question

Are there observable changes in APC or APPC at the per-journal or per-publisher level from 2018 – 2019?

Method

The data for this study is from the 2019 iteration of the APC longitudinal study; for documentation of the main study, a link to the dataset, and an invitation to open peer review, see Morrison et al. (2019). As reported by Singh & Morrison (2019), the majority of journals do not charge publication fees. Journals from the main spreadsheet were selected for which an APC or APPC amount is available for both 2018 and 2019. This resulted in a sample of 2,471 journals. Currencies were matched and original currency used for calculations wherever the same currency was listed in both years (2,255 APC journals). The reason for matching currency is to avoid conflation of currency fluctuations and pricing changes. For the remaining journals, APC in USD equivalent was done, using June 30, 2019 XE Currency Converter rates. The 2018 price was deducted from the 2019 price and the difference was divided into the 2018 price to determine the percentage of change.

A second sub-selection was drawn from this sample, limiting to journals that were listed in DOAJ on January 31, 2019, resulting in a sample of 1,514 journals. Of these, 1,394 match in currency in 2018 and 2019. Calculation of the numeric and percentage difference in price from 2018 to 2019 was calculated as described above. This eliminates journals by publishers that are no longer listed in DOAJ, newer journals that are not yet listed in DOAJ and other journals that are listed due to not meeting one of the DOAJ criteria, such as minimum number of articles published per year.

Per-publisher analysis was conducted using the second (DOAJ journals only) sample. For each publisher with more than one journal in the sample, the average APC or APPC was calculated as well as the average, minimum and maximum percentage change.

Results

Journals with APC or APPC data in both 2018 and 2019

As illustrated in the table and chart below, pricing trends on a per-journal basis varied. The majority of journals (62%) did not change in price; 13% decreased in price and 25% increased in price.

Journals in DOAJ 2019 with APC or APPC data in both 2018 and 2019

The following table and chart illustrate a somewhat different trend when limiting to journals included in DOAJ. The percentage of journals with price decreases is the same at 13%, but the percentage of journals with price increases in higher at 37%. Half the journals (50%) did not change in price.

Price change 2018 – 2019 by publisher

The following illustrates that pricing changes from 2018 – 2019 varied by publisher. 6 publishers had no price changes from 2018 – 2019. 16 publishers did have price changes from 2018 – 2019. For the publishers with price changes, there were differences in the pattern of change. Nature and Sage’s price increases and price decreases cancel each other out for an average of no change in price. A few publishers either kept prices the same or increased them, however most publishers have a mixture of price increases and decreases. In interpreting the pricing trends, it is important to consider the average price. A publisher with no price increases may have a higher average APC than a publisher with price increases. The average prices will be highlighting in the next table.

The following table shows the average APC in USD by publisher in ascending order (starting with the lowest price), along with average, minimum and maximum price changes from 2018 – 2019 by percentage.

Discussion and conclusions

The data clearly demonstrate that the volume and direction of pricing changes varies by journal and by publisher. From 2018 to 2019, most journals did not change in price, some decreased in price, and others increased in price. Different APC based publishers display different tendencies and a wide range of average APCs, from 246 to 2,851 USD. The two APPC based publishers had similar pricing. The lowest average APC of 246 USD was for Wolters Kluwer Medknow. As noted by Avashti & Morrison (2019), most Medknow journals do not charge APCs; the average APC is likely impacted by the area served, as Medknow originated in India. It is not surprising that the 3 highest average APCs are associated with European based publishers (Wolters Kluwer, Nature, and Karger). However, the low average APC of UK based Ubiquity Publishing at 536 USD, combined with no price increases, is in marked contrast with Oxford University Press’ average APC of 1,572 USD and average price increase of 22%. This evidence of differences in APC / APPC and pricing trends by publisher supports, and is supported by, Shi & Morrison’s (2019) comparison of 4 pairs of publishers and sub-publishers.

References

Avasthi, N & Morrison, H (2019). Medknow 2019 – is this the best for India? Sustaining the Knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/23/medknow-2019-is-this-the-best-for-india/

Morrison, H. et al. (2019). OA Main 2019: Dataset, documentation and open peer review invitation. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/20/oa-main-2019-dataset-documentation-and-open-peer-review-invitation/

Shi, A & Morrison, H. (2019). APCs comparisons among different publishers in 2019. Sustaining the knowledge Commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/26/apcs-comparisons-among-different-publishers-in-2019/

Singh, S. & Morrison, H. (2019). OA journals non-charging and charging central trends 2010 – 2019. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/23/oa-journals-non-charging-and-charging-central-trends-2010-2019/

Cite as:  Morrison, H. (2019). APC price changes 2019 – 2018 by journal and by publisher. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/26/apc-price-changes-2019-2018-by-journal-and-by-publisher/

by Hamid Pashaei and Heather Morrison

Fifty percent of the open access (OA) journals listed in DOAJ in 2019 are published in Europe, and the United Kingdom is the biggest publisher of OA journals in DOAJ. It is important to note that we do not know the extent to which OA journals are fully represented in DOAJ; we understand that there is a parallel service called Chinese Open Access Journals. There are a few surprises in the 10 largest countries in DOAJ. Latin America and the U.S. are well represented as usual, while Indonesia is now the second largest country in DOAJ, and Poland, Iran, and Turkey, are among the top 10. This may reflect the work of the DOAJ ambassadors program.

The analysis of geographical data on Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) shows that the European countries are leading the way in publication of Open Access journals by publishing 6133 journals in 2019, while Oceania and Africa published the least amount of OA journals in the same period.

The United Kingdom is the biggest publisher of open access journals by publishing 1471 journals in 2019. Indonesia and Iran are among the top 10 publishers of OA journals in 2019 that implies a growing interest in open access in these two countries.

Our team of researches collected the publication fee data for the open access journals in 2019 to see how the pricing to publish OA journals differs in different parts of the world. The results shows that while 71% of OA journals published in North American countries do not charge article processing charge (APC), but the average APC for the rest of the journals in North America is 1473 USD which is more expensive than any other part of the world. Asia with the average APC of 190 USD is the least expensive continent to publish OA journals.

Crawford (2019) published the results of his research on world open access journals in 2018 but he categorized the regions in a different way.

The following table shows the share of world OA journals in 2019 by each continent. It should be noted that the true number of OA journals in the world are higher, but here we are only analyzing the journals which geographical data on DOAJ was available.

The following table shows the percentage of journals which charge APC comparing those which do not charge APC in each continent. Because the information regarding APC was not available for some journals, the sum of APC and NO APC columns in the table for some rows is not equal to 100 percent.

Of the journals that charge APC, the average APC amount for each region is shown in the following table. The high standard deviation implies high variability in the range of prices.

According to the DOAJ data, there are 24 countries that have published more than 100 OA journals in 2019.

The summary of top 24 countries in publishing open access journals is shown below.

The method and documentation of the current research by Morrison et al. (2019) and the complete dataset is listed in the references section.

Cite as: Pashaei, H. & Morrison, H. (2019). Open Access in 2019: Which countries are the biggest publishers of OA journals? Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/26/open-access-in-2019-which-countries-are-the-biggest-publishers-of-oa-journals/

References
Morrison, H. et al. (2019). OA Main 2019: Dataset, documentation and open peer review invitation. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/20/oa-main-2019-dataset-documentation-and-open-peer-review-invitation/

Morrison, Heather, et al. 2019, “OA APC longitudinal study dataset 2019”,https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/0DIPGE, Scholars Portal Dataverse, V1

Crawford, W. (2019). Gold Open Access 2013-2018: Articles in Journals (GOA4), Livermore, CA:2019. Retrieved Oct. 31, 2019 from https://waltcrawford.name/goa4.pdf

by Hamid Pashaei and Heather Morrison

The analysis of Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) shows that open access journals were published in 85 different languages in 2019. English is the language used by more than 9,500 journals, while Spanish language comes second with more than 2,400 journals, followed by Portuguese (1,731), Indonesia (1,135) and French (897). We analyzed the tendency to charge and average APC by first language listed. The only language with a majority of journals charging APCs was Chinese (54%), followed by Persian (33%) and English (31%). Average APC ranged from 43 USD (Indonesian) to 1,096 USD (English). The second highest APC was Catalan at 331 USD, illustrating a correlation between language and APC, with English language journals at the high end of the range.

The most popular languages to publish open access articles in 2019 are listed in the following table.

We analyzed the article processing charge (APC) for the ‘first language’ that OA journals publish articles in, and the results for the top languages are shown below.

Cite as: Pashaei, H. & Morrison, H. (2019). DOAJ 2019: Language analysis. Sustaining the knowledge commons.  https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/26/doaj-2019-language-analysis/

References
Morrison, H. et al. (2019). OA Main 2019: Dataset, documentation and open peer review invitation. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/20/oa-main-2019-dataset-documentation-and-open-peer-review-invitation/

Morrison, Heather, et al. 2019, “OA APC longitudinal study dataset 2019”,https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/0DIPGE, Scholars Portal Dataverse, V1

Directory of Open Access Journals 2010 – Metadata. Retrieved at various dates from https://doaj.org/faq#metadata

by Hamid Pashaei and Heather Morrison

The original currency to charge article processing charge (APC) for more than 50 percent of world open access (OA) journals in 2019 recorded in our study is USD (for documentation of our procedures see Morrison et al (2019), while GBP and EUR are in the second and third place. 5 currencies (USD, GBP, EUR, CHF – Swiss Franc, INR – Indian Rupee) account for over 90% of the journals.

The following table and chart depict the original currency for OA journals in 2019.

When looking at the average APC in each original currency, it could be seen that the journals that their original currency is GBP charge the highest amount of APC. The top 10 most expensive APCs in original currency are listed below (all amount are converted to the USD).

Cite as: Pashaei, H. & Morrison, H. (2019). Open Access in 2019: Original currencies for article processing charge . Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/26/open-access-in-2019-original-currencies-for-article-processing-charge/

References
Morrison, H. et al. (2019). OA Main 2019: Dataset, documentation and open peer review invitation. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/20/oa-main-2019-dataset-documentation-and-open-peer-review-invitation/

Morrison, Heather, et al. 2019, “OA APC longitudinal study dataset 2019”,https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/0DIPGE, Scholars Portal Dataverse, V1

Directory of Open Access Journals 2010 – Metadata. Retrieved at various dates from https://doaj.org/faq#metadata

By: Niharika Avasthi and Heather Morrison

Abstract – Open access journals have been developing in India for several decades for promoting the visibility of research done in various streams. OA to science has been encouraged by government sponsored repositories of student and doctoral proposals, and numerous Indian journals are distributed with OA. There is a need to build mindfulness among Indian scholastics with respect to publication practices, including OA, and its potential advantages, and use this methodology of distribution at whatever point doable, as in openly supported research. This research also showed that a well doing publisher in India gets acquired by  European publisher Wolters Kluwer and becomes commercialised. The number of journals with “title not found” or “risky URL”, for example leading to a scam website, is surprising as one might assume that the motivation for this publisher’s society, university and commercial partners is that such partnership would result in high quality services. Most Medknow journals do not charge publication fees. The journals with publication fees are increasing the cost up to 50%. For documentation and a link to the underlying dataset, see Morrison et al. (2019).

According to the Medknow website, Medknow Publications was founded in 1997 in Mumbai, India by Devkumar Sahu. Sahu opted for the open access model of publishing services. Open access publishing means that research outputs and analysis are available online free of cost. In 2006, Medknow had 33 scientific technical and medical journals in its portfolio, at the time, one of the largest open access publishers of medical content in the world. They became the largest open access publishers of medical content till 2006. It was then acquired by Wolters Kluwer in Dec 2011.  Medknow now provides publishing services to over 500 medical society journals in over 40 specialties. These are open access journals. Open access increases the visibility and accessibility of the published content. Medknow publishes journals in partnership with societies (affiliations), universities or other commercial partners for the most part. Most of the publications offer free access to the full text of papers immediately. Authors can self-archive articles that have been published. Journals are available freely online but also available through value-added subscriptions.

531 Medknow journals were analysed in this research. This is an increase of approximately 7% in the count of journals in 2018. It is a significant growth however lesser as compared to that from 2017-2018. Out of these 531 journals, almost 65% of the journals do not charge publication cost. It is also important to notice that a few journals are redirecting to risky URL which is concerning as there are chances, it has been stolen by some other company. For the analysis I looked at each journal from Medknow’s website on an alphabetical basis. The charges for each journal are mentioned in a different manner. Some of the journals directly states the cost they charge however; few charges are based of the article type as mentioned below:

• Short communications
• Case Reports
• Original Articles
• Qualitative Research
• Review Articles
• Number of words

The below graph shows the representation of charges being taken by Medknow for 2019.

Out of 104 journals that are charging APC, below table shows the distribution of charges based on different currencies for the year 2019.

Most journals are charging in INR and USD. It is to be noticed as the journal originally started from India, but they started taking the publication cost in various other currencies as well which could be confusing for potential authors. Even for INR, there is no fixed cost and it is varying depending on each journal. There are few journals who are not charging for Indian authors but have mentioned publication costs for writers outside India. Have a look at the chart below:

This is a variation and we cannot suggest on a pattern of the publication cost. Below table shows the numbers currency wise:

If we look at the data from 2018, we can see that there has been both increase and decrease in the publication cost for the journals. There has been an increase of 16% in the journals whose title were not found, and this is subsequent to notice as Medknow being one of the well-known publishers does not have websites for so many journals! These journals have not been listed as ceased or nothing specific has been mentioned related to them. There are just 3% journals who showed a price drop but 4% increased the cost. At one side most journals are not charging publication fees but few of them have relatively increased their cost.

Please refer the below table for APC statistics comparison based on different currencies

Looking at the above table, I feel that it is relatively high cost to take for publishing a journal. In todays world, 8000 – 10000 INR would be a week’s salary of a corporate employee in a non metro city. Again, it depends from author to author, but the charge should be in a cap where its not too high. USD, EGP and IRR seem to be balanced as compared to charges being taken in INR globally.

References:

Morrison, H. et al. (2019). OA Main 2019: Dataset, documentation and open peer review invitation. Sustaining the knowledge commons https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/20/oa-main-2019-dataset-documentation-and-open-peer-review-invitation/

Brutus, W. & Morrison, H. (2016). Medknow 2016: it’s complicated! Sustaining the knowledge commons https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/10/11/medknow-2016-its-complicated/

Fernandez, L. (2006). Open Access Initiatives in India – an Evaluation. Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.21083/partnership.v1i1.110

Pasha, H. & Morrison, H (2018). Medknow in 2018: growing fast! | Sustaining the Knowledge Commons https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2018/12/13/medknow-in-2018-growing-fast/

Singh, S. & Morrison, H. (2019). OA journals non-charging and charging central trends 2010 – 2019. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/23/oa-journals-non-charging-and-charging-central-trends-2010-2019/

Cite as: Avasthi, N & Morrison, H (2019). Medknow 2019 – is this the best for India? Sustaining the Knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/23/medknow-2019-is-this-the-best-for-india/

by: Snehita Singh and Heather Morrison

This article summarizes qualitative analysis of APC (Articles Processing Charges) in 2019 and comparison of the central tendencies for APC and APPC (Article page processing charges) of the year 2010 and 2014-2019.

Dataset: Morrison, Heather, et al. 2019, “OA APC longitudinal study dataset 2019”, https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/0DIPGE, Scholars Portal Dataverse, V1

OA APC Main 2019 dataset documentation

Morrison, H. et al. (2019). OA Main 2019: Dataset, documentation and open peer review invitation. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/20/oa-main-2019-dataset-documentation-and-open-peer-review-invitation/

Abstract

For the year 2019, we analyzed around 16000 journals that were fully open access in DOAJ (or whose publishers were listed in DOAJ) at some point from 2010 – 2019. More than half of these journals (58%) published had no publication charge.30% of the journals have publications fees. The most frequent model is APC (28% of total) followed by APPC (page charges), under 1%. In a few cases the cost was not specified or an unusual model such as charge per word was used. Of all the journals analyzed, the title of 4% of journals were not found and 3% of journals belonged to ceased publication. It was noted that 53 journals (less than 1%) also had hybrid charges (partially open access) in 2019. The global average APC was 908 USD. From 2010 the global average APC has ranged from 906 – 974 USD. The lack of change in the global average contrasts with variation in mode, reflecting change in the market, particularly ongoing entry of large numbers of new journals, gradually increasing maximum amounts for both APC and APPC, and substantial changes we sometimes observe when recording data for particular publishers. We conclude that continuing to calculate the global average is a less fruitful method of studying the transition to open access and plan to continue this longitudinal study by using the historical data gathered to focus on case studies.

Moreover, the highest value for APC in 2019 went up to 5800 USD whereas the lowest value remained at 0 USD. The SKC team distinguishes between journals that indicate an intention not to charge (no publication fee) and APC-based journals that have not yet begun to charge (identified as APC journals with APC of 0). The mode was noted to be 500 USD.

Abstract

We also analyzed the central tendencies for APC and APPC for over the years of this study. It was observed that there wasn’t much change in the global average of APCs and APPCs from the year 2010 to 2019 and it ranged between 840 to 1090 USD.

The global average of APPC was noted to vary between 50 to 110 USD.

The highest value of APCs observed each year shows a gradual upward trend over the years and the lowest value of APCs has remained between 0 to 8 USD.

For APPC, the highest value shows a steep increase reaching up to 1844 USD in 2019 (for Karger’s, Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders Extra, 4 times higher than the second highest APPC) when compared to the previous years. The minimum value of APPCs varied between 0 to 5 USD over the years.

It was observed that the mode of APCs between year 2010 and 2019 kept varying from year to year. It was lowest in the year 2014 and 2017 with 0 USD and highest in the year 2016 and 2018 with around 1800 USD.

For APPCs, it reached to a minimum of 30 USD in 2015.Apart from that, it remained between 50 to 90 USD over the years.

Discussion and conclusions

The global average (mean) APC has changed little over the years. In 2010, Solomon & Björk (2012) recorded an average of 906 USD. Our 2014 data yielded an average of 964 USD (Morrison et al., 2015), in 2017, 974 USD (Morrison, 2018), and for 2019 we record an average of 908 USD. This contrasts with variation in mode or most common APC and gradually increasing maximum APC and APPC and the changing prices we observe when studying particular publishers (most often price increases, sometimes a mix of price increases and decreases). For example, Shi (2019) reports a 2019 Hindawi average APC of 1,186 USD, well above the global average and a 14% increase over the 2018 Hindawi APC. As reported by Pashaei and Morrison (2019), DeGruyter is rapidly expanding its collection of open access journal titles, primarily through its new Sciendo imprint. Most of the OA journals of this commercial publisher do not charge publication fees; of those that do, the range of APC prices is much lower for Sciendo than De Gruyter. A focus on the global average APC does not tell the story of what is happening in the transition to open access. We conclude that continuing to calculate a global average APC is less fruitful in understanding OA transition, and for this reason our future research will build on the OA Main dataset for historical context for a series of case studies.

References

Solomon, D. J. and Björk, B. (2012), A study of open access journals using article processing charges. J Am Soc Inf Sci Tec, 63: 1485-1495. doi:10.1002/asi.22673

Crawford, W. (2019). Gold Open Access 2013-2018: Articles in Journals (GOA4), Livermore, CA:2019. Retrieved Oct. 31, 2019 from https://waltcrawford.name/goa4.pdf

Morrison, H.; Salhab, J.; Calvé-Genest, A.; Horava, T. Open Access Article Processing Charges: DOAJ Survey May 2014. (205). Publications 3: 1-16. http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/3/1/1

Morrison, H. (2018). Global OA APCs (APC) 2010–2017: Major Trends. Chan, L. & Pierre Mounier. P. , eds. ELPUB 2018, June 2018, Toronto, Canada. <10.4000/proceedings.elpub.2018.16>.  Retrieved July 5, 2018 from https://elpub.episciences.org/4604

Pashaei, H. & Morrison, H. (2019). De Gruyter and Sciendo Open Access journals expanding in 2019. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/10/16/de-gruyter-and-sciendo-open-access-journals-expanding-in-2019/

Shi, A. (2019). Hindawi APC comparison 2018-2019. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/05/hindawi-apc-comparison-2018-2019/

Cite as: Singh, S. & Morrison, H. (2019). OA journals non-charging and charging central trends 2010 – 2019. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/23/oa-journals-non-charging-and-charging-central-trends-2010-2019/

Cite as: Morrison, H. et al. (2019). OA Main 2019: Dataset, documentation and open peer review invitation. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/20/oa-main-2019-dataset-documentation-and-open-peer-review-invitation/

Dataset: Morrison, Heather, et al. 2019, “OA APC longitudinal study dataset 2019”, https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/0DIPGE, Scholars Portal Dataverse, V1

OA APC Main 2019 dataset documentation

Abstract:

481 Hindawi journals were analyzed. 226 (47%) journals published at some point from 2010 – 2019 have ceased publication, 7 cannot be found on the Hindawi website anymore and 1 has been transferred to another publisher. In 2019, there are 247 journals actively publishing on the Hindawi website. All the journals are charging APCs. The average price is 1186.44 USD, an increase of 14% over the 2018 APC (1040.30 USD). Compared to the US inflation rate for 2018 of 2.44%(“U.S. Inflation Rate 1960-2019” n.d.), the publication fee rises more than 5 times. Among active journals, 17% of the 217 journals did not change in price; 30% journals decreased their price while more than half (53%) of the journals increased price. The amount of price increase starts from 25 USD up to 1350 USD. 14 journals appear to have switched from “no fee” to “fee”, with different APCS from 750 USD to 1350 USD.

Most journals that not found on the website in 2018 now been illustrated ceased on the web page with the specific ceased year and where to find previous publication articles which could be good practice for authors who are trying to find the latest information about specific journals. it also benefits other publishers to follow the lead.

Detail:

Table 1: 2019 Hindawi Journal Publication and APC status summary

Hindawi has 481 journals in 2019. Among these journals, 226 of them were reported ceased on Hindawi’s website. In 2018, most of the ceased journals cannot be found in the website but they have been specified on the webpage about when this journal is ceased and where can readers find previous articles published in the journal. This is a good practice. Here is a example of one of the ceased title.

Price changes 2018-2019

Hindawi has 232 active journals listed on its website in 2018. In 2019, there are 247 journals actively publishing on the Hindawi website. There are 15 journals that cannot be found on the website now can be searched which represents a 6.47% increase in journal numbers of Hindawi.

The average publication fee we found from the Hindawi’s website in 2018 is 1040.30 USD. There are 14 journals that had no publication fee in 2018 in contrast with no journals with no publication fee in 2019 and for most journals the publication fee is 1000 USD per article. The range of APC (article proceeding cost) starts from no publication fee which is zero to 2250 USD.

This average takes into account the 15 journals’ APC for the year 2019. This year, the majority of journals have a publication fee of 950 USD per article. Obviously, every journal found on the Hindawi website does have a publication fee from this year. The minimum cost is 650 USD up to 2300 USD. Graph 1 and Graph 2 below shows the frequency of APC for different prices in two years.

Table 2 2018 & 2019 Hindawi active titles APC status summary

Graph 1: price distribution for 2018

Graph 2: price distribution for 2019

Of the 247 journals total:

• 15 “new” journals are added in 2019 (including in 2019 overall analysis but not 2018-2019 change analysis)
• Journals with status: no publication fee coded as 0 in change analysis.

Total journals included in the price change analysis:

• 2019 overall: 232
• 2018-2019 comparison: 217

Of the 217 titles, as illustrated in the chart and table below, a majority of these journals (53%) increased in prices in USD from 2018 to 2019, while a third (30%) decreased in price and a few (17%) did not change in price.

For the 116 journals that increased in price, the increases in percentages ranged from 2.22% to 95% (slightly under double in price).

Among the 65 journals with APC price decreases, the drop in percentage ranged from 5% to 24%.

Working dataset : https://sustainingknowledgecommons.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/hindawi-analysis_2019_prep_version-0.xlsx

Cite as: Shi, A. (2019). Hindawi APC comparison 2018-2019. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/11/05/hindawi-apc-comparison-2018-2019/

Selected previous posts on Hindawi:
Morrison, H. (2018). Recent APC price changes for 4 publishers (BMC, Hindawi, PLOS, PeerJ). Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2018/04/13/recent-apc-price-changes-for-4-publishers-bmc-hindawi-plos-peerj/
In brief: Hindawi April 2016 – November 2017: mixed picture, price increases a bit concerning
Brutus, W. (2017). Hindawi: comparaison 2016 – 2017. Soutenir les savoirs communs. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2017/04/22/hindawi-comparaison-2016-2017/
In brief: French – highlights: the mode (most common APC) was $600 USD in 2016, $1,000 in 2017
Salhab, J. (2016). Hindawi publisher: 2016 findings and longitudinal comparison of APC rates. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/04/27/hindawi-publisher-2016-findings-and-longitudinal-comparison-of-apc-rates/
​In brief: Hindawi previously used a strategy of rotating free publication in journals, mentioned in this post; the most common APC in both 2015 and 2016 was $600; comparing 2010 and 2016 data, we see a mixed picture with some prices increasing and others decreasing.
Salhab, J. & Morrison, H. (2015). Who is served by for-profit gold open access publishing? A case study of Hindawi and Egypt. Sustaining the knowledge commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/04/10/who-is-served-by-for-profit-gold-open-access-publishing-a-case-study-of-hindawi-and-egypt/
Highlights: as reported by Poynder (2012), Ahmed Hindawi, (from Egypt) founder of Hindawi, confirmed a revenue of millions of dollars from APCs alone – a $3.3 net profit on $12 million in revenue, a 28% profit rate. Hindawi is highly regarded as a leading reputable open access publisher. This commercial Egyptian success story is contrasted with high APC for the most prestigious journals and English-language- only journals that suggest that this approach is not helpful for Egypt’s researchers.

Reference:

“U.S. Inflation Rate 1960-2019.” n.d. Accessed October 31, 2019 from https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/inflation-rate-cpi

Poynder, R. (2012).The OA interviews: Ahmed Hindawi, founder of Hindawi Publishing Corporation. Retrieved March 10, 2015 from http://www.richardpoynder.co.uk/Hindawi_Interview.pdf

Résumé

La plateforme publie 524 revues issues de 32 pays d’Afrique. 39 revues sont en français. Malgré ce contenu francophone, Ajol ne dispose pas un filtre pouvant repérer les revues en français. Pour y arriver, il faudrait d’abord reconnaitre ou repérer les pays francophones sur la liste à sa page, Une. De plus l’on remarque que la plateforme est unilingue.

    Visité par plus 200.000 personnes par mois, AJOL est une plateforme qui a été créée en 1998 à Oxford en Angleterre. Sa mission est de mettre à disposition du public en ligne une collection de publications des recherches académiques en provenance d’Afrique. D’importants domaines de recherche en Afrique (Biology & Life Sciences, Health, General Science, etc.) ne sont pas connus dans des publications de pays développés. Pour AJOL, Internet est un bon moyen d’augmenter l’accès à ses recherches afin de permettre aux chercheurs du monde entier. Le site de AJOL héberge 524 revues avec169 652 articles en texte intégral de 32 pays. De nos jours, son siège social se trouve en Afrique du Sud (Ajol, 2019). Deux types de frais d’accès qui permettent d’accéder aux articles non open access sont accordés aux chercheurs et aux étudiants d’une part, et un autre aux bibliothèques et cela en fonction du pays où la demande est émise.

Dans ce travail nous présentons les activités de Ajol. Notre démarche repose sur le protocole d’évaluation de The Charleston Advisor. il stipule que l’on que : «As a critical evaluation tool for Web-based electronic resources, The Charleston Advisor will use a rating system which will score each product based on four elements: content, searchability, price and contract options/ features» (The Charleston Advisor, 2019).

     AJOL est une plateforme hybride. De ses 524 revues, 262 sont en accès libre. Le système AJOL est entièrement basé sur des logiciels et des technologies Open Source en l’occurrence : Open Journal Systems developed de Public Knowledge Project (PKP) au Canada, Operating System, etc. AJOL n’accepte pas les publications des auteurs de façon individuelle. Il faut passer par une revue pour être publié (AJOL, 2017 (a)).

Options de tarification

    Les frais de publication proposés pour le téléchargement des chercheurs, des étudiants, etc. (AJOL, 2017 (e)). Ce sont :

     Pour les bibliothèques ont leurs frais qui sont différents de ceux des chercheurs (AJOL, 2017 (d)).

Aperçu du produit / Description

    Deux produits sont mis à la disposition à la disposition du public: des publications payantes et non payantes. AJOL publie 169 652 articles en texte intégral dont 110 502 sont en accès libre. Ces articles sont issus de 527 revues, dont 262 en accès libre (AJOL, 2017 (a)). 25 disciplines reparties.

Les disciplines contenues dans leurs publications les suivantes :

     L’on constate que 6 nouvelles revues (en gras dans le tableau ci-dessus) se sont ajoutées depuis 2017 au niveau des champs :

– des Sciences environnementales : 29

– de la Sociologie et de l’anthropologie : 42

– de la Technologie, de l’informatique et de l’ingénierie 30

– des Sciences générales : 87

– de l’Économie et du développement : 48

– Sciences humaines : 56

     Les champs de la santé (Health (167)) et de (General Science (87)) arrivent en tête du nombre des catégories de sujet et sont toutes évalués par les pairs (peer reviews). AJOL s’adresse spécifiquement aux chercheurs et aux bibliothèques. Selon les auteurs du site Web, AJOL a un PageRank Google de 8. Il est visité par 200 000 personnes par mois à travers le monde. L’onglet «Using AJOL» permet d’accéder la feuille de route qui indique le processus de recherche (AJOL, 2017 (b)).

Interface utilisateur / Navigation / Recherche

    La plateforme publie 524 revues issues de 32 pays d’Afrique. 39 revues sont en français. Malgré ce contenu francophone, Ajol ne dispose pas un filtre pouvant repérer les revues en français. Pour y arriver, il faudrait d’abord reconnaitre ou repérer les pays francophones sur la liste à sa page principale. De plus l’on remarque que la plateforme est unilingue.

    Une particularité est que son interface donne accès facilement aux produits. La fonctionnalité «Journal» donne directement accès aux différentes catégories de sujets qui sont traités. On peut les obtenir par pays sur une facette où tous les pays sont affichés. Et les facettes par pays permettent de spécifier sa recherche. Toutefois, les informations sur les auteurs et les rédacteurs de la plateforme sont inexistantes. Par exemple, l’on n’a pas les noms et l’organigramme de cette organisation à but non lucratif (The Charleston Advisor, 2019).

    Le site web de AJOL demande une inscription pour naviguer sans restrictions. Au niveau de la principale, 5 onglets permettent de se connecter. «Afriacn Journals Online (AJOL)» est fixé sur la page une. L’onglet «Journals» conduit à la liste des catégories de publication, «Advanced Search» ouvre sur un champ de recherche plus spécifique par facettes. «Using AJOL» permet de trouver des articles en accès libre de toutes les catégories de revues par titre, d’enregistrer le profile de votre revue et de donner une feuille de route pour les recherches.

    Ajol donne une occasion aux différentes de s’enregistrer et diffuser leurs propres articles. Il indique aussi la liste des frais que chercheurs et auteurs doivent payer. «Ressources» connecte les visiteurs sur d’autres revues hors de l’Afrique. Par ailleurs, une colonne à facette située à droite du site indique les catégories, par ordre alphabétique et par pays où l’on peut télécharger les articles (AJOL, 2017 (a)).

Contenu

     Ajol a pour mission de valoriser et de diffuser les publications africaines. Dans ce sens, la plateforme remplit parfaitement ses objectifs. Elle diffuse 524 revues examinées par les pairs, dont plus de la moitié (306) avec des frais pour le téléchargement. Le reste est en accès libre. On remarque que la grande partie est en anglais (497). 39 revues en français. Bien que le contenu soit diversifié, les études sur les Sciences de l’Information et de la bibliothéconomie sont très restreintes (18 revues avec la Communication) par rapport aux sciences de la santé (167).

Tarif

    Les revenus provenant des frais de téléchargement de l’article pour les revues d’abonnement sont envoyés au journal d’origine (moins le coût d’amortissement d’AJOL). Par contre toutes les revues en accès libre sont à la portée de tous. Les frais sont fixés en fonction des pays. Les pays pauvres payent moins que les plus riches. Les critères qui définissent ces pays sont basés sur les statistiques de la Banque Mondiale (The World Bank, 2017). Évidemment, les frais des bibliothèques sont plus élevés que ceux des chercheurs et cela en selon les pays.

     Par ailleurs, une des compétitions de AJOL est The Sabinet African ePublications (African Journal online archive). Son site publie 500 revues regroupant 64 catégories de sujets, dont 86, en Open Access. Il est créé depuis 2001. Cette plateforme a la particularité de ne pas publier son organigramme comme AJOL. Nous n’avons pas retrouvé ses frais de publication. Par contre, elle publie un grand nombre de revues de l’Afrique du Sud (The Sabinet African ePublications, 2017).

        La bibliothèque numérique en ligne africaine (AODL) est un portail de collections multimédia sur l’Afrique. Les auteurs collaborent avec le Centre d’études africaines de l’Université d’État du Michigan, ainsi que des organisations du patrimoine culturel en Afrique pour construire cette ressource (AODL, 2019).

Dispositions d’achat et de contrat

       Les revues qui choisissent de publier dans un modèle d’accès ouvert ont leur texte complet en ligne pour le téléchargement gratuit. Les bibliothèques peuvent ouvrir un compte de téléchargement d’articles prépayés avec AJOL pour accéder aux titres des partenaires qui facturent leur contenu. Cela permet aux utilisateurs d’obtenir plus facilement des articles en texte intégral auprès de AJOL. L’accès aux articles d’abonnement est effectué par un mot de passe ou par leur logiciel qui sélectionne automatiquement la gamme d’adresses IP au choix de l’établissement. Des indications expliquent qu’il n’y a pas de restriction de temps pour la remise des articles. Les comptes peuvent être complétés à tout moment. Pour vérifier la catégorie dans laquelle votre pays se trouve, il est demandé de se référer listes de pays de la Banque mondiale. L’adresse suivante : info@ajol.info permet aux revues de se faire créer une installation un compte.

Conclusion

        La plateforme AJOL est hybride, certains articles sont payants. Pour gérer le flux de clients, une souscription exige un «username» et un mot de passe pour la navigation sur le site. De plus, l’accession aux documents payants sont soit par abonnement ou directement. Ce qui filtre les visiteurs. Il y a un panier dans lequel tout souscripteur peut collectionner les articles qu’il souhaite acheter. Il n’y a pas d’options qui déterminent un groupe particulier avec des faveurs spécifiques.

Références

AJOL, (2017) (a). African Journals Online (AJOL)) (2017). http://www.ajol.info/                                              Visité le 30/102019

AJOL, (2017) (b). African Journals Online: Browse by Category. http://www.ajol.info/index.php/index/browse/category Visité le 30/102019

AJOL, (2017) (c). FAQ’s http://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajol/pages/view/FAQ#A1 Visité le 30/102019

AJOL (2017) (d). How Librarians can use AJOL. http://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajol/pages/view/LIBhowto . Visité le 30/102019

AJOL, (2017) (e). How Researchers can use AJOL http://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajol/pages/view/RESHowto Visité le 30/102019

The Sabinet African ePublications (2017). http://journals.co.za/. Visité le 30/102019

The African Online Digital Library (AODL) (2017). http://www.aodl.org/ Visité le 30/102019

The Charleston Advisor, (2017) About TCA. http://www.charlestonco.com/index.php?do=About+TCA Visité le 30/102019

The World Bank (2017) Data and Statistics. http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/DATASTATISTICS/0,,contentMDK:20421402~menuPK:64133156~pagePK:64133150~piPK:64133175~theSitePK:239419,00.htmlVisité Visité le 30/102019

Original:

Kakou, T.L. (2019). Arima, une revue africaine dans Hal archives. Soutenir les savoirs communs. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/10/23/arima-une-revue-africaine-dans-hal-archives/

English synopsis by Heather Morrison

African journals seek to create a space for themselves by disseminating their journals through online platforms and archives. There are multiple possibilities for preservation and publishing on line. One of these is electronic archiving. In this research post Kakou presents the HAL archive and explores the representation of African document. Developed and administered by the Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe (CCSD), the platform HAL is an open archive in Social Sciences. In this post, Kakou presents an overview of the services offered by HAL, including  Episciences.org and Sciencesconf.org. Episciences.org offers journal publishing within the archive and supports the innovative peer-review overlay approach to journal publishing. Arima, a journal that has been supported by the North-South coalition Colloque africain pour la Recherche en Informatique et mathématiques appliquées (CARI) for twenty years, is among the 15 Episciences journals. This is « our » platform too ; Morrison’s 2018 ELPUB OA APC survey can be found in Episciences.

Original:

Kakou, T.L. (2019).  OpenEdition et les revues savantes d’Afrique. Soutenir les savoirs commun. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/10/23/openedition-et-les-revues-savantes-dafrique/

English synopsis by Heather Morrison

OpenEdition (formerly Revues.org) publishes 21 African journals. Only one of these journals is published in an African country (Kenya). In this post Kakou illustrates a gap in dissemination of African scholarship, particularly francophone African scholarship. For example, of the 524 journals included in African Journals Online (AJOL), 465 (89%) are published in English speaking countries and only 39 (7%) in French speaking countries. Only 12 of the 24 African countries where French is an official or co-official languages are represented in AJOL. This research illustrates the African and particularly Francophone African knowledge gap that is the focus of Kakou’s doctoral research.

Parmi les revues que OpenEdition publie, 21 revues sont africaines. Elles sont localisées dans 5 pays. Seul un pays africain (Kenya) y figure. Ce sont : Nederland (1), Portugal (2), Kenya (1), France (17), Italie (1).

Les universités africaines adoptent les stratégies à suivre pour se développer au numérique. Selon Murray et Clobridge (2014), de plus en plus de revues en ligne sont diffusées sur les plateformes africaines telles AJOL, Sabinet, etc. La plateforme AJOL (African journals online) par exemple, se veut promotrice de la revue africaine en général. Cependant, l’on dénombre sur ce site, 39 revues en français (7%) sur 524 (Ajol, 2019). Ces revues sont reparties entre 12 états sur 24 (voir tableaux ci-dessous) dont le français est une langue officielle ou co-officielle (Université Laval, 2019).

Tableau 1 : Liste en % des pays cités dans Ajol

Tableau 2 : Liste des pays et nombre de revues en % des pays existants et non-existants sur Ajol

18 états anglophones détiennent la majorité absolue des revues avec 465 revues. D’autres pays (arabes (19), portugais (1)) se partage 20 revues. Voir Tableau.

Tableau 3 : Nombre de revues par pays en %

Tableau 4 : Nombre de revues par pays en %

Objectif

Notre objectif est de répertorier les revues africaines sur le Web et principalement sur les plateformes. Dans cette recherche, nous avons sélectionné la plateforme OpenEdition pour connaître les types de publications de revues africaines. Dans un premier temps, nous présentons la plateforme OpenEdition. Dans un deuxième temps, nous indiquons le nombre de documents qui y sont diffusés.

Les quatre plateformes d’OpenEdition

Au sortir de l’analyse de la plateforme Revues.org, nous observons que celle-ci devient: OpenEdition depuis 2017 pour renforcer sa dimension internationale. Elle publie quatre plateformes de publication et d’information sur les sciences humaines et sociales: OpenEdition Journals (les revues), OpenEdition Books (les collections de livres), Hypothèses (les carnets de recherche) et Calenda (les annonces d’événements académiques internationaux) (OpenEdition 1, 2019).

OpenEdition accueille 522 revues sur son portail. Environ plus de 200 000 articles, dont 92% sont accès libre (OpenEdition 2, 2019). Sur la plateforme OpenEdition Books, l’on dénombre près de 7 960 livres en sciences humaines et sociales provenant de 90 éditeurs. L’accès aux ouvrages se fait sur l’espace personnel de chaque éditeur. Ils sont librement accessibles en HTML, et imprimables (OpenEdition 3, 2109).

Quant à Hypothèses, 3 103 carnets de recherches sont recensés sous différents types et tous en accès libre. Ce sont : carnet de chercheur, carnet de terrain, carnet de séminaire, carnet de veille, etc. (OpenEdition 4, 2019).

Enfin, Calenda est le calendrier d’annonces scientifiques en sciences humaines et sociales. Il regroupe, plus de 42 619 annonces en libre accès. De plus, Calenda publie dans les actes de colloque, les programmes complets de journées d’études et de séminaires, les cycles de conférences, les appels à contributions en vue de colloques, etc. (OpenEdition 5, 2019). Voir tableau

Tableau 5 : Les 4 plateformes de OpenEdition en nombre d’articles et en %

OPenEdition offre aux bibliothèques la possibilité de choisir une politique d’acquisition dans la logique de développement du libre accès. Aucun quota de téléchargement ne s’applique à cet accès (OpenEdition 6, 2019). OpenEdition publie 274 581 en accès libre. 17 748 articles sont payant et 4219 articles sous embargo. «L’abonnement donne accès aux fichiers PDF et ePub de manière pérenne» (OpenEdition 6, 2019). Voir tableau

Tableau 6 et 7 : APC dans OpenEdition en nombre d’articles et en %

Fig:6

Fig:7

Conclusion

OpenEdition publie 4 plateformes (Revues, livres, Hypothèses Calanda) soit un total de 253 682 publications. Les revues représentent 200 000 soit 79%. 274 581 (92%) sur 296 548 articles sont disponibles en accès libre. Parmi ces revues OpenEdition diffuse 21 revues africaines. Seul un pays africain y figure: le Kenya. Nous avons observé que OpenEdition est le nouveau nom de Revue.org.

Bibliographie

African journals online, 2018, https://www.ajol.info/ Visité le 13-10-2019

Murray, S. et Clobridge, A. (2014). The Current State of Scholarly Journal Publishing in Africa Findings & Analysis September 2014.

OpenEdition 3, Books, 2109, http://books.openedition.org Visité le 13-10-2019

OpenEdition 5, Calanda, 2019, http://calenda.org Visité le 13-10-2019

OpenEdition 4, Hypothèse, 2019) http://hypotheses.org Visité le 13-10-2019

OpenEdition1, Informations Journal, 2019,https://journals.openedition.org/10580 Visité le 13-10-2019

OpenEdition 2, Les services d’OpenEdition 2019, https://www.openedition.org/10918 Visité le 13-10-2019

OpenEdition 6, Services, 2019, https://journals.openedition.org/10179 Visité le 13-10-2019

Université Laval, 2019, Les États où le français est langue officielle ou co-officielle

http://www.axl.cefan.ulaval.ca/francophonie/francophonie_tableau1.htm Visité le 13-10-2019

Résumé

Nous présentons dans cette recherche :Hal archives. Hal est une plateforme d’archives ouvertes. Elle conserve des revues sur sa plateforme Episciences.org sur laquelle l’on trouve une revue africaine Arima. Hal anime sur une seconde plateforme: Sciencesconf.org  le programme des organisateurs de colloques ou réunions scientifiques.

Les revues africaines cherchent à se faire une place par la diffusion de leur journal sur les plateformes et les archives en ligne. Les possibilités de conserver et de publier en ligne sont multiples. L’une d’elles est l’archivage électronique. Dans cette recherche nous présentons Hal archive. Quelle est la représentativité des documents africains dans cette plateforme ? Développée et administrée par le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe (CCSD), la plateforme HAL est une archive ouverte en Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société. Le CCSD entend diffuser et valoriser des publications et des données scientifiques en fournissant des outils pour l’archivage en ligne (CCSD 2, 2019). Dans ce travail, dans un premier temps, nous définissons deux termes épi-comité, épi-revues qui peuvent aider à la compréhension des termes utilisés pour indiquer certains produits. Dans deuxième temps, nous présentons Hal archive et les plateformes qu’elle publie.

Définition

Epi-revue :

Epi-revue est une revue électronique en libre accès. Elle est composée d’articles soumis via un dépôt dans une archive ouverte telle que HAL ou arXiv.

Epi-comité :

Epi-comité désigne le comité scientifique d’experts reconnus dans leur discipline. Les scientifiques sont chargés de stimuler la création des comités de rédaction pour l’organisation de nouvelles épi-revues et de veiller à la qualité de leurs contenus (Episciences 1, 2019).

Activité de Hal archive : Episciences.org – Sciencesconf.org

Hal publie 2 principales plateformes : Episciences.org et Sciencesconf.org. Elle conserve actuellement 9 300 revues, 8 151 images, 3 421 de thèse et 3 103 Chapitre d’ouvrages. En tout 23 975 documents, dont 5 661 (24%) ont été déposés en 2018. Le nombre de 600 000 documents est dépassé depuis sa création. 11 529 de ces dépôts concernent des documents publiés en 2019 parmi lesquels 5 278 sont des articles (CCSD 2, 2019).

A travers ces deux plateformes, Hal conserve et publie 15 revues dont une Africaine : ARIMA. La revue Arima est créée des suites d’une collaboration scientifique Nord/Sud menée depuis plus d’une vingtaine d’années. L’initiative est arrivée au cours des activités de CARI (Colloque africain pour la Recherche en Informatique et mathématiques appliquées). Arima permet de publier les résultats de recherche issus de ces coopérations. Le domaine scientifique recouvre tous les sujets de recherche de l’informatique et des mathématiques appliquées (Hal, 2019). Que sont les plateformes Episciences.org et Sciencesconf.org ?

Episciences.org

Episciences.org héberge des revues en Open Access (épi-revues) et permet la soumission des articles par un dépôt dans une archive ouverte (Episciences 2, 2019). Episciences.org diffuse une bibliothèque numérique ELPUB (ELectronic PUBlishing). Elpub présente les résultats de recherches sur différents aspects de l’édition numérique sur le plan culturel, économique, social, technologique, juridique, etc. ces résultats impliquent une communauté internationale diversifiée de chercheurs œuvrant, entre autres, dans les domaines des sciences et des sciences humaines et sociales, des bibliothécaires, des éditeurs (ELPUB, 2019).

D’ailleurs, l’on trouve une publication intitulée : Global OA APCs (APC) 2010–2017: Major Trends (Morrison, 2019) de Heather Morrison, chercheuse principale de Sustaining knowledge common. Cette diversité d’acteurs montre la diversité des contributions pour Hal archive.

Cette possibilité de faire des dépôts dans Episciences.org est une avancée majeure des publications en français par rapport aux plateformes en anglais qui sont récentes. Kathleen Shearer, al. (2019) présentent dans une récente l’approche Pubfair. En matière de communication scientifique, l’approche facilite le partage et la collaboration en ligne, tout en favorisant la transparence et la confiance dans les résultats de la recherche diffusés par le biais des services.

Pubfair est un cadre de publication ouvert qui permet la soumission, l’évaluation et à l’accès à une variété de résultats de recherche. Elle permet également aux utilisateurs de créer des canaux de diffusion pour divers groupes de parties prenantes (Kathleen Shearer, al., 2019, 6). Pour Heather Morrison, le cadre Pubfair est un excellent début pour une profonde transformation nécessaire dans la manière dont les universitaires travaillent ensemble et diffusent la recherche. C’est le type d’approche le plus susceptible de générer des économies importantes en fonction des dépenses actuelles consacrées à l’édition savante.

Sciencesconf.org.

Sciencesconf.org est une plateforme Web qui s’adresse aux organisateurs de colloques, ou réunions scientifiques. Elle facilite les différentes étapes du déroulement des conférences depuis la réception des communications jusqu’à l’édition des actes en passant par la relecture et la programmation des thématiques (Episciences 2, (2019).

Tableau 1 : Principaux types de documents

Tableau 2 : Principaux types de documents

Conclusion

Hal est une archive ouverte qui conserve des documents d’images, de revues, de thèse, etc. Elle facilite l’organisation de conférences scientifiques. Une revue africaine (Arima) y figure parmi une quinzaine de revues.

Bibliographie

Arima, (2019). Présentation – Revue africaine de la recherche en informatique et mathématiques appliquées. https://arima.episciences.org/

Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe, 2019 -2, Dépôts dans HAL : 600 000 ! https://www.ccsd.cnrs.fr/2019/07/depots-dans-hal-600-000/

Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe, 2019-1, Epi-revues

https://www.ccsd.cnrs.fr/epi-revues/

ELPUB, (2019). ELPUB Digital Library. https://elpub.architexturez.net/

Episciences 1, (2019) Documentation. À propos. https://doc.episciences.org/a-propos/

Episciences 2, (2019). Plateforme de gestion de congrès scientifiques.

https://www.sciencesconf.org/

Hal, (2019). Archive ouverte en Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société. https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/

Morrison, H. (2019). Global OA APCs (APC) 2010–2017: Major Trends

https://elpub.architexturez.net/

Morrison, H. (2019). Peer review of Pubfair framework.

https://wordpress.com/view/sustainingknowledgecommons.org

Shearer, K., Ross-Hellauer, T., Fecher, B., et Eloy, R. (2019). Pubfair A Framework for

Sustainable, Distributed, Open Science Publishing Services.

https://comments.coar-repositories.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/09/Pubfair_-A-Framework-for-Sustainable-Distributed-Open-Science-Publishing-Services.pdf

According to the Asian Network for Scientific Information (ANSInet) website, the article processing charges (APCs) for almost all the listed journals dropped from 625 USD in 2018 to 325 USD in 2019 which is 48 percent decrease. Only the ‘International Journal of Pharmacology’ dropped from 1000 USD to 625 USD, about a 38 percent decrease. On the contrary, two journals experienced a slight increase for their article processing charges (APCs) from 250 USD to 275 USD. This is good news for authors who do not have enough funding but try to publish through Asian Network for Scientific Information (ANSInet). From the journal number perspective, 3 new journals have been added in the Asian Network for Scientific Information (ANSInet).

ANSInet is included in our study as this publisher was formerly in DOAJ. ANSInet no longer listed in DOAJ now; we do not know whether this publisher did not complete the re-application process or if ANSInet applied and was not accepted.

by Hamid Pashaei and Heather Morrison

Abstract
De Gruyter is a well-known traditional academic publisher with 270 years of experience. We first noted the dramatic expansion of De Gruyter into open access publishing in 2016 (French: Dumais-DesRosiers, M. & Brutus, W. (2016); English: Morrison (2016). In 2014, there were no De Gruyter titles listed in DOAJ; by the end of 2015, De Gruyter was the third largest publisher in DOAJ. In 2019, De Gruyter’s expansion into open access is even more remarkable, primarily through De Gruyter’s new imprint Sciendo, which has added more than 300 OA journals in 2019. The majority of De Gruyter / Sciendo journals (57%) do not charge APCs. In many cases we were not able to ascertain whether or not there is a fee.

Details
Both De Gruyter and Sciendo publish journals through either Open Access or Paid access model.

The analysis of Open Access journals for these two publishers reveal that especially Sciendo is expanding its number of open access journals significantly, as almost 300 new journals were added to their database in 2019 alone.

Out of the new journals, 33 titles were published for the first time in 2019.

A deeper glance into the list of Sciendo journals shows that most of them are published through collaboration with different universities and academic societies and institutions in Europe.

There is not a clear pattern for pricing model of open access journals for authors by Sciendo. About 57 percent of the open access journals published by Sciendo are free of charge to publish in for authors, while almost 14 percent charge processing fees to publish articles. We were unable to find information regarding the rest of the journals.

For the open access journals with article processing charge (APC) model, the range of processing fees was approximately 50 Euros to 1000 Euros, depending on the journals in which the authors want to publish their articles (To write this blog post, we converted the cost from local currencies to Euros).

On the other, there were less changes in De Gruyter open access journals, though we found 21 new journals in the list of their journals comparing to the previous year. The data regarding their publishing model could be seen in the following chart.

For the journals with article processing charge model, the range was almost between 500 to 2000 Euros, with the average cost about 1000 Euros.

On a side note, there were some journals that were transferred between De Gruyter and Sciendo as the publisher, so it could be beneficial to authors and people who are interested in finding journals if De Gruyter was more clear in pointing out this on their website.

References
Dumais-DesRosiers, M. & Brutus, W. (2016). De Gruyter maintenant 3rd éditeur en importance sur le Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Sustaining the Knowledge Commons https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/04/27/de-gruyter-maintenant-3e-editeur-en-importance-sur-le-directory-of-open-access-journals-doaj/

Morrison, H. (2016). De Gruyter open (English). Translation of Dumais-DesRosiers, M. & Brutus, W. (2016) De Gruyter maintenant 3rd éditeur en importance sur le Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Sustaining the Knowledge Commons https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/04/27/de-gruyter-maintenant-3e-editeur-en-importance-sur-le-directory-of-open-access-journals-doaj/ Sustaining the Knowledge Commons
https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/04/27/de-gruyter-open-english/

Sous la direction de Marie-Claude Bernard, Geneviève Tschopp et Aneta Slovik

Les récits de vie sont bien connus en recherche. Ils permettent de construire une vision fine et subtile du monde vécu, de la société vue de l’intérieur. Mais ils sont utilisés dans bien d’autres milieux, notamment en formation professionnelle, dans des interventions visant la transformation sociale ou dans le champ de l’éducation. Les seize chapitres de cet ouvrage proposent d’explorer de tels usages des pratiques biographiques et autobiographiques dans des contextes variés. Les auteurs et les autrices, venant des deux côtés de l’Atlantique (Suisse, Pologne, France, Allemagne, Portugal, Cameroun, Gabon, Brésil et Canada), témoignent ainsi de la diversité et de la fécondité de ces pratiques. Cet ouvrage est le fruit d’un partenariat de trois années entre l’Université de Basse-Silésie (Pologne), l’Université de Tours (France) et l’Université Laval (Québec, Canada).

Publications associées :

• Slowik, A., Rywalski, P. et de Souza E.C. (coord.) (2019). Approches (auto)biographiques et nouvelles épreuves de transitions. Construire du sens avec des parcours de vie. Paris : L’Harmattan.
• Slowik, A., Breton, H. et Pineau, G. (coord.) (2019). Récits de vie et approches biographiques. Histoire et vitalité d’un paradigme en sciences sociales. Paris : L’Harmattan.

ISBN PDF : 978-2-921559-38-6
ISBN version imprimée : 978-2-924661-88-8
ISBN ePub : 978-2-924661-90-1
DOI : 10.5281/zenodo.3473735
318 pages
Couverture réalisée par Kate McDonnell à partir d’un tableau de Charlotte Salomon, Collection Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam © Charlotte Salomon Foundation Charlotte Salomon ®
Date de publication : octobre 2019

Table des matières

by Hamid Pashaei and Heather Morrison

We review article processing charge (APC) for approximately 4,000 open access journals from more than 20 major publishers and a lot of small publishers on an annual basis. But our spreadsheet includes about 9,000 journals on the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) that we have not collected data as of August 2019. Most of these journals do not charge APCs.

Although APC data for open access journals is mentioned on the DOAJ website, we are not sure whether these data are up to date. Based on the previous year’s experience, DOAJ APC data can be quite different from what we see on publisher websites.

In order to test the usability of the data on DOAJ website and see how much we could actually rely on this information, we decided to randomly compare the data for 100 journals on the publishers websites to the data on DOAJ.

Research Randomizer (https://www.randomizer.org) was used to select a set of 100 row numbers within the range of journals with DOAJ provenance.

The comparison of data on publishers websites to DOAJ website for the 100 sample journals showed that the information for 7 journals did not match at all, 23 journals were matched substantially (e.g. it was mentioned as no APC on the DOAJ website while there was nothing mentioned about the cost on the publisher website), and 70 journals had exact match.

The seven journals that did not have the same information on the publishers websites comparing to DOAJ website are listed in the following table:

In conclusion, 93 percent of the 100 titles matched either exactly or substantially. This is sufficient to consider the data usable with a note to the effect that some data may have changed since the DOAJ entry. It may be worth noting that when change is noticed the direction is from non-charging to charging. As context note that data obtained directly from publisher’s websites frequently changes as well.

Sous la direction de Mélodie Faury & Marie-Anne Paveau

Collection Réflexivités et expérimentations épistémologiques

L’idée du livre liquide (Liquid Book) est de proposer des livres d’un nouveau genre : nés de textes moissonnés sur des carnets de recherche et des blogs, ils présentent des modes d’écriture native du web, hypertextuelle, augmentée et multimédiatique. Comme les blogs, les ouvrages permettent de naviguer de fenêtre en fenêtre, de regarder tout en lisant, de lire tout en écoutant. Comme les blogs, ils font entendre plusieurs voix, celles des auteur.e.s des billets devenus textes, mais aussi celle des commentateur.trice.s qui ont augmenté l’écriture initiale en la rendant interactive.

En lien direct avec le contexte d’une mise en valeur de la recherche en ligne en sciences humaines et sociales sur la plateforme Hypothèses, ce livre liquide propose des textes soigneusement sélectionnés dans les contenus du carnet de recherche Les Espaces réflexifs, et éditorialisés de manière à constituer un livre fluide, ouvert aux commentaires et augmenté, notamment par les liens hypertextes et la circulation qu’ils permettent.

Liquide, cela veut dire multiple dans les formes d’expression (texte, hypertexte, image, son), polyphonique dans la nature de l’écriture (l’augmentation par les commentaires) et évolutif dans les contenus de la recherche. Un livre liquide accueille la variété des approches, des écritures et des langues. Il a l’ambition de photographier l’état de la science en ligne à un moment donné de sa diffusion, en la rendant accessible par l’éditorialisation et le partage.

Blog Espaces réflexifs : https://reflexivites.hypotheses.org/

ISBN PDF : 978-2-924661-69-7
467 pages
Date de publication : septembre 2019

Table des matières

Job posting: Research Assistant(s) (University of Ottawa students)

Français: https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/08/30/offre-demploi-assistantes-de-recherche-etudiantes-de-luniversite-dottawa/

Deadline: September 17

The goal of the project Sustaining the Knowledge Commons (SKC) is a global sharing of the knowledge of humankind. SKC is financed through a SSHRC Insight Grant. This fall I am looking for 4 research assistants (RAs). There are several different types of tasks that require types skills of skills and knowledge. An RA should have at least one of the following qualifications:

• familiarity with Excel and patience with details
• knowledge of philosophy of technology and/or dialectics
• knowledge of global political economy
• academic writing
• web or popular writing

We work in english or french, in the open research style, using a research blog. Examples:

Salhab, J. & Morrison, H. (2015). Who is served by for-profit gold open access publishing? A case study of Hindawi and Egypt. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/04/10/who-is-served-by-for-profit-gold-open-access-publishing-a-case-study-of-hindawi-and-egypt/

Kakou, T.L. (2016). Frais de publication/APC: un regard sur les revues en français de Walt Crawford dans DOAJ. Soutenir les savoirs communs.

https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/06/01/frais-de-publication apc-2/

More information on the project: sustainingknowledgecommons.org

Hours and tasks: negotiable, up to 10 hours / week, September – November

Salary rates: CUPE 2626 http://www.2626.ca/your-rights/salary-rates/

To apply, send an e-mail to the Principal Investigator Heather dot Morrison at uottawa dot ca

State your qualifications and why you are interested in this position. Deadline: September 17, 2019.

Offre d’emploi: Assistant(e)s de Recherche (étudiant(e)s de l’université d’Ottawa)

Date limite: 17 septembre

Le but de projet <<Soutenir les savoirs communs>> (SSC) est un partage global de la connaissance de l’humanité. SSC est financé par une Subvention Savoir de CRSH. Cet automne je cherche 4 assistant(e)s de recherche (AR). Il existe plusieurs types de tâches qui requièrent différents types de compétences et de connaissances> . Un assistant(e) de recherche doit avoir au moins une des compétences suivantes:

• familiarité avec Excel + patience avec détails
• connaissance de philosophie de la technologie et/ou de la dialectique
• connaissance de l’économie politique mondiale
• rédaction universitaire
• rédaction web ou rédaction populaire

Nous travaillons en anglais ou français, en mode <<libre recherche>> en utilisant un blogue de recherche. Exemples:

Kakou, T.L. (2016). Frais de publication/APC: un regard sur les revues en français de Walt Crawford dans DOAJ. Soutenir les savoirs communs.       https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/06/01/frais-de-publication apc-2/

Salhab, J. & Morrison, H. (2015). Who is served by for-profit gold open access publishing? A case study of Hindawi and Egypt. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/04/10/who-is-served-by-for-profit-gold-open-access-publishing-a-case-study-of-hindawi-and-egypt/

Plus de détails au sujet du projet: sustainingknowledgecommons.org

Heures et taches: négociables jusqu’à 10 heures / semaine, septembre – novembre

Taux de salaire: CUPE 2626 http://www.2626.ca/fr/vos-droits/taux-de-salaire/

Pour soumettre une candidature, envoie un courriel à la chercheuse principale Heather (dot) Morrison (at) uottawa (dot) ca.

Indiquez vos qualifications et pourquoi vous êtes intéressé par le poste. Date limite: 17 septembre 2019.

The purpose of this post is to encourage sharing of knowledge and ideas on the topic of modifying informed consent when working with human subjects to accommodate open licensing. Questions can be found at the end of the post.

Researchers who work with human subjects, as is common in disciplines such as health sciences, education, and social sciences, are expected to obtain informed consent from subjects prior to starting research for ethical and legal reasons.

To obtain informed consent, researchers must explain what will happen with the subject’s information and material (if applicable) and the potential consequences for the subject (beneficial and potential harm).

Consent in the context of traditional publishing meant consent to publish in one specific venue, typically under All Rights Reserved copyright. Policies and procedures for informed consent developed in this context will need to be modified in order for authors to publish using open licenses that actively invite re-use (and sometimes modification) through human and machine-readable licenses, in some cases for commercial use.

To illustrate the difference: an educational researcher might wish to obtain and use a photo of schoolchildren in a publication. In the traditional context, this permission involved publication in one venue (one journal or one book), with re-publication requiring permission from the copyright owner (publisher and/or author). Until recently, such material, while not forbidden to the general public, would usually only be found in an academic library. This is still the case with journals and books that are not yet open access. Open access per se expands access to anyone with an internet connection, but free access on the Internet is automatically covered by copyright in all countries that are signatories to the Berne Convention. Open licensing goes beyond expanding access to inviting re-use. In the case of Creative Commons licensing, the invitation is extended via a human readable form that is designed to facilitate easy understanding of permitted uses, a machine readable form that can be used by searchers to facilitate limiting searches to content by desired use, and a legal license that most people are not likely to read.

For example, publication under a CC-BY license would include traditional uses, and other beneficial uses such as re-use by another researcher building on the work of the original. CC-BY would also invite uses that could be harmful to the subjects, such as targeted commercial social media advertising or use of a modified photo in a video game (schoolkid becomes loser kid, perhaps target practice).

This does not mean that such uses would necessarily be legal, rather that open licensing is an invitation that makes such uses more likely to occur. The harmful uses described above are likely a violation of moral rights under copyright, privacy and/or publicity rights. There are potential legal remedies, but these can only be pursued after the harm is done and discovered by a subject with the means and incentive to pursue legal remedies.

The Chang v. Virgin Mobile case is an illustration of what can happen with sensitive material and lack of understanding of the implications of licensing. In brief, a photographer took a photo of a minor girl (family friend) and posted it to Flickr under a CC-BY license. Virgin Mobile interpreted the license as an invitation to use the girl’s photo in an ad campaign. The girl’s family sued Creative Commons (dropped this one) and Virgin Mobile. The case was eventually dropped for jurisdictional reasons (girl in Texas, company in Australia). Lawrence Lessig wrote about the case, arguing that Virgin’s interpretation of copyright was correct, but that the girl still has privacy rights as minor. A bit more on this here:

https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Chang_v._Virgin_Mobile

The Committee on Publication Ethics has published guidance for journals with respect to one type of particularly sensitive material, medical case reports. Excerpt of their General Principles on this topic:

• Publication consent forms should be required for any case report in which an individual or a group of individuals can be identified. This requirement also applies when a report involves deceased persons. Examples of identifying information are descriptions of individual case histories, photos, x-rays, or genetic pedigrees. A list of 23 potential identifiers has been published in BioMed Central’s Trials.
• Journals should not themselves collect the signed consent forms, because the receipt and storage of confidential patient information could subject them to cumbersome security requirements and potential legal liability under applicable privacy or patient information laws, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 in the USA.

from:

https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines/journals%E2%80%99-best-practices-ensuring-consent-publishing-medical-case-reports

These principles are designed to protect journals and their publishers, and only speak to one particular type of sensitive material. For me, this raises some questions. If anyone on the list has answers or ideas, I would love to hear them, on or off-list or as blog comments. If you reply off-list or on the blog and would prefer to be anonymous, please let me know. If warranted, I will summarize responses.

Questions:

1. COPE’s guidance is for the education and protection of journals. Is anyone aware of efforts for the education and protection of authors and their institutions on the topic of informed consent for open licensing?
2. Do other publishers or organizations serving publishers have policies, guidance, sample forms, etc. to deal with informed consent and open licensing?
3. Have any research ethics boards (or similar bodies) revised their guidance to accommodate informed consent and publication under open licenses?
4. Is anyone aware of cases or analysis of potential implications of licensing for re-use for other types of material involving human subjects besides case reports?
5. Do you have any other ideas or insights on this or closely related topics that I haven’t asked about?

As any movement grows and flourishes, decisions made will turn out to have unforeseen consequences. Achieving the goals of the movement requires critical reflection and occasional changes in policy and procedure.The purpose of this post is to point out that the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) appears to be inadvertently acting as a handmaiden to at least one despotic government, facilitating dissemination of works subject to censorship and rejecting open access journals that would be suitable venues for critics of the despotic government. There is no blame and no immediately obvious remedy, but solving a problem begins with acknowledging that a problem exists and inviting discussion of how to avoid and solve the problem. OA friends, please consider this such an invitation.

As I posted recently, SpringerOpen is currently publishing 13 journals that are sponsored by the Government of Egypt, a government that has been criticized for numerous major violations of the human rights and academic freedoms of scholars (by “major” I mean consequences up to and including murder). These journals are listed in DOAJ.

In contrast, a number of journals that welcome global authors that would be suitable venues for critics of the Egyptian government (a number of the Global Communication Journals network journals and the International Journal of Communication) are no longer listed in DOAJ, in spite of the facts that these journals are fully open access and meet the quality criteria for DOAJ, as discussed here.

It seems very unlikely that anyone in the OA movement deliberately decided on a strategy of facilitating the inclusion of works sponsored by a despotic government and suppressing venues suitable for critique of despotic governments. But in effect this is what is happening. I do not know if this scenario is unique. There are reasons to think that it is not. As reported in previous posts on this blog, large commercial companies partnering with various sponsors is not unusual. A large company with dedicated staff and a number of open access journals is in a better position to ensure that their journals are included in DOAJ than a small one-off not-for-profit journal.

There is no blame and no instant remedy, but to achieve the vision of the global sharing of the knowledge of humankind, solutions must be found. The first steps in solving a problem are acknowledging that a problem exists and inviting discussion and brainstorm on potential solutions. OA friends, please consider this an invitation.

Links to posts referred to:

https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/08/07/springeropen-egypt-and-academic-freedom/

https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/08/13/no-fee-inclusive-journals-and-disappointment-with-doaj/

by Heather Morrison

Abstract

270 SpringerOpen journals were studied. 33 (12%) have ceased publication, 15 have been transferred to another publisher, and 7 are now hybrid. Of the 215 active journals published by SpringerOpen, 54% charge APCs. The average APC was 1,212 EUR, an increase of 8% over the 2018 average, 6 times the EU inflation rate for June 2019 of 1.3%. 58% of the 96 journals for which we have 2018 and 2018 data did not change in price; 5% decreased in price; and 36% increased in price. Price increases for journals that increased in price ranged from 3% to 109% (double the inflation rate to double in price). Journals with the highest volume of publishing were the most likely to have increased in price. This will amplify the effective percentage of articles with price increases for APC payers. 40% of the journals are sponsored by a university, society, government, or other not-for-profit partner, and have no publication fee. The sustainability of these sponsorships is not clear. 12 journals appear to have recently switched from “no APC” to “now APC”, with APCs only slightly below the SpringerOpen average. The affordability of the SpringerOpen partnership approach is called into question. SpringerOpen’s average APC does not compare favorably either to average academic salaries in a low to middle income country (with Egypt as an example) or to OJS Premium journal hosting services (the break-even point is 2 articles per year, i.e. a journal that publishes 3 articles per year saves money with OJS Premium as compared to SpringerOpen). Even a sponsor based in Germany only pays half the APC, raising a question about whether SpringerOpen sponsorships are sustainable anywhere.

Details

PDF Springer Open Pricing Trends 2018_2019

Table 1: 2019 SpringerOpen Journal Publication and APC status summary

* status data is found in “2019 APC publisher website original currency” column

** total excludes 1 predecessor title and 12 journals previously listed under Springer now listed under BMC

Pricing trends 2018 – 2019

Of the 270 journals total:

• 13 titles are new in 2019 (included in 2019 overall analysis but not 2018 – 2019 trend analysis)
• 33 are ceased, 7 now hybrid, 15 transferred to another publisher: these titles are not included in the price trends analysis

Total journals included in price trend analysis:

• 2019 overall: 215
• 2018 – 2019 comparison: 202

Of the 215 titles, as illustrated in the chart and table below, an APC amount is confirmed for just over half the journals (54%). 40% are confirmed as having no publication fee, while for 6% of the journals it was not possible to confirm whether or not a publication fee is charged.

Chart 1: % of SpringerOpen active times by APC status (has APC, no publication fee, no cost found)

Table 2: SpringerOpen active titles 2019 by APC status

* No cost found = we could not identify whether or not there is a publication charge.

Of the 85 titles with no publication fee in 2019, 73 were published in partnership with a university (31), society (17), government (17), or not-for-profit organization (8).  Many of these journals’ websites indicate that there is no publication fee due to sponsorship, for example “…agreement between Springer Nature and the Specialized Presidential Council for Education and Scientific Research (Government of Egypt), therefore author-payable article-processing charges do not apply”. 7 of these titles are new to the Springer Open website in 2019. This suggests that either Springer Nature is actively soliciting sponsoring partners, or that not-for-profit publishers are actively seeking commercial partnerships.

APC Model, currency and some notes re data collection

SpringerOpen uses a straightforward per-article article processing charge. A SpringerOpen APC list that includes pricing for Springer, BioMedCentral, and Nature journals was downloaded from the Springer website on July 16, 2019. Pricing is listed in 3 currencies for each journal: EUR, GBP, and USD. EUR was selected for analysis as this was the currency included in the 2018 OA Main spreadsheet, hence the best for comparison (because Springer is based in Germany, it was assumed that this was the “primary” currency).

For some journals the SpringerOpen APC list states “see website” for pricing. Pricing information for these journals was taken from the SpringerOpen website.

Information about waivers etc., and pricing information for hybrid journals, was not gathered as outside the scope for this project.

APC information from the Jan. 31, 2019 DOAJ metadata forms part of the main spreadsheet. Originally, I had hoped to be able to rely on this data, at least for journals added to DOAJ in 2018 and 2019, at least for journals that do not charge APCs. However, after a quick check I realized that there are a number of journals that indicated no publication charge in DOAJ that currently have a publication charge in the SpringerOpen APC list or website. For this reason, DOAJ data is not used as a basis for 2019 information.

Table 3: 2019 and 2018 SpringerOpen APC central tendency in EUR

The table above provides the central tendencies for all SpringerOpen titles with an APC for either 2019 (117 journals) or 2018 (104 journals) in EUR. There has been an 8% increase in the average APC and a 12% increase in the median APC.

Price changes 2018 – 2019

There are 96 journals for which we have an APC amount in both 2018 and 2019.

Table 4: SpringerOpen price changes 2018 – 2019 (96 journals)

As illustrated in the Table 4 above, a majority of these journals (58%) did not change prices in EUR from 2018 to 2019, while more than a third (36%) increased in price and a few (5%) decreased in price.

The 2018 prices of journals with price increases ranged from 630 EUR (well below average) to 1,750 EUR (well above average). The 2018 average price of these journals was 1,160 EUR, above the 2018 average of 1,128 EUR. The median was 1,100 EUR, above the 2018 median of 1,035 EUR. In other words, while some journals with below-average APCs increased in price, a majority of journals with price increases had above-average APCs in 2018.

For the 35 journals that increased in price, the increases in percentages ranged from 3% to 109% (slightly more than double in price).  According to the European Commission (2019), “Euro area annual inflation was 1.3 % in June 2019, up from 1.2 % in May 2019.” All prices increased were more than double the inflation rate. 23 journals had price increases of 14% or more, more than 10 times the current inflation rate.

All of the 5 journals with APC price decreases had above-average APCs in 2018 (from 1,050 to 2,035 EUR).

Volume of publishing and direction of APC price change

Volume of publishing per journal was calculated using Walt Crawford’s (2018) Global Open Access Journals. The number of articles published per year was summed to get a total # of articles published per journal from 2011 – 2018. A few journals for which no such data was available were excluded. Not surprisingly, volume of publication appears to correlate with APC pricing trend. As illustrated in the table below, journals that decreased in price had on average fewer articles than journals that did change in price, with the highest volume of publication noted for journals with price increases.

Table 5: average SpringerOpen articles published 2011 – 2018 by APC trend

Table 6: 2018 -2019 price changes and # of articles by journal title

Table 6 above lists all Springer journals with APC changes from 2018 – 2019 in descending order by % change, with the total number of articles published from 2011 – 2018 from Crawford (2018)

“No APC” to “Now APC” journals (12 journals

As of July 26, 2019, there are 12 journals listed in DOAJ where DOAJ indicates “No” Article Processing Charges (APCs) that have APCs according to the Springer Open website. For example, DOAJ information on Brain Informatics is as follows

“PUBLICATION CHARGES

Article Processing Charges (APCs): No.

Submission Charges: No.

Waiver policy for charges? No.”

(Screen scrape from DOAJ website July 26, 2019)

An investigation was conducted to answer the following questions:

• Are these errors in DOAJ or an actual change from non-charging to charging?
• What are the characteristics of these journals (age, country of publication, journal license, current APC, society / institution partnerships, timing of switch from non-charging to charging)

Information to answer these questions was drawn from DOAJ and the APC project (data gathered from the publishers’s website) for 2014 – 2019.

Of the 12 journals, 9 are confirmed as having had no publication fee as of 2016, the first year we began systematic gathering of data from the SpringerOpen website. 1 journal listed as “no cost found” in 2016 is listed as “no publication fee” in 2015 and “0” in 2014 (reflecting a change in data collection practices). The remaining 2 journals were identified as “no publication fee” in 2018. Therefore, it was confirmed that all 12 journals were at some point between 2015 and today “No publication fee” journals, that is, journals that had wording on the website clearly indicating that there is no publication charge.

10 of the 12 journals (83%) have a society or institution listed in DOAJ as of Jan. 31, 2019. This suggests two possible reasons for the change from non-charging to charging: 1) the society or institution may have provided interim sponsorship to cover Springer APCs but did not obtain ongoing funding or 2) Springer may have offered an initial low or no-cost deal then raised prices (a common business strategy). The two reasons are not mutually exclusive, and it is possible that other factors are involved that I am not aware of.

Country of publication of no to now APC journals

As illustrated in the table below, 11/12 (92%) of the journals are published in the EU/UK, suggesting a regional trend. 8/12 (two thirds) of the journals are published in Germany, the home country of the ownership and management of parent company SpringerNature (see Who owns SpringerNature? Section below). Does this hint at a direction the company expects to take with all sponsored journals in future?

Table 7: Country of Publication of SpringerOpen “no” to “now” APC journals

First calendar year journal provided online Open Access content (no to now journals)

The DOAJ metadata element “First calendar year journal provided online Open Access content” for Jan. 31, 2019 was used a surrogate for age of the journals, with the following results.

Table 8: First calendar year of open access (from DOAJ)

The table above indicates a fairly wide range of dates of first online content, with some clustering in 2014. These results are not sufficient to draw inferences about age of journal and tendency to shift from charging to non-charging.

Timing of switch from non-charging to charging

APCs were first found on the SpringerOpen website for these journals as follows:

2017:   1

2018:   3

2019:   8

This data suggests a recent increase in tendency to switch from non-charging to charging. This makes sense in the context of funder push for transition to OA via APCs (OA2020, PlanS).

The APC amounts for these journals are very similar to the overall pattern for SpringerOpen journals, as is illustrated in the following table:

Table 9: SpringerOpen APC no to yes APC v. all

Table 10: SpringerOpen Transferred publications

Of the 10 journals that were transferred to other publishers, 8 were transferred to other commercial publishers, 1 was transferred to the association partner, and 1 simply indicated “new publisher”. 3 of these journals were picked up by deGruyter imprint Sciendo.

Discussion

One of the goals of the Sustaining the Knowledge Commons project is to assess the sustainability of approaches to open access. This analysis of Springer Open as of summer 2019 raises some concerns. APC price increases far beyond inflationary rates, particularly when correlated with journals with higher volume, raises questions about the sustainability of the APC approach. The following section focuses on questions about the sustainability of the SpringerOpen partner-sponsor approach that currently accounts for 40% of SpringerOpen journals.

Journal and partnership sustainability

SpringerOpen is a relatively new entrant into open access journal publishing. SpringerOpen appears to be growing through a combination of starting new commercial journals and partnerships with societies, universities, and other not-for-profits that appear to start out with sponsorship approach. In this context, a 12% attrition (“ceased publication”) rate is a concern, particularly when ceased journal titles are no longer listed on the SpringerOpen website or DOAJ, as explained in detail in Morrison (July 22, 2019).

The sustainability of sponsoring partnerships needs further examination. 12 journals that formerly had no publication fees, now have fees. A glance at the list of new sponsoring journals raises questions about sustainability. One of the sponsoring agents is the Government of Egypt. This raises concerns about academic freedom as the Government of Egypt has been described as actively directing academic research and major abuses of the human rights of students and faculty, as discussed in detail elsewhere (Morrison, Aug. 7, 2019). This section will focus on the question of the economic sustainability of this approach.

As we noted a few years ago (Salhab and Morrison, 2015), as of 2015 it would have taken 3 months’ salary for a full professor in Egypt’s public university system to pay an APC of $1,500 USD. The current average APC rate is 1,212 EUR for Springer, equivalent to 1,357 USD (as of August 8, 2019 according to XE currency converter).

As of July 2019, SpringerOpen publishes 13 journals supported by “Specialized Presidential Council for Education and Scientific Research (Government of Egypt), so author-payable article-processing charges do not apply.” The titles are listed below. This arrangement appears to be in growth mode as 5 of these titles are new to the SpringerOpen list in 2019. In addition, The Journal of Basic and Applied Zoology, is published by an Egyptian society.

Table 11: Egypt sponsored SpringerOpen journals, July 2019

I hope that the salaries of professors in Egypt’s public university system have improved substantially since 2015. However, if this is not the case, this raises questions about the sustainability of this kind of sponsorship. If the Government of Egypt were to pay SpringerOpen average APCs (1,212 EUR or 1,357 USD) for a small journal publishing 40 articles per year, this sponsorship would cost 54,280 USD per year. If the salary rate for a full professor is still about 6,000 USD per year (1,500 for 3 months x 4), then the cost for sponsoring just one journal with SpringerOpen would be equivalent to the salaries of 9 full professors.

Optimistically guessing that the salaries of professors have doubled in the last few years, sponsoring just one small journal of 40 articles per year would cost the equivalent of the salaries of 4.5 full professors. Egyptian authors would be eligible for a 50% SpringerOpen discount because Egypt is listed as a lower-middle income economy by the World Bank (2019) (SpringerOpen, 2019). Assuming that the discount is applied to the sponsoring partner (the Government of Egypt), this still leaves the situation where a 40-article-per-year journal costs the equivalent of 4.5 full professors’ salaries. Assuming these waivers are applied and are not simply absorbed by a SpringerOpen profit rate of 50%, if the sponsor did not pay the full cost, who does?

Are these sponsorships affordable in the long run even for wealthy countries? The following statement of partial coverage of the 1,155 EUR APC of one of SpringerOpen’s journals may be relevant here as it suggests that SpringerOpen’s business plan involves charging sponsors similar amounts to their average APCs, and raises a question about whether a relatively well-funded research organization based in the same country as SpringerNature can afford to maintain this sponsorship model on an ongoing basis: “50% of the Article Processing Charge for Geothermal Energy is covered by Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Helmholtz Centre Potsdam – GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology” (from SpringerOpen website, July 2019).

There are other options for a country like Egypt that are more sustainable and a better fit with the original goal of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002) to “lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge”. As an initial step, I recommend developing a national open access repository or a system of institutional repositories, including an approach such as LOCKSS for preservation purposes, and developing a policy requiring Egyptian researchers to deposit their work for open access in these repositories. This is important to ensure that Egypt (and any other country) does not risk losing access to its own funded research. Relying for access on servers and suppliers in other countries is not wise in the long run because wars (military and trade) and natural disasters could result in temporary or permanent loss of access.

For publishing, there are significant advantages to a local approach, such as hosting local journals using the open source Open Journal Systems (OJS) and hiring local academics, technicians, and administrative assistants to do the work of publishing. OJS is just one example that I use, partly due to familiarity and partly due to open posting of their pricing. In the short term, this provides the immediate benefit of the lower and more predictable costs of local wages. In the long term, this approach cultivates the development of local expertise (technical and academic) and prepares Egyptian researchers for a larger role in international research. As an interim step, the Government of Egypt could contract with OJS for hosted systems at a cost of 850 USD – 2,700 USD per journal, depending on the level of service preferred. Assuming a 40-article per year journal and premium OJS service at 2,700 USD, this would save 51,580 USD per year as compared to publishing with SpringerOpen. Assuming SpringerOpen only expects half due to Egypt’s income status (27,140 USD), this still saves 24,440 USD per year.

Multiplying by 13 journals would result in an estimated cost savings of 317,720 USD – 670,540 USD per year. Assuming 2015 salary figures are still fairly accurate, this sum would be enough to pay the salaries of 55 – 110 full professors.

If half of this amount is redirected to hiring local staff (e.g., pay part of the time of a full-time professor to oversee academic quality, a librarian shared among several journals to look after journal hosting, a part-time administrative assistant), the Government of Egypt benefits from both cost savings and building of local expertise and leadership, and is developing the expertise to benefit even further down the road as this approach is good preparation for eventual further savings from downloading and hosting the software, eliminating the hosting fees. Aside from cost savings, this approach helps us to move towards equity – equal participation – and away from the charity model of APCs with waivers.

A simpler way to express the difference in affordability of the 2 approaches: 2 APCs at 1,357 USD (SpringerOpen average) = 2,714 USD. OJS premium journal hosting is 2,700 USD. The break-even point for a journal using OJS hosting as compared to partnering with SpringerOpen is 2 articles / year. Any journal that publishes 3 or more articles per year saves money with OJS’ premium service.

Perhaps this model would be helpful to institutions like Helmholtz in Germany, too? This basic approach (support local publishing) is a popular model in North and Latin America.

Who owns SpringerNature? According to the SpringerNature website:

“Springer Nature is organised as a German partnership limited by shares…which combines elements of a German stock corporation…and elements of a German limited partnership…  Shares in Springer Nature are held by entities controlled by the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and funds advised by BC Partners.

The management …is undertaken by a “general partner” (or “GP”)… For Springer Nature the GP is a German stock corporation held by entities controlled by the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and funds advised by BC Partners….” Screen scraped from July 26, 2019 (German omitted).

Raw data  in excel: (Springer portion of main spreadsheet). Caution: this is a working document without documentation and does not include analysis.

Springer_OA_main_2019

References

Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002). Read the initiative. Retrieved August 8, 2019 from https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read

Crawford, W. (2018). Gold Open Access Journals 2013 – 2018. Retrieved July 29, 2019 from https://waltcrawford.name/goa4.pdf

European Commission (2019). Eurostat statistics explained. Retrieved July 29, 2019 from https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Inflation_in_the_euro_area#Euro_area_annual_inflation_rate_and_its_main_components

Morrison, H. July 22, 2019. SpringerOpen ceased, now hybrid, and OA identification challenges. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/07/22/springer-open-ceased-now-hybrid-oa-identification-challenges/

Morrison, H. August 7, 2019. SpringerOpen, Egypt, and academic freedom. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/08/07/springeropen-egypt-and-academic-freedom/

Salhab, J. & Morrison, H. (2015). Who is served by for-profit gold open access publishing? A case study of Hindawi and Egypt. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/04/10/who-is-served-by-for-profit-gold-open-access-publishing-a-case-study-of-hindawi-and-egypt/

SpringerOpen (2019). APC waivers and discounts. Retrieved August 8, 2019 from https://www.springeropen.com/get-published/article-processing-charges/open-access-waiver-fund

World Bank (2019). World Bank country and lending groups. Retrieved August 8, 2019 from https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/906519

Cite as: Morrison, H. (2019). SpringerOpen pricing trends 2019. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons August 13, 2019 https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/08/13/springeropen-pricing-trends-2018-2019/

by Heather Morrison

Abstract

This post highlights two living models for inclusive, no-fee journals. One is a global network of not-for-profit journals that are diverse in language and content (the Global Media Journal network). The other is an English language journal with content that is global in scope (the International Journal of Communication, IJOC). These two examples were selected because the journals are fully open access, inclusive, have no publication charges, and are the journals that I would recommend irrespective of OA and fee status. They are in my discipline and I am acquainted with some of the members of their highly qualified editorial boards and have discussed with them their involvement in these journals. I am disappointed to find that most of these journals are no longer listed in DOAJ. If journals like these are not included in DOAJ, in my field, another list is needed. Recommended actions for sustainability of not-for-profit no-fee inclusive journals like these: re-direct financial support from the large for-profit commercial publishers to provide support for these journals (library journal hosting, a common practice in North America, can be part of the solution); reach out to understand their needs, recognizing that a small not-for-profit no-fee journal has no funds to send staff to OASPA or lobby on their behalf; include in listings like DOAJ for maximum dissemination of their works; and find examples of journals like these and make them a priority in open access education.

PDF version: Morrison_No_fee_inclusive_journals_2019_08_13

Details

This post is inspired by the useful information provided by Egyptian scholarly ElHassan ElSabry to the Global Open Access List (GOAL) in August 2019, which can be found here: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/2019-August/005195.html

Two points raised by ElHassan ElSabry are that publication charges in international journals are a barrier for scholars in a country like Egypt, where scholars must pay out of pocket. Even the 50% waiver provided by a publisher like SpringerOpen for authors from a low to middle income country like Egypt still leaves a very substantial cost for the author. Aside from cost, another barrier is that international journals often do not welcome authors from outside the developed world. This post features examples of two no-fee, inclusive approaches to journal publishing.

These and similar journals can provide an immediate solution for some scholars. A major limitation is that a tendency to welcome authors from around the world may vary depending on discipline, sub-discipline, region and among particular communities of scholars. In the field of communication, many scholars and journals welcome submissions from authors around the world. My own research is global in scope, so it is not surprising that this is reflected in the journals published by scholars in my communities.

Global Media Journals Network https://globalmediajournal.wordpress.com/

The Global Media site describes the network as follows: “Founded by Dr. Yahya R. Kamalipour, in 2002, the Global Media Journals network includes the following independent open-access peer-reviewed editions. Published in many languages, each edition is hosted by a major university and has its own managing editor and advisory board”.  I first met Dr. Kamalipour at a 2014 Global Communication Association conference in Ottawa, Canada, hosted by scholars at St. Paul University, with which the University of Ottawa has a long-standing relationship. I was very favorably impressed with Dr. Kamalipour, the Global Media Journals network, the conference, and the Global Communication Association (also founded by Dr. Kamalipour). I have discussed the journals with some of the editors, respected scholars including scholars associated with my own University.

From: https://globalmediajournal.wordpress.com/

Browsing through the URLs on this list, I found that 7 of the 11 journals exhibit publishing activity in 2019, and an additional 3 in 2018. Only one, the Malaysian journal, may be inactive, having last published in 2016. The URLs for the Malaysian and Persian versions do not work, but the journals can be found here: Malaysian:  http://gmj-me.upm.edu.my/? and Persian: https://gmj.ut.ac.ir/

As of August 12, 2019, only 3 of the 11 journals are listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals. In previous years, it appears that all were listed.

International Journal of Communication https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/index.

The International Journal of Communication (IJOC) was founded by scholars at the University of Southern California – Annenberg, and USC-Annenberg hosts the journal. There is no fee for publication. How is this possible? In North America, it is common for academic libraries to provide journal hosting services for journals faculty are involved with. It makes sense for universities to provide this kind of technical support for services needed by faculty members, just as universities provide facilities for advanced computing, word processing, statistical analysis, bibliographic management and pedagogical tools, to name a few examples. The infrastructure (hardware, software, staffing) requirements are very similar. To learn more about this North American approach, I recommend starting with the website of the Library Publishing Coalition: https://librarypublishing.org/

Although IJOC is published exclusively in English, a quick glance at the Table of Contents for the most recent issue (Volume 13, 2019) illustrates global diversity in topics. Articles covering U.S. based issues are intermingled with articles focused on China, South Korea, the EU, Africa, Afghan Media, and Chile. There is a special section on East Asia, and one on Extreme Speech in different countries that directly addresses questions of growing social exclusion in the broader society of which academic exclusion is just one example.

As of today, IJOC is no longer listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

Recommended actions for sustainability of these inclusive not-for-profit examples of open access:

• Re-direct economic support (library budgets) from large for-profit commercial publishers to support journals like this. This can be accomplished at significant cost savings to libraries – see my 2013 First Monday article for an explanation: https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4370/3685
• Library journal hosting can be part of the solution, but journals need some financial support for academic and support staff time and incidentals; the SSHRC Aid to Scholarly Journals program provides one model of this type of support, and in addition provides a model for journal-level peer-review, ensuring academic quality: http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/scholarly_journals-revues_savantes-eng.aspx
• Reach out to journals like these to understand their needs; recognize that a small not-for-profit no-fee journal does not have funding to send staff to conferences like OASPA or to lobby (unlike large commercial publishers).
• Include the journals in major lists and indexing services such as DOAJ to increase dissemination for the journals and their authors.
• To encourage not-for-profit inclusive journals like these ones, find examples like these and make them a priority in open access education.

Comments are welcome. Exceptions to the commenting policy requiring attribution can be made if public commenting is a risk to the author.

Cite as:

Morrison, H. (2019). No-fee inclusive journals, and disappointment with DOAJ. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons August 13, 2019. https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/08/13/no-fee-inclusive-journals-and-disappointment-with-doaj/

SpringerOpen 2019 and the Government of Egypt

by Dr. Heather Morrison

SpringerOpen is currently publishing 13 journals sponsored by the Government of Egypt. This is an opportunity to discuss some issues of relevance to the goals and sustainability of open access, starting with academic freedom. As described by Holmes and Aziz (2019) there are very serious problems with academic freedom in Egypt, ranging from tight government control over what is studied and published to extrajudicial killings of 21 students in the last few years. The University of Liverpool considered, then rejected, a lucrative offer to set up a campus in Egypt due to concerns about reputational damage. This raises some interesting questions. Academic freedom is critical to any kind of meaningful open access. Nothing could possibly be more in opposite to open access than a dead student whose research was destroyed because of what was studied. Why is SpringerOpen partnering with the Government of Egypt? Should academics boycott SpringerOpen because of this partnership? What, if anything, can academics do to support academic freedom in a country like Egypt? Some believe that the Creative Commons license CC-BY (attribution only) is the best for open access (I don’t agree, but this is a separate topic). If your research could get you killed, attribution might not be a good idea. Today, some of us might assume that these kinds of problems would never happen in our own countries; but times change, and it has happened that places that enjoyed freedom at one point in time came under the control of a dictator.

Following is the list of titles which state on the SpringerOpen site that they are supported by the “Specialized Presidential Council for Education and Scientific Research (Government of Egypt), so author-payable article-processing charges do not apply”.

Holmes, A. & Aziz, A. (2019). Egypt’s lost academic freedom. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Retrieved August 9, 2019 from https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/78210

SpringerNature, owner of Springer Open, Nature, and BioMedCentral, positions itself as a leader in the open access movement. However, Springer, Nature, and BMC are only 3 of the brands of the parent company, SpringerNature Group. The purpose of this post is to raise awareness about the dual approach of the parent company with respect to copyright and intellectual property – positioning itself as both a leader in open access and a leader in IP maximization, and to encourage those with a sincere interest in the goal of open access to learn about, and question, organizations with an interest in serving this area.

While the SpringerNature site today states that it is:

“A new force in research publishing
Springer Nature is the world’s largest academic book publisher, publisher of the world’s most influential journals, and a pioneer in the field of open research” (from: https://group.springernature.com/gp/group”

…another of the company’s brands, Macmillan, is sending letters to creators complaining that library lending is cannibalizing sales, and is further restricting paid library use of works. See the Canadian Urban Libraries’ Council on this matter here:
http://www.culc.ca/cms_lib/CULC%20Statement%20on%20Macmillan%20US%20Lending.pdf

Following are the brands listed on the SpringerNature group site as of today:

Our brand sites
Springer
Nature Research
BiomedCentral
Palgrave Macmillan
Macmillan Education
Springer Healthcare
Scientific American

In addition to open access, this company is involved in toll access textbook publishing and rentals and educational services that appear to compete with public education services. Even among the 3 brands involved in open access, 2 (Springer and Nature Research) have a long history of making money through subscriptions and sales. Even today, this is probably a much larger source of income than open access, and one of these brands’ main assets is copyright ownership of a large corpus of works.

To understand the potential futures of open access, it is important to understand the nature of the players involved. The friendly staff of Springer Open are no doubt a pleasure to work with for people in the OA movement, and sincere in their embrace of OA. However, when they tell you that true open access requires open licensing granting blanket downstream permission for commercial uses, they might not be aware that some of these commercial uses could involve for-profit textbook sales and rentals.

Unlike Elsevier, SpringerNatureGroup does not post financial information on its website. As a publicly traded corporation, Elsevier is obliged to provide this kind of transparency, including profits and business strategy. The corporation as a form of business can be viewed as an early form of openness in business; anyone can buy shares and participate in profits and decision-making. Springer is privately owned, and has no such obligation. In this respect, Springer is far less open than Elsevier.

Originally posted on the Global Open Access List and the Radical Open Access List.

This post links to a preliminary review of Debat & Babini’s preprint PlanS in Latin America: a precautionary note (citation details below) – in brief, Latin America has long been a leader and role model, and these authors have no peers; an open offer to conduct a full peer review (with conditions), and a link to a post highlighting my current perspective on open peer review and an invitation to participate in experimentation with, and discussion about, open peer review. A link to this post as an offer for a full open peer review will be sent to Debat, Babini, and the editor of PeerJ.

Open offer to conduct a full peer review (with conditions): if desired by the authors and the journal should the journal wish to accept my conditions, I offer to conduct a full peer review of this article under the following conditions:

• My peer review would be open access but published under, and clearly marked as, All Rights Reserved Copyright, and will include a detailed explanation of this choice at the bottom of the peer review.
• If the journal, PeerJ, wishes to publish the review, what is required:
  • An exception to the journal’s CC-BY policy
  • A mechanism for a “one-time-only” review, i.e. if I agree to review one article, this does not mean that I wish to join the PeerJ community as an author or receive further review requests
• The authors and journal must commit to a particular version for the review, grant a reasonable time frame (minimum two weeks) for the review, and commit to reading and responding to the review. Rationale: it is not a good use of a reviewer’s time to review a version while the authors are already working on another version and/or if the work itself might be complete before the reivew.

The peer review itself becomes an item that I wish to retain and include in my CV, hence the official version from my perspective is included in my institutional repository. Following is a sample of a recent open peer review I did on a related topic:  https://ruor.uottawa.ca/hand
le/10393/39053

Observations and discussion

Please see my post Open Peer Review: a Model & an Invitation (2019 update) for current perspective and an invitation to participate in discussion and experimentation to further open peer review.

Debat & Babini article – citation, abstract and links

Humberto Debat, Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (IPAVE-CIAP-INTA), Argentina

Dominique Babini, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO), Argentina

Latin America has historically led a firm and rising Open Access movement and represents the worldwide region with larger adoption of Open Access practices. Argentina has recently expressed its commitment to join Plan S, an initiative from a European consortium of research funders oriented to mandate Open Access publishing of scientific outputs. Here we suggest that the potential adhesion of Argentina or other Latin American nations to Plan S, even in its recently revised version, ignores the reality and tradition of Latin American Open Access publishing, and has still to demonstrate that it will encourage at a regional and global level the advancement of non-commercial Open Access initiatives.

Access to full-text in English:

https://peerj.com/preprints/27834/

Access to full-text in Spanish:

https://zenodo.org/record/3332621#.XSekx-hKg2z

This post is a preliminary review of Debat & Babini’s preprint PlanS in Latin America: a precautionary note (citation details and links below).

Preliminary review:  Latin America has long been a leader in open access, and had achieved substantially the goals of PlanS more than a decade ago. In 2007, I wrote: “Scielo is an excellent example of what can be accomplished through a nationally subsidized open access program. While the Scielo portal encompasses the scholarly work of many latin countries, Brazil alone, in 2005, brought 160 fully open access journals to the world at a very modest cost of only $1 million dollars” (republished here).

This article is written by experts without peers, and does not really require peer review. This perspective is every bit as worthy of consideration by policy-makers everywhere as anything written by the EU-based OA2020 initiative.

This post will be accompanied by an open offer to conduct a full peer review (with conditions), and some observations on open peer review that are meant to stimulate discussion, however this affirmation of the leadership of Debat, Babini, Scielo & Redalyc warrants a unique post.

Humberto Debat, Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (IPAVE-CIAP-INTA), Argentina

Dominique Babini, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO), Argentina

Latin America has historically led a firm and rising Open Access movement and represents the worldwide region with larger adoption of Open Access practices. Argentina has recently expressed its commitment to join Plan S, an initiative from a European consortium of research funders oriented to mandate Open Access publishing of scientific outputs. Here we suggest that the potential adhesion of Argentina or other Latin American nations to Plan S, even in its recently revised version, ignores the reality and tradition of Latin American Open Access publishing, and has still to demonstrate that it will encourage at a regional and global level the advancement of non-commercial Open Access initiatives.

Access to full-text in English:

https://peerj.com/preprints/27834/

Access to full-text in Spanish:

https://zenodo.org/record/3332621#.XSekx-hKg2z

This is a 2019 update of a post originally published in 2005 on The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics; the original is republished here. This version reflects experience with open peer review (mine and that of others), further reflection, and research conducted since 2005.

These are some ideas for open peer review that can be used today in experiments that may be helpful to shape future systemic approaches. The overall goal is to facilitate open research by opening up preprints, increase transparency in the peer review process, and to allow peer reviewers to take credit for their work. Interested authors and/or reviewers can experiment with this approach today. For example, an author can post a preprint in a repository, seek volunteer reviewers through a listserv or other social media service for a relevant scholarly community and/or ask a colleague to serve as an editor to coordinate the review process and/or serve as a contact for blind reviews.

Examples and links:

Gibney (2016) wrote an article for Nature on peer review overlay journals built on arXiv that includes links to the journals.

A copy of my peer review of a recent article can be found in the University of Ottawa Institutional Repository here: https://ruor.uottawa.ca/handle/10393/39053 In this way my peer review constitutes a scholarly work with a stable URL that I include in my online CV.

See the Open Access Tracking Project tag oa.open_peer_review for 32 items as of July 15, some posted in the past week.

This model would be compatible with, but does not depend on, peer review overlay journals, featuring an overlay of peer review on articles submitted to and archived in institutional and/or subject repositories, the method recommended in 2009 for the UK for transition to open access in the medium to long term by Houghton et al. (2009) as the most transformative and most cost-effective approach.

The idea of open peer review is not new. While this post will not include a full review of related literature, as one example, Stevan Harnad talks about one approach to open peer review as early as 1996, in Implementing Peer Review on the Net: Scientific Quality Control in Scholarly Electronic Journals.

The goals of this model are:

transparent peer review: unlike blind peer review, readers can see the peer review process in action. Rather than accepting an assessment of certification based on a closed system, readers can judge the peer review process per se, for themselves. This model could accomodate a combination of open and blind peer review – that is, a peer reviewer could publish a signed peer review, or provide comments confidentially, depending on the preferences of authors or the discretion of editors. As an example of the latter, when reviewing opinion pieces in an emotionally heated area, some blind review might be seen as preferable to open peer review.

increased scholarly literacy: it is assumed that a transparent peer review process will facilitate science literacy teaching, as more people will be able to see the peer review process in action

better peer review: exposing the peer review process per se will allow for thoughtful reflection on peer review per se, and facilitate research. This will allow for the development of better and more efficient peer review.

peer-reviewer credit: peer review is an important task, which a great many academics undertake on a voluntary basis. A portfolio of signed peer reviews can be added to the author’s c.v. The best peer-reviewers, those who are thorough, considerate, and respond quickly, can be recognised for their work.

facilitate and recognise author controlled peer review: There are advantages and disadvantages to author-controlled peer review, where the author takes responsibility to seek out peer reviewers. While this is not presently recognised as peer review, it is widely practiced. In the author’s view, an article which has been peer reviewed and edited accordingly prior to submission for publication, is likely to be a better article. Authors who seek out comments from colleagues, and peer reviewers who are sought out by authors, are both demonstrating an openness to collaboration and willingness to listen to critique – both important elements in conducting scholarly research. Author controlled peer review could be used to supplement editor-coordinated peer review (a pre-peer-reviewed article might need only one outside peer reviewer, for example, while an unreviewed work might need two or three).

In some cases, author controlled peer review could be an alternative to editor-coordinated peer review. It would be desirable to develop a set of criteria outlining the optimum for peer review (peer reviewer meets certain criteria, is not a former student, teacher, co-researcher or co-author, at least one peer reviewer from a different cultural background – more important in social than hard sciences – and so forth). Authors should explain whether and how they have met these criteria; this could be accomplished by an automated list, where the relevant criteria are checked off. Some of this could be be automated, as well – for example, a database of the author’s works will reveal former co-authors, and automated comparison of the c.v.’s of author and peer reviewer will reveal common affiliations.

Comments on this blogpost or via e-mail are welcome.

Last updated July 15, 2019.

References

Gibney, E. (2016). Open journals that piggyback on arXiv gather momentum. Nature 530: 7558. Retrieved July 15, 2019 from https://www.nature.com/news/open-journals-that-piggyback-on-arxiv-gather-momentum-1.19102

J. Houghton, B. Rasmussen, P. Sheehan, C. Oppenheim, A. Morris, C. Creaser, H. Greenwood, M. Summers, and A. Gourlay, 2009. “Economics implications of alternative scholarly publishing models: Exploring the costs and benefit” (27 January). Retrieved July 11, 2019 from:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/45dd/cb9ebb9c8505a4ac86718734dda3311f91d8.pdf

See also
Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) Editorial 1978 on Open Peer Commentary Thanks to Stevan Harnad.

This post, originally published on December 7, 2007, on the Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, (IJPE) is just as relevant today. I am re-publishing today because of technical difficulties for some with access to IJPE and as support for an open peer review post in progress.

National open access journal subsidy

In preparation for some current work in open peer review, this is a re-publication of my August 15, 2005 post on The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics (IJPE), drawing from and building on Harnad’s 1996 work in this area. IJPE is live but some readers (including myself while at work) are reporting that they are not able to connect. Other links have not been tested.

Open Peer Review: A Model & An Invitation

Following is what I am working on during my academic leave (sabbatical) from July 1, 2019 – June 30, 2020.

Overall project:   Transitioning economics of scholarly publishing for open access: Sustaining the Knowledge Commons

Summary: this project is a phase in my Sustaining the Knowledge Commons (SKC) research program currently funded through a SSHRC Insight Grant (2016 – 2021). The overall goal of this research program is to advance our knowledge on how to transition economic support for scholarly publishing from demand side (e.g. purchase of books and journal subscriptions) to supply side economics (e.g. sponsorship such as the SSHRC Aid to Scholarly Journals program, support for scholar-led publishing such as library publishing services, article processing charges) to facilitate economically sustainable open access to scholarly publishing.

This phase will focus on 3 major sub-projects: a major literature review, a holistic theoretical analysis from a global political economics perspective, and a major release of a large dataset and documentation. Anticipated outcomes are all non-traditional formats, for reasons explained later in this letter, in case this might be of interest to reviewers of this request.

Major literature review: a neutral academic literature review is needed because there is a great deal of substantial research published recently or in progress in this area. The majority of this research focuses on just one of the approaches, potential and currently in use. Most of the major research is this area is business research conducted by organizations with a primary or exclusive focus on their own needs, regions, and/or preferred approach. For example, the Research Councils U.K. several years ago made a business decision to support article processing charges (APC) for U.K. scholars; they publish substantial and very useful research that is focused on the needs of U.K. scholars and universities and the APC model. The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) and érudit, both originating in Canada, have developed and support popular software to support journal publishing. Both conduct research with a focus on collaborative approaches to economic support for journal publishing, such as developing new consortia of journals and/or libraries, or working with existing consortia. The International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM) regularly conducts research focused on market opportunities for their members. Anticipated outcome: major literature review in the form of a report made available for open peer review (approximately 30 – 40 pages).

Holistic theoretical analysis from a global political economics perspective: there is currently substantial agreement on a global scale regarding one common goal of open access, that is scholarship that is free for anyone to read. However, there is limited understanding of the necessity to move forward towards this goal in the context of multiple and often conflicting socio-political contexts. For example, the U.K. is unilingual, its university system is highly centralised, and the U.K. enjoys a favorable balance of trade in the existing scholarly communication landscape as the corporate home of some of the largest commercial scholarly publishers (Relyx, parent company of Elsevier, and informa.plc, parent company of Taylor & Francis). These are motivating factors behind the current U.K. approach, designed to transition to open access while protecting the profits of traditional scholarly publishers. In Canada, universities are under provincial jurisdiction, the country is bilingual, and the U.K.’s positive balance of trade is a negative balance of trade for Canada, and so there is motivation to question the wisdom of sustaining the existing system in the process of moving to open access. In the developing world, there is an additional motivation to increase the participation and impact of scholars in global scholarly communication in the transition process. There is scholarship on the latter topic, but this has never been brought together in a holistic way along with conditions particular to the developed world. Anticipated outcome: major theoretical analytic paper made available for open peer review (approximately 30 – 40 pages).

2019 open access article processing charges (APC) dataset: since 2014, the SKC project has been annually collecting and collating data on fully open access journals relating to APC. Although the primary focus is on APCs (whether or not journals charge, and if so how much), the dataset includes rich metadata that can support a wide variety of correlational studies. The dataset (currently over 17,000 journals and over one hundred metadata points per journal) is released as open data periodically with full documentation. Anticipated outcome: release of an open dataset with approximately 18,000 journals and close to two hundred metadata points per journal with detailed documentation (about 10 – 15 pages) for open peer review.

Anticipated outcomes: why a non-traditional approach: there are several reasons for following a non-traditional approach to publication. 1) The most useful formats for outcomes do not fit traditional scholarly publication formats. A major literature review or theoretical analysis in this area will be far too long for a peer-reviewed journal article. For example: recently, in order to fit the page length for the peer-reviewed ELPUB proceedings, I was forced to eliminate entire sections of research even though these logically fit with this work. A major literature review or theoretical analysis in this area will be far too long for most peer-reviewed journals or for a journal chapter, but too short for a monograph. 2) Open peer review is becoming a standard in open scholarship, and this works well in my area. I consider my scholarly and research blogs to be my most important works. When I publish a blogpost about a particular scholarly publisher, I frequently receive review comments from that particular publisher and/or questions as well as comments from funders and other scholars. 3) Timeliness. For example, recently, I posted about high price increases by one particular publisher. Almost immediately, I received a request from [an APC payer], in the process of making annual budget decisions about support for the APC approach, regarding the practices of other publishers. The SKC team had already gathered the data and so I was able to quickly analyse and publish this research. One publisher that was not included spontaneously conducted research on their own data using my methodology, published it via a listserv, and agreed to re-publication on the SKC blog. This rapid sharing of research made it possible to identify early on an essential conflict between the market-based approach of some new publishers (i.e. charge as much as you think you can get) and the accountability-based approach of most payers (i.e. universities, libraries and research funders have fixed and cost-based budgets). This gives the publisher an opportunity to consider business models moving forward that are a better fit with the budgets of payers.

Sous la direction de Laurence Brière, Mélissa Lieutenant-Gosselin et Florence Piron

Accessible en libre accès intégral sous la forme d’un cyberlivre.

Le PDF du livre est téléchargeable librement à partir de l’archive ouverte de l’Université Laval : http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11794/34463

Acheter un livre, c’est nous soutenir et permettre à ceux et celles qui ne peuvent l’acheter de le lire en libre accès.

Les manières de faire de la science aujourd’hui sont multiples et innovantes. Pourtant, un modèle normatif continue d’écraser les autres : le modèle positiviste. Il soutient que la science vise l’étude objective de la réalité en s’appuyant sur l’application rigoureuse de la méthode « scientifique » dont la neutralité est un des emblèmes. Cette vision est vivement contestée dans plusieurs champs de recherche, tels que les études sociales des sciences, l’histoire des sciences et les études féministes et décoloniales. Ces critiques considèrent que les théories scientifiques sont construites et influencées par le contexte social, culturel et politique dans lequel travaillent les scientifiques, ainsi que par les conditions matérielles de leur travail. Cet ancrage social de la science rend impensable, pour ces critiques, l’idée même de neutralité. Faut-il donc renoncer à cette exigence normative? Par quelle autre norme la remplacer?

Né d’un colloque tenu en 2017 à Montréal, ce livre propose les réflexions et analyses sur ces questions de 25 autrices et auteurs issus de sept pays. Études de cas, analyses réflexives et discussions théoriques s’entrecroisent pour permettre une réflexion collective approfondie sur ces enjeux anciens, mais constamment renouvelés, notamment dans le contexte du nouveau statut précaire de l’expertise scientifique dans l’espace public.

ISBN epub : 978-2-924661-54-3
ISBN pour l’impression : 978-2-924661-52-9
547 pages

Billet de blog à propos de ce livre : « Neutralité et science : les leçons principales de l’ouvrage Et si la recherche scientifique pouvait ne pas être neutre ? »

Utilisez le bouton Paypal ci-dessous pour commander le livre imprimé ou l’obtenir en format ePub (prêtable). Les auteurs et autrices peuvent aussi l’utiliser pour commander des exemplaires supplémentaires. Une contribution de 9 $ aux frais d’envoi est automatiquement ajoutée. Le livre sera bientôt disponible dans nos librairies dépositaires : la Librairie du Quartier à Québec, Zone libre à Montréal, à venir pour Paris, Genève et l’Afrique.

Table des matières

Introduction. Un espace de réflexions sociales et politiques sur les manières de penser et de faire des sciences
Laurence Brière, Mélissa Lieutenant-Gosselin et Florence Piron

Partie I. (Im)possible neutralité scientifique

L’ancrage sociologique du concept. Réflexion sur le rapport d’objectivation
Marie-Laurence Bordeleau-Payer

La neutralité pour quoi faire? Pour une historicisation de la rigueur scientifique
Oumar Kane

De l’impossible neutralité axiologique à la pluralité des pratiques
Pierre-Antoine Pontoizeau

Sur l’idéal de neutralité en recherche. Bachelard, Busino et Olivier de Sardan mis en dialogue
Julia Morel et Valérie Paquet

Quand les résultats contredisent les hypothèses. La neutralité en question dans la production du savoir sur le cerveau
Giulia Anichini

Les traductions coloniales et (post)coloniales à l’épreuve de la neutralité
Milouda Medjahed

Les pratiques d’évaluation par les pair-e-s : pas de neutralité
Samir Hachani

Les faits, les sciences et leur communication. Dialogue sur la science du climat à l’ère de Trump
Pascal Lapointe et Mélissa Lieutenant-Gosselin

Partie II. L’insoutenable neutralité scientifique

L’amoralité du positivisme institutionnel. L’épistémologie du lien comme résistance
Florence Piron

Voyage vers l’insolence. Démasquer la neutralité scientifique dans la formation à la recherche
Maryvonne Charmillot et Raquel Fernandez-Iglesias

La question de la neutralité en sciences de l’environnement. Réflexions autour de la Marche internationale pour la science
Laurence Brière

Neutralité, donc silence? La science politique française à l’épreuve de la non-violence
Cécile Dubernet

Les sciences impliquées. Entre objectivité épistémique et impartialité engagée
Donato Bergandi

Partie III. Au-delà de la neutralité

Neutralisation et engagement dans des controverses publiques. Approche comparative d’expertises scientifiques
Robin Birgé et Grégoire Molinatti

Non-neutralité sans relativisme? Le rôle de la rationalité évaluative
Mathieu Guillermin

Comprendre et étudier le monde social. De la réflexivité à l’engagement
Sklaerenn Le Gallo

Langagement. Déconstruction de la neutralité scientifique mise en scène par la sociologie dramaturgique
Sarah Calba et Robin Birgé

Partie IV. Perspectives réflexives

Que signifie être chercheuse? Du désir d’objectivité au désir de réflexivité
Mélodie Faury

Des relations complexes entre critique et engagement. Quelques enseignements issus de recherches critiques en communication
Éric George

Perspectives critiques et études sur le numérique. À la recherche de la pertinence sociale
Lena A. Hübner

Réguler les rapports entre recherche scientifique et action militante. Retour sur un parcours personnel
Stéphane Couture

Auteur : Abdou Moumouni Dioffo (1929-1991)

Cette réédition en libre accès de ce livre fondamental publié pour la première fois en 1964 (François Maspéro éditeur) est un projet dirigé par Frédéric Caille (Université de Chambéry), avec l’autorisation de Mme Aïssata Moumouni.

Pour accéder au livre en version html, cliquez ici.
Pour télécharger le PDF, cliquez ici.
Pour commander le livre en version imprimée, cliquez sur le bouton Paypal ci-dessous.

Acheter un livre, c’est nous soutenir et permettre à ceux et celles qui ne peuvent l’acheter de le lire en libre accès.

«  Si […] on ne perd pas de vue l’importance du facteur culturel et humain pour toute tentative de sortir du sous-développement, pour sauvegarder effectivement l’originalité africaine, la personnalité africaine dans leurs aspects les plus authentiques et les plus positifs, on comprendra l’importance qu’il faut accorder aux questions d’enseignement et d’éducation, l’urgence de leur étude approfondie et de la discussion des voies déjà proposées ou expérimentées, le caractère impératif de l’élaboration de solutions adaptées aux conditions, mais aussi aux objectifs immédiats et lointains de l’ensemble des peuples d’Afrique Noire, aux exigences de la libération totale de l’homme Noir Africain, et à l’éclosion et l’épanouissement de son génie. »

Ce livre écrit en 1964 à propos des enjeux postcoloniaux de l’éducation en Afrique francophone subsaharienne reste d’une pertinence incontestable, tout en offrant des données historiques précieuses. Cette réédition, sous la direction de Frédéric Caille, servira aux étudiants et étudiantes, chercheuses et chercheurs et à toutes les personnes qui continuent à réfléchir à la meilleure manière de garantir un accès universel à l’éducation en Afrique.

ISBN epub : 978-2-924661-77-2
ISBN pour l’impression : 978-2-924661-75-8
397 pages
Design de la couverture : Kate McDonnell

***

Pour acheter le livre, choisissez le tarif en fonction de l’endroit où le livre devra être expédié. Des frais de 15 $ sont ajoutés pour le transport. Le ePub (pour lire sur une tablette ou un téléphone) revient à 16 $ et est expédié par courriel.

Auteur : Abdou Moumouni Dioffo (1929-1991)

Cette réédition en libre accès de ce livre fondamental publié pour la première fois en 1964 (François Maspéro éditeur) est un projet dirigé par Frédéric Caille (Université de Chambéry), avec l’autorisation de Mme Aïssata Moumouni.

Pour accéder au livre en version html, cliquez ici.
Pour télécharger le PDF, cliquez ici.
Pour commander le livre en version imprimée, cliquez sur le bouton Paypal ci-dessous.

Acheter un livre, c’est nous soutenir et permettre à ceux et celles qui ne peuvent l’acheter de le lire en libre accès.

«  Si […] on ne perd pas de vue l’importance du facteur culturel et humain pour toute tentative de sortir du sous-développement, pour sauvegarder effectivement l’originalité africaine, la personnalité africaine dans leurs aspects les plus authentiques et les plus positifs, on comprendra l’importance qu’il faut accorder aux questions d’enseignement et d’éducation, l’urgence de leur étude approfondie et de la discussion des voies déjà proposées ou expérimentées, le caractère impératif de l’élaboration de solutions adaptées aux conditions, mais aussi aux objectifs immédiats et lointains de l’ensemble des peuples d’Afrique Noire, aux exigences de la libération totale de l’homme Noir Africain, et à l’éclosion et l’épanouissement de son génie. »

Ce livre écrit en 1964 à propos des enjeux postcoloniaux de l’éducation en Afrique francophone subsaharienne reste d’une pertinence incontestable, tout en offrant des données historiques précieuses. Cette réédition, sous la direction de Frédéric Caille, servira aux étudiants et étudiantes, chercheuses et chercheurs et à toutes les personnes qui continuent à réfléchir à la meilleure manière de garantir un accès universel à l’éducation en Afrique.

ISBN epub : 978-2-924661-77-2
ISBN pour l’impression : 978-2-924661-75-8
397 pages
Design de la couverture : Kate McDonnell

***

Pour acheter le livre, choisissez le tarif en fonction de l’endroit où le livre devra être expédié. Des frais de 15 $ sont ajoutés pour le transport. Le ePub (pour lire sur une tablette ou un téléphone) revient à 16 $ et est expédié par courriel.