Interactive journal concept for improved scientific publishing and quality assurance

Many scientific publications are careless, useless or false, and inhibit scholarly communication and scientific progress. This is caused by the failure of traditional journal publishing and peer review to provide efficient scientific exchange and quality assurance in today's highly diverse world of science. The most promising way to improve matters is a two‐stage (or multi‐stage) publication processes with interactive peer review and public discussion in new and traditional scientific journals. A concept for such interactive scientific journals is outlined, and its applicability is demonstrated by the open access journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.     

Scholarly publishing and open access in the Nordic countries

This study examines aspects of scholarly journal publishing in the Nordic countries. On average half of Nordic journals publish online. In most Nordic countries, commercial publishers predominate; however, in Finland the majority are society publishers. The number of open access journals is low, in line with international figures. There is concern to maintain local languages in journal publishing. A majority of the journals publishing in local languages are within social science, humanities, and arts; the STM sector publishes in English. English‐language publications are favoured in research assessments, international recognition, and impact, while the visibility of local‐language scholarly journals in international databases is low. The Nordbib program supports Nordic scholarly journals and fosters co‐operation with publishing companies and learned societies over migration to e‐publishing; it also supports open access. The article discusses future challenges for journal publishing, pointing out the problems of small journal publishers and the need for co‐operation between stakeholders.     

Do we need to move from communication technology to user community? A new economic model of the journal as a club

Much of the argument around reforming, remaking, or preserving the traditions of scholarly publishing is built on economic principles, explicit or implicit. Can we afford open access (OA)? How do we pay for high‐quality services? Why does it cost so much? In this article, we argue that the sterility of much of this debate is a result of failure to tackle the question of what a journal is in economic terms. We offer a way through by demonstrating that a journal is a club and discuss the implications for the scholarly publishing industry. We use examples, ranging from OA to prestige journals, to explain why congestion is a problem for club‐based publications, and to discuss the importance of creative destruction for the maintenance of knowledge‐generating communities in publishing.     

The specifics of access to scholarly journal literature in the digital society

The current details of publishing in the scientific and technological field are analyzed. Attention is paid to the reinforcement of the information noise that accompanies administrative approaches to the improvement of the citation index. The roles and functions of publishers that deal with scientific-journal literature are investigated. The need for a strict ranking of scientific publications based on their scientific value established through high-quality peer review, as well as the difficulties in the organization of peer-review work, are highlighted. The possibility of organizing a centralized peer review of scholarly journal publications on the basis of peer-review centers is presented and discussed. It is assumed that this will help to eliminate one of the major barriers to open access to scientific articles.     

The future of academic publishing: Revolution or evolution?

Key points

• Concerns about a crisis in monograph publishing date back to at least the 1990s, and for traditional journal publishing at least a decade.
• Two key trends behind concerns over book and journal models are pressures on funding and the emergence of open access.
• Despite predictions of a revolution, the academic publishing sector has proved remarkably resilient in adapting to market changes.
• Whilst showing some support for ‘open science’, even early career researchers remain committed to traditional publishing models.
• The growth in scholarly collaboration networks and in sharing across traditional boundaries is the more likely disrupter of traditional publishing.

     

What publishers can take away from the latest early career researcher research

Key points

• Early career researchers (ECRs) consider journals the central form of communication – but are concerned about pressure to publish.
• ECRs want to share but currently accept the closed publishing system because of the need to build a traditional reputation.
• ECRs know – and appear to care – little about publishers but trust them as publishing and reviewing facilitators.
• Editors are criticized for not managing peer review with better selection of reviewers.
• Megajournals are not seen as the future journal form and criticized for lack of selectivity.
• ECRs want open access/science in principle but are circumspect about their contribution to it.
• ResearchGate is a key force for change as ECRs consider it a mainstay communication and reputation platform.

     

Authors and open access publishing

Surveys were carried out to learn more about authors and open access publishing. Awareness of open access journals among those who had not published in them was quite high; awareness of ‘self‐archiving’ was less. For open access journal authors the most important reason for publishing in that way was the principle of free access; their main concerns were grants and impact. Authors who had not published in an open access journal attributed that to unfamiliarity with such journals. Forty per cent of authors have self‐archived their traditional journal articles and almost twice as many say they would do so if required to.     

The role of learned societies in national scholarly publishing

This study examines the role of learned societies as publishers in Finland based on bibliographic information from two Finnish databases. We studied the share of learned societies' peer‐reviewed publication channels (serials with ISSNs and book publishers with distinct ISBN roots) and outputs (journal articles, conference articles, book articles, and monographs) in Finland. We also studied the share of learned societies' open access (OA) publications. In 2018, there were 402 peer‐reviewed publication channels in Finland. In 2011–2017, the number of peer‐reviewed publications from scholars working in Finnish universities and published in Finland was 17,724. Learned societies publish around 70% of these channels and publications, mostly in the fields of humanities and social sciences. Learned societies in Finland focus on journal publishing, whereas university presses and commercial publishers focus on book publishing. In 2016–2017, 38.4% of the learned societies' outputs were OA. This study concludes that Finnish learned societies play an integral part in national scholarly publishing. They play an especially important role in journal publishing, as commercial publishers produce only 2.6% of Finnish journals and book series, and only 1.4% of the journal articles from scholars working in Finnish universities.     

国际OA出版平台现状及“互联网+学术期刊”出版模式改革建议

以“互联网+”思维为基础,研究国际上几个代表性OA出版平台如DOAJ、BMC、PLoS的运营模式,分析国内外政府机构对OA出版的资金和政策支持,提出一套系统性的改革方案.认为基于互联网的数字出版模式渐成趋势,我国学术期刊应运用互联网思维改革办刊模式,开发自主云出版平台,创办一批国际领先水平的高质量OA英文期刊,在推动国内现有英文期刊精品化、国际化的同时,促进中文期刊可持续发展,从而整体提升我国学术期刊的综合影响力.     

Infectious diseases citation patterns: mapping the literature 2008–2010

Objectives:

The research identified the publication types and ages most frequently cited in the infectious diseases literature and the most commonly cited journals.

Methods:

From 2008–2010, 5,056 articles in 5 infectious diseases journals cited 166,650 items. Two random samples were drawn: one (n = 1,060) from the total set of citations and one (n = 1,060) from the citations to journal articles. For each sample citation, publication type and date, age of cited item, and inclusion of uniform resource locator (URL) were collected. For each item in the cited journal articles sample, journal title, publication date, and age of the cited article were collected. Bradford zones were used for further analysis.

Results:

Journal articles (91%, n = 963) made up the bulk of cited items, followed by miscellaneous items (4.6%, n = 49). Dates of publication for cited items ranged from 1933–2010 (mean = 2001, mode = 2007). Over half (50.2%, n = 483) of cited journal articles were published within the previous 5 years. The journal article citations included 358 unique journal titles.

Discussion:

The citations to current and older publications in a range of disciplines, heavy citation of journals, and citation of miscellaneous and government documents revealed the depth and breadth of resources needed for the study of infectious diseases.

Highlights

• Literature on infectious diseases is multidisciplinary, encompassing medical specialties, public health, and the medical sciences.
• Infectious disease publications cite journal articles more than 90% of the time. Cited journal articles greatly range in age at citation: more than a quarter were over 10 years old.
• Infectious disease citation patterns resemble clinical medicine citation patterns more than public health citation patterns.

Implications

• Infectious disease professionals need access to general medicine titles as well as infectious disease, immunology, virology, microbiology, and public health literature.
• Librarians serving infectious disease researchers and practitioners should provide access to older materials, especially journal back files, to support the cyclical needs of their patrons.

     

Open access publications in sciences and social sciences: A comparative analysis

In this paper, we conduct a comparative analysis to examine the characteristics and evolutionary trends of open access (OA) publications in natural and social sciences. We use data recorded by Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Journal Citation Reports during 2001–2015 as the main source. We then comparatively analyse the characteristics of natural and social sciences in terms of historical evolution, main contributors, and distribution of OA journals and publications across different languages, disciplines, and impact factor quartiles. Our results suggest that both natural and social sciences experienced dramatic growth of OA journals since 2009, but the share of social science OA journals within journal impact factor quartile 1 is much lower than that of natural sciences. While natural and social sciences share some similarities in OA publishing activities, such as main countries of contribution, they differ greatly in dimensions such as OA ratio across specific disciplines, countries, and publishing languages. We acknowledge that OA publishing offers a level playing field for traditionally disadvantaged languages, countries, and scientific disciplines, but meanwhile, the advancement of high‐quality OA publishing needs more targeted and sophisticated approaches to tackle differences in natural and social sciences.     

Authors' choice between parent and mirror journals of Elsevier

• 2021, open access articles in parent journals with higher charges accounted for 72% of the total open access articles in parent and mirror journals.
• Although the charges for mirror journals were significantly reduced in 2021, the increase in the number of articles was relatively small.
• These findings suggest that many authors do not significantly respond to changes in article processing charges.

     

关于中文学术期刊开放获取的再思考

S计划的提出将开放获取(Open Access, OA)提升到一个新的高度,对于中文学术期刊的OA必须深入思考。在OA2020的推进过程中,学术出版不同环节经历着长期的博弈和努力,而绝大多数中文学术期刊由于存在着主观和客观上的障碍,只在自建网站上实施了OA。为了推进高质量中文学术期刊金色OA并达到知识普惠社会发展的要求,笔者认为应该允许相关期刊收取合理的文章处理费,充分利用现有的OA平台,并探索在期刊集成平台上的OA。     

Predicting research excellence at the individual level: The importance of publication rate,top journal publications,and top 10% publications in the case of early career mathematicians

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between publication rate, top journal publications and excellence during the first eight years of the career, and how well publication rate, top journal publications and highly cited publications during the first four years of the career can predict whether an author attain excellence in the fifth to the eighth year. The dataset consisted of publication track records of 406 early career mathematicians in the sub-field of number theory collected from the MathSciNet database. Logistic regression and dominance analysis was applied to the data. The major conclusions were (1) publication rate had a positive effect on excellence during the first eighth years of the career. However, those who publish many articles in top journals, which implicitly require a high publication count, had an even higher probability of attaining excellence. These results suggest that publishing in top journals is very important in the process of attaining excellence in the early career in addition to publishing many papers; and (2) a dominance analysis indicated that the number of top journal publications and highly cited publications during the first four years of the career were the most important predictors of who will attain excellence in the later career. The results are discussed in relation to indicator development and science policy.     

国外学术期刊OA出版论文处理费(APC)调查

调查了国际知名出版商Elsevier、Springer、Taylor & Francis、Wiley-Blackwell、NPG和国际知名OA期刊社BMC、PLoS、Hindawi、MDPI等OA期刊的论文处理费(APC)的收费标准.2015年度主要商业性出版社完全OA期刊的APC主要分布在1 000 ～5 000美元之间,混合型OA期刊的APC相对高些,分布较窄,基本在3 000美元左右.以瑞士MDPI公司为案例,分析该公司OA期刊的创办、期刊载文量、期刊经营、APC收取策略等.还简要讨论APC和OA出版机制,以期为我国的科研管理部门和期刊管理部门提供参考.     

英文科技期刊办刊现状调查及发展对策研究

本文对50种中国英文科技期刊开展问卷调查,从期刊基本情况、期刊内容、出版平台、出版模式、期刊国际化发展策略等方面,比较全面地反映了中国英文科技期刊的办刊现状与办刊人心声,并对SCI期刊与非SCI期刊的办刊现状进行了对比分析.针对问卷调查反映出的英文科技期刊的发展瓶颈进行分析研究,提出国际化办刊的若干对策建议.     

In a paperless world a new role for academic libraries: providing open access

Academic libraries should be considered research tools, co‐evolving with technology. The Internet has changed the way science is communicated and hence also the role of libraries. It has made it possible for researchers to provide open access (OA) (i.e. toll‐free, full‐text, online access, web‐wide) to their peer‐reviewed journal articles in two different ways: (i) by publishing in them in OA journals, and (ii) by publishing them in non‐OA journals but also self‐archiving them in their institutional OA archives. Librarians are researchers' best allies in both of these strategies. Examples of these strategies are described. We conclude that an official mandate for OA provision is necessary to accelerate its growth and thereby the growth of research usage and impact worldwide.     

Predatory journals and their article publishing charges

This study examines the payment policies of a list of standalone predatory open access journals available on scholarlyoa.com . It is found that 72% do charge article publication fees (APCs), which is a higher percentage than found in DOAJ journals. The mean number of articles published during 2013 was 227, but ranged from 4 to 2,286 articles. The majority of journals charge low APCs and can be assumed to have modest annual incomes. There was no correlation between the amount of APC charged and the number of articles published. Comparing the number of journals charging APCs compared to the percentage from DOAJ, the findings suggest a connection between predatory practices and charging author fees. However, a comprehensive assessment of the dynamics of open access journal publishing beyond author charges should be done to avoid using APCs alone as a measure of whether a journal is predatory or not.     

Economics as if science mattered: the BioOne business model and the transformation of scholarly publishing

The BioOne database of scholarly journals in the biological and ecological sciences was established in the belief that broad and enduring access to scholarly literature is essential not just to the health of the scientific enterprise but also to the health of the wider society in which science is practiced. The prevailing model of profit-based journal publishing – in which high prices are impeding access – is harming the interests of the very scientists who provide its life-blood. The BioOne business model seeks to meet the interlocking goals of providing broad and enduring access, supporting the publishing enterprise of scholarly societies, and assuring that BioOne will keep pace with changes in technology and scientific communication.