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.     

社会科学核心网站的评价标准与方法

文章在介绍国内外网站评价研究的基础上,指出了当前网站评价研究之不足,结合社会科学类网站的特点,论述了网站评价的三大原则,提出了包括内容质量、系统设计、网站管理三大指标的社会科学核心网站评价指标体系和评价方法。     

The difference between popularity and prestige in the sciences and in the social sciences: A bibliometric analysis

The status of a journal is commonly determined by two factors: popularity and prestige. While the former counts citations, the latter recursively weights them with the prestige of the citing journals. We make a thorough comparison of the bibliometric concepts of popularity and prestige for journals in the sciences and in the social sciences. We find that the two notions diverge more for the hard sciences, including physics, engineering, material sciences, and computer sciences, than they do for the geosciences, for biology-medical disciplines, and for the social sciences. Moreover, we identify the science and social science journals with the highest diverging ranks in popularity and prestige compilations.     

Scholarly open access journals in medicine: A bibliometric study of DOAJ

This study aims to present a quantitative analysis of open access (OA) journals in the field of medicine indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The bibliographic data for this study was extracted from DOAJ and inserted into an Excel sheet for analysis. The retrieved data was analyzed by using different quantitative techniques to disclose the findings. The findings disclosed that 3627 OA journals related to the field of medicine are indexed in DOAJ, which represents a substantial increase from just 8 in 2002. Moreover, most of the medical journals (n = 1874 or 51.7%) do not charge any Author Processing Charges (APC) from the authors. The United Kingdom leads the world with 878 (24%) open access journal titles, whereas English is the top language of publication with 3149 (86.8%) OA journals in medicine. Elsevier is the leading publisher with 236 (6.5%) journal titles. A majority of the journals (n = 1595 or 44%) follow a double blind, peer-review process. About 2046 (56.4%) journals publish their contents under the Creative Commons (CC BY) licensing model to enable access and use of scholarly content for educational purposes.     

From sailing boat to steamship: the role of the publisher in an open access environment

The Internet has been a huge success in the academic world, as it makes it possible for academics to share and find research materials; open access has therefore become a fact of life for academic publishing. But what is the role of publishers in this new environment? The key functions of publishing – organizing peer review, editorial support, graphic design, marketing, and distribution of academic information – do not just disappear; publishers still have a role here, but they need to take a more service‐minded perspective. Academics still need to find ways to ensure the dissemination of their output; it is important that they realize that this will cost money, whether it is brought in‐house or outsourced. The IMISCOE project, on which Amsterdam University Press has recently embarked, offers an entirely new publishing model oriented towards online dissemination of academic research results, as well as in book form.     

Toward a scalable and sustainable approach to open access publishing and archiving for humanities and social sciences societies: a proposal

The proposal we offer here (and in the more extensive ‘white paper’ proposal on which this article is based) tackles head‐on the open access (OA) business models that have proven particularly problematic for implementation of OA in the humanities and social sciences (HSS). Our proposal suggests all tertiary institutions contribute to systemic support of the research process itself, including its entire scholarly output. A bold rethinking of the economics of OA by way of partnerships among scholarly societies and academic libraries funded by an institutional fee structure based on a student‐and‐faculty per‐capita sliding scale, our plan is nevertheless intentionally incremental. Our proposal focuses first on HSS and primarily in the United States, but just as research and scholarship are increasingly global and collaborative, our plan is not bound by discipline or national borders, but can be adopted by all those looking for a more equitable and sustainable OA model.     

Internet access in libraries: A comparison of press coverage between Canada and Singapore

This article compares the newspaper coverage of Internet access in public libraries across two countries, Canada and Singapore. The aim is to discover some of the main concerns and themes that the press identifies with libraries, noting the differences between the two countries in this regard, and then to provisionally link these differences to certain structural characteristics of their respective societies and states. To achieve these aims I compare press coverage produced in terms of dates of publication, discourse producers, and discourse content. Implications of the findings for libraries and librarians are discussed.     

文理"双栖"期刊特色化发展路径探索——以入选"中国科技期刊卓越行动计划"《Journal of Sport and Health Science》为例

近年来,在"中国科技期刊卓越行动计划"等项目的 支持下,我国科技期刊特别是英文科技期刊取得了长足发展,然而文理交叉学科领域的高水平英文期刊凤毛麟角,对于文理"双栖"期刊的特殊作用亦缺乏探讨.本文以《Journal of Sport and Health Science》为例,从内容建设、对标国际、求新思变、期刊育人等角度,探讨文理交叉英文期刊的特色化高质量发展路径.     

A comparison of social style between Japanese and Americans

Social style is investigated in terms of its two dimensions—assertiveness and responsiveness. Using the Assertiveness‐Responsiveness Scale, populations in Japan and the United States are compared to discover what differences, if any, might exist. Results indicate a significant difference between the two cultures. Also, the males in the two cultures tend to be more assertively inclined; the females more responsively.     

Going all the way: how Hindawi became an open access publisher

As the Hindawi Publishing Corporation approaches its tenth anniversary, the author looks back at the history of Hindawi and examines a number of challenges that the company has faced over the past decade. These challenges include the rapid expansion of the company's workforce, the establishment of a standard editorial system for its journals, and the conversion of Hindawi's entire operation to an open access publication model. Although some of Hindawi's characteristics may not be common among other publishers, many of the challenges that Hindawi has faced are the result of recent developments within the scholarly publishing market that have implications for the entire industry.     

Patterns of Iranian co-authorship networks in social sciences: A comparative study

Collaboration in science is a process in which two or more authors share their ideas, resources and data to create a joint work. This research compares coauthorship networks of Iranian articles in library and information science (LIS), psychology (PSY), management (MNG), and economics (ECO) in the ISI Web of Knowledge database during 2000–2009, and uses network analysis for the visualization of coauthorship networks. Data include all articles with at least one Iranian author and indexed in ISI's Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) for the fields of LIS, PSY, MNG, and ECO. Indicators such as the Collaborative Index (CI), Degree of Collaboration (DC) and Collaboration Coefficient (CC) were calculated for each discipline. Results show that two or three authors were the most common number of authors per paper, and authors of PSY tended to have more multi-authored articles, compared to the other disciplines. LIS had the lowest rank regarding CC. MNG had the densest coauthorship network, and PSY had the sparsest. Iranian authors in the field of PSY mostly collaborated with those in the U.S., while LIS and MNG authors tended to collaborate with U.K. authors, and ECO authors tended to collaborate with Canadians.     

Op. cit.: publishing in the humanities and social sciences

Do the humanities and social sciences have the same publishing requirements as the sciences? What can be done to counter perceptions that acquisition funds have migrated away from publications in the fields of the humanities and social sciences to meet the escalating cost of electronic and print journals in the natural and applied sciences? With university presses, non-profit publishers, and the academy itself under strain, we examine the problems, discuss the continuing requirements of scholarship, the implications for funding strategies, and the role of technology, and give examples of new ventures that suggest possible solutions to the problems. We conclude that the primary values that scholars in the humanities and social sciences hold are not dramatically different from those of other academic disciplines and make recommendations for building a broader base of support for scholarship in these areas.     

再析中国社会科学生产力--社会科学论文的学科、地区结构(2001年)

本文以<中文社会科学引文索引>(2001)所发表的学术论文为指标,对我国社会科学生产力及其结构、分布作了系统研究,并给出了我国社会科学生产力的学科结构、地区结构,以及地区--学科分布.文章最后对我国社会科学生产力作了较为深入的分析.