Open access journal publishing in the Nordic countries

The number of open access (OA) journals and their share of all scholarly journals are usually estimated based on indexing in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). DOAJ's coverage of OA journals from different regions of the world is, however, far from complete, particularly of journals publishing in languages other than English. Using alternative data sources for identification and manual verification, 437 scholarly OA journals published in the five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) were identified, and some key characteristics were studied. Of these, only 184 were indexed in DOAJ. A vast majority of the journals was published by scholarly societies or universities. Social sciences and humanities dominated as topics, and few journals charge authors. National or university‐specific OJS portals have played a major role in enabling OA publishing. Around a third of the Nordic scholarly journals are currently OA.     

基于开放存取的图书情报期刊发展研究

开放存取期刊具有快捷的投稿和出版模式、低廉的费用、海量的数据、方便的检索、良好的互动等优势,给学术交流提供了更广阔的空间。目前,虽然我国图书情报学期刊也在不同程度上实现了开放存取,但是仍需要做如下努力：顺应形势,发展开放存取期刊;建设门户网站,实现功能模块多样化;尝试传统期刊与网刊并行;采用网上联合审核,促进同行评议与用户评议相结合;与时俱进,顺应开放存取政策,实现开放存取环境下的学术交流;多途径寻求合作,以广告等方式实现效益的平衡。     

Open Access Journals in College Library Collections

Students and scholars can take full advantage of Open Access journals only if libraries make them available through mechanisms that are familiar to patrons. This study examines the extent to which American liberal arts colleges have provided access to Open Access journals through their journal title lists (Serials Solutions, Ex Libris, etc.) and their online public access catalogs (OPACs). While 57 percent of the colleges provide access to at least 90 percent of the journals in our sample, 20 percent of the colleges provide access to fewer than 20 percent of the journals. Large and high-impact journals are especially likely to appear in libraries' catalogs and journal lists. There is no systematic trend by publication fee status or country of publication, however. The study concludes with a discussion of the strategies libraries can use to select Open Access journals and add them to their collections.     

粒子物理开放存取出版资助联盟简介与评价

粒子物理开放存取出版资助联盟(SCOAP3)致力于把全世界范围内粒子物理研究机构和图书馆组织起来,把它们用于订购粒子物理期刊的订购经费转变为支持这些期刊进行开放存取出版的资助经费,通过这一资助模式实现粒子物理领域全部高质量期刊的开放存取出版。SCOAP3资助模式具有科学合理的运作流程,可节省粒子物理科研机构、图书馆订购期刊的费用,为出版商提供稳定的收入,并且取消作者出版费用的做法也使出版商获得更多的投稿支持。     

Is it worth establishing institutional repositories? The strategies for open access to Spanish peer‐reviewed articles

We examine open access to the Spanish scientific literature via investigation of a sample of peer‐reviewed articles in seven subject categories. Of the 28,259 papers published in 2000, 26.89% were freely accessible, with the share varying among disciplines. Articles in the social and behavioral sciences were the most widely available for free. This disciplinary divide applies also to the strategies used to offer open access to documents. In clinical medicine, life sciences, arts and humanities and social sciences open access was mainly based on the publishers' side, while subject‐based repositories were dominant in physical, chemical and earth sciences and deposit on homepages was the preferred strategy in engineering, computing and technology. Institutional and general repositories seem to play a minor role in providing free access to the Spanish peer‐reviewed literature. Papers published in commercial journals are less accessible than those that appear in non‐commercial journals, and we found overlaps in almost 20% of papers deposited. The fastest way to gain open access is to deposit in subject‐based repositories and the longest delays are related to deposits in homepages and especially to institutional repositories. Open access to Spanish peer‐reviewed articles is dominated by the passive mechanism of the “gold route” and the editorial strategy with self‐archiving practices in the minority and directed mainly towards subject‐based repositories and homepage posting of the papers. The results of this study could serve as a reference point for further study on the evolution of open access in Spain.     

The OA Gourmand

It is trendy to be a supporter of Open Access publication with even journal publishers finding a role in communicating research results through this mechanism. When discussing Open Access it is rare for all parties to be clear about why Open Access is endorsed. The differences between Green Open Access and Gold Open Access can lead to unclear communication when the distinctions between the two are avoided.     

The Open-Access System of Journals and Its Use by Russian Scientists According to the Statistics of Web of Science (2008–2017)

The review of the research of the Open-Access system of journals and its advantages and disadvantages are presented. The bibliometric analysis was carried out for the array of Russian papers published in the journals of the Gold Open Access system and reflected in the SCI-E database for 2008–2017. The results of the analysis of the publication activity showed that, despite the high payments for papers, there was a steady increase in the share of Russian publications in such journals compared to the overall publication activity of Russia: from 7.8% in 2008 to 13.7% in 2017. This is largely due to active international cooperation of Russian organizations with funding agencies from the United States (31%), Germany (29%), and other industrialized countries. Analysis of the array of Gold OA publications in large research areas made it possible to establish a significant difference in its structure compared to the general array of publications in Russia. As an example, the most important scientific field in the world, Research Area Scientific Technologies, was ranked the third in comparison with the ninth rank in the general array.russian scientists widely use high-quality foreign journals of the Gold OA system, which includes one Russian journal, Solid State Physics.     

Evidence of open access of scientific publications in Google Scholar: A large-scale analysis

This article uses Google Scholar (GS) as a source of data to analyse Open Access (OA) levels across all countries and fields of research. All articles and reviews with a DOI and published in 2009 or 2014 and covered by the three main citation indexes in the Web of Science (2,269,022 documents) were selected for study. The links to freely available versions of these documents displayed in GS were collected. To differentiate between more reliable (sustainable and legal) forms of access and less reliable ones, the data extracted from GS was combined with information available in DOAJ, CrossRef, OpenDOAR, and ROAR. This allowed us to distinguish the percentage of documents in our sample that are made OA by the publisher (23.1%, including Gold, Hybrid, Delayed, and Bronze OA) from those available as Green OA (17.6%), and those available from other sources (40.6%, mainly due to ResearchGate). The data shows an overall free availability of 54.6%, with important differences at the country and subject category levels. The data extracted from GS yielded very similar results to those found by other studies that analysed similar samples of documents, but employed different methods to find evidence of OA, thus suggesting a relative consistency among methods.     

Czech Open Access for the Humanities and Social Sciences

ABSTRACT

This article examines the current state of Open Access for the humanities and social sciences in the Czech Republic. Since the Velvet Revolution in 1989, and following the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia in January of 1993, the Open Access movement in the Czech context remains understudied. This article focuses on the current state of affairs of Open Access in the Czech Republic within the European Union framework for Open Access.     

Bibliometrics Methods in Detecting Citations to Questionable Journals

In recent times, there has been a proliferation of questionable practices in research publishing, for example, via predatory journals, hijacked journals, plagiarism, tortured phrases and paper mills. This paper intends to analyse whether journals that had been removed from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) in 2018 due to suspected misconduct were cited within journals indexed in the Scopus database. Our analysis showed that Scopus contained over 15 thousand references to the removed journals identified. The majority of the publications citing these journals came from the area of Engineering. It is important to note that although we cannot assume that all the journals removed followed unethical practices, it is still essential that researchers are aware of the issues around citing journals that have been suspected of misconduct. We suggest that research libraries play a crucial role in training, advising and providing information to researchers about these ethical issues of publication malpractice and misconduct.     

Publishing in Open Access Education Journals: The Authors’ Perspectives

Open access publishing is now an accepted method of scholarly communication. However, the greatest traction for open access publishing thus far has been in the sciences. Penetration of open access publishing has been much slower among the social sciences. This study surveys 309 authors from recent issues of open access journals in education to determine why they choose to publish in open access journals and to gain insight into the ways publishing practices within the discipline itself impact the willingness of authors to engage in open access publishing.     

Actions and Updates on the Standards and Best Practices Front

Four standards and best practices recently released or currently underway at the National Information Standards Organization were presented: Knowledge Bases and Related Tools, Presentation and Identification of E-Journals, Open Discovery Initiative, and Open Access Metadata Indicators. Basics outlining the creation work and deliverables were shared for each project. Applicability of these standards and best practices for different stakeholders of the information community were discussed.     

The citation impact of the Open Access accounting journals that appear on Beall's List of potentially predatory publishers and journals

Although there are at least six dimensions of journal quality, Beall's List identifies predatory Open Access journals based almost entirely on their adherence to procedural norms. The journals identified as predatory by one standard may be regarded as legitimate by other standards. This study examines the scholarly impact of the 58 accounting journals on Beall's List, calculating citations per article and estimating CiteScore percentile using Google Scholar data for more than 13,000 articles published from 2015 through 2018. Most Beall's List accounting journals have only modest citation impact, with an average estimated CiteScore in the 11th percentile among Scopus accounting journals. Some have a substantially greater impact, however. Six journals have estimated CiteScores at or above the 25th percentile, and two have scores at or above the 30th percentile. Moreover, there is considerable variation in citation impact among the articles within each journal, and high-impact articles (cited up to several hundred times) have appeared even in some of the Beall's List accounting journals with low citation rates. Further research is needed to determine how well the citing journals are integrated into the disciplinary citation network—whether the citing journals are themselves reputable or not.     

高校图书馆利用OA期刊开展信息服务的实践探讨——以桂林医学院图书馆为例

开放存取(OA)资源对提高图书馆信息资源保障能力和用户服务水平均具有重要意义。桂林医学院图书馆对OA期刊进行搜集、整合,通过建设OA期刊检索平台为用户提供参考咨询服务。高校图书馆在利用OA期刊开展信息服务时应有针对性地进行资源配置,有选择地配备人员,保持数据库建设的持续性,保证OA网站资源的稳定性,重视OA期刊的宣传推荐工作,做好数据的维护更新工作。     

What is Open Access Button? An interview with Joe McArthur

Articles published behind a paywall in commercial journals are often inaccessible to potential readers who are not affiliated with a subscribing institution. Open Access Button is an application that assists readers in finding Open Access versions of such articles. This service works in a completely legal fashion. This interview is with one of the co-founders of the service, Joe McArthur. Open Access Button is supported by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.