Open Research Library’s Post

Publishing in #OpenAccess inherently contributes to scholarly integrity, since it introduces transparency into publication procedures https://ow.ly/b59Q50U6fp9

The Financial Times describes how academic publishers profit from the publish-or-perish culture and where the biggest publishers have increased their share of the more prestigious end of the market. #openaccess #scholarlypublishers #academicpublishing #researchintegrity #peerreview

I've seen several posts stating how because of this new technology that highlights the amount of suspicious papers per journal, we should be cautious with who scientists publish with. If anything, I see this technology as a good thing. It shows we have a fully functioning peer review processes, and that we are able to highlight problematic papers and remove them where necessary. Science is self correcting, after all. Do you think this article shows that or do you think it highlights major issues? https://lnkd.in/ebtKUbU7 #nature #science #peerreview #publication

Dawid Hanak and others are making serious criticisms of the structures of knowledge dissemination, and its distorting pressures on researchers created by citation counts, the hierarchy of journals, often a flawed refereeing system, and the imposed financial prices of publication which no longer reflect genuine marginal economic costs. As a former Editor in Chief of two journals, I have full sympathy with these criticisms. But my main criticism of the current system - as it applies to my field of study, and possibly other similar fields in the public policy area - is different. The current structures seriously distort understanding of the history of the subject, and inhibit its scientific development. This arises because of the imposed distinction between 'true' research (ie that published in the journals published by the same companies who run the citation indexes) and the 'grey literature', deemed to be second class, with lower quality standards, including vanity publishing and promotional or advertorial propaganda. That may well be a valid picture in some fields, but it is simply not a truthful description how transport science and transport policy assessment has developed. Much of the foundation work has actually been carried out and published in the Government scientific service, in local government bodies, in companies, in Government Commissions and Parliamentary inquiries, in independent advisory bodies, by consultants commissioned by industry of Government, and in a host of think tanks and advisory bodies. Academics have of course been active in all of these, but a substantial portion of their work has then been published under Government covers, or by their own academic institutes. (Yes, and a substantial proportion of not very good work as well. Just like the journals). The intellectual debates around their validity are held in the formal processes of Public Examination, Committees, Parliamentary Inquiries, and indeed sometimes the Courts. The journals have had a role in this, but their schedules are much slower than the rate at which the procedures themselves evolve. All this has strengths and weakness of course. But as a rule of thumb, I would say that somewhere around half of all the highest quality work is published in the 'grey' literature. If you use a search criterion for a literature review based on the citation counts of the academic journals, you would simply miss many of the most important references. (Google Scholar, in my experience, is better, since it includes the official sources). A longer version of this post, with examples and details, is available (free to view of course!) in Local Transport Today's 'Tapas' network, at https://lnkd.in/dQYdrh3P (One caveat: I was fortunate enough to get my first senior academic appointment before the citation count system became embedded. I'm not recommending now that you ignore it! But don't rely on it for scientific understanding).

Scientific publishers are producing more papers than ever Well, academics are producing more papers than ever. In 2005, the average OECD-based academic published about 0.9 papers per year. In 2021, that number had risen to 1.6. One might wonder where all that high-quality research is coming from.

New #preprint by members of #CoalitionPublica: "The oligopoly of academic publishers persists in exclusive database" "As a result of excluding smaller publishers, the 'oligopoly' of scholarly publishers persists, at least in appearance, according to the #WebofScience. However, both #Dimensions' and #OpenAlex' inclusive indexing revealed the share of smaller publishers has been growing rapidly, especially since the onset of large-scale online publishing around 2000, resulting in a current cumulative dominance of smaller publishers." By Simon van Bellen, Senior Research Advisor at Érudit, Juan Pablo Alperin, Scientific Director at PKP, and Vincent Larivière, Scientific Director at Érudit. Did you know? PKP and Érudit together are Coalition Publica! Get the preprint: https://lnkd.in/gmMtQqpU #ScholComm #ScholarlyPublishing #Discoverability #Indexing #AcademicChatter

Can Subscribe to Open work for the big five academic publishers? I shared my thoughts on Taylor & Francis Group's new Subscribe to Open pilot in this Research Professional news article 👇 #scholcomm #openaccess #stmpublishing

Which scientific publishers and journals are worst affected by fraudulent or dubious research papers — and which have done least to clean up their portfolio? A technology start-up founded to help publishers spot potentially problematic papers says that it has some answers, and has shared its early findings with Nature. The science-integrity website Argos, which was launched in September by Scitility, a technology firm headquartered in Sparks, Nevada, gives papers a risk score on the basis of their authors’ publication records, and on whether the paper heavily cites already-retracted research. A paper categorized as ‘high risk’ might have multiple authors whose other studies have been retracted for reasons related to misconduct, for example. Having a high score doesn’t prove that a paper is low quality, but suggests that it is worth investigating.

I have been denouncing this since 20 years ago. 5-6 groups control 50+% of all scientific publications in a very predatory way. Many experienced researchers we dont play or conribute anymore to feeding this global oligopoly. Universities should start forgeting the impact factor, scopus and all endogamic mentality. On the other side check the Editorial Board of directors and free repositories of good reputation as Repec or Doaj. Univ pay around 10.000 USD/year to repositories for accessing its journals. Jornals and editors dont pay anything to reviewers and make pay authors 1500 USD/article published with the infamous APC charges. What a nerve and what a sweet heart deal. Even my students must pay 30-50 USD/person to access or download my articles, I cannnot pass them because I lost the copyrights. Infamous and consequently I refuse to add more gasoline to this fire. Scientists File Antitrust Lawsuit Against Six Journal Publishers

Great to join Jelena Subotic, Jessica Auchter, Yasemin Akbaba, Rafi Youatt, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Andrew Hom at International Studies Association (ISA) NE for a discussion on demystifying book and journal publishing. We had some great questions focusing mainly on early career scholars (ECRs), and touched upon: * how the book publishing process differs from journals: with a focus on initiating the submission; types of submissions (PhD thesis based monographs vs. edited volumes vs. special issues/forums/special theme collections); different types of publishers and presses (academic vs. commercial, large vs. small) and implications for different priorities; role of an editorial board (academic or not); * peer-review process: selection process, double vs. single blind, pay/no pay, revise and resubmit processes, editor role/discretion, increased rates of refusal and how to tackle them, publishing reviews with their own DOI; * open access: what's covered and when, institutional agreements, special provisions for authors from the Global South, process and timeframes; * role of AI in peer-review, research integrity, and how publishing is changing overall with increased digitization (a side note on this, I thought Vincent Pouliot's fascinating keynote address on the politics of languages was especially relevant to thinking about the political implications of these changes) We all enjoyed it, as you can tell by our smiles, and look forward to more conversations with ECRs and an increasingly transparent and supportive publishing environment.