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Preliminary Findings from the Review, Promotion, and Tenure Study

Preliminary Findings from the Review, Promotion, and Tenure Study

Only about 5% of the institutions made explicit mention of open access in their guidelines, and, in several of those few cases, the mention was done to call attention to the potentially problematic nature of these journals.

All Publishers Are Predatory - Some Are Bigger Than Others

All Publishers Are Predatory - Some Are Bigger Than Others

The assumption that the publication of an article in a high-impact factor, indexed journal somehow adds value to international science is a collective illusion - one that is unfortunately shared by funding agencies, institutions and researchers. This illusion - which serves as an excuse to delegate the evaluation of science to for-profit companies and anonymous reviewers for the sake of false objectivity - costs taxpayers dearly.

Getting Scientists Ready for Open Access: The Approaches of Forschungszentrum Jülich

Getting Scientists Ready for Open Access: The Approaches of Forschungszentrum Jülich

Case report looking at two approaches taken by the Central Library of Forschungszentrum Jülich in 2017.

Scientists Should Be Solving Problems, Not Struggling to Access Journals

Scientists Should Be Solving Problems, Not Struggling to Access Journals

It takes an average of 15 clicks for a researcher to find and access a journal article. This time could be much better spent

Why Are Ai Researchers Boycotting a New Nature Journal and Shunning Others?

Why Are Ai Researchers Boycotting a New Nature Journal and Shunning Others?

The AI field is increasingly turning to conference publications and free, open-review websites while shunning traditional outlets - sentiments dramatically expressed in a growing boycott of a high-profile AI journal.

Europe’s Open-Access Drive Escalates as University Stand-Offs Spread

Europe’s Open-Access Drive Escalates as University Stand-Offs Spread

Sweden is the latest country to hold out on journal subscriptions, while negotiators share tactics to broker new deals with publishers.  Inspired by the results of a stand-off in Germany, negotiators from libraries and university consortia across Europe increasingly declare that if they don’t like what publishers offer, they will refuse to pay for journal access at all.

What was Missing in Australia's $1.9 Billion Infrastructure Announcement

What was Missing in Australia's $1.9 Billion Infrastructure Announcement

It’s not hard to get excited over money that will support imaging of the Earth, or the Atlas of Living Australia. But important as these projects are, there’s a whole set of infrastructure that rarely gets mentioned or noticed: “soft” infrastructure. These are the services, policies or practices that keep academic research working and, now, open.

Linking Impact Factor to 'Open Access' Charges Creates More Inequality in Academic Publishing

Linking Impact Factor to 'Open Access' Charges Creates More Inequality in Academic Publishing

Simply adding an ‘open access’ option to the existing prestige-based journal system at ever increasing costs is not the fundamental change publishing needs, says Bianca Kramer and Jeroen Bosman 

Six Questions About Openness in Science

Six Questions About Openness in Science

Transparency is especially important because science appears to be facing a major credibility crisis right now. The high percentage of bronze OA means that many papers are vulnerable to being re-enclosed. Librarians have failed to make institutional repositories either interesting or useful. The rise of pay-to-publish gold OA is a real problem, especially for less wealthy countries.

Sweden Stands up for Open Access - Cancels Agreement with Elsevier

Sweden Stands up for Open Access - Cancels Agreement with Elsevier

In order to take steps towards the goal of immediate open access by 2026 set by the Swedish Government, the Bibsam Consortium has after 20 years decided not to renew the agreement with the scientific publisher Elsevier.

Open-Access Model Is a Return to the Origins of Journal Publishing

Open-Access Model Is a Return to the Origins of Journal Publishing

Until recently, many university and society journals operated at a loss. To return to their earlier significant role in scientific dissemination, scientific societies and universities will have to return to their earlier acceptance of knowledge sharing as part of their broader public service, rather than their more recent exploitation of publications as revenue generators.

Conflicting Academic Attitudes to Copyright Are Slowing the Move to Open Access

Conflicting Academic Attitudes to Copyright Are Slowing the Move to Open Access

The open access movement has prompted a shift towards retention of rights and the use of creative commons licenses to control how works are used by publishers. However, in many cases, researchers continue to agree to standard assignment terms offered by publishers without fully investigating or understanding them.

A Landscape Study on Open Access and Monographs: New Summary and Survey

A Landscape Study on Open Access and Monographs: New Summary and Survey

The state of affairs with regard to policies, funding and publishing Open Access monographs in eight European countries.

Open Access Negotiators Prepare for a Future Without Publishers

Open Access Negotiators Prepare for a Future Without Publishers

At the invitation of Horst Hippler, chair of the German conference of university rectors and the Projekt DEAL initiatives, representatives from multiple countries met in Berlin to share their views and tales of the ongoing negotiations on open access.

OAPEN-CH - the Impact of Open Access on Scientific Monographs in Switzerland

OAPEN-CH - the Impact of Open Access on Scientific Monographs in Switzerland

Pilot study found that providing a digital edition that is freely available on the Internet increases the trackability, visibility and use of monographs. The study also finds that open access does not have a negative impact on printed book sales.

Towards Open Access by default in Spain

Towards Open Access by default in Spain

In January 2018, Spanish Government published the State Plan for Research, Development and Innovation 2017-2020 that includes important news on open access to scientific publications and research data. 

Thousands of Academics Spurn Nature’s New Paid-Access Machine Learning Journal

Thousands of Academics Spurn Nature’s New Paid-Access Machine Learning Journal

Nature has just announce plans to create a Machine Intelligence imprint, and researchers in this normally open access field are not happy. Over two thousand have signed a statement saying they won’t publish in it.

Inexpensive Research in the Golden Open-Access Era

Inexpensive Research in the Golden Open-Access Era

The financial pressure that publishers impose on libraries is a worldwide concern. Gold open-access publishing with an expensive article-processing charge paid by the authors is often presented as an ideal solution to this problem. However, such a system threatens less-funded departments and even article quality.

Practicing What You Preach: Evaluating Access of Open Access Research

Practicing What You Preach: Evaluating Access of Open Access Research

This study finds that 73.7 percent of articles about OA are openly available.

Why the Term 'Article Processing Charge' (APC) Is Misleading

Why the Term 'Article Processing Charge' (APC) Is Misleading

It is clear that APCs cover both the direct processing costs and the indirect costs of running the entire publishing business. Therefore, the term APC is itself misleading.

Results of the FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot

Results of the FP7 Post-Grant Open Access Pilot

For a period of almost 3 years, the OpenAIRE2020 project has run - on behalf of the European Commission - a pilot to fund post-grant Open Access publication of research outputs arising from projects financed under the 7th Framework Programme (FP7).