Change is glacially slow, but it happens

Challenges and opportunities

for the HSS

Paola Galimberti, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy

Andrea Marchitelli, CILEA, Italy

2

The Italian panorama – National institutions

Lack of central policies

Universitary Consortia involved by a personal

commitment of people and auto-cohordinated

No office/officier for OA in the Ministry

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

3

The Italian panorama – Universities

Lack of University policies – New Bylaws?

CRUI guidelines not mandatory

The case of Doctoral theses

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

4

The Italian panorama – Universities

Maintream Science and Italian research

Very difficult to change

Marginal role of UPs

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

5

The Italian panorama – The authors

Inertia of some disciplinary (not STM)

communities

Specialized editorial behaviors

Lack of consciousness by the authors

No special fundings for OA publishing

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

6

Research assessment

Reduction in funding of public universities

More competition and raising importance of

research evaluation

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

7

Research assessment for HSS

HSS not so easy to evaluate due to lack of

robust indicators (lack of data at all)

Traditional measures as IF, h-index or citation

counts not available for LotE

Multidimensionality of HSS need a large set of

indicators

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

8

Open Access represents a great chance for HSS

To reach visibility --- reputation

To start to gather research data through

standardization

To be read and cited

To reach more transparency in peer review ex

ante and ex post

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

9

Research assessment in Italy

Evaluation criteria incoherent for HSS

No indicators

Too many entities

10

THE «ITALIAN WAY» TO THE

GOLD ROAD

title, date

11 Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

12

Growth of OA journals in Italy

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

OA

Jo

urn

als

Years

47

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

13

OA journals by disciplinary sector

Italy

45%

53%

2%

60%

38% 2%

World

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

14

49% 51%

OJS

Other

OA italian journals by software

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

15

15%

85%

Italian only

Italian AND/OR otherlanguage

OA journals by language

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

16

Problems in the HSS that draw to a change

Dissatisfaction with the present conditions in

scientific communication

Very bad distribution of the articles

It takes too much to be published (until 2

years) while evaluation is now

Very high costs of publication with an

intensive editorial work for the authors

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

17

Problems in the HSS that draw to a change

Criteria for peer review are not transparent,

not clearly stated by publishers

Agreements are not flexible. Publishers

require a copyright transfer agreement.

LtP is unknown

Italian publishers don’t offer advanced tools

to their authors

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

18

Open Access could represent a chance for HSS

It c

ou

ld s

olv

e p

rob

lem

s

A certain reserve typical for the HSS

Habit to publish in paper form only

Limited circulation of scientific works

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

19

BUT

Fear of plagiarism

Books are still the main publication channel

National publishers as target that don’t

support Open Access

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

20

SIGNALS OF CHANGE: «RIVISTE UNIMI»

E-Journals by University of Milan

title, date

21

The Project

3 journals started in 2008 on OJS (maintained

by CILEA)

Adoption of strong peer review criteria; call

for papers

Wide distribution of internal research in the

HSS

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

22

Editorial Advantages

Great visibility improved by the use of

standard metadata

Internationalization and a great number of

submissions

Harvesting from Google, Scholar, Scientific

Commons, Base, DOAJ (full content); 2

journals are under evaluation by WOS

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

23

Economic Advantages

No size limits for the issues and

supplementary materials

Sustainable costs

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

24

At the present

11 Journals, in Literature, Critics, Philosophy,

Cultural Studies, Artificial languages, Law,

Veterinary, History, ItalianL2

Great number of views and downloads

All journals are published timely

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

25

Downloads/month (Jan-Jul 2011)

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

26

The ice is melting…

1.General conditions

2.Mentality change

are slowly changing the scenario

Change is glacially slow / Galimberti, Marchitelli, Berlin, PKP Conference, 28/09/2011

title, date