Scholarly Communications in Global PerspectiveMulti-level influence of global context: Government realities and expatriate assignments
Indiana Tech Global Leadership Immersion Weekend, April 25, 2015
Nina CollinsReference Librarian
Scholarly Communications
“Scholarly communication is the process of sharing, disseminating and publishing research findings of academics and researchers so that the generated academic contents are made available to the global academic communities” (UNESCO, p. 6).
UNESCO, (2015). “Scholarly communication”, Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Scholarly Publishing
2015 marks the 350th anniversary of the first scientific paper!
1665, Royal Society of London published the first issue of “Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society”.
Laid the foundation and began the practice of peer review
Available online at: https://www.force11.org/meetings/force2015/350
Bodleian Libraries, Oxford
Scholarly Publishing Business Model
Editors of journals are gatekeepers to knowledge
Peer Reviewers as well
Pay Walls
Journals require subscriptions for access
Who Pays?!
Creators of the scholarly works must sign away all copyrights to their works.
Authors of scientific research have to pay for access.
Publishers cover the costs of publishing. They do not pay the creators of the works, so profits go to publishers.
Rising Costs of Journal Subscriptions
Serials Crisis
“Between 1986 and 2004, journal expenditures of North American research libraries increased by a staggering 273%, with the average journal unit cost increasing by 188%. During this same period, the U.S. Consumer Price Index rose by 73%, meaning that journal costs have outstripped inflation by a factor of almost 4” (Newman, 2009).
273% increase!
Open Access
“By Open Access, we mean the free, immediate, availability on
the public Internet of those works which scholars give to the world
without expectation of payment – permitting any user to read,
download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full text of
these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to
software or use them for any other lawful purpose.”
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC),(2013)
Who Benefits from Open Access
Researchers
Increases discoverability of relevant literature and provides new avenues of discovery
Increases visibility and impact of an author’s works
Increases citations of scholarly works (Gargouri, 2010)
Enhances interdisciplinary research
Increases the pace of research and innovation
Researchers and medical practitioners in developing nations!
SPARC. Why Open Access? http://www.sparc.arl.org/resources/open-access/why-oa
Who Benefits from Open Access
Educational Institutions
Supports the mission of the institution—advances knowledge
Provides access to STEM resources (expensive)
Provides access for community colleges and K-12 institutions
Increases democratization AND competitiveness of institutions
SPARC. Why Open Access? http://www.sparc.arl.org/resources/open-access/why-oa
Who Benefits from Open Access
Students
Provides access to resources students need, regardless of institutional budget constraints
Enriches quality of education
Provides resources to help enhance education of work force
Businesses
Public
Research Funders
SPARC. Why Open Access? http://www.sparc.arl.org/resources/open-access/why-oa
Open Access Business ModelsGreen, Gold, Delayed, Hybrid
Green Open Access
Creators are allowed to place a preprint copy of the manuscript on an
institutional repository
Freely available to all
Costs of maintaining the repository are funded by the institution
Only works when the institution has a repository, and encourages faculty to
archive their scholarly content on the repository
Most traditional publishers support Green OA
Gold Open Access
“Author pays” model, used by online journals
The costs of publication are funded by the authors, in the form of “author fees”, or “article processing fees”
Author fees vary significantly based on the discipline and the publisher
Many OA publishers have policies for waiving the author fees for scholars in developing nations, or who cannot afford the fee
The fee is sometimes paid by the research sponsor (Institution or funding agency)
Delayed and Hybrid Models
NIH uses a delayed OA model
Many traditional, for profit, publishers are offering OA options
Government Mandates and Policies
FASTR bill
Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act
U.S. OSTP memo
Finch Report (2014)
Research Councils UK (RCUK) Open Access Policy adopted
Institutional Mandates and Policies
Predatory Publishers
Use the author-pays model of Gold Open Access
Are not limited to Open Access publications. Can include conferences, or traditional publishing business models
Engage in unethical publishing practices
Look like legitimate publishers
(Beall, 2013)
Unethical Publishing Practices(Beall, 2013)
Unethical Practices: Deception
The websites look like legitimate publishers (ex.)
The journal/publisher name mimics an established journal/publisher (ex.)
Journal name does not reflect geographic location (ex.)
Not indexed by reputable indexing and abstracting services, but claim to be
Coverage is misrepresented in abstracting & indexing services
List databases as abstracting/indexing services that are not true abstracting/indexing services
Make up citation metrics
List people on the editorial board who have not agreed to serve OR refuse to provide names of editorial board
Lie about location of publisher headquarters (ex. Avens Publishing Group)
(Beall, 2013)
Unethical Practices: Negligence and Non-adherence to standards
Inadequate peer-review
A publisher may list the same editor for all its journals
A journal has very broad coverage or subject matter
Author side fee
Spelling or Grammar errors
Licensing problems
Fleet Startup
Use email spam to solicit manuscripts
May not use ISSN or DOIs
Fail to provide contact information for the journal or the editors
Use AOL. Yahoo! Or Gmail addresses (ex.)
Poor website search functionality
Beall (2013)
Unethical Practices: Lack of transparency
Claim Peer review, when they do not practice adequate peer review
Little or no information about the peer review process
Fail to clearly state author side fees
Fail to list editorial board or contact information for editorial board
The only contact information for the editor is an online form, or an email through the website
Beall (2013)
Predatory Publishing Quick Check
Has the publisher started dozens of new Open Access titles all at once?
Do the published titles have very few papers (if any)?
Does the publisher send e-mails to myriad researchers asking for manuscript submissions or to serve on editorial boards?
Does the publisher fail to disclose the names of editorial board members or editors?
Is the publisher’s address NOT verifiable?
Is there very little evidence of peer review?
Crawford (2011)
Additionally:
Use the PET Project
Check Sherpa/Romeo
Ethics in Scholarship
Peer review stings
Bohannon, 2013
Scientific Paper Retractions
Barbash, 2015
Acceptance of nonsensical papers
“Get me off your f#@$!^* mailing list”
Citation cartels
Thompson Reuters bans Journals from IF measures (Jump, 2013)
Academic administrators loosing positions due to predatory publications (Beall, 2014)
Misrepresented results, under pressure to publish or secure funding
Data falsification (Extance, 2015)
Why care about ethics in scholarship?
Scholars
Administrators
Hiring Managers
General Public
Your professional career can be sunk before you begin
Administrators have recently lost their jobs for publishing in predatory journals
Unethical scholars working in higher education reflect poorly on the institution as well as the entire scientific community
False link between autism and vaccines
Scientific Knowledge is built upon previous knowledge
Discovery and visibility are important
Scholarly Communications Lifecycle
Discovery
Analysis
Write
Publication
Research Activity
Proposals
Idea
Partners,Funding
Simulate, Experiment,
Observe
Scholarly Communications Lifecycle
Discovery
Analysis
Write
Publication
Research Activity
Proposals
Idea
Partners,Funding
Simulate, Experiment,
Observe
Breakdowns in the scholarly communications lifecycle:1. Publication
1. Publication is not “the end” of the scientific process.2. Discovery
1. Scientific knowledge is built on previous knowledge.2. What happens when research is created and lost?
Scholarly Communications Lifecycle: Re-Discovery
Visibility of Scholarship is important (Salo, 2008)
Open Access
Research supports visibility and reuse (Gargouri, 2010)
Research also supports higher priced journals are more highly cited (Bosch and Henderson, 2013)
Publishing Open Access allows you to maintain copyright permissions
Global Perspective: North-South Divide
Although ¾ of the world’s population lives in the Global South, they are poor.
4/5 of the world’s wealth is held by the Global North.
Access to knowledge is limited by paywalls that are far beyond the reach of researchers in the Global South.
1986 paper documenting the likelihood of an Ebola outbreak in Liberia (Dahn, Mussah, and Nutt, 2015)
Open Access holds the potential to bridge this divide.
(Open Science Initiative Working Group, 2015)
Strategic PublishingHow to maximize visibility and impact of your scholarship
Copyright
Title 17, U.S. Code governs copyright
Copyright covers original works of creative expression in any fixed, tangible medium
Authors have the following rights
Reproduction
Translation, abridgement, revision
Distribution
Public Performance or display
Please note, I am not a lawyer and therefore cannot give legal advice.
Negotiate copyright with publishers
Be proactive. If you seek a position in higher education, your future employer may wish to archive your work on their IR!
Influence of Scholarship: Bibliometrics
Pay attention to Citation Metrics
Impact Factor
Eigenfactor
Article Influence
Look for High Impact Journals
Lower acceptance rate
(Bosch and Henderson, 2013)
Altmetrics
“Alternative metrics” include discussions about scholarly research that occur on social media
How many times has the article been shared on social media? Comments about the research?
Social Media for scholarly inquiry
Academic.edu
Research Gate
Mendeley
Best Practice: deposit your work on an institutional repository, then link to this version from other social media outlets!
Researcher ID/ ORCHID ID
Ensures all of your publications are attributed to the exact same person
Resources and Tools
For more information:
See the McMillen Library LibGuide on Choosing and Evaluating Journals
Use the PET Project (Publisher Evaluation Tool)
Visit Jeffrey Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers
For detailed information about a journal’s open access policies, visit Sherpa/Romeo
To assess journal impact, visit Eigenfactor
For Fun: see SCIgen, the scientific paper generator
Open Access Creative Commons Licenses
Use the SPARC Author Addendum to negotiate copyrights
ORCHID ID, Researcher ID
Contact Nina Collins, Reference Librarian:
260.422.5561 x 2223
References
Barbash, F. (2015, March 28). “Major publisher retracts 43 scientific papers amid wider fake peer-review scandal”. The Washington Post.Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/27/fabricated-peer-reviews-prompt-scientific-journal-to-retract-43-papers-systematic-scheme-may-affect-other-journals/
Beall, J. (2014, February 20). Iceland professor in hot water for publishing in predatory journals. Scholarly Open Access: Critical analysis of scholarly open access publications. Retrieved from http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/02/20/iceland-professor-in-hot-water-for-publishing-in-predatory-journals/
Beall, J. (2014, January 24). University of Pristina Rector under fire for publishing in predatory journals. Scholarly Open Access: Critical analysis of scholarly open access publications. Retrieved from http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/01/24/university-of-pristina-rector-under-fire-for-publishing-in-predatory-journals/
Beall, J. (2013). Unethical Practices in Scholarly, Open-Access Publishing. Journal of Information Ethics, 22(1), 11-20. doi: 10.3172/JIE.22.1.11
Bohannon, J. (2013, October 4). Who’s afraid of peer review? Science, 342(6). Retrieved from https://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full
Bosch, S. and Henderson, K. (2013). “The winds of change: Periodical price survey 2013”. Library Journal. Retrieved from http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/04/publishing/the-winds-of-change-periodicals-price-survey-2013/#_
Bot, B., Ratan, K. and Jackson, K. (2014). “ACRL-SPARC Forum: Evaluating the quality of open access content.” Proceedings from American Library Association Annual Conference. Las Vegas, NV.
Crawford, W. (2011). ALA Editions Special Reports : Open Access : What You Need to Know Now. Chicago, IL, USA: American Library Association Editions
References
Dahn, B., Mussah, V., and Nutt, C. (2015). “Yes, we were warned about ebola”. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/opinion/yes-we-were-warned-about-ebola.html?_r=1
Extance, A. (2015, March 16). “Data falsification hits polymer mechanochemistry papers”. Chemistry World. Retrieved from http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/03/data-falsification-hits-polymer-mechanochemistry-papers
Gargouri, Y., et al. (2010). Self-selected or mandated, Open Access increases citation impact for higher quality research. PLoS One, 5(10).
Jump, P. (2013). “Journal citation cartels on the rise.” The Times Higher Education. Retrieved from http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/journal-citation-cartels-on-the-rise/2005009.article
Newman, K. (2009). “The cost of journals.” University Library: University of Illinois at Urbana0Champaign. Retrieved from http://www.library.illinois.edu/scholcomm/journalcosts.html
Open Science Initiative Working Group. (2015). “Mapping the future of scholarly publishing”. National Science Communication Institute (nSCI). Retrieved from http://nationalscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/OSI-report-Feb-2015.pdf
Salo, D. (2008). “Innkeeper at the roach motel.” Library Trends: 57(2).
SPARC, (2013). Why Open Access? Retrieved from http://www.sparc.arl.org/resources/open-access/why-oa
Straub, D., & Anderson, C. (2010). Journal Quality and citations: common metrics and considerations about their use. MIS Quarterly, 34(1), iii-xii.
Suber, P. (2012). MIT Press Essential Knowledge : Open Access. Cambridge, MA, USA MIT Press
Van Noorden, R. (2013). “The true cost of science publishing”. Nature. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-science-publishing-1.12676