scholarly journals What Matters More in Open Access Journal Publishing: Scientific Rigor or Financial Vigor?

Author(s):  
Barbara J. Crawford

Academics and librarians around the world are raising concern about the current state of scholarly journal publishing in that the majority of journals are under the control of five multinational commercial journal publishing companies. Some are advocating for scholars to take back control of scholarly communication, particularly because it is the academics who are supplying and managing most of the content for journals. Open access publishing is one option, but the question of sustainability in funding streams raises concerns. Also the roles of scholarly societies, academic association, and universities in looking for stability in nonprofit journal publishing are discussed.


2005 ◽  
Vol 57 (6) ◽  
pp. 481-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Rowlands ◽  
David Nicholas

PurposeThis paper aims to make a substantial contribution to the ongoing debate about the potential of open access publishing and institutional repositories to reform the scholarly communication system. It presents the views of senior authors on these issues and contextualises them within the broader framework of their journal publishing behaviour and preferences.Design/methodology/approachA highly representative online opinion survey of more than five and half thousand journals authors, building on an earlier (January 2004) benchmarking study carried out by CIBER.FindingsSenior researchers are rapidly becoming more informed about open access publishing and institutional repositories but are still a long way off reaching a consensus on the likelihood that these new models will challenge the existing order, nor are they in agreement whether this would be a positive or a negative development. Disciplinary culture and, to a less extent, regional location are key determinants of author attitudes and any policy response should avoid “one‐size‐fits‐all” solutions.Research limitations/implicationsThis survey reflects the opinions of senior corresponding authors who have recently published in a “top” (i.e. ISI‐indexed journal) with 95 per cent confidence. The findings should not be generalised to represent the views of all authors in all journals, open access or otherwise.Originality/valueThe journal publishing sector is facing enormous challenges and opportunities as content increasingly migrates to the web. The value of this research is that it provides an objective, non‐partisan, assessment of the attitudes and opinions of more than 5,000 senior researchers, a key stakeholder group, and thus contributes both to the development of public policy as well as more realistic commercial strategies.



2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Weedon

The process of digitization has transformed the ways in which content is reproduced and circulated online, rupturing long held distinctions between production and consumption in the (virtual) public sphere. In accordance with these developments over the past fifteen years, proponents for open access publishing in higher education have argued that the (not yet absolute) transition from physical to digital modes of journal production opens up unprecedented opportunities for redressing the restrictive terms of ownership and access currently perpetuated within an increasingly untenable journal publishing industry. Through this article, I advocate that the sociology of sport community hastens to question, challenge and reimagine its position within this industry in anticipation of a reformed publishing landscape. The impetus for the paper is to ask not whether sociologists of sport should or should not publish open access, but rather as open access publishing inevitably comes to pass in some form, what say will the field’s associations, societies and members have in these changes, and how might they help invigorate a public sociology of sport?



2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-53
Author(s):  
Heather Morrison

The current state of scholarly communication is presented as one of contest between an increasingly commercial system that is dysfunctional and incompatible with the basic aims of scholarship, and emerging alternatives, particularly open access publishing and open access archiving. Two approaches to facilitating global participation in scholarly communication are contrasted; equity is seen as a superior goal to the donor model, which requires poverty or inequity to succeed. The current state of scholarly communication within the discipline of communication is examined. A relatively healthy percentage of not-for-profit publishers and at least 76 fully open access journals suggest strong potential for emancipating scholarship in communication from commercial imperatives. Specific sites of struggle and actions for scholars, including developing open access journals and self-archiving, are presented.



Author(s):  
Markus Wust

This qualitative study investigates how faculty gather information for teaching and research and their opinions on open access approaches to scholarly communication. Despite generally favorable reactions, a perceived lack of peer review and impact factors were among the most common reasons for not publishing through open-access forums.Cette étude qualitative examine comment les membres du corps professoral recueillent l’information pour l’enseignement et la recherche, et leurs opinions envers les approches de la communication scientifique à libre accès. Malgré des réactions généralement favorables, le manque perçu de révision par les pairs et les facteurs d’impact comptent parmi les motifs habituellement évoqués pour ne pas publier sur ces tribunes à libre accès. 



2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
F.W. Dulle ◽  
M.K. Minishi-Majanja

This research explored the awareness, usage and perspectives of Tanzanian researchers on open access as a mode of scholarly communication. A survey questionnaire targeted 544 respondents selected through stratified random sampling from a population of 1088 university researchers of the six public universities in Tanzania. With a response rate of 73%, the data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. The study reveals that the majority of the researchers were aware of and were positive towards open access. Findings further indicate that the majority of researchers in Tanzanian public universities used open access outlets more to access scholarly content than to disseminate their own research findings. It seems that most of these researchers would support open access publishing more if issues of recognition, quality and ownership were resolved. Thus many of them supported the idea of establishing institutional repositories at their respective universities as a way of improving the dissemination of local content. The study recommends that public universities and other research institutions in the country should consider establishing institutional repositories, with appropriate quality assurance measures, to improve the dissemination of research output emanating from these institutions.



Neuroglia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Butt ◽  
Delia Mihaila ◽  
Alexei Verkhratsky


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Heather Joseph

This paper is based upon the 2021 Miles Conrad Award Lecture that was given by Heather Joseph at the second annual NISO Plus conference held virtually from February 22–25, 2021. The lecture provided a brief look back at the emergence of the Open Access (OA) movement in scholarly communication beginning with the E-biomed proposal in 1999 that was shortly followed by the Budapest Declaration released on February 14, 2002, through how far it has come in almost two decades. The author notes that the initial reaction to OA was often just a quick dismissal of it as an idealistic pipe dream and as the idea began to grow in popularity, skepticism changed into hostility. OA was criticized as being too disruptive to the then-existent publishing paradigm. Yet, far from disappearing, the movement towards the open sharing of knowledge steadily advanced. Today conversations about “why” or “whether” to open up the scholarly communication system have evolved into conversations about how best to do it. The author notes that the Budapest Declaration underscored that the end goal of OA is to empower individuals and communities around the world with the ability to share their knowledge as well as to share in accessing the knowledge of others. She warns that members of the global scholarly communication community must look critically at who currently can participate in the production of knowledge, and whose voices are represented in the “global intellectual conversation” that need to be facilitated. Whose voices are still are left out because structural barriers – be they technical, financial, legal, cultural, or linguistic – prevent them from joining?





Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Uribe-Toril ◽  
José Ruiz-Real ◽  
Julia Haba-Osca ◽  
Jaime de Pablo Valenciano

Forests is a Swiss open access journal in the field of forestry and forest ecology founded in 2010. Currently, the journal celebrates its 10th anniversary. Therefore, the purpose of this research for the special issue A Decade of Forests Open Access Publishing is to present a whole bibliometric overview of the journal and highlight the state of the art of forestry as an interdisciplinary knowledge area. A bibliometric analysis of 2094 articles, reviews, editorials and corrections was conducted using two different scientific information platforms which publish indexes in online databases: Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus. The most influential countries and their relationship with funding institutions, the most leading and outstanding authors and the most significant articles published in Forests have been analyzed. A complete keyword concurrence network with a graphical visualization and a cluster analysis are adopted for identifying the main trends and opening issues to address in the coming decade, such as genetic diversity, forest productivity, resistance or resilience. This article has identified climate change, remote sensing, biomass and forest management as the main trends in forestry research during the last ten years.



2018 ◽  
Vol 79 (5) ◽  
pp. 244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Wipperman ◽  
Shawn Martin ◽  
Chealsye Bowley

With the acquisition and creation of scholarly communication platforms/infrastructure by major commercial entities, the balance of influence continues to shift. The ACRL/SPARC Forum at the 2018 ALA Midwinter Meeting brought together library stakeholders for a conversation about how the library community can reassert its influence to shape the open access publishing landscape. Panelists focused on 1) Individual action: “What can one person do?” 2) Local coordinated action: “How can one group or institution effect change?” and 3) Collective action: “How can libraries work together to provide sustainable alternatives?”1



Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document