Current market rates for scholarly publishing services

For decades, the supra-inflation increase of subscription prices for scholarly journals has concerned scholarly institutions. After years of fruitless efforts to solve this “serials crisis”, open access has been proposed as the latest potential solution. However, also the prices for open access publishing are high and are rising well beyond inflation. What has been missing from the public discussion so far is a quantitative approach to determine the actual costs of efficiently publishing a scholarly article using state-of-the-art technologies, such that informed decisions can be made as to appropriate price levels. Here we provide a granular, step-by-step calculation of the costs associated with publishing primary research articles, from submission, through peer-review, to publication, indexing and archiving. We find that these costs range from less than US$200 per article in modern, large scale publishing platforms using post-publication peer-review, to about US$1,000 per article in prestigious journals with rejection rates exceeding 90%. The publication costs for a representative scholarly article today come to lie at around US$400. These results appear uncontroversial as they not only match previous data using different methodologies, but also conform to the costs that many publishers have openly or privately shared. We discuss the numerous additional non-publication items that make up the difference between these publication costs and final price at the more expensive, legacy publishers.

Research libraries as digital publishers: The foreign experience

The author discusses the current experience of building the service of digital science publishing obtained by the libraries in the Western countries. She emphasizes that this process is incorporated into further informatization of libraries and their increasing role in managing science data. The digital publications integrate a number of interrelated programs comprising the whole cycle of scientific data management accomplished within the wider context of innovations. Digital publishing is a new type of library activities; it requires integrating competences of modern librarians (i.e. content selection, data supervising, metadata management, building digital collections, their preservation and archiving) and publishers (monitoring new trends in science and technology, selecting materials for publication, abstracting, scientific editing, developing marketing strategies).For the first time in the domestic library studies, the dynamics of this service in foreign countries is examined based on Library Publishing Directory for 2013– 2018. The author compares digital publishing services in four university libraries in different world regions and offers the findings of preliminary analysis of online publication services in foreign research libraries.

The Difficult Way to Publish a Research Paper

BACKGROUND: The authors aim to publish the results of their studies in peer-reviewed targeted international journals with a high impact-factor as possible, but they are also exposing to “predatory” publishers. AIM: The aim of the study was to offer some advices for authors to help to identify relevant medical journals, avoid “predatory” journals and publishers, use intermediary services, know a journal policy, and expectations of good journal editor(s). RECOMMENDATIONS: During the publication process authors should find suitable journals, assume a risk to encounter “predatory” or “hijacked” journals, know the advantages and disadvantages of using intermediary publishing services, understand expectations of editor(s), and make payment for article processing. CONCLUSIONS: The advices can help many researchers to publish their papers in relevant journals with cited indexes, and avoid many problems within the publication process.

The difficult way to publish a research paper

<p><b>Background</b> Authors aim to publish the results of their studies in peer-reviewed targeted international journals with a high impact factor as possible, but they are also exposing to ‘predatory’ publishers. Offering some tips to publish papers, identifying relevant journals, and avoiding problems within submitting.</p> <p><b>Results</b> During submitting authors should find suitable journals, assume a risk to encounter ‘predatory’ or ‘hijacked’ journals, know the advantages/ disadvantages of using intermediary publishing services, understand expectations of editor(s), and make a payment.</p> <b>Conclusions</b> The tips help many researchers to publish their papers in relevant journals with cited indexes, and avoid problems within submitting.

The difficult way to publish a research paper

<p><b>Background</b> Authors aim to publish the results of their studies in peer-reviewed targeted international journals with a high impact factor as possible, but they are also exposing to ‘predatory’ publishers. Offering some tips to publish papers, identifying relevant journals, and avoiding problems within submitting.</p> <p><b>Results</b> During submitting authors should find suitable journals, assume a risk to encounter ‘predatory’ or ‘hijacked’ journals, know the advantages/ disadvantages of using intermediary publishing services, understand expectations of editor(s), and make a payment.</p> <b>Conclusions</b> The tips help many researchers to publish their papers in relevant journals with cited indexes, and avoid problems within submitting.

Preprint as the Material for an Overlay Journal

The Open access movement has a long history. In 2002 the Budapest Open access initiative was first announced. However, the problem of Open access has not yet been fully and definitively resolved. In 2018 The European Union has adopted Plan S, which calls for making Open access a reality by 2020. Plan S emphasizes the importance of self-archiving of articles and the role of Preprint’s archives (servers) for scientific results placement. It is noted that Preprint archives have a great potential for editorial and publishing innovations. Scientific journals with limited reader access that operate on a commercial basis do not give up their positions. But even here we see some progress. Journals have become less rigid in their policy towards preprints and post-prints. More and more foreign scientists are becoming adherents of the "Fair open access" movement, which offers a new organizational solution. The journal must have a scientific organization or non-profit Foundation as a founder, that hires a group of executors to provide editorial and publishing services. Editors and publishers should not have their own commercial interests. The scientific journal should be funded from the general contribution of organizations. The article considers a modern type of online scientific journal — the overlay journal. The cost of an issue of the overlay journal is so low that the journal can easily implements the "free for the author, free for the reader" scheme. The overlay journal is based on the public servers of preprints. The online overlay journal reviews the article received from the archive. If the article is accepted for publication, the article metadata is published on the journal website, and the full text of corrected article is re-archived. This way of working does not overload the archive functionality, but it allows to reduce the financial burden on the overlay journal.

Fatigue Evaluation of API 12F Shop-Welded Tanks With a New Roof-to-Shell Junction Detail

The American Petroleum Institute (API) provides a series of standards and specifications on storage tanks, in which the API 12F specification provides 12 tank designs that can be fabricated in the shop and transported to the field. The nominal capacity of the 12 API 12F tank designs ranges from 90 bbl (14.3 m3) to 1000 bbl (158.99 m3). The minimum required thickness and operational pressure levels that each tank case can sustain are given in Table 1 of the current 13th edition of API 12F (API, 2019, “API 12F Specification for Shop-Welded Tanks for Storage of Production Liquids,” 13th ed., API Publishing Services, Washington, DC, Standard No. API 12F). The objective of this study is to estimate the fatigue life of API 12F tanks under normal operation pressure cycles following the procedure presented in ASME VIII-2. The stored liquid product specific gravity is assumed to be 1.2 when the liquid height is half of the tank height, while the specific gravity is assumed to be 0.7 when the stored liquid height is 18 in. (460 mm). Meanwhile, a new roof–shell attachment detail is proposed in this study, the new rectangular cleanout junction detail presented in the 13th edition of API 12F is modeled, and various component thickness combinations are considered to investigate the effect of component thickness on fatigue life. The roof–shell joint (top junction) and shell–bottom plate (bottom junction) are studied by axisymmetric models under axisymmetric idealization as they are away from the cleanout junction, while the cleanout junction is studied by applying a submodeling technique. Stress classification is performed at each location of interest to obtain the stress components to calculate the stress range within each loading cycle that is needed to perform fatigue evaluation. The results and discussion about fatigue evaluation of API 12F tanks are presented in this report.

Current market rates for scholarly publishing services

For decades, the supra-inflation increase of subscription prices for scholarly journals has concerned scholarly institutions. After years of fruitless efforts to solve this “serials crisis”, open access has been proposed as the latest potential solution. However, the prices for open access publishing are also high and are rising well beyond inflation. What has been missing from the public discussion so far is a quantitative approach to determine the actual costs of efficiently publishing a scholarly article using state-of-the-art technologies, such that informed decisions can be made as to appropriate price levels. Here we provide a granular, step-by-step calculation of the costs associated with publishing primary research articles, from submission, through peer-review, to publication, indexing and archiving. We find that these costs range from less than US$200 per article in modern, large-scale publishing platforms using post-publication peer-review, to about US$1,000 per article in prestigious journals with rejection rates exceeding 90%. The publication costs for a representative scholarly article today come to lie at around US$400. We discuss the additional non-publication items that make up the difference between publication costs and final price.

INDICATORS OF PUBLICATION ACTIVITY OF LEGAL SCHOLARS THROUGH THE PRISM OF LEGISLATIVE REQUIREMENTS

Legally established criteria for assessing the quality of scientific work of a scientist in Ukraine as well as the obligation to comply with them currently raise concerns of legal scholars. The purpose of the article is to analyze the legal regulation for performance evaluation of scholars, conducting legal studies, to outline the potential adverse consequences of implementing such provisions, as well as to analyze the practice of other states that have already faced similar challenges. Based on the results of comparative analysis, the author scrutinizes types of negative consequences of the use of quantitative indicators to assess the productivity of individual scientists and research institutions in other countries and suggests possible ways to improve the situation in Ukraine. It is stated that the obligation to publish the results of scientific work in a specified number of articles in journals indexed in the scientometric databases Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection, has some negative consequences for scholars in the field of law. Foreign publishers of journals indexed in the mentioned scientometric databases have a limited interest in Ukrainian legal research of national nature. This complicates the publication of results and gives rise to some negative practices of publication in non-core journals, more expensive publishing services, the emergence of "predatory journals". The problem can be, in particular, solved by changing the restrictive interpretation of legal requirements on the need to publish scientific results indexed exclusively in the two scientometric databases. Also, the specifics of law as a field of science of predominantly national importance should be taken into account. It is proposed to expand the list of scientometric databases recognized, as well as journals that are allowed to publish scientific results of scholars in the field of Law.

The Dynamics of Some Market Indicators

The purpose of this article is to study the dynamics of some market indicators for “paid” publications. The authors analyze scientific articles, data from Google Trends on requests characterizing the dynamics of the market, data from student journals published by top sites offering paid publishing services. The main research method is content analysis of data using automated tools of the MS Office suite and the VBA environment. The authors note that supply and demand in the “paid” publications market are formed under the influence of state policy in the field of university ranking, stimulating scientists and students. According to the data regarding inquiries over 5 years, there has been a positive trend. The popularity of the «RSI publication» request has grown by 300% since January 1, 2017. The authors also show an increase in the selected student journals. The authors note the steady growth of the market for “paid” publications and point out that a number of measures applied do not work or may even adversely affect the development of Russian science. The authors discuss possible measures to remedy the situation, agreeing with the position of some scientists and objecting to others.