Some pitfalls of OA discussions – an opinion piece

This is an attempt to vent some frustrations accumulated over 25 years of following – and participating in – OA debates.

The Research Data Alliance in Norway

The Research Data Alliance (RDA) is a neutral international network aiming at promoting data sharing and data-driven research. The efforts of RDA are organized in a number of groups, including national nodes, where contributors work together to develop and adopt approaches that foster the uptake of standards and good practice of research data management through all stages of the data lifecycle. Since 2019, Norway has had its national RDA group. This article gives a short introduction to the Norwegian RDA group. In section 1 we provide some background information about RDA. Section 2 describes the Norwegian RDA group, including its background and organisational structure, as well as past and future activities.

A brief saga about open access books

Monographs and academic books are increasingly becoming a focus point in the open access debate and policy developments. This article gives a personal account of the rationale behind open access book publishing and open infrastructures for books. It elaborates on the need for collaboration between the actors in the community in order to sustain open access book publishing to the benefit of the scholarly community and the public at large.

Unholy goals and flawed methods

A problematic practice has evolved, which is threatening to undermine research in the social sciences and humanities. Bibliometrics is often claimed to be able to measure researchers’ efficiency. We find this quite problematic and, in this article, we illustrate this point by discussing two different bibliometric practices. One is the so-called h-index, the other the so-called BFI-points (Den bibliometriske Forskningsindikator, The Bibliometric Research Indicator). The BFI was never intended to be used for evaluating individual researchers and their productivity. Yet since its introduction in 2008 especially the social sciences and the humanities experience a pressure to deliver “BFI points” and academic job advertisements within the social sciences and the humanities increasingly mention expectations for people’s past and/or future production of BFI points. The h-index is even more problematic because no one academic database covers all the research publications in the world. The whole thing is completely disorganized, and as many as five different h-indexes exist for each researcher. What makes the h-index even more useless is that it will not let you make comparisons across disciplines. Furthermore, like other simple measurements, it is liable to be manipulated and misinterpreted. On that background, it is remarkable that numbers extracted from incomplete databases are used for describing the quality of researchers and their institutions.

Some highlights from the PKP 2019 International Scholarly Publishing Conference

This an overview of the PKP 2019 International Scholarly Publishing Conference that took place at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain) on November 20–22, 2019.

Impressions from the 14th Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing 2019

The 14th Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing 2019 took place at UiT The Arctic University of Norway on November 27–28, 2019. This short article reports some impressions from the conference. The full materials of the conference, including presentation slides and video recordings are available at https://doi.org/10.7557/scs.2019.1.

Norwegian Read & Publish agreements – an overview

During the course of 2019, Unit (the Norwegian Directorate for ICT and Joint Services in Higher Education & Research), who acts as the Norwegian coordinator of Open Access and licence negotiations, landed Open Access agreements with the four major academic publishers. This article gives an overview of the key elements in the agreements with Wiley, Elsevier, Springer Nature and Taylor & Francis.

Implementation of Open Science in Lithuania

The number of open science policies being adopted in Europe by universities and research institutions is constantly increasing, however many European countries face difficulties while implementing open science practically. This publication reveals the Lithuanian landscape of open science policies and institutional involvement in open science practices. Prerequisites for sustainable and consistent open science implementation such as open science infrastructure, incentives for researchers, research assessment, and repositories' compliance with EC requirements on a national level are discussed.

Need for a change in scientific publishing

Outsourcing of scientific publishing to scientific journals is problematic, both economically and academically. It is expensive, slow, non-transparent, unbalanced and excluding. Academic library subscriptions contribute substantially to the publishing companies’ 30-40% profit. There is general consensus that scientific reports should be openly accessible on the Internet. This is generally not the case with articles published in the traditional scientific journals. Open access journals are multiplying fast, but many are of questionable quality. Although open access publishing is less expensive than journal subscription, the article processing charges (APC) of open access journals are still high (up to 5,000 USD) and should be reduced. Science is expensive, scientific publishing should not be expensive.The impression the present system, with its editors and anonymous reviewers, conveys of quality and objectivity, is partly an illusion. The basis for decision on manuscripts is too thin and the balance of power is too uneven.Instead of a complicated fallible system, a simple fallible system is suggested: web-based, indexed and searchable repositories funded and organized by accountable and non-profit institutions/organizations where researchers may upload reports that have been thoroughly reviewed by and are supported by one or more competent, impartial, unbiased and named expert peers chosen by the authors themselves. After publication, reports may be further openly evaluated and commented online by named researchers in the field. Article processing charges should be moderate. Such a system would be simple, reasonable, fast, transparent, balanced, including, efficient, and adequately quality secured.