Category Archives: oa.paywalled

A rich-world Wikipeak – Wikipedia’s future lies in poorer countries | Graphic detail | The Economist

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“This leaves the Wikipedias of most of the languages of Asia and Africa either bereft of articles or at the mercy of automation. Such sites are prone to including articles written by bots. After English, the language with the most articles on Wikipedia is Cebuano, spoken by just 20m people in the Philippines. Nearly all were translated from English by a computer program created by a physicist in Sweden.

Users frustrated by clunky machine-written prose can soon expect a reprieve. From 2010 to 2018 the number of active editors working in languages spoken in the richer half of countries in the world fell by 5%, but the corresponding figure for those spoken in the poorer half more than doubled. Wikipedia may have done the bulk of its organisation of the world’s information long ago, but most of the work towards making it universally accessible and useful still lies ahead.”

Changing the philosophy, direction, and the governance of The Breast Journal as it moves towards becoming an “Open Access” journal in 2022 – Masood – – The Breast Journal – Wiley Online Library

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Not even an abstract is OA. Excerpt from the paywalled text: 

“The conversation about transitioning The Breast Journal to an “Open Access” status was difficult for me to consider. Based on my assessment, The Breast Journal was an independent publication and despite not being a society?based journal, it was doing fine and I was not prepared to change the status of The Breast Journal. I understood the financial impact for the publisher and also the claim of making publications more accessible to all.

However, I choose to stand for my principles and not to become a part of the process that to me is lesser than what I had envisioned for my brain child The Breast Journal. As I am not prepared for The Breast Journal to become an Open Access journal on January 2022, I will step down as the Editor?in?Chief at the end of December 2021.

The transition has already started, and the process of handling of submissions, the review process, and communications with the authors will no longer take place from my office. Karen Earick the Managing Editor of The Breast Journal who has selflessly served The Breast Journal, the authors and the editorial board members will no longer be in charge. Instead, Pavikala Sunny from Wiley will replace her. Naturally, I will keep you informed of any new developments….”

Open Access Book Publishing 2020-2024 – Research and Markets

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“In today’s global market, it’s more important than ever to understand the evolution of academic publishing. Rely on the Open Access Book Publishing 2020-2024 to build your strategy in this emerging market for this year and beyond.

This report explains the origins of the open access movement, gives a timeline for its development, but most importantly, Simba Information quantifies open access book publishing as a market segment. Simba used the information it gathered through primary and secondary research to develop a financial outlook for open access book publishing with market projections through 2024. This research was conducted in conjunction with a larger study of the overall market for scholarly and professional publishing. Open Access Book Publishing 2020-2024 contains separate chapters covering the market, notable publishers and programs, and issues and forecast that include:

Exclusive analysis of market size and structure
Title growth metrics
Open access book publishing by discipline
A look at key geographic markets that are pushing the development of open access books
Exclusive market projections to 2024 and more.

Publishers and investment professionals can trust Open Access Book Publishing 2020-2024 to provide the inside intelligence needed to evaluate growth potential, understand trends affecting the industry, and size up the competition. Examples of some of the issues discussed include:

The continued evolution of open access
The impact of open access in social science and humanities vs. scientific, technical and medical
Prevailing business models and experiments
Open access mandates spread to books
Opportunity for monographs and conference proceedings
Emerging markets fertile ground for open access….”

A communication strategy based on Twitter improves article citation rate and impact factor of medical journals – ScienceDirect

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[Note even an abstract is OA.] 

“Medical journals use Twitter to optimise their visibility on the scientific community. It is by far the most used social media to share publications, since more than 20% of published articles receive at least one announcement on Twitter (compared to less than 5% of notifications on other social networks) [5] . It was initially described that, within a medical specialty, journals with a Twitter account have a higher impact factor than others and that the number of followers is correlated to the impact factor of the journal [67] . Several observational works showed that the announcement of a medical article publication on Twitter was strongly associated with its citation rate in the following years 891011 . In 2015, among anaesthesia journals, journals with an active and influential Twitter account had an higher journal impact factor and a greater number of article citations than those not embracing social media [12] . A meta-analysis of July 2020 concluded that the presence of an article on social media was probably associated with a higher number of citations [13] . Finally, two randomised studies, published in 2020 and not included in this meta-analysis, also showed that, for a given journal, articles that benefited from exposure on Twitter were 1.5 to 9 times more cited in the year following publication than articles randomised in the “no tweeting” group [1415] 

The majority of these works have only been published very recently and the strategy for using Twitter to optimise the number of citations is now a challenge for all medical journals. Several retrospective studies have looked at the impact of the use of a social media communication strategy by medical journals. They have shown that the introduction of Twitter to communicate as part of this strategy was associated with a higher number of articles consulted, a higher number of citations and shorter delays in citation after publication [1617] . Two studies (including one on anaesthesia journals) showed that journals that used a Twitter account to communicate were more likely to increase their impact factor than those that did not [1218] . Some researchers even suggest that the dissemination of medical information through social media, allowing quick and easy access after the peer-review publication process, may supplant the classical academic medical literature in the future [19] . This evolution has led to the creation of a new type of Editor in several medical journal editorial boards: the social media Editor (sometimes with the creation of a “specialised social media team” to assist him or her) [20] . This medical Editor shares, across a range of social media platforms, new journal articles with the aim of improving dissemination of journal content. Thus, beyond the scientific interest of a given article, which determines its chances of being cited, there is currently a parallel Editorial work consisting in optimising the visibility on Twitter to increase the number of citations and improve the impact factor. Some authors also start to focus on the best techniques for using Twitter and on the best ways to tweet to optimise communication, for example during a medical congress [21] ….”

 

Transparency in Clinical Trials: adding value to Paediatric Dental Research – Cenci – – International Journal of Paediatric Dentistry – Wiley Online Library

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Abstract:  Background

Even though considered as studies with high methodological power, many RCTs in paediatric dentistry do not have essential quality items in their design, development and report, making results’ reliability questionable, replication challenging to conduct, wasting time, money and efforts, and even exposing the participants to research for no benefit.

Aim

We addressed the main topics related to transparency in clinical research, with an emphasis in paediatric dentistry.

Design

We searched for all controlled clinical trials published from January 2019 up to July 2020 in the three paediatric dentistry journals with high journal Impact Factor, indexed on Medline. These papers were assessed for transparency according to Open Science practices and regarding reporting accuracy using some items required by CONSORT.

Results

53.6% of the studies declared registration, 75% had sample size calculation, 98.2% reported randomisation, and from those, 65.4% explained the randomisation method. Besides that, no study shared their data, and 6.8% were published in open access format.

Conclusions

Unfortunately, a large proportion of RCTs in paediatric dental research show a lack of transparency and reproducibility.

Reflections on the Evolving World of Periodicals – PubMed

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Abstract:  Data-Sharing Rule Finalized: Beginning in January 2023, all biomedical researchers newly funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be required to share data from their studies or explain why they are unable to do so. The new policy updates a 2003 requirement. Challenges in Achieving Replicability: The replicability of evidence for scientific claims is an important element in achieving scientific progress. Knowledge accumulation depends on reliable past findings to generate new ideas and extensions that can advance understanding. Disappearing Journals: Scholarly journals are supposed to provide a lasting record of science. Over the past two decades, however, 176 open-access journals and many papers appearing in them have disappeared from the Internet. The Conundrum of Academic Publishing: Academic publishing is in flux. Historically, dissemination of research through academic journals has been based on paid library or institutional subscriptions, with most content held behind a paywall. That is now changing with a global call for open access, a model of scholarly communication intended to increase accessibility of research results to the reader.

 

Resourcefully: Let’s End the Serials Crisis: The Serials Librarian: Vol 79, No 1-2

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“This is not the first time I’ve written about the Serials Crisis, but I would love for it to be the last. 1 The Serials Crisis is a short-hand term commonly applied to the multidecade-long effects of unsustainable serials cost increases as it affects relatively flat academic library budgets. 2 The crisis is currently in at least its fourth decade, which is to say it has defined the work of whole generations of library workers, myself included. A cursory review reveals it has been written about in the Serials Librarian at least 58 times, and referenced at least 907 times since 1981. 3 …

A quaint crisis by our current standards – the Serials Crisis was a symptom and indicator of the knowledge inequities that would explode in importance under the pressure of COVID-19. Here in the flickering last light of the inevitable destruction of the prestige economy, let’s confront the issue of access, which has always been the issue of cost. 4 …

[T]he Serials Crisis is one obnoxious fire we can put out with all this daunting, harrowing, and powerful urgency serving as a cap which deprives it of fuel….

This first installment of Resourcefully will give a quick overview of the Serials Crisis and present my preferred path forward, one that requires significant action from us all, and particularly our colleagues in publishing. Then, we can appropriately direct our attention to the bigger fires in the room….

Since we contextualize the Serials Crisis as a crisis of cost, content, and ownership, Transformative Agreements with their emphasis on costs, copyright, transparency, and transition, are the appropriate response. The issue, yet again, is consistency and parity….

I have wondered if publishing executives bemoaning piracy have contemplated how they might have avoided the rise of SciHub 15 if they had been more willing to work with libraries. Having priced libraries out of subscriptions, the costs imposed succeeded only in alienating readers from both their publications and from library services, effectively undermining both institutions. Ultimately, publishers lost revenue and libraries lost patrons. This lose-lose situation is the sad truth at the heart of the Serials Crisis itself….

It might be considered the first truly Transformative Agreement, as it would leverage a scale fit to actually transforming the marketplace itself. It would be neither a “Read-and-Publish,” nor a “Publish-and-Read,” rather it would be a “This-Is-What-It-Costs” deal for us all.

Of course, alternately, just one major publisher could make the change to signal the others, open their content and share their actual costs so we can figure out what a sustainable scholarly communication system is together. …”

NIGERIA’S LOW CONTRIBUTION TO RECOGNIZED WORLD RESEARCH LITERATURE: CAUSES AND REMEDIES: Accountability in Research: Vol 0, No ja

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Abstract:  We present a first time study on identifying the causes and remedies to Nigeria’s low contribution to research literature. A mixed research approach involving 300 academic staff from several areas of specialization in southern Nigeria was adopted, using structured questionnaire and semi-structured interview schedule. Data obtained were analysed using descriptive statistics and thematic technique. Furthermore, 43.7%, 28.6%, and 27.7% of the respondents were from the university, polytechnic, and the college of education system, respectively. While 78.4% of the respondents agreed that the high cost of open access publication in top journals influenced Nigeria’s low contribution to research literature, over 75% reported that the low contribution was due to high cost of attending international conferences. Other factors identified were stringent conditions for paper acceptance (89.7%), scarcity of relevant information about Africa (85.4%) and paucity of high impact journals in the libraries of Nigerian tertiary institutions (6.7%). Others were poor funding, non-usage of research findings by policymakers, lack of adequate facilities, and high penchant for publication in predatory journals, informed by promotion criteria not supportive of quality. Participants advocated for increased funding, reduced conference fees and entrenchment of collaboration between reputable publishers abroad and African publishers.