Open Science

Your guide to Open Access publishing and Open Science

Tag: PLOS
Open Access 2014-19, October 20, 2014 | © Courtesy of Hanne Pearce/Flickr.

Open Access Publishers Team Up to Promote Cost Transparency, in a Bid to Speed Up the Transition to Open Science

As the regulatory pressure for a blanket implementation of Open Access standards from the European Commission grows, the Fair Open Access Alliance has united leading Open Access journal and book publishers into a consortium dedicated to the transition to Open Access and the transparency of publication procedures. A Blog Article by Pablo Markin. Since the European Commission (EC) mandates that in European Union countries scientific output should be published in Open Access by default come 2020, it has also invited external bids for setting up and running an Open Access publication platform that will effectively compete with existing publishers in […]

The Closed-Access Area, Manchester Town Hall, Manchester, United Kingdom, May 22, 2017 | © Courtesy of Ruth.

The Difference between Open Access and Paywall-Based Publishing Models Sharpens, as Preprints Gain in Legitimacy

Even though costs associated with Open Access publishing have been found to grow, as preprints gain in increasing recognition in funding, grant and fellowship applications, Open Access publishers, such as Hindawi, may be poised to benefit from the associated disruptive change in the publishing industry. A Blog Article by Pablo Markin. As illegal file sharing begins to affect the subscription-based journal publishing market, it can both hasten a wide-ranging adoption of Open Access by both publishers and researchers and give impetus to renewed efforts to shore up the paywall-based models against challengers. More specifically, as the interview with Daniel Himmelstein […]

Preprint Exhibits, January 20, 2007 | © Courtesy of Jeffrey Beall.

Recent Pre-Print Findings Cast Doubt and Spark Discussion on the Citation Performance of Open Access Journals

While Green and hybrid Open Access articles have been tentatively found to out-perform paywall-protected articles based on their citation statistics, Gold Open Access articles show lower citation levels than subscription access articles, which could be due to revenue performance differences between respective publishers. A Blog Article by Pablo Markin. In the United States, since the early 2000s print publications have been witnessing steeply declining advertising revenues, such as from more than 60 billion USD in 2000 to less than inflation-adjusted 20 bullion USD in 2012, after the absolute majority of which have begun to offer Internet-based Open Access to their […]

BCM112 hashtag network visualisation 24 05 2017 Week Twelve, May 24, 2017 | © Courtesy of Chris Moore.

Alternative Measures of Scholarly Impact are Increasingly Adopted by Funders and Publishers

Digitization increasingly makes it possible to develop and apply scientific article-level impact metrics, rather than rely on journal-level measures of influence on the research community. A Blog Article by Pablo Markin. While journal impact factor metrics have been and continue to be used to assess the quality of publications that scholars publish, it appears that the primarily digital format in which most scholarly articles are published and the attendant article-level data that can be retrieved via the Internet can make it possible to devise article-level impact measures. A relatively recent example of this is the Relative Citation Ratio (RCR) that […]

Code for America, PLOS open access hackathon, June 23, 2012 | © Courtesy of mk30.

The Impact of Market Forces on Open Access Journal Publishers

As open access journal publication is increasingly becoming mainstream, article processing charges experience pressure to approach the equilibrium prices in the open access market. A Blog Article by Pablo Markin. In recent years, as open access (OA) publishing has evolved into a mainstream phenomenon, it has, however, remained restricted to a market niche within the larger academic journal publishing landscape. This has both reduced the impact of open access on the equilibrium prices in the latter market, as indicated by article processing charges (APCs), and reduced the pressure of market forces on open access publishers. Yet, as a recent study […]