Open Science

Your guide to Open Access publishing and Open Science

Tag: quality
Office Desk Configuration, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, January 16, 2008 | © Courtesy of Vicky Hamilton/Flickr.

Article Review Practices of Open Access Mega-Journals Demonstrate Selectivity, Apply Widely Accepted Quality Criteria

A recent qualitative study by Spezi et al. (2018), published in Open Access in the closed-access Journal of Documentation, argues that, despite the prevalent policy of checking for manuscript academic soundness or rigour only, Open Access mega-journals employ in their article review practices more stringent criteria, such as novelty or originality, that converge with those employed by traditional journals and their peer review routines. A Blog Article by Pablo Markin. To arrive at their findings, Spezi and colleagues (2018) have conducted semi-structured interviews with 31 editorial and management representatives of 16 publishing houses comprising Open Access mega-journals and the rest. […]

Fudan University, Shanghai, China, April 26, 2008 | © Courtesy of Alva Chien/Flickr.

Open Access Journals and Institutional Repositories in Asia Continue to be Underrepresented in International Directories and Rankings

The lacking visibility of Open Access journals and repositories from the Global South, such as Asian countries, in international directories, e.g., DOAJ, can be due to the hurdles for the implementation of best practices they encounter, which limits access to knowledge, while indicating that university, publisher and funder partnerships can contribute to capacity building and academic quality in the journal publishing market around the world. A Blog Article by Pablo Markin. In their scholarly article published on May 31, 2017, Abrizah, Noorhidawati and Kiran have analyzed the presence of Asia-based Open Access institutional repositories in the Open Directory of Open […]

2011 MidSouth e-Resource Symposium at MSU Libraries, Mitchell Memorial Library, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS, USA, August 10, 2011 | © Courtesy of Mississippi State University Libraries/Flickr.

While Inclusion into Citation Indices Can Indicate Open Access Journal Quality, Its Impact on Visibility May Be Uncertain

Though scientific databases, e.g., the Web of Science, make an extensive use of citation indices, such as the Social Sciences Citation Index, into which Open Access journals are increasingly included, whether these journal and paper indices are effective may be less certain than assumed, as recent empirical data cast doubt on the impact of Open Access on citation rates. A Blog Article by Pablo Markin. Citation indices, such as those developed by Clarivate Analytics for the Web of Science, aim to include high-quality global and regional journals across a wide range of scholarly fields, while expressly arguing that this significantly […]

John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston, MA, USA, April 11, 2017 © Courtesy of Bill Ilott/Flickr.

Subscription-Based Journals Have Not Been Found to Make Significant Contributions to Post-Publication Article Quality

Recent findings suggest that a transition to Open Access publishing is not likely to have a discernible effect on the quality of scholarly articles, since no significant measurable differences have been found between pre-print papers and their final versions as articles published in toll-based journals. A Blog Article by Pablo Markin. In their article published by International Journal on Digital Libraries on February 5, 2018, and available in draft version at arXiv, a pre-print archive, from April 18, 2016, Martin Klein, Peter Broadwell, Sharon E. Farb, and Todd Grappone have cast considerable, though tentative, doubt on the claims of large […]

Mudd Hall, University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, California, USA, September 19, 2015 | © Courtesy of Ken Lund.

A Growing Number of International Open Access Initiatives Are Launched by Scientific Associations

As the august American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) founded in 1848 and publishing Science and other scientific journals, has announced on November 21, 2017, its Science Partner Journals initiative for Open Access publications, it has joined the larger trend of academic institutions making transitions to Open Access publishing. A Blog Article by Pablo Markin. Seeking to enter into collaborative relations with international scientific societies, institutions and foundations, the AAAS seeks to position its Science Partner Journals digital program in the high-quality sector of Open Access publishing, while banking on its reputation, visibility and expertise, in order to […]

Biochemical Baoding Balls Generate Power (Still Life), July 7, 2015 | © Courtesy of Surian Soosay via Flickr.

Case Study Findings Show Transitioning Scientific Journals to Gold Open Access is Feasible and Sustainable

The successful conversion of RSC Advances published by the Royal Society of Chemistry into Gold Open Access since October 2016 indicates the maturity of the Open Access model, its acceptance by the scientific community and the continued growth of the journal after the transition to Open Access. A Blog Article by Pablo Markin. In their recent research report published on March 2017, Emma Wilson and Jamie Humphrey describe the effects that the transition of RSC Advances, a major journal in the field of chemistry, to Gold Open Access has had on the journal performance in terms of article submissions, topics […]