On 12 January, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released A Framework for Federal Scientific Integrity Policy and Practice, a roadmap that will help strengthen scientific integrity policies and practices across the federal government. Read the entire press release here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2023/01/12/ostp-releases-framework-for-strengthening-federal-scientific-integrity-policies-and-practices/
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a Fact Sheet on 11 January detailing current efforts and proposed policy changes to promote open science. For more information, see the press release here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2023/01/11/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-new-actions-to-advance-open-and-equitable-research/
NIH has issued a new Final NIH Policy for Data Management and Sharing, which will require NIH funded researchers to prospectively submit a plan outlining how scientific data from their research will be managed and shared. On January 25, 2023, the new policy will come into effect and replace the 2003 NIH Data Sharing Policy currently in effect.
To help the research community prepare for implementation of the new policy, NIH also provides the following supplemental information: Elements of an NIH Data Management and Sharing Plan, Allowable Costs for Data Management and Sharing, and Selecting a Repository for Data Resulting from NIH-Supported Research. Visit the NIH page on public access and open science to learn more.
Did you know that adding hyphens to the title of your published papers can have a negative impact on your citation counts, h-values, impact factors, and other metrics? And that the negative effect is independent of the quality of the article and its underlying research?
A recent study conducted by Zhi Quan Zhou, T.H. Tse, and Matt Witheridge of the University of Hong Kong and the University of Wollongong (Australia) demonstrates these surprising results. Their resulting article, "Metamorphic Robustness Testing: Exposing Hidden Defects in Citation Statistics and Journal Impact Factors," was recently published in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering and (not surprisingly) contains no hyphens in the title.
A summary of the results can be found here: https://phys.org/news/2019-05-hyphens-paper-titles-citation-journal.html. The DOI of the full article in IEEE is https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2019.2915065. This is an open access article.
A concise overview of the history of academic publishing and the various responses to the current crisis can be accessed here.
Covered topics include:
Over the last few months, Europe’s Plan S and the University of California’s cancelation of their Elsevier subscriptions have focused attention on the business models of major academic publishers like Elsevier. At the same time, and perhaps not as widely reported, a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission against the Indian publisher OMICS (see here or here) calls attention to the detrimental and controversial business practices of some open access publishers, sometimes referred to as “predatory publishers.” This action is seen by some as a victory, but Adam Marcus argues that the judgment may not have any real or lasting effect on these practices (read the article here).
All of this underscores the importance of deliberate and careful planning when choosing where and how to publish the results of your research (see also my previous post here). We at Galvin Library can help you navigate the changing academic publishing landscape and identify reputable and socially responsible venues for publishing your research. Email us at library@iit.edu for more information or to set up an appointment to talk with your librarian.
Increasingly, I find myself discussing open access publishing (OA) with both faculty and students. While attitudes at Illinois Tech have generally been changing in favor of OA (see our video here), a number of persistent myths and misconceptions about OA keep cropping up. Unfortunately, these get in the way of discussing OA on its actual merits.
Open Access is too important a topic to allow its discussion to be guided or influenced by myths or misunderstandings. To help dispel these persistent myths, experts from both academia and the publishing industry have created a number good resources. For example, Editage, an editorial services provider, created an excellent video that busts a number of OA myths (watch it here). Additional myth-busting resources are listed below.
There are many terms associated with Open Access that describe different levels of openness. This post can be used to clarify what some of these terms mean.
Green Open Access- a subscription journal that allows self archiving of pre-prints or post-prints in repositories. Ex. Advanced Engineering Informatics
Gold Open Access - a journal with fully accessible open access articles made possible under the model which an article publication fee is paid by the author, institution, or a third party. Ex. PLOS ONE, Journal of Physics Communications
Hybrid Open Access - a subscription journal that gives the option of making an article open access to readers with a fee paid for by the author or author's institutions (author processing fee). Not all articles in these journals are Open Access. Ex. International Journal of Automation and Computing, Algorithmica
pre-print - author's copy of an article before it's been reviewed by a publisher.
post-print - author's copy of an article after it's been reviewed and corrected by a publisher, but before it has been formatted for publication or post-reviewed.
If you want to give an article Green Open Access but are not sure if the publisher allows it, use the SHERPA/RoMEO database to find out. If you would like to publish a pre-print or post-print, you can use Illinois Tech's institutional repository which is managed by Galvin Library.
The recent announcement that the University of California System has canceled their multi-million dollar subscription contract with Elsevier (see here or our previous post) highlights a new Open Access publishing model termed “Read and Publish” or RAP.
RAP is just one of many new publishing models introduced in the past few years with the aim of making the results of research open and accessible. With RAP, an institution pays an annual fee to the publisher that includes both access to traditional journal content and a blanket publishing charge so that all affiliated researchers can publish without access restrictions or paywalls. The key differences between RAP and other models are:
RAP's promise is that it will substantively increase access to an institution's research as well as increase the overall pool of open access research articles. To this end, RAP has been used already in the Europe (see here or here) and here in the US by MIT (see here), but some researchers are concerned that RAP is not necessarily a good deal, citing how, amongst other things, it bolsters the huge multi-journal access packages that so many universities are moving away from; that it is not transparent to the institutions; and that it doesn’t necessarily reduce costs (see here or here). The concept is still so new, however, that it may be several years before enough data can be collected on RAP to see if it truly delivers on its promise.
This week the University of California (UC) 10 campus system (which accounts for nearly 10% of all US publishing output) decided to cancel its Elsevier subscription after months of contract negotiations. UC is committed to open access and set a goal to make research immediately available to readers at no cost. Elsevier would only make this possible by charging authors large publishing fees on top of the university's multi-million dollar subscription. UC's contract terms were to integrate subscription charges and open access publishing fees which would make open access the default for articles written by UC researchers. The Academic Senate at UC issued a statement endorsing UC's position.
Read the press release from UC Office of the President here.