5 Must-Reads to Understand How Open Access Can Shape Research on Covid-19
COVID-19 could kill the for-profit science publishing model. That would be a good thing.
by Michael Hilrzik
LA Times, March 3, 2020
“Of all the ways the current coronavirus crisis has upended commonplace routines — such as disrupting global supply chains and forcing workers to stay at home — one of the most positive is how it demonstrates the value of open access to scientific research.”
Coronavirus and Ebola: could open access medical research find a cure?
by Rachael Pells
The Guardian, January 22, 2020
“In other words, hiding research papers behind a subscription paywall – as is the case for an estimated two-thirds of all research – could be killing people. There are countless examples of how failure to share science openly can have a devastating impact on public health.”
‘A completely new culture of doing research.’ Coronavirus outbreak changes how scientists communicate
by Kai Kupferschmidt
Science Magazine, February 26, 2020
Two of the largest biomedical preprint servers, bioRxiv and medRxiv, “are currently getting around 10 papers each day on some aspect of the novel coronavirus,” says John Inglis, head of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, which runs both servers. The deluge “has been a challenge for our small teams … [they] are working evenings and weekends.”
The hunt for a coronavirus cure is showing how science can change for the better
by
So while cities are locked down and borders are closed in response to the coronavirus outbreak, science is becoming more open. This openness is already making a difference to scientists’ response to the virus and has the potential to change the world.
But it’s not as simple as making every research finding available to anyone for any purpose. Without care and responsibility, there is a danger that open science can be misused or contribute to the spread of misinformation.
Coronavirus outbreak puts ‘open science’ under a microscope
by Sabin Russel
Hutch News Stories, February 13, 2020
Aided by social media, data and scientific chatter are circulating faster and more freely, for better or for worse. In the worst cases, unproven claims can be hijacked by traffickers in fear, sensation and fraud.
Inglis said responsible journalists rely on a network of trusted, expert sources — just as scientists do among their own colleagues — to assess the veracity and importance of preprint research.
Weekly Open Access Must-Reads (11-15 November 2019)
A selection of this week’s news, opinions and feature articles about open access, academia and the publishing industry.
1. Room for everyone’s talent
Erkennen en waarderen in de wetenschap gaan drastisch veranderen (in Dutch)
By Sicco de Knecht in Science Guide
Date: 13 November 2019
Read it here in English or here in Dutch
Dutch public knowledge institutions and funders call for a modernization of the academic system of recognition and rewards, in particular in five key areas: education, research, impact, leadership and (for university medical centres) patient care. Sicco de Knecht writes, for ScienceGuide, that a culture change and national and international cooperation is required to achieve such modernization.
“Many academics feel there is a one-sided emphasis on research performance, frequently leading to the undervaluation of the other key areas such as education, impact, leadership and (for university medical centres) patient care. This puts strain on the ambitions that exist in these areas. The assessment system must be adapted and improved in each of the areas and in the connections between them.”
2. If we choose to align open access to research with geo-political borders we negate the moral value of open access
By Martin Paul Eve in LSE Impact Blog
Date: 11 November 2019
Read it here
While, at its core, the open access movement is intended to promote free access to knowledge to everyone, independently of social status, earnings or location, some of its proponents have been proposing geographical curbs on the openness of OA.
In this opinion piece, Martin Paul Eve argues that such measures would undermine “the moral imperative of open access to enable widest possible level of engagement with research.”
“An eye for an eye, a famous Indian once apocryphally noted, though, makes the world blind. Aside from the technical unworkability of the proposal – VPNs provide easy circumvention of geolocation blocking – and the fact that restricting access to those from outside the EU could have truly damaging consequences, particularly in fields such as public health, a retaliatory and vengeful approach undermines the gift-like nature of OA articulated by Peter Suber.”
3. Key takeaway from a panel on the impact of Open Access: It is up to librarians to make it happen
By Mirela Roncevic in No Shelf Required
Date: 14 November 2019
Read it here.
“Do researchers have access to freely available academic content as much as we assume they do? Do they know where to find it? How easy is it for them to find it?”. Mirela Roncevic gives us her key takeaways as a moderator of the global panel “Break on Through to the Open Side”, centred around the question of whether Open Access (OA) is indeed prioritizing the needs of science and research.
Peter Mitchell (IntechOpen), Andras Hall, (Library and Information Center of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Vivian Rosa Storti (Institutional Repository of Sao Paulo State University, Brazil), and Sven Fund, (Knowledge Unlatched) discussed the challenges of the publication market, the need to raise awareness of OA funding, the various licenses and degrees of OA, the usage of OA books worldwide, and much more.
The recording of the panel is available here.
Open access has increasingly become the new norm. Countries and research funders are embracing open access. Many set targets to reach 100% open access before 2020. However, issues related to equitable sharing, diversity and inclusion is not fully addressed, according to a statement by SPARC.
Open access should serve the need of all scholarly communities and research output consumers in an equitable way. The challenge in this front so far has been what is open access to an institution might not be the case for others. For instance, students and staff members have free access to their own institutional repositories. Nonetheless, due to log in requirements, individuals without login access are hindered to access articles. There are repositories trying to make open access as open as possible, nevertheless.
It seems that open access advocacy groups are realizing deficiency related to open access equity and inclusion. Emphasizing on the need for equitable sharing as the theme for International Open Access Week 2018 underscores this. Brining equity to the front might help institutions, research funders and policy makers to set equitable sharing of scholarly output as one of their top agenda items.
French research institutions, following the measure taken by their counterparts in Germany, refused to agree on a new deal with Springer, one of the leading academic journals publishers. As a result, there is no new contract between the French research institutions and Springer Nature since the beginning of 2018.
According to Times Higher Education report, Couperin, an organization representing the interests of more than 250 French institutions, and Springer Nature discussed over issues pertinent to signing a new deal for more than a year. Nevertheless, the discussion failed to bring the two negotiating parties closer. It ended with a disagreement.
For years, universities and research institutions have struggled to cope up with growing journal subscription fees. Obviously, the source of contentions between Springer Nature and French institutions is over the cost of journal subscriptions. Though Couperin demanded lower subscription fees, Springer Nature refused to accept it; rather it demands fee increase. Moreover, research funders in the UK also have concerns over the ever-increasing and unsustainable cost of subscriptions. However, Springer Nature argues that this kind of challenge has a limited impact on their business because the negotiation does not target all the journals they publish.
There is a growing assertiveness from research institutions. Standing up to the traditional publishers such as Elsevier and Springer Nature and challenging the status quo has become the new norm.
It is serial crisis, high rate of journal subscription fees in the 1990s, that ushered a new era of open access. Open access has been promoted as a solution that reduces subscription burden and also removes access barriers to scholarly materials. Read more of Times Higher Education
Open Access Academic Books are More Downloaded and Cited
A research conducted by Springer Nature reveals that publishing academic books on open access platforms have many benefits. This report, according to Springer Nature, is the first of its kind to make a comparative analysis of open access and non-open access academic books. The study highlights the benefits open access books has provided to authors, publishers, funders and to a society at large.
The research used three metrics to measure the impact of open access academic books: downloads, citations and online mentions. In addition to these quantitative measures, Springer Nature also investigated the motivations and experiences with open access of researchers in a qualitative manner, by interviewing researchers and funders.
Results of the quantitative research
Most importantly, this study finds that:
- open access books are downloaded seven times more
- over the past four years the number of citations that open access books received is 50% higher
- open access books are mentioned online 10 times more
Results of the qualitative research
The interviews with funders show that the open access requirements put in place by funders are ethically motivated. Funders find it primarily important that the results from the research they funded disseminates to a large audience and is without access barriers.
The interviews with the researchers, on the other hand, shows that open access publishing was not solely ethically motivated. Researchers care most about visibility of their research output. They desire that their work gets disseminated to the widest possible audience and that this work gets cited more.
However, the researchers that were interviewed are not convinced about the benefits of open access to achieve wider dissemination and more citations. Although the interviewed acknowledged the quantitative results of the study, they pointed out that the causality is not proven. Other reason for the increased downloads and citations of open access scholarly work were suggested, such as authors reputation and the topic of the books that are open access.
Isn’t this skeptical attitude of these researchers slightly ironic? Indeed, this study doesn’t prove causality. But knowing that 1) open access removes an access barrier, 2) open access books are downloaded and used more, can we really not infer (1+1=2) that open access is increasing visibility? Are we not ‘scientific’ enough if we believe this inference? Or are researchers perhaps too skeptical stressing the lack of evidence for causality?