Open Access vs Predator
Predatory Open Access publishers on the rise
The increase in so-called “predatory” Open Access publishers is posing a threat to the integrity of Open Access publishing. Predatory Open Access publishers charge authors high publishing fees without providing proper editorial and peer review services. They are abusing the opportunity created by the Gold Open Access publishing model which requires authors to pay article processing charges.
Since 2010 the number of predatory Open Access publishers has shown a sharp increase, according to Finland’s Hanken School of Economics. Authors of the research, Cenyu Shen and BO-Christer Bjork, found out that in 2014 alone predatory Open Access publishers had dumped more than 420,000 articles on the market. This shows a nearly 800% increase from the year 2010. The findings of the research are based on a detailed analysis of 613 Open Access journals.
The whole idea behind Open Access publishing is to give people free access to research output for the benefit of science and society. Unfortunately, some Open Access publishers are focused on serving individual or company interests. Their primary motive is to make a profit. Their existence poses a threat to Open Access publishing and the movement. Researchers and authors need to start identifying them.
There are various ways of identifying predatory Open Access publishers. Mr. Jeffrey Beall created a set of criteria for this: editorial quality, publishing standards, integrity and business management. He used these criteria, among many others, to label hundreds of journals as predatory ones. These criteria were used by the researchers to examine the practices of predatory Open Access publishers and also to find out the danger that they are posing to Open Access publishing in general.
Predatory Open Access publishers have developed faster and cheaper publishing models by drastically lowering the quality of their peer review and editing processes. On average they charge authors 178 USD to publish articles within 2 to 3 months from the date of submission. Meanwhile, the average time to publish an article on reputable Open Access journals is 5.9 months.
The research revealed that those predatory publishers mainly prey on authors from Asia and Africa. Nearly 77 percent of the authors exposed to such abuse are researchers from those two regions. India is where the vast majority of predatory publishers are based. This is not surprising at all, as nearly 35 percent of the authors who are abused by the predators are from the same country.
What exposes the authors from these regions to abuse on such a massive scale? Firstly, predatory publishers promise a fast track to publication. This is appealing to many researchers who would like to publish as many papers as possible. Publishing many papers is positively correlated with promotion and greater name recognition. Secondly, their article processing fees are on average far below the industry standard. Both factors are strong incentives for authors from developing regions choose a predatory publisher.
Coupled with the pre-existing concerns over the quality of Open Access journals, the damaging effect predatory publishers might have on Open Access can be far reaching; both in terms of quality and integrity. Shen and Bjork write, “Predatory publishers are causing unfounded negative publicity for Open Access publishing in general.” Perceived lack of quality of Open Access journals is already one of the major reasons mentioned by several authors not to publish on Open Access platforms. Doubtlessly, predatory Open Access publishers are aggravating the negative perceptions of articles published in Open Access, in addition to casting a big shadow over the quality and reputation of Open Access journals and publishers.
Authors can play a significant role in terms of identifying predatory Open Access publishers and denying them the opportunity to prosper. Taking necessary precautions against predatory Open Access publishing serves two purposes: First, it protects authors from the predators. Secondly, authors’ engagement helps protect the quality, integrity and reputation of Open Access publishing.
References:
Scholarly Open Access: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers
Shen C, & Björk BC (2015). ‘Predatory’ open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics.BMC medicine, 13 PMID: 26423063
FAO plans to launch open access agricultural data portal
The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) announced that it will launch an Open Access portal for agricultural data in October.
The agricultural data portal, once launched, will contain both raw and analyzed satellite data. It will be easily and freely accessible for everyone. The data and information from this Open Access portal will have far reaching impact for water management and improve agricultural productivity. The data portal should contribute towards the creation of sustainable agriculture. According to FAO, countries in the Near East, North Africa and others that are prone to recurrent droughts especially stand to benefit.
Remote Sensing, consisting in part of satellite imagery, is a revolutionary new method of data collection. The collected data can be used to analyze the level of surface and ground water, health of crops, soil moisture and the level of precipitation. All are essential ingredients for agriculture and water management. The information extracted from the satellite imagery can be passed onto farmers in the field for practical application. There will be data on the continental level, the country (river basins) level and the irrigation schemes level.
Information Era
This is the information era. We know how important information is for almost everything we do on a daily basis. But the power and potential of information can only be realized if access to information is guaranteed. The ultimate goal of the Open Access movement, to facilitate the free flow of information, can only be realized by bringing down the pay-walls which stand in the way of sharing information and knowledge.
Remote Sensing data is an indispensable tool for agricultural development. But it is also prohibitively expensive, especially for real time, up-to-date data. Remote Sensing data has been trapped behind pay-walls, just like other scholarly output, despite it being developed specifically to be used in the field. The FAO took the initiative to launch the project, and as a result now bear the costs for it. The agency did not reveal how much the project costs and how it is going to fund it.
The Open Access movement, started at universities and aimed at liberating knowledge and information from the pay-walls erected by big publishers and data owners, has gradually expanded and reached the agricultural sector. Open Access, by impacting the agricultural sector, has reached a point of directly impacting the day to day lives of ordinary citizens.
Source FAO
Reputation Of Open Access Journals On The Rise
Academics’ perceptions on Open Access are improving.
One of the challenges Open Access publishing has been facing is a perceived lack of quality. The perception is so rampant that it casts a big shadow not only on Open Access journals but also on authors. It’s a very serious issue which held back many researchers from publishing their research output on fully Open Access journals. However, the research conducted to test changes in perceptions associated with Open Access quality revealed that opinions are shifting.
Two major scholarly publishers, the Nature Publishing Group and Palgrave Macmillan conducted a survey on 22,000 academic researchers. The result revealed remarkable improvement regarding the image of Open Access journals. This year, only 27 percent of the surveyed researchers still believe that Open Access publications do not meet quality standards. Last year it was 40 percent of those who participated in the survey who held the same belief. This is a significant shift in researchers’ opinion and perceptions of Open Access. These changes are not evenly distributed across fields, though. In the field of social sciences, business and humanities the gain is very astonishing; negative perception about Open Access journals dropped from 54 percent to 41 percent. Despite these improvements in reputation and the push from funders to publish Open Access, quality concerns are still the major factor keeping some researchers from publishing on Open Access journals.
What matters to authors
The survey highlighted another interesting point: the reasons why authors choose one journal over the other. According to this survey there are four major leading factors. First and foremost, it is the reputation of the journal. Relevance of the journal content is another point which influences authors’ decision about where to publish. Many authors also consider the quality of the peer review process before sending their manuscripts to publishers. Finally, journals’ impact factor and readership influences the decision of authors.
The Head of Insights at Nature Publishing Group and Palgrave Macmillan, Dan Penny, believes that the negative stigma attached to Open Access will fade away with time. Improving reputation of Open Access journals and funders mandate will apparently help improve perception of authors about Open Access journals.
Momentum for Open Access
Of course, improving the reputation, impact factor and even the peer review process of Open Access journals is not something that can be done overnight; it will take time. This is in part because most Open Access journals have not been in the business for more than a decade. But now there is a steady growth of journals and publishers entering the Open Access business. If this momentum is maintained, Open Access will definitely improve and eventually deliver what the scientific community and the general public expect from it.
Source Nature
International development agencies and organizations are loudly acknowledging the tremendous contributions open access to data might have for development- both on economic and social fronts. The policy statementreleased by the Canadian International Development Research Center (IDRC) is a testament to this. Moreover, the views from the recently concludedconference on open data, argued Stephen Dale, underscored the same reality.
Open access might transform the lives of millions in developing countries in many ways. It has an incredible potential for knowledge dissemination, innovation acceleration and improving the lives of many, wrote Naser Faruqui of IDRC. Furthermore, he argued that development agencies, realizing far reaching effects of open access, are promoting open development models, which based on an open access to information and data, ‘to unleash economic value, address democratic shortfalls, improve learning, and advance science.’
The IDRC is not the only organization that recognizes the benefits open access provides in the areas of innovation and sustainable development. According to Stephen Dale the participants of the recently concluded open access conference, including Canadian government and the World Bank representatives, extensively explored the impact open access has on education, elections, agriculture, health services, and the environment. Moreover, they esteemed the concrete results open access demonstrated and above all its immense potential in enhancing efficiency and opportunity for all.
Economic benefits that both developing and developed countries might harvest from open access are huge. The IDRC President Jean Lebel indicated that open data could generate more than $3 trillion additional economic values a year. This is a huge economic benefit that individual countries’ policy makers and open access advocates should not ignore.
Furthermore, for institutions in the developing nations open access provides diverse opportunities. Some of these benefits are cost saving, visibility and knowledge democratization. For many institutions in the developing world cost related challenges are in the heart of all the problems. This is principally true for resource stretched universities and research institutions which normally rely on a limited number of journals due to the high cost of subscription. Open access, effectively liberates those institutions from absurdly high subscription fees. The resources saved as a result of access to freely available scientific outputs can be used to develop or expand core educational and research infrastructures.
Recently, scholars and several research libraries have rolled out a petition to boycott Elsevier, the biggest scholarly materials publisher, in protest of its new open access policy. Elsevier, an Amsterdam based company, again faced another set of challenges- this time it’s homegrown.
The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU- its Dutch acronym) has announced that the negotiation with Elsevier over open access is going nowhere, because it is in a deadlock. Last year, the association began negotiating with Elsevier to reach consensus on open access and journal subscription matters. But so far, compromise and agreement remained elusive.
The statemnet release by the VSNU made clear that Elsevier brought forward a series of proposals. None of them, however, appeared good enough to be accepted by the team of negotiators appointed by VSNU. The association’s position is to get the renewal of the previous agreement on a bundled package of journal subscription, which is known as ‘big deal’. The association further demanded that Elsevier allows full access (through open access) to sixty percent of the country’s scientific output by 2016 and a hundred percent by 2024. While the negotiations with Elsevier showed no result, the VSNU made clear that negotiations on open access with other major publishers such as SAGE, Springer and Wiley have succeeded.
The VSNU, disappointed and frustrated by the deadlock, has called up on academics to play a vital role to break the deadlock. First and foremost, the VSNU hopes, the academics on the editorial board may use their leverage to exert pressure on Elsevier. If this yields no result, it will request the academics to also quit Elsevier’s editorial board and also stop publishing on Elsevier’s journals.
Industry dominant academic publishers charge high subscription fees. Yet, research libraries and authors around the world subscribe to journals owned by companies like Elsevier. The major reasons behind this are alleged editorial quality and impact factor of the journals publsihed by those companies. However, skyrocketing subscription fees combined with a growing open access movement are forcing some authors to start publishing on open access platforms. Moreover, research libraries are making policy changes to embrace the use of open access scholarly materials; which are showing steady improvements both in quality and availability.
Source VSNU