Predatory Publishers — steer clear!

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(Thinkchecksubmit.org)

If you thought that academia’s ‘publish or perish’ culture couldn’t get anymore exploitative, you’d be wrong. Sadly, predatory publishers exist to make money off of academics trying to disseminate their works without providing any kind of quality checks or editorial services. The publication fee is often exorbitant, despite a total lack of input on the publisher’s end.

Jeffrey Beal, Librarian at the University of Colorado in the US, coined the term ‘predatory publishers.’ Up until 2017, he also maintained an eponymous list of predatory journals until his institution was sued by Frontiers Media. It was taken offline as a result, but you can still refer to Beal’s List here.

Beal was unequivocal in his criticism of how predatory publishing has harmed the Open Access movement, writing in 2012 that:

When e-mail first became available, it was a great innovation that made communication fast and cheap. Then came spam — and suddenly, the innovation wasn’t so great. It meant having to filter out irrelevant, deceptive and sometimes offensive messages. It still does. The same corruption of a great idea is now occurring with scholarly open-access publishing (Nature).

The email analogy is a good one, especially as this is primarily how predatory publishers target academics. Watch out for emails from publishers that are overly effusive and promise speedy publication!

Publishing in predatory journals could have several negative consequences for authors and their research:

  • Works publisher in low-quality predatory journals can be harder to find and cite. Your hard work and important findings may be disregarded by the wider scientific community. A lot of citation databases also don’t index low-quality journals, so it may be difficult for others to discover at all.
  • Loss of work. Predatory publishers ultimately have no interest in the author’s actual output and so will have no scruples about taking papers offline without warning or never actually publishing works in the first place. Bear in mind also that most legitimate publishers won’t allow you to submit a work that has been published before so you could waste a huge opportunity.
  • Diminishing scholarly integrity in the scientific community. Many predatory journals promise that works will be peer reviewed, but of course, this is not the case. As a result, works of low-quality or misinformation are brought into the scientific conversation, distracting from legitimate sources.

To avoid predatory publishers, check for basic spelling and grammar errors in their communications and website as an obvious giveaway. Take a look at their archives to see if there’s consistency in terms of research area. Also look out for clearly outlined Article Processing Charges and review processes. Note how communicable the publisher is, if you can easily get in touch with them and if they keep normal working hours for the country they state they’re based in.

These are some red flags to be mindful of, but you can use ThinkCheckSubmit.org, to check out a step-by-step guide to evaluating journal quality. You can also quickly check if a journal is featured on the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) or a member of The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) by having a look at their respective websites.

Lastly, if you’re ever in doubt, just get in touch with your friendly UWL Open Research team! As ever, you can email us at open.research@uwl.ac.uk. We’d be more than happy to help!

Guerilla Open Access

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This week, we’re sharing a video put together for Open Access Week in late October that hasn’t had a home until now!

Check it out and make your own mind up on issues around Guerilla Open Access. In 2024, it looks like publishers are upping the ante in their fight against sites like z-library by using DMCA takedown requests so it’ll be interesting to see how things develop this year. You can read more about that here. 

Get in touch if there are any more topics you’d be interested in seeing the Open Research team cover! See our last post here. 

Podcast Recommendation: Freakonomics Radio-Why is there so much fraud in academia and can academic fraud be stopped?

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You might have already encountered the popular Freakonomics book series, it was a big pop-psychology read of the 2010’s that you’d find on the ‘Smart Thinking’ shelves of Waterstones. If you haven’t kept up with the book’s prolific co-author, Stephen J. Dubner it’s worth checking out the archives of the long-running Freakonomics radio podcast series for some well-researched dispatches from the annals of behavioral psychology.

The latest episodes are of particular interest for anyone working in research, not least in the aftermath of Harvard president Claudine Gay being ousted on the basis of plagiarism charges.

The first episode in this two-parter, ‘Why is there so much fraud in Academia?’ looks into the behavioral psychology behind academic misconduct with candid interviews from exasperated academics. The second episode, ‘Can Academic Fraud be Stopped?’, focuses largely on ‘Publish or Perish’ culture with reformers of academic culture proposing new ways of challenging the existing structures set up by the $28 billion publishing industry.

Naturally, the second episode takes a brief look at Open Access as one of the proposed solutions (mostly from the publisher’s point of view). But there’s productive discussion around increasing transparency in research and other open practices that will help to change research culture for the better. Give it a listen!

 

New Vistas: New pastures for academic publishing

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New Vistas is the University of West London’s flagship journal. It flipped from being a free-to-read and predominantly print-based journal to becoming a Gold open access publication and produced it’s first fully open access issue in April of the Spring. It is hosted by Janeway, an open source publishing platform developed by the Centre for Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck.

As a non-profit journal, the content of New Vistas is available to anyone with an internet connection and like a steadily growing number of Gold open access journals, it does not impose fees as a prerequisite for open access publication (these journals are also sometimes referred to as ‘Diamond’ or ‘Platinum’ OA journals and typically receive very modest funding from academic library budgets or learned societies). Fees known as article processing charges involve a substantial payment (either on the part of the author, an institution in receipt of government grants or a funder) to cover the nominal revenue that is lost, usually by traditional subscription-based publishers, as a result of offering barrier-free access to articles. While APCs may be considered to be “loss-making” by these major publishers, it is worth noting that these eye-watering charges are wholly unaffordable for many small institutions, nevermind our researchers, scholars and early career researchers.

The good news is that non-APC charging open access journals, like New Vistas, are on the rise and are now vastly outnumbering their fee-charging counterparts on the Directory of Open Access Journals.

So why is it that New Vistas was not considered a fully fledged Gold open access journal before now? Afterall, New Vistas content was free to read online, people within the University mostly knew where to find the content if they were looking for it and the earlier material was downloadable in PDF format.

New Vistas was established as a print journal initially, with a pdf version added later to a page on the University website. The website is pretty big so finding us was a bit hit or miss. We were not really open access – we were just posting information out there and hoping that the world took notice.

-Erik Blair, Senior Editor of New Vistas

 

The answer can be summarised in the figure below which highlights some of the key differences between Green open access journals (which are usually cost-free to access) and Gold open access journals (which have no price barriers and few permission barriers for reuse).

 

Gold open access journals for example offer open licensing, such as Creative Commons, as standard. This is a formal grant of rights and permissions giving back to the user many of the rights and permissions copyright normally reserves exclusively for the rights holder. This allows any user to redistribute, reuse or modify for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

Hosting the journal on a platform such as Janeway, in contrast to a static page on the University’s website also allows the content to be more discoverable to users beyond the institution and the academy as a whole, potentially increasing opportunities to reach wider audiences and increase engagement.

The implementation of Document Object Identifiers (DOI) allows scholarly resources to be uniquely addressed, demonstrating a commitment to continued access in the future not merely in the present. The DOI system represents an important part of the digital preservation infrastructure that aims to reliably return a resource, in the event that a journal goes offline or a publisher folds.

Authors who publish in Gold open access journals also retain copyright of their work, giving them greater control over the conditions with which their work may be shared. This lies in stark contrast to traditional subscription-based journals and even some free-to-read journals where publishers typically claim copyright of the author’s work and impose restrictions on their dissemination and wider use.

Knowing about different licences and the various rights of authors and our readership has made a huge difference. Before I thought that posting information on the internet was the last step – something you did once you had the work all nice and neat. Now I see it as part of the process and authors are told about it from the very start – so that they can write with OA in mind. Our new website was designed with OA at the heart of things, from day one. This means that we are open, accessible, and useful to the academic community. It seems like, beforehand, we were working in the hope that someone would read our work – now it is out there and we are part of a whole movement that puts knowledge in the hands of readers.

-Erik Blair, Senior Editor of New Vistas

 

 

News Roundup January 2018

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Open Access Publishing Cooperative Study

The Public Knowledge Project have published the final report of their Open Access Publishing Cooperative Study, following a two-year investigation in the USA ‘…to examine whether scholarly publishing models, involving cooperation between the relevant stakeholder, might provide a means of moving subscription journals to a sustainable form of open access publishing.’ A key finding was that the majority of the libraries surveyed were willing to explore the option of forming open access cooperatives with publishers, replacing subscriptions with funding for conversion to an open access model, whereas journal editors and publishers were much less attracted to this strategy.

The Meaning of Research Impact

In this post from the LSE Impact Blog, the tricky concept of ‘impact’ within academic research is explored, with the argument that the term is often ‘unclear and contested’. Based on a literature review, four existing types of research impact definitions are identified, which are further broken down into four domains that underpin these definitions. The authors then go on to propose their own definition with a focus on mental health research, which is also adaptable for other health-related areas. The article the post is based on is freely available here.

Reporting New Research

This article from The Conversation examines the way that research is communicated through the media, critiquing a lack of transparency where news reports fail to provide information on who has carried out the research, where this was done, and how it was funded. Highlighting the progress made by the open access movement, the author argues that the media have a responsibility to accurately represent research, and that in the age of “fake news”it is more important than ever that people are able to dig deeper into what is being reported.

Elsevier Negotiations

Institutions around the world have been involved in negotiation stand-offs with Elsevier, pushing back against subscription price increases and seeking an easier transition towards open access publishing. Although consortia in South Korea and Finland have recently reached agreements, the Project DEAL coalition in Germany is still holding out. Despite the fact that contracts have expired, Elsevier have not yet severed access to their journals for the majority of the institutions in question.

Flipping Learned Societies to Open Access

In this post Martin Paul Eve (Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck) outlines an interesting proposal for Learned Societies who wish to move to an OA model of publishing, but without introducing charges for authors. Professor Eve provides a concise step-by-step guide to how this transition could work and the advantages it would bring, explaining that the key barrier would be communicating the new model to subscribers.

Open Access Knowledge: Digital Style Guide

As part of the Writing For Research resource, Patrick Dunleavy et al. have produced a new style guide for citations and references, designed to address issues with current practice and encourage modernisation. Central principles include the idea that wherever possible citations/references should lead to digital resources, and that the primary source cited should be open access. The guide is clearly laid out, identifying issues and suggesting solutions, and providing lots of examples of how different sources should be cited. The guide is currently at the beta stage, so the creators welcome any comments and suggestions.

DOAJ Best Practice Guide

The Directory of Open Access Journals have enhanced their service even further by launching a Best Practice Guide, designed to ‘…support researchers, publishers and librarians in their search of best practice and transparency standards’ when identifying reputable open access journals. The guide aims to highlight issues around questionable publishing practices, provide a checklist of criteria for identifying questionable publishers, highlight other tools to assist in making informed decisons on where to submit articles, and provide case studies and real-life examples to base decisions on. Find more information here.

Launch of Dimensions

Digital Science have launched their new Dimensions service, which includes a citations database, a research analytics suite, and article discovery and access. The tool is designed around a “freemium” business model, providing free basic access to the database, with a paid-for institutional version that will allow more advanced research analytics. For more information see this article.

UCL’s Open Access Megajournal

UCL Press have announced the launch of a new OA megajournal, stating that ‘…this will provide academics and students with ground-breaking research free of charge in a move that challenges traditional commercial publishing models.’ As well as being freely available, the cross-disciplinary platform will aim to appeal to authors by reducing publication times compared to traditional models, and incorporating open peer review for greater transparency. See the full press release here.

Special Issue of Publications

OA journal Publications are inviting submissions of manuscripts for a special issue on ‘Open Access and the Library’, with some suggested topics including the changing role of university/research libraries, OA workflows and systems, and communications and engagement with authors. The submission deadline has been extended to 20 February 2018, and the Article Processing Charge (APC) will be waived for ‘well-prepared manuscripts’.

News Roundup December 2017

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Integrating OA Content with Discovery Systems

Jisc released an update on the next steps for their OA Button Project, following the publication of their findings in October. Having identified three possible service options for further exploration, a decision was made to focus on ‘Integration of OA search into library systems’ as the one to pursue. Separate to this project, but clearly relevant, was the announcement that the CORE service, which aggregates open access research papers from around the world, is now working with ProQuest to integrate search results in their library discovery systems (Primo and Summon). Based on this development a decision was made that ‘…Jisc will be developing work with CORE at the centre of any OA discovery focussed solutions, initially by addressing the issue of search and discovery integration with library systems,’ and that their collaboration with the OA Button would be put on hold for now.

Monitoring the Transition to Open Access

This report, commissioned by the Universities UK Open Access Coordination Group, examines recent trends in OA in the UK. Five strands were explored, including the OA options available to authors, the take-up of those options, levels of downloads of OA and non-OA articles, financial implications for funders and universities, and implications for learned societies. Key findings included the fact that over half of UK-authored articles are made accessible through Gold or Green OA within 12 months, and that the proportion of UK-authored articles published OA has increased from 12% in 2012 to 30% in 2016. As well as mentioning the positive increase in OA shown by the report, this THE article also points out the finding that ‘UK universities’ journal subscription costs have risen 20 per cent in three years despite their simultaneously paying far more to make research open access.’

Considering the Impact of Finch 5 Years On

In a presentation at the London Info International conference, Danny Kingsley (Deputy Director, Scholarly Communication and Research Services Cambridge University Library) raised some interesting and challenging points about the effectiveness of the RCUK Open Access Policy thus far. As with the UUK report mentioned above, the presentation acknowledged that there has certainly been a notable increase in the amount of UK research now available OA. However, journals have not ‘flipped’ to an open access model as was intended, and the costs of publishing in the hybrid Gold OA format or maintaining Green OA are arguably unsustainable, meaning new solutions should be explored.

Universities Spend Millions on Accessing Results of Publicly Funded Research

In this article, a Senior Lecturer from the University of Auckland explains how he used FOI laws to find out how much universities in New Zealand had spent on journal subscriptions in recent years. He found that in 2016 alone US$15 million was paid to just four publishers, that some universities were getting much worse deals than others, and that the rate of increase for subscriptions greatly exceeded the Consumer Price Index inflation rate. While open access could be a solution, the author points out that a large shift to the Gold OA model currently available would not save money. He suggests a movement to ‘the right kind of open access’, whereby control is given back to the scholarly community as outlined in the Fair Open Access Principles.

100% Open Access to Swiss National Science Foundation-funded Research

A decision has been made by the National Research Council of Switzerland that all resulting publications from SNSF-funded projects will be freely available online as of 2020, fitting in with a broader national aim for all publications financed by public money to be freely available by 2024. Funding will be available not only for publishing in OA journals, but also for publishing OA books and book chapters. Matthias Egger, President of the National Research Council, argues that ‘…researchers themselves stand to benefit the most from Open Access: their results will be seen by more people. And they will have unrestricted access to the publications of their colleagues. This will be a big step forward for science.’

Decolonising Open Access

This article from journalologik challenges the perception in the Global North that the OA movement is universally seen as a force for good around the world, and addresses the idea that there may be a ‘neo-colonial face of open access’. The author shares recent views on the subject from African researchers, such as Piron et al.: “… if open access is to facilitate and accelerate the access of scientists from the South to Northern science without looking into the visibility of knowledge of the South, it helps to redouble their epistemic alienation without contributing to their emancipation. Indeed, by making the work of the center of the world-system of science even more accessible, open access maximizes their impact on the periphery and reinforces their use as a theoretical reference or as a normative model, to the detriment of local epistemologies.” To address these issues, and change the relationship between Global North and South, it is suggested that there needs to be ‘…a realignment of this relationship from mere access to empowerment through sustainable capacity building.’

The Altmetric Top 100 2017

As they have been doing each year since 2013, Altmetric released their list of their top 100 most popular articles for the year. In a blog post Altmetric pointed out that medical and public health issues gained the most attention, as has been the case for previous years, taking up the top three spots and over half of the list as a whole. A useful feature is the ability to filter by articles that are open access or free to read, with many falling into these categories.

A Call for Open Citations

Members and supporters of the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) have signed a letter aimed at scholarly publishers, requesting that they ‘…make references openly available by providing access to the reference lists they submit to Crossref,’ in order to create a full and open data source for analysing research. The letter points out that many have already opened up their reference lists, but that there are several large publishers who are still to do so, meaning many millions of references remain closed.

News Roundup November 2017

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REF 2021: Decisions on Staff and Outputs

Following the release of their initial decisions and further consultation earlier this year, the UK higher education funding bodies have now released a document finalising details of how the Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) will operate. The document outlines which staff members will be eligible for submission, the number of outputs required for each staff member, rules on the portability of outputs, the number of impact case studies required, and further information on UOA structures. It also confirms the next stage of the Open Access policy, and encourages institutions to include ORCID identifiers when submitting their staff, something that may become compulsory in later exercises.

An Open Access Mandate for Monographs?

Although monographs are not currently part of the REF open access mandate, it has been suggested that they will be included in future. This article by Martin Paul Eve et al. considers the implications of an open access mandate for monographs, modeling the approximate costs and suggesting ways these costs could be met. For a recent analysis of the  benefits of OA for scholarly books, see this report from Springer Nature.

Launch of Gates Open Research

Articles are now officially being published on Gates Open Research, an open access publishing portal for the outputs of research funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The platform joins others such as Wellcome Open Research in providing a way to quickly and openly share the results of research, with open peer review taking place after initial publication.

New OA Journal Hosting Service from ScienceOpen

Discovery and research network ScienceOpen have launched a customised hosting service for OA journals, starting with a partnership with UCL Press. As well as the existing benefits of their regular platform in connecting articles through their metadata, by using OA journals there are additional advantages in being able to embed the full texts and encourage interaction. Find more information here.

Making Scholarship More Relevant

This article from Inside Higher Ed raises some interesting questions about how researchers should be communicating their work, and creating multiple points of access. The authors argue that the traditional academic article needs ‘…to begin to share the scholarly stage with other forms of communication that are geared toward different audiences, who may have varying degrees of expertise, amounts of time to engage with research, and familiarity or interest in different information platforms.’

ResearchGate Restricts Access to Nearly 2 Million Articles

Following recent pressure from publishers, ResearchGate have taken further action to avoid accusations of copyright infringement on their site as reported by The Scientist. At least 1.7 million formally available articles have now been restricted, with users now needing to request them directly from authors, but the Coalition for Responsible Sharing still argue that ResearchGate have still done not enough to answer their complaints.

Sci-Hub Domains Blocked

In the ongoing legal battle between major publishers and Sci-Hub, several of the domains used by the site have been blocked following an order by the judge overseeing the case, as reported here. Although this has made access to the site more difficult, ways around this remain, and Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan shows no intention of stopping. Martin Eve, professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck, argues that ‘Academic publishers would do better to reroute their efforts into developing business models for scholarly communications that allow open dissemination of educational research content and that are, therefore, immune to initiatives such as SciHub.’

OpenCon 2017

The main OpenCon 2017 conference took place from 11-13 November 2017 in Berlin, with satellite events around the world. OpenCon is described as ‘…a platform for the next generation to learn about Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data, develop critical skills, and catalyze action toward a more open system for sharing the world’s information—from scholarly and scientific research, to educational materials, to digital research data.’ Highlights will be available here.

Open Repositories 2018

The 13th International Conference on Open Repositories is now calling for proposals for papers around the theme of ‘Sustaining Open’. The conference is taking place from June 4th-7th 2018 in Bozeman, Montana, USA, and the deadline for submissions is January 5th 2018. Find more information here.

News Roundup October 2017

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International Open Access Week 2017

October 23 – 29 was the 10th annual International Open Access Week, with the theme “Open in Order to…” leading to interesting discussions around the many different benefits of making scholarly outputs openly available. Check out #OAWeek on Twitter to catch up with what went on around the world.

The UK Scholarly Communications License

During OA Week the official website for the UK Scholarly Communications Model Open Access Policy and Licence was launched. The UK-SCL is an open access policy mechanism designed to make it easier for researchers to retain the re-use rights for their own work, with benefits including being able to share research findings earlier, and ensuring compliance with REF2021. Originally developed at Imperial College there is now widespread support for the model across UK institutions, although this has not come without criticism from publishers.

The Radical Open Access Collective

Also launched during OA Week was the website of the Radical Open Access Collective. The collective is formed of ‘a community of scholar-led, not-for-profit presses, journals and other open access projects’, with over 30 members from around the world. This blog post gives an overview of their ethos and aims, including a focus on experimenting with new forms of publishing, promoting diversity within academic publishing, and maintaining an ethical approach.

Introducing ScholarlyHub

The development of a new scholarly social network has been announced, which ‘…aims to become a member-run and owned, non-profit portal for sharing and improving scholarly communications among scholars and between scholars and the public at large.’ ScholarlyHub will provide free access to the content on the site for all, as well as a range of additional services for paying members, and have pledged not to sell users’ data.

Termination of Transfer Tool

Authors Alliance and Creative Commons have launched a new Termination of Transfer Tool, designed to help authors in the U.S. to renegotiate or retrieve copyright and sharing rights for their work. The tool is currently designed for U.S. law, but Creative Commons also plans to develop a database of laws in other countries that enable similar opportunities for authors and creators to reclaim their rights.

Wikipedia OA Bot

Wikipedia have developed a tool called OAbot, which allows their articles to be easily edited by anyone to include links to open access versions of publications, rather than the paywalled version. Find out more here.

Jisc Open Access Button Project

A project to assess the feasibility of developing a service using the Open Access Button for libraries’ discovery and inter-library loans (ILL) workflows has been completed, with Jisc releasing their initial findings. Several different possible integrations of the Open Access Button were considered, with potential benefits being identified such as saving money on ILL, but with the acknowledgement that implementation across different institutions and library systems will be a complex task. Jisc and Open Access Button will now reflect on the results of the project before deciding how to proceed with a potential service.

Ongoing Publisher Action Against ResearchGate

Following last month’s challenge from STM, a group of publishers calling themselves the ‘Coalition for Responsible Sharing‘ has been formed and have identified formal steps they will take against ResearchGate if they fail to control copyright infringements on their site. Despite recent attempts ResearchGate have made to remove certain articles, the Coalition is demanding that further steps are taken, and members have begun to issue takedown notices for the many remaining copyright infringing articles. This article gives some suggestions for how publishers could help authors to avoid such infringements in future.

German Researchers Resign from Elsevier Journals

In their attempt to negotiate a new payment model, five leading German academics have stepped down from their editorial positions at Elsevier journals. The five are part of the Projekt DEAL group, who are pushing for a new ‘publish-and-read’ payment system allowing all papers authored by Germany-based researchers to be made open access upon publication, with Elsevier currently claiming that the proposals are unrealistic. Find more information here.

Special Issue of the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication

Submissions are being sought for a special issue of the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, on the Role of Scholarly Communication in a Democratic Society. As well as traditional research articles, the journal is looking for commentaries, case studies, theoretical explorations and literature reviews, with the aim of addressing ‘…the role that information and knowledge creation, sharing, and access plays in a democratic society, and what limitations or challenges may impede that role.’ The deadline for submissions is 5 January 2018.

Repository Summary October 2017

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Below you will find a summary of UWL Repository activity for October 2017. We will provide this data each month, showing the most talked about outputs (highest Altmetric scores) and the most downloaded outputs. Links to these papers are included below so you access these via our open access repository.

The top 5 most downloaded outputs for October 2017:

1. Berridge, Graham (2015) Event experiences: design, management and impact. Doctoral thesis, University of West London.

2. Pappas, Nikolaos (2015) Marketing strategies, perceived risks, and consumer trust in online buying behaviour. Journal of Retailing & Consumer Services, 29. pp. 92-103.

3. Demeke, Wegene (2014) Small and Micro Business Enterprises (SMBEs) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: development and poverty reduction through Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), with particular reference to the hotel industry and associated businesses. Doctoral thesis, University of West London.

4. Gannon, Judie, Roper, Angela and Liz, Doherty (2015) Strategic human resource management: insights from the international hotel industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 47. pp. 65-75. ISSN 0278-4319

5. Hunter, Louise (2014) Supporting teenage mothers to initiate breastfeeding and developing a support intervention to increase breastfeeding rates in a vulnerable group – the importance of place. Doctoral thesis, University of West London.

The top 3 most talked about outputs:

1. Hester, Helen and Walters, Caroline, eds. (2015) Fat sex: new directions in theory and activism. Gender, Bodies and Transformation . Ashgate, Farnham, UK. ISBN 9781472432544

2. Wilson, Jennie, Bak, Aggie and Loveday, Heather (2017) Applying human factors ergonomics to the misuse of non-sterile clinical gloves in acute care. American Journal of Infection Control, 45 (7). pp. 779-786. ISSN 0196-6553 Item availability may be restricted.

3. Testa, Alberto and Armstrong, Gary (2010) Football, fascism and fandom: the UltraS of Italian football. Bloomsbury, London, UK. ISBN 9781408123713

Our data is provided by EPrints (via the UWL Repository), IRUS-UK, and Altmetric.

News Roundup September 2017

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Initial Decisions on the Research Excellence Framework 2021

Following their recent consultation on the next REF, the UK higher education funding bodies have published a set of ‘initial decisions on key areas of REF policy.’ The document outlines several changes, including an amended Unit of Assessment structure, increased weighting for research impact, and the addition of a section on ‘open research’ in the UOA environment category, indicating that extra credit will be given where an institution goes ‘above and beyond’ the REF open access policy requirements. Other decisions are yet to be made on the submission of staff and the portability of outputs. A summary of the responses to the consultation that informed the initial decisions is available here.

Meeting Open Access Requirements

HEFCE have outlined some initial findings from a pilot study, which was carried out in advance of a survey to gather information on how the higher education sector is meeting open access policies. Challenges to meeting OA policies are identified as: the complexity of the OA environment, resource constraints, cultural resistance to OA, and inadequate technical infrastructure. This response from the University of Cambridge’s Office of Scholarly Communication argues that the additional factor of academic publishers deliberately obstructing OA has been unfairly ignored.

Emerald Removes Embargoes

Emerald have launched a new open access programme, Emerald Reach, which includes an expanded range of open access journals, more options for open access book publishing, and a key change to their Green Open Access policy. Authors in Emerald journals are now able to make their Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) available on their institutional repository as soon as the article has been published, free from any embargo periods. Full details of the new policy can be found here.

The 2.5% Commitment

American librarian David Lewis has launched a new movement for academic libraries, which aims to build ‘the common infrastructure needed to support the open scholarly commons’. By making a commitment to contribute 2.5% of their budget towards this aim, Lewis believes that libraries can secure their future roles in both the preservation and dissemination of knowledge. The paper outlining the plan is available here.

Ongoing Legal Action Against Sci-Hub

The American Chemical Society (ACS) have followed in Elsevier’s footsteps in filing a lawsuit against Sci-Hub, the site that offers free access to millions of pirated academic articles. As well as seeking millions of dollars in damages, the publishers have also called for access to the site to be blocked. Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan has stated that they plan to ignore both lawsuits, and will find ways to circumvent any attempts to prevent access to the site. This article discusses the implications of Sci-Hub’s rise for the open access movement, and some potential solutions for publishers.

STMA Association Challenge ResearchGate

The International Association of Scientific, Technical and medical Publishers (STM) have issued a proposal to ResearchGate about the content they allow to be shared on their scholarly collaboration network, and the way this content is used. In a letter from their lawyers STM have suggested that ResearchGate should put systems in place to tackle the problem of articles being shared on the site without authorization or permission, and that any such content currently available should ultimately be removed.

Jisc OA Dashboard

Jisc have released findings and conclusions from their OA Dashboard project, which ‘aimed to assess the feasibility of a dashboard that would support institutions by combining and visualising data on OA.’ A range of testing was done over three phases, which considered user requirements, potential technical features, and the business case for the dashboard within institutions. It was decided that there is not a strong enough case for further investment to be made in the service at this point, but that Jisc will re-evaluate the idea in the future, in the hope that the available open data sources will have improved. The final report is available here.

SAGE Open Special Collection

SAGE Open are inviting submissions of papers for a special volume on Open Access. Navigating the Complex Terrain of Open Access, A Continuing Story will aim ‘…to showcase the continuing work of institutions and organisations in the areas of open access and open science.’ The submission deadline is December 31, 2017.