1st International Conference on Academic Communication Journals (Barcelona, 27/02/2015)

Communication journals and open access

Ernest AbadalFacultat de Biblioteconomia i Documentació

Universitat de Barcelonaabadal@ub.edu

Contents

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1. Introduction2. Open access journals

1. Some data2. How to finance OA journals?3. Predatory journals

3. Situation in Spain4. Conclusions5. Bibliography

1 Introduction

“Open-access literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions” (Suber, 2006).

Open access is a “vision”.

• We are convinced that the scientific communication system will work better with this model.

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1 Introduction (ii)

Maturity of the movement•10+ years from first declarations: Budapest (2002), Berlin (2003), Bethesda (2003).

•Well known by academics, publishers, librarians, etc.

Institutional support •European Union: Horizon 2020.•Spain: Ley de la Ciencia y la Tecnología (2011).•Universities: mandates.

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1.1 How much OA? Several studies, based on inferences from

samples.

20,4% of the total (Bjork, 2010)•8,5%, in publishers’ portals (“gold” route)•11,9% in repositories (“green” route)

37,8% (Chen, 2014)•Same methodology as Bjork (2010)

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1.2 Authors’ perspective

Several advantages•More visibility.•More audience (downloads).•More impact (citations).

Obligation to publish in OA.•H2020, universities’ mandates, etc.•They have to know the conditions of their publications’ copyright licences for archiving them in repositories.

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1.3 Publishers’ perspective

They are adapting their business model to the OA framework.• Introducing APC (Article Processing Charges) [v. 2.2.1].

•Seeking economic support (universities, funding bodies, etc.). [v. 2.2.2].

They are adapting copyright licences to make it easier for authors to include their publications in personal webpages and repositories.

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1.4 Objectives

1. Analyse the main challenges of open access journals.•To increase quantity.•To consolidate new business models (or means of financing).

•To be recognized for quality.

1. Analyse the situation of Spanish communication journals in relation to open access.

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2 Open access journals Their quality and recognition are similar to

commercial ones.•Based on peer review.

But … they have to:

Increase their proportion in the academic journals scenario. [v. 2.1]

Consolidate their business models and economic sustainability. [v. 2.2]

Avoid “contamination” from predatory journals. [v. 2.3]

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Fig. 1. Main sources of data

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2.1 Some data about OA journals By “quality”: (Source: Ulrich’s)

• 9 % journals in JCR (930 of 10,036)• 13 % of peer review journals (8,703 of 67,495) By country: (Source: Ulrich’s)

• Brazil: 63% • Spain: 37%• USA: 9% By fields: (Archambault, 2013)

• Biomedicine: 61% • Social sciences: 32%• Communication & Textual Studies: 21% (21st of 22

fields).11

Fig. 2. Communication journals in DOAJ (108 titles)

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2.2 How to finance OA journals?

[Subscription]

Article processing charges (APC) Public financing Consortia of users Other ways

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2.2.1 Article Processing Charges (APC) Publishing charge payment by the author

using research funds. Cost: from 400 to 3.000 euros per paper. Common in health sciences and in countries

with well-financed research. Some data (from DOAJ):

•32% of journals use APC.•Mainly in Medicine, Science, etc. •Low presence in Social sciences and, especially, in Communication journals.

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Fig. 3. APC journals by subject

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Fig. 4. Non APC journals by subject

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2.2.1 APC (ii) Finch report (2012) adopts / defends this

kind of author-side payment. It permits the reconversion of the publishing

industry (ex., OpenChoice, de Springer). New publishers have appeared: PLOS,

BioMedCentral, Hindawi, etc. H2020 and other research programs permit

APC.

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2.2.2 Public financing

Processing charges are paid by public administration (universities, research centers, etc.).

Very common in Humanities and Social sciences (little funding for research).

Prevalent in countries from the scientific periphery.

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2.2.2 Public financing (ii)

Best example: Brazil (Rodrigues, Abadal, 2014)

•More than 90% of high quality journals are OA.•More than 250 journals in WoS and Scopus.

How? (mechanisms)•Public administration (CNPq, CAPES): annual call of 2 M euros (for 200 best journals)

•Scielo: Dissemination platform.•Universities: technical support, training, human resources, etc.

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2.2.3 Users’ consortia Agreement between big users for making

centralized payments which finance publishers costs.•Libraries (and consortia).•Funder agencies and research institutes.

Feasible in special and well defined fields (for example, High energy physics).

The individual payment is assigned according to several indicators (scientific production, uses, etc.)

Example: SCOAP3 (begun January 2014).20

2.2.4 Other ways

Advertising Sale of services

•Print copies.•Reprints (for authors).

Comments:•These complement the other ways mentioned above.

•Options more often used for books than for journals.

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2.3 Predatory journals Journals without quality (in peer-review,

originality, scientific advisors, etc.). Priority: to obtain APCs paying no attention

to scientific content.

Jeffrey Beall (librarian at Univ. Colorado)•Blog (http://scholarlyoa.com/)•Denounces bad practices and bad practitioners.

List 2015•More than 500 journals and 650 publishers (“potential, possible, or probable”).

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Fig. 5. Journal home page

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Fig. 6. Publisher’s portal web

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3 Situation in Spain

Source: Dulcinea database Journals

•1,711 Spanish academic journals (active)• 61 Communication journals (4%)

Aspects•Type of publisher•Type of access•Self-archiving permission•Open access

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Fig. 7. Source of data

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3.1 Publisher type

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Communication Total journals

Private non-profit 18 % 23 %

Commercial 7 % 17 %

Government 3 % 7 %

Academic 72 % 50 %

3.2 Type of access

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Type of access Examples

Gratis Publisher pays the cost (universities, etc.)

Gratis after an embargo

Content can be accessed after a period of time.

Hybrid Subscription journals with OA articles (via APC).

Restricted to subscribers

3.2 Type of access (ii)

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Type of access Communication Total of journals

Gratis 88 % 70 %

Gratis after an embargo

7 % 11 %

Hybrid 2 % 1 %

Restricted to subscribers

3 % 15 %

3.3 Self-archiving

Publishing policies of journals with regard to granting permission for self-archiving in open access repositories (Sherpa-Romeo).

Important for facilitating green route.

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3.3 Self-archiving

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Communication Total journals

White (not permitted) 5 % 13 %

Blue (post-print) 61 % 57 %

Green (pre- and post- print)

23 % 20 %

Unknown 11 % 10 %

3.4 Open access

How we can define an open access journal? We will consider only the journals which are:• gratis• self-archiving (blue or green) is permitted

Communication OA journals: 44 (77%). Spanish OA journals: 43%.

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3.4 Open access (ii)

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Green Blue White Unknown

Gratis 13 34 0 7 54 (88%)

Gratis after an embargo

0 2 2 0 4 (7%)

Hybrid 0 1 0 0 1 (2%)

Restricted 1 0 1 0 2 (3%)

14 (23%) 37 (61%)

3 (5%) 7 (11%)

4 Conclusions The main challenge to OA journals now is,

probably, to find sustainability models and also battle for quality against predatory journals.

In Spain, communication journals have adopted by a large majority the open access model. • 88 % are gratis immediately • 84 % grant permission to self-archive • 77 % open access (crossing both conditions).

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4 Conclusions (ii) These figures are over the average and the

explanation lies in the proportion of academic and governmental publishers (90% for communication respect to 57% for all journals).

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5 References Abadal, E. (2012). Acceso abierto a la ciencia. Barcelona: UOC.

(http://diposit.ub.edu/dspace/handle/2445/24542) Abadal, E. (2012). "Retos de las revistas en acceso abierto: cantidad,

calidad y sostenibilidad económica". Hipertext.net. (http://www.upf.edu/hipertextnet/numero-10/retos-revistas-en-acceso-abierto.html)

Archambault, Eric; Amyot, D.; Deschamps, P.; Nicol, A.; Rebout, L.; Roberge, G. (2013). Proportion of open access peer-reviewed papers at the European and world levels—2004-2011. Brussels: European Comission, 2013, http://www.science-metrix.com/pdf/SM_EC_OA_Availability_2004-2011.pdf

Björk, B-C et al. “Open access to the scientific journal literature: situation 2009”. PLoS ONE, 2010, v. 5, n. 6. (doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011273).

Budapest Open Access Initiative: Ten years on from the Budapest Open Access Initiative: setting the default to open (2012). http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/openaccess/boai-10-recommendations

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5 References (ii)

Chen, Xiaotian (2014). “Open access in 2013: reaching the 50% milestone”. Serials Review, 40:1, 21-27, DOI: 10.1080/00987913.2014.895556

Finch, Janet (2012). Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications. (http://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/Finch-Group-report-FINAL-VERSION.pdf)

- Melero, R.; Rodríguez-Gairín, J.M.; Abad-García, F.; Abadal, E. (2014). "Journal author rights and self-archiving: the case of Spanish journals", Learned Publishing, vol. 27, no. 2, p. 107-120. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/20140205)

Rodrigues, R.; Abadal, E. (2014). "Scientific journals in Brazil and Spain: alternative publishing models". Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Volume 65, Issue 10, pages 2145–2151, October 2014. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.23115)

Suber, Peter (2012). Open access. Massachussets: MIT Press. http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262517638_Open_Access_PDF_Version.pdf

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Acknowledgements

Alice Keefer (revises slides and my taught).

Miguel Navas (prepares data from Dulcinea).

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Thanks for your attention