Daley White Academic Publishing, Open Access

Open Access: History, 20-Year Trends, and Projected Future for Scholarly Publishing

It’s hard to imagine where the scholarly publishing landscape would be today without open access. As we reach two decades from the inception of open access, it’s important to evaluate how this model has revolutionized research and its potential future directions.

A Brief History of Open Access

1991: The beginning of the open access movement is commonly attributed to the formation of arXiv.org (pronounced ‘archive’), the first widely-available repository for authors to self-archive their own research articles for preservation. ArXiv.org is still widely used for article deposition, with over 2 million articles included in January 2023.

1994: Dr. Stevan Harnad’s ‘A Subversive Proposal’ recommended that authors publish their articles in a centralized repository for free immediate public access, leveraging the potential of the up-and-coming internet and combating the rapidly increasing publication costs and slow speed of print publishing (ie, the ‘serials crisis’). Though this was not the first traceable mention of what would become open access publication, it’s widely considered as the start of an international dialogue between scientific researchers, software engineers, journal publication specialists, and other interested stakeholders.

2000-2010: Open access journals began appearing within the publishing landscape. Throughout the decade, a heated back-and-forth debate persisted between open access proponents and traditional non-OA publishershttps://www.bmj.com/content/334/7587/227.

2001: The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) resulted in a declaration establishing the need for unrestricted, free-to-readers access to scholarly literature. This initiative is considered the first coined use of the phrase ‘open access.’

2003: As a follow-up to BOAI, the 2003 Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities expanded upon the definitions and legal structure of open access and was supported by many large international research institutes and universities.

2013-present: Multiple governments have announced mandates supporting or requiring open access publishing, including the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Canada, Spain, China, Mexico, and more.

2018: cOAlition S was formed by several major funders and governmental bodies to support full and immediate open access of scholarly literature through Plan S.

Current State of Open Access

Today, there are four primary submodels of scholarly open access article publishing:

  • Gold: all articles are published through open access, and the journal is indexed by Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The author is required to pay an article processing charge.
  • Green: manuscripts require reader payment on the publisher’s website but can be self-archived in a disciplinary open access archive, such as ArXiv, or an institutional open access archive. A time-based embargo period may be required before the article can be archived. The authors are not required to pay an article processing charge.
  • Hybrid: authors have the choice to publish their work through the gold or green open access models.
  • Bronze: a newer and less common option than gold, green, or hybrid open access, bronze open access means that manuscripts are published in a subscription-based journal without a clear license.

Though open access isn’t yet the default for publishing, it’s a widely available option that’s quickly becoming an expected option for journals. Additionally, research funding bodies are increasingly requiring open access publication as a term for funding, such as the Wellcome Trust and the National Institutes of Health.

Since its launch in 2015, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) has risen to the forefront as one of the most comprehensive community-curated lists of reputable open access journals. Unfortunately, however, the rise of open access has also enabled a widespread increase in predatory publishing practices, and counteracting predatory publishers is expected to be a primary focus of future open access development.

Open Access Growth Trends

Before diving into the numbers, it’s important to note that open access reporting is unstandardized. Depending on the databases assessed and definitions of open access, document types, and related terms, the reported number of open access articles per year can differ dramatically between reports. However, overarching trends remain relatively consistent across reports.

In 2018, the European Commision of Research and Innovation, an official research group of the European Union, found that 30.9% of open access publications were open access in 2009, which increased to 41.2% in 2016, then slightly tapered off to 36.2% in 2018. As of 2019, 31% of funders required open access publishing of research, 35% encouraged open access publishing, and 33% embraced no overt policy or stance.

In 2022, the Research Information Observatory partnered with the Max Planck Digital Library and Big Data Analytics Group to compile and publish their data paper, “Long Term Global Trends in Open Access.” Their report found that the percentage of articles that are accessible without paywall subscriptions has increased substantially: around 30% of articles published in 2010 were openly accessible, which jumped to around 50% of articles published in 2019.

Future Expectations and Projections for Open Access

Simon Linacre Academic journals, Academic Publishing, Open Access, Scholarly Communication

OA Week: Open Spectrum

This week sees the 14th Open Access Week (#OAWeek #OAWeek2021) since it started in 2008. To mark the event, Simon Linacre looks at the challenges and opportunities the movement may face in post-pandemic times.


For many in the scholarly communications industry, Open Access Week is a fixture on the calendar just as much as Frankfurt Book Fair and The Charleston Conference, which bookend OA week. So, it may surprise people to learn that it only started as ‘Open Access Day’ in October 2008 as a follow up to the National Day of Action for Open Access in February 2007, growing to a week’s worth of activity in 2009. OA has come a long way since then – but how far does it still have to go?

Open Access content was minimal in those days, with an estimated 8.5% of published articles available as OA in 2008, and a further 11.9% available in repositories. By 2020, several estimates put the total number of research articles available via some form of OA as well over half of all articles published.

Judging the success of this growth since the inception of OA Week is difficult, and it probably depends where you are on the spectrum of opinion on OA itself. If you strongly believe that all research should be freely available period, then there is probably some frustration that a significant slice of content is still behind a paywall. The growth of OA as a percentage of all content has been sustained and consistent but is unlikely to reach the vast majority of published articles for some time yet. However, this availability varies hugely in terms of geography, with some countries such as the UK having national mandates in place to ensure almost all newly published articles are Open Access.

If you are on the other side of the spectrum and have no problem with the traditional subscription model, then you may be surprised how developed OA has become. So-called transformative agreements, initiatives such as Plan S and the increased use of repositories for scholarly communications have all contributed to the tide turning in favor of OA.

And if you are on this side of the spectrum, then you may also have concerns about the decrease in use of peer review as a method of validating research. The COVID-19 pandemic has both highlighted the risks of research being shared without peer review checks, and also stressed the importance of the sharing of vital medical research as quickly as possible. The net result is probably an acceleration, both of the availability OA research and worries about the consequences of this.

But where does this acceleration lead to? It was inevitable that most research would become available as OA, and if funding – either for authors or for publishers – was available to cover the costs of that, then few would disagree with this outcome. But for many it was not about when most research would be made OA, but how that would happen, and for them the validation of research in an age of fake news and deep fake images is perhaps more important than ever.


Simon Linacre Academic journals, Academic Publishing, Getting published, Open Access, Scholarly Communication

New Kid on the Block

The publishing industry is often derided for its lack of innovation. However, as Simon Linacre argues, there is often innovation going on right under our noses where the radical nature of changes are yet to be fully understood, for good or bad.


There is a clock ticking down on the top right of my screen. I have 15 mins and 28 seconds to upgrade to premium membership for half price. But what do I need to do? What is the clock for? What happens if I don’t click the button to stop the clock in time…?

This isn’t an excerpt from a new pulp fiction thriller, but one of the elements in a new journal many academics will have received notification of recently. Academia Letters is a new journal from Academia.edu, a social networking platform for researchers worldwide to share and discover research. Since it started life in 2008, the site has become popular with academics, with millions signed up to take advantage of the platform to promote their research and find others to collaborate with. It has also been controversial, accused of hosting thousands of article pdfs in breach of copyright terms. Up until now, the site has focused on enabling researchers to share their work, but now they have joined the publishing game with their own journal publishing short articles of between 800 and 1,600 words.

The new offering provides several other different takes on the traditional journal:

  • All articles are Open Access but for a lower fee than average (£300 in the UK)
  • Peer review times are promised to be “lightning-fast”
  • Articles are accepted or rejected at the first round, with only minor revisions required if accepted.

Now, some people reading this will ask themselves: “Doesn’t that sound like a predatory journal?”. However, it is very clear that Academia Letters is categorically NOT predatory in nature, because far from attempting to deceive authors into believing there is in-depth peer review, it is clear that the light-touch process and access to millions of users should mean the publishing process is both fast and cheap compared to other OA options. However, the quality of articles would not be expected to match those in a traditional journal given the brevity and lack of intervention from peer reviewers in the new model.

It will be interesting to see how many authors take advantage of the new approach chosen by the journal. If it takes off, it could open up other new forms from traditional publishers and other networking sites, and be held up as a clear example of innovation in scholarly communications. However, the journal may run afoul of its approach to marketing as authors have become increasingly wary of promises of fast turnaround times and low APCs from predatory publishers. For example, what happened when the ticking clock ran down to signify the end of a half price deal to become a premium member of Academia.edu? It simply reset to 48 hours for the same deal. Such marketing tactics may be effective in signing some authors up, but others may well be put off, however innovative the new proposition might be.

Simon Linacre Academic Publishing, Open Access Week, Predatory publishing

Open with purpose

This week is Open Access Week, which you will not have missed due to the slew of Twitter activity, press releases and thought pieces being published – unless you are an author, perhaps. In this week’s blog, Simon Linacre focuses on academic researchers who can often be overlooked by the OA conversation, despite the fact they should be the focus of the discussion.

The other day, I was talking to my 16 year-old son about university, as he has started to think about what he might study and where he might like to go (“Dunno” and “dunno” are currently his favourite subjects and destinations). In order to spark some interest in the thought of higher education, I told him about how great the freedom was to be away, the relaxed lifestyle, and the need to be responsible for your own actions, such as handing in your work on time, even if you had to pull an all-nighter.

“What do you mean ‘hand in your work’?”, he said.

“You know, put my essay in my tutor’s pigeon hole”, I said.

“Why didn’t you just email it? And what do pigeons have to do with it?”, he replied.

Yes, university in the early 90s was a very different beast than today, and I decided to leave pigeons out of the ensuing discussion, but it highlighted to me that while a non-digital university experience is now just a crusty anecdote for students in education today, the transition from the 80s and 90s to the present state of affairs is the norm for those teaching in today’s universities. And in addition, many of the activities and habits that established themselves 20 to 30 years ago and beyond are still in existence, albeit changed to adapt with new technology.

One of these activities that has changed, but remained the same, is of course academic publishing. In the eyes of many people, publishing now will differ incredibly to what it was in the 80s pre-internet – physical vs digital, delayed vs instant, subscription vs open. But while the remnants of the older forms of publishing remain in the shape of page numbers or journal issues, there are still shadows from the introduction of in the early 2000s. This was brought home to me in some webinars recently in Turkey, Ukraine and India (reported here) where the one common question about predatory journals was: “Are all open access journals predatory?”

To those of us who have worked in publishing or to Western academics, this may seem a naïve question. But it is not. Open Access articles – that is, an article which is both free to read on the internet and free to re-use – are still relatively unknown by many academics around the world. In addition, being asked to pay money to publish is still not the norm – most journals listed by the Directory of Open Access Journals do not charge an Article Processing Charge (APC) – and publisher marketing communications are dominated by spam emails from predatory journals rather than press releases during Open Access Week. As such, while the dial may have moved appreciably in Europe and North America following initiatives such as Plan S and high-profile standoffs such as that between the University of California and Elsevier, discussion about OA may not have been replicated elsewhere.

So, while there will be many interesting conversations about Open Access (and delta Think has some fascinating data here), it is also important not to forget many authors may be hearing about it for the first time, or previously may have only heard negative or misleading information. Thankfully, there are plenty of useful resources out there, such as this introduction from Charlesworth Author Services to help authors identify the right OA outlet for their research. And of course, authors should remember that most Open Access journals are not predatory – but to be on the safe side, they can check our Predatory Reports database or criteria to judge for themselves.

Dr. Sneha Rhode Open Access, Plan S

Plan S for/versus Early-Career Researchers

Last week saw the joint-hosting by ALPSP and UKSG of a one day conference in London on the theme of “Shifting Power Centres in Scholarly Communications”. Former researcher and Cabells Journal Auditor Dr. Sneha Rhode attended the event and shares her thoughts below from both sides of the research and policy divide.

The ALPSP and UKSG event on scholarly communications was filled with illuminating talks by librarians, funders and publishers – but the academics panel on Plan S, which comprised of three early career researchers and a professor of sociology, was the highlight for me. Plan S – an initiative for Open Access (OA) publishing that is supported by cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funders – launched in September 2018, and requires that scholarly publications from research funded by public/private grants provided by national, regional and international research councils and funding bodies must be published in compliant OA journals or platforms from January 2021 [1].

It was clear from the panel discussion that Plan S/OA isn’t a priority for researchers. This was shocking for most attendees, but not for me! Not long ago, I was an early career researcher myself at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London. I know from experience that early career researchers have busy lives doing research, applying for jobs, writing grant proposals, writing research papers and submitting to different journals until their research is accepted. Add to this, the stress of short tenures, limited funding and the power imbalance between researchers and principal investigators. It was apparent from the panel discussion that advancing in a highly-competitive career, where success is based mostly on the number and impact factor of research articles produced while having little control over money and decisions that are made in the publishing life cycle, makes it hard for OA to be a priority for researchers. Moreover, there has been limited engagement between librarians/funders/publishers and researchers regarding Plan S. No wonder, most researchers know very little about Plan S.

I wholeheartedly support OA and Plan S – it is a great initiative aimed at solving some of the problems that researchers face. Principle 10 in Plan S mentions assessing the impact of work during funding decisions, rather than the impact factor or other journal metrics (shout out to Ireland for putting this into place from next year) while Principle 4 mentions OA publication fees being covered by the funders or research institutions, and not by individual researchers [1]. However, individual members of cOAlition S plan to monitor compliance and sanction non-compliance by withholding grant funds, discounting non-compliant publications as part of a researcher’s track record in grant applications, and/or excluding non-compliant grant holders from future funding calls. This seems harsh, and yet it might be the only way to ensure compliance. However, I wish there were other methods to ensure Plan-S compliance out there that are geared towards researchers. I wish funders would introduce incentives for researchers to publish OA that could help them in their funding grants, tenure-track applications and promotions instead. Moreover, I also hope additional funds are assigned, and efforts are made by university librarians and funders to improve author engagement and awareness to Plan S and OA.

We at Cabells understand the need for author awareness to Plan S and OA. We are constantly trying to innovate to improve researchers’ work. With this in mind, the Journal Whitelist, our curated list of over 11,000 academic journals spanning 18 disciplines that guides researchers and institutions in getting the most impact out of their research, will soon start listing additional “Access” information. This additional information about OA policies (that govern Plan-S compliance) for individual journals will help smoothen researchers’ transition into publishing Plan S-compliant research.

ALPSP and UKSG deserve huge credit for showing us that a lot needs to be done by the publishing industry to make early career researchers are an integral part of Plan S. Early career researchers are invaluable to the publishing industry. They perform research that is published in journals and they are the editors and reviewers of tomorrow. We at Cabells recognize this and look forward to creating a synergy between researchers and Plan S into the future.

[1] https://www.coalition-s.org/.

sneha
Dr. Sneha Rhode, Cabells Journal Auditor

 

 

 

 

Simon Linacre Open Access

Open Access Week 2019: “Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge”

It is #OpenAccessWeek, and a number of players in the scholarly communications industry have used the occasion to produce their latest thinking and surveys, with some inevitable contradictions and confusion. Simon Linacre unpicks the spin to identify the key takeaways from the week.

It’s that time again, Open Access Week -or #openaccessweek, or #OAWeek19 or any number of hashtag-infected labels. The aim of this week for those in scholarly communications is to showcase what new products, surveys or insight they have to a market more focused than usual on all things Open Access.

There is a huge amount of content out there to wade through, as any Twitter search or scroll through press releases will confirm. A number have caught the eye, so here is your indispensable guide to what’s hot and what’s not in OA:

  • There are a number of new OA journal and monograph launches with new business models, in particular with IET Quantum Communication and MIT Press, which uses a subscription model to offset the cost of OA
  • There have been a number of publisher surveys over the years which show that authors are still to engage fully with OA, and this year is no exception. Taylor & Francis have conducted a large survey which shows that fewer than half of researchers believe everyone who needs access to their research has it, but just 18% have deposited a version of their article in a repository. Fewer than half would pay an APC to make their article OA, but two-thirds did not recognize any of the initiatives that support OA. Just 5% had even heard of Plan S
  • And yet, a report published by Delta Think shows that OA publications continue to increase, with articles published in Hybrid OA journals alongside paywall articles declining compared to pure OA articles. In other words, more and more OA articles continue to be published, but the hybrid element is on the decrease, hence the reports’ assertion that the scholarly communications market had already reached ‘peak hybrid’

At the end of the Delta Think report was perhaps the most intriguing question among all the other noise around OA. If the share of Hybrid OA is in decline, but there is an increase in so-called read-and-publish or transformative agreements between consortia and publishers, could Plan S actually revive Hybrid OA? The thinking is that as transformative agreements usually include waivers for OA articles in Hybrid journals, the increase in these deals could increase Hybrid OA articles, the very articles that Plan S mandates against.

And this puts large consortia in the spotlight, as in some cases a major funding agency signed up to Plan S may conflict with read-and-publish agreements increasing Hybrid OA outputs. It will be interesting to see how all this develops in the next OA Week in October 2020. The countdown starts here.

Simon Linacre Editorial, Open Access, Plan S

Cabells Launches New Blog

Cabells today launches this new blog site, The Source, which brings the original posts and news coverage from our popular bi-weekly newsletter to a wider audience. Simon Linacre introduces the new site along with some wider thoughts on scholarly communications.

Earlier this week I attended the annual Research 2 Reader Conference, which has earned somewhat of a reputation in recent years for, as one delegate put it, “emitting more light than heat.” R2R, as it has become known, aims to use the judicious mix of publishers, librarians and scholarly communication bodies that attend to try and move many of the conversations forward that often become bogged down in the rhetoric and corporate-speak that blight so many other events.

True to their mission, the organizers did well to focus minds on the two big discussion points of the day in Plan S and Sci-Hub. Inviting Science Europe’s Marc Schlitz, one of the key people involved in progressing Plan S, to give the opening keynote ensured plenty of coverage on the first day through the usual social media channels. Later, two willing volunteers tried to pull apart the moral conundrum that is Sci-Hub and its use by debating mano-a-mano whether it did more harm than good for scholarly communications. (Good won by a nose on the votes.)

Communicating what?

What struck me during the event was that, as with other major debates such as Brexit or climate change, the communication is done most effectively in the ‘bubble’ in which the debating parties exist, with little or no apparent engagement from the people that the matters at hand actually impact? For both Plan S and Sci-Hub, the views and narrative from the perspectives of academics, authors, early career scholars, and editors are drowned out by the ‘professionals’ in scholarly communication.

And so, beginning today, we are going to try and change things.

Welcome to the first blog published directed to our new, dedicated blog page designed to represent the different views and voices of those in the trenches of scholarly communications. Many of you will have received our newsletter The Source every two weeks, and this will continue to share curated news from multiple sources around the world about academic publishing and higher education. However, to develop engagement with our readers and highlight their interests and concerns, we have established this blog and hope to add real color to the debates around such issues as Plan S.

New era

In addition to regular blog posts from myself, colleagues and invited guests, we will also be including:

  • highlights of related research Cabells has undertaken or supported
  • details of ongoing news and activities through our dedicated Twitter account
  • access to a rapidly growing set of free resources aimed at improving best practice in research, publishing and scholarly communications in general.

Since its founding over 40 years ago, Cabells services have grown to include both the Journal Whitelist and Journal Blacklist, manuscript preparation tools, and a suite of powerful metrics designed to help its users find the right journals, no matter the stage of their career. Our new blog has been put together with your needs front and center, and we invite you to get onto the comment section and let us know what you are thinking!

P.S. If you would rather comment directly, please feel free to email me at simon.linacre@cabells.com and hopefully we can start to create some interesting new posts.

For more information about Cabells, visit https://www2.cabells.com/.

Simon Linacre Open Access, Plan S, Predatory publishing

Curiosity, curation and cures

In his latest post, Simon Linacre considers ways to solve new problems in an old industry from CISPC 2018

This week saw the second hosting of the Challenges in the Scholarly Publishing Cycle (CISPC) event in London, where a motley collection of publishers, librarians and researchers convened to discuss the latest issues in the scholarly publishing industry. The usual suspects – open access (OA), discoverability, accessibility – were given an airing, as were some new issues that hadn’t seen the light of day even a year ago, such as Plan S. With these topics and a mix of attendees, it was no surprise that full and frank exchanges ensued.

Adding grist to the mill of scholarly publishing discourse was The Scholarly Publishing Research Cycle 2018 report, which was released at the event. A detailed survey of the three main stakeholder groups, the report covers the issues above and a host of others in a wide-ranging overview of what’s on the minds of the great and the good in the industry. While having an inevitable UK focus – I’ll spare the intricacies of the REF for those of you outside Blighty – many of the findings will be familiar to all. Taking each group in turn:

  • For researchers, the most important challenges they identified currently were open access and licensing, discoverability and accessibility
  • For publishers, the key challenges were trust and validation, discoverability and policymakers’ scholarly publishing policies
  • While for librarians it was OA and accessibility, as well as scholarly publishing policies.

Curiouser and curiouser

While the issues were familiar – as were the shrugs when confronted with how to bridge some of the divides – there were a couple of stark omissions from the debate that perhaps could have shed some new light. Firstly, during an animated discussion of who were the real gatekeepers of scholarly publishing, which swung between publishers and librarians, the role of editors was curiously absent. Surely, with fast-moving changes in policymaking, mandates and author choice for their outputs, the role of editor as curator has never been more crucial?

Secondly, an old favorite of The Source reared its ugly head again in the shape of unintended consequences. Particularly in respect of Plan S and how things may get shaken out, it was evident from the flummoxed faces of all in attendance that there was much to still comprehend for all concerned. Could it accelerate predatory publishing practices? Will the ‘publish or perish’ culture alive and well in many countries be marginalized? Will journals see large scale consolidation and fragmentation? Again, the sage voice of editors would have brought welcome insight.

A problem shared

What was encouraging was that the report highlights some shared issues where much-improved communication and collaboration could help cure some longstanding problems that have become increasingly troublesome for all stakeholder groups. The ills of predatory publishing were mentioned by representatives of industry members as a major challenge, as was the different rates of change in the regulatory environment. However, some of the conclusions of The Scholarly Publishing Research Cycle 2018 report offered at least a glimmer of hope in the December gloom:

  • Better evaluative metrics for researchers will support the whole industry in dealing with the rise of impact evaluation and offer ample opportunity for collaborative working on all sides
  • Greater transparency by publishers, particularly around APCs and on behalf of society publishers who may have a distinct and more compelling offer than their larger cousins
  • Continued collective action by librarians, as seen in Sweden and Germany where they have made large-scale cancellations of content, may be replicated elsewhere and hasten change
  • Moving beyond open access, in the shape of seeking to address other issues in a shared publishing system, with the aim of making progress in other areas that often get neglected in the all-encompassing OA debate.

Who knows what will happen in the intervening 12 months before what will hopefully be the third CISPC event, but for many in the UK, it is difficult to think about anything beyond the 29th March 2019. With the balance of power likely to continue changing between the main protagonists, what is certain is that further such shared events can only be a good thing.

 

Simon Linacre Academic Freedom, Open Access, Plan S

Academic freedom fighters

Isn’t it worrying what your kids pick up from the radio and TV these days? When I was a child – back in the good ol’ days of four TV channels and the one radio station my parents only ever seemed to listen to – I don’t remember hearing the constant stream of news stories about rape, murder, sera misconduct or violence that seem to dominate the news programs today. Is that right, or am I donning the same rose-tinted glasses that show fashion, music and sporting icons just BETTER 30 years ago?

What prompted these musings was a question my 10-year-old asked me last week while the radio was on in the background:

‘Dad, what are they talking about on the radio?’

Me, not listening to the radio due to an intense focus on making the first espresso of the day, ‘What?’

‘Dad, on the radio. They are talking about something. And they said “post-truth”. What’s “post-truth”?’

‘Oh, erm, well, er – it’s not worth explaining. Eat your breakfast’

Difficult to swallow

Now, I am not saying an in-depth of exposition of modern political discourse and current media disintermediation is beyond me, but I need at least a couple of strong coffees before breaking that down into the proverbial bite-sized chunks for my kids. But it did concern me that while I dodged that particular challenge that morning, it only delayed the inevitable that I would have to explain in the future that there is a school of thought that believes that truth can somehow be ignored in favor of emotion, feelings – or simply shouting more loudly.

For many in academia, the notion of post-truth comes at a worrying time. While the idea may make for some interesting debate and analysis, the effect is to concentrate attention away from evidence and rigor towards something else entirely, as if truth is something that is irrelevant, unnecessary. What’s next after post-truth – post logic? Post-freedom? Post-life? At a time when the need for experts has been challenged in some quarters, and worse wholly ignored, the very essence of what an academic does is also called into question.

Global Challenges

If this wasn’t bad enough, faculty also see challenges to what has been termed ‘academic freedom’ across a wide-ranging number of cases around the world in recent months:

  • In Brazil, academics have promised to resist what they say is a breach of their freedoms by the state after campuses were stormed by police and people arrested for their views following the recent presidential election
  • In Canada, a professor was suspended by his school in the Summer after blowing the whistle on colleagues who had published in predatory journals
  • Meanwhile, in China, it was reported last month that the head of the elite Peking University was removed from office and replaced by a government representative
  • Scientific network ResearchGate has come under fire for allegedly forcing authors to upload their open access publications rather than share a link to them
  • The consortium of research funders that have come together under Plan S – joined this month by Wellcome and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – has also been challenged for not allowing publication of their funded projects in hybrid OA journals

Looking at these together, it is clear that there is a spectrum of potential breaches to academic freedoms, and while all such breaches are serious, it is clear that being arrested because of your research or having a member of the ruling party put in charge of your university present major problems for academic freedom. For those academics unnerved by Plan S then, they should think themselves lucky, right?

Wading through the pages and pages of comment on this issue, there seems to be a huge disconnect on both sides. While some open access advocates stress the fundamental necessity to make funded research openly accessible, some academics stress the fundamental necessity to choose which journal to publish in. Of course, these are not mutually exclusive, and it may well be that both publishers and Plan S alike evolve their policies into a joined-up approach that will satisfy both of the concerns expressed. Like the TV of my youth, publication channels have exploded in number and variety, but research quality remains absolute, and a further fundamental necessity for scholarly endeavor. We shouldn’t lose sight of that or the other academic freedoms that are currently under threat.

Simon Linacre Gold OA, Open Access, Plan S

What lies beneath

On announcing that the Journal Blacklist has reached 10,000 journals – 10,060 to be precise – there have been two broad reactions. One group of people have said, ‘Wow, I didn’t even know there were 10,000 journals in total!’, while another group has said, ‘Wow, I bet that’s just scratching the surface.’ This underlines the challenge in estimating how large the problem of predatory publishing is, but however large it is, there are ways to circumvent it. 

 

One of the many roles the librarian at a university has had over the years is to be the de facto guardian not only of the journal resources they provide in the library, but also to ensure faculty and researchers use legitimate resources outside the library as well. Many have provided invaluable guidance over choosing the right journals to read, use and publish in, a contribution made more and more difficult over time as the number of journals has grown exponentially. In a time of budget cuts, these services have often been retired or forgotten without any substitutes put in place.

Librarians would also have a savviness and understanding of the journal world, and be on hand to answer quick questions about journals and legitimacy. It is hoped that the Cabells Blacklist can go some way to support these kinds of queries from academics, and in case your trusty librarian is in Charleston this week, here is a quick guide on how to identify predatory journals and use the Blacklist to ensure you or your colleagues are not one of the thousands of scholars who waste millions of dollars every year paying to publish in predatory journals:

B – Behavioral Indicators: What is the track record of the journal you want to publish in? Look at its history and appearance online. Read the articles.

L – Look, But Don’t Touch: Use investigative skills to ‘research your research’ before making any submission decisions.

A – Actively Monitor: Ensure any information used in a decision to publish is up-to-date. 

C – Community Effort: Journals on the Blacklist, Whitelist or official ranking have used their communities to validate their entries – trust in your communities to help you choose a journal.

K – Kickass Metrics: Use citation-based information, such as the Impact Factor, alongside other metrics, such as alt metrics, usage and readership to ensure evidence-based decision-making with a blended approach. 

L – Legitimacy: Failure to legitimize your journal submission decision can lead to painful consequences – use of the Cabells Blacklist can prevent this.

I – Independent: Make sure your investigation of journals is based on independent, verified sources of information.

S – Searchable Database: The Blacklist, along with major journal databases such as Scopus and Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science, are fully searchable and enable comparison of journals across multiple data points.

T – Transparency: There are many databases which offer information, but are not transparent. How and where did they get their data? Being critical of any information is vital to ensure optimal decision-making. 

(NB: For help in identifying potentially predatory journals, ask your librarian if your institution subscribes to the Cabells Blacklist.)