Simon Linacre Academic Publishing, Higher Education, Sustainability, Uncategorized

Opening up the SDGs

While the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer a framework for global communities to tackle the world’s biggest challenges, there are still huge barriers to overcome in ensuring research follows the desired path. This week, Simon Linacre reflects on the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ effects in publishing and one organization trying to refine a fragmented infrastructure.

Recently, Cabells has been able to further its commitment to pursuing the UN SDGs by signing up to the SDG Publishers Compact and sharing details of its pilot journal rating system with the Haub School of Business at Saint Joseph’s University that assesses journals in terms of their relevance to the SDGs. Part of the reason Cabells is working with the SDGs – aside from a simple belief that they are a force for good – is that they represent an opportunity to offer reward and recognition for researchers who are using their talents to in some small way make the world a better place.

The scholarly communications industry, like many others, relies on push and pull dynamics to maintain its growth trajectory. The push elements include the availability of citations and other metrics to judge performance, recognition for publishing in certain journals, and various community rewards for well-received research. On the flip side, pull elements include opportunities shared by academic publishers, a facility to record research achievements, and an opportunity to share findings globally. This is how the publishing world turns round.

This dynamic also helps to explain why potentially disruptive developments – such as Open Access or non-peer-reviewed journals and platforms – may fail to gain initial traction, and why they may require additional support in order to become embedded with academics and their mode of operations. Going back to the SDGs, we can see how their emergence could similarly be stymied by the existing power play in scholarly publishing – where are the push and pull factors guiding researchers to focus on SDG-related subjects?

I recently spoke to Stephanie Dawson, CEO at ScienceOpen, which is a discovery platform that seeks to enable academics to enhance their research in an open access environment and offer publishers ‘context building services’ to improve the impact of their outputs. ScienceOpen is very much involved with the UN SDGs, recently creating a number of content containers for SDG-related articles. By offering curative opportunities, post-publication enhancements, and article-level data services, ScienceOpen is most definitely doing its part to support a pull strategy in the industry.

Stephanie says, “We began this project working with the University College London (UCL) Library to showcase their outputs around the UN SDGs. Because we believe there needs to be broad community buy-in, we also wanted to encourage researchers globally to highlight their contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals by adding keywords and author summaries on ScienceOpen, regardless of the journal they published in and demanding publisher engagement for new works.”

And this is what Cabells is also trying to achieve – by offering new metrics that can be used to guide authors to the optimal publishing option (push) and highlighting traditionally overlooked journals with low citations as destination publications (pull), we hope we can change the conversation from ‘Is this a good journal?’ to ‘Does this research matter?’. And we think reframing the context like ScienceOpen is doing is an important first step.

Mike Bisaccio Academic Publishing, Uncategorized

Cabells is proud to be COUNTER Release 5 Compliant

Cabells is excited to have passed an independent COUNTER audit, the final step to being deemed fully compliant with the COUNTER Release 5 Code of Practice.

COUNTER tweet

COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources) is a non-profit organization that helps libraries from around the world determine the value of electronic resources provided by different vendors by setting standards for the recording and reporting of usage stats in a consistent and compatible way. The COUNTER Code of Practice was developed with the assistance of library, publisher, and vendor members through working groups and outreach.

By implementing the Code of Practice, publishers and vendors support their library customers by providing statistics in a way that allows for meaningful analysis and cost comparison. This allows libraries to closely asses user activity, calculate cost-per-use data, and make informed purchasing and infrastructure planning decisions, ensuring limited funds are spent in the most efficient way possible.

For more information, check out the COUNTER website which includes their Registries of Compliance.

Simon Linacre Getting published, Research, Uncategorized

Why asking the experts is always a good idea

In the so-called ‘post-truth’ age where experts are sidelined in favor of good soundbites, Simon Linacre unashamedly uses expert insight in uncovering the truth behind poor publishing decisions… with some exciting news at the end!

Everyone in academia or scholarly publishing can name at least one time they came across a terrible publishing decision. Whether it was an author choosing the wrong journal, or indeed the journal choosing the wrong author, articles have found their way into print that never should have, and parties on both sides must live with the consequences for evermore.

My story involved an early career researcher (ECR) in the Middle East whom I was introduced to whilst delivering talks on how to get published in journals. The researcher had submitted an article to well-regarded Journal A, but, tired of waiting on a decision, submitted the same article to a predatory-looking Journal B without retracting the prior submission. Journal B accepted the paper… and then so did Journal A after the article had already appeared in Journal B’s latest issue. Our hapless author went ahead and published the same article in Journal A – encouraged, so I was told, by his boss – and was then left with the unholy mess of dual publication and asking for my guidance. A tangled web indeed.

Expert advice

The reason why our author made a poor publishing choice was both out of ignorance and necessity, with the same boss telling him to accept the publication in the better-ranked journal, the same boss who wanted to see improved publishing outputs from their faculty. At Cabells, we are fast-approaching 11,000 predatory journals on our Blacklist and it is easy to forget that every one of those journals is filled with articles from authors who, for some reason, made a decision to submit their articles to them for publication.

The question therefore remains: But why?

Literature reviewed

One researcher decided to answer this question herself by, you guessed it, looking at what other experts had said in the form of a literature review of related articles. TF Frandsen’s article is entitled, “Why do researchers decide to publish in questionable journals? A review of the literature” and is published by Wiley in the latest issue of Learned Publishing (currently available as a free access article here). In it, Frandsen draws the following key points:

  • Criteria for choosing journals could be manipulated by predatory-type outlets to entrap researchers and encourage others
  • A ‘publish or perish’ culture has been blamed for the rise in ‘deceptive journals’ but may not be the only reason for their growth
  • Identifying journals as ‘predatory’ ignores the fact that authors may seek to publish in them as a simple route to career development
  • There are at least two different types of authors who publish in so-called deceptive journals: the “unethical” and the “uninformed”
  • Therefore, there should be at least two different approaches to the problem required

For the uninformed, Frandsen recommends that institutions ensure that faculty members are as informed as possible on the dangers of predatory journals and what the consequences of poor choices might be. For those authors making unethical choices, she suggests that the incentives in place that push these authors to questionable decisions should be removed. More broadly, as well as improved awareness, better parameters for authors around the quality of journals in which they should publish could encourage a culture of transparency around journal publication choices. And this would be one decision that everyone in academia and scholarly publishing could approve of.

PS: Enjoying our series of original posts in The Source? The great news is that there will be much more original content, news and resources available for everyone in the academic and publishing communities in the coming weeks… look out for the next edition of The Source for some exciting new developments!

Simon Linacre Uncategorized

Predicting 2019 is a fool’s game… so here are some predictions!

Five things that may or may not happen this year — In his first post of 2019, Simon Linacre lifts the lid on what he expects to happen in the most unpredictable of years since, erm, 2018…

A very Happy New Year to everyone, and as has become traditional in post-Christmas, early-January posts, I thought I would bring out the old crystal ball to try to predict some trends and areas of development in scholarly publishing in 2019. However, please do not think for one second that this is in any way a scientific or even divine exercise, as we all know that we may as well just stick a few random happenings on a wall and throw darts at them blindfolded to try and somehow see what may or may not occur in the next few months. So, with that caveat in mind, here are five predictions that at least may have some vague hope of coming to pass this year:

  1. #Plan_S – the agreement from 11 major European funders to mandate certain types of Open Access publications from researchers they have supported – has already kept commentators busy in scholarly communications in the early days of 2019. Suffice it to say it will undoubtedly gain traction, with all eyes on the U.S. and China simultaneously to see if funders in those research behemoths sign-up to or explicitly support the movement. However, while Plan S may hasten change in STEM funding and publishing communities, this change may be quicker than academia itself can change, with petitions being raised against it and significant communities outside either Europe and/or STEM subjects still largely oblivious to it.
  2. The most popular research-related search terms in 2018 included ‘AI’ and ‘blockchain’, as the belief is that both can have a major influence on scientific development in a huge range of areas. Expect 2019 to see these both have more of an influence on scholarly publishing, with applications of blockchain to peer review systems and AI improving the ways knowledge is utilized, especially in countries set up for exploiting such opportunities.
  3. Hot on the heels of the news that the whole Editorial Board of Elsevier’s Informetrics journal has resigned to form their own journal Quantitative Science Studies with MIT Press, bibliometrics should remain in the headlines with new metrics appearing or rumored on a regular basis. Chief among these will be new rankings slated to appear from Times Higher Education and other organizations based around utility, impact or relevance rather than as a proxy for quality.
  4. While any prediction around Brexit – especially this week, day, hour, or even minute – is wholly futile, several shifts can already be seen to be occurring as a result of this and other major political events. Uncertainty around Brexit, especially based on fears of the so-called no-deal Brexit, will inevitably cause some prospective students to think long and hard about any plans they had to study in the UK, while President Trump’s one-of-a-kind presidency may have a similar effect. Major elections in Europe will also have major ramifications for higher education, not least where the EU research money goes if/when the UK eventually exits.
  5. Given the increasingly complicated nature of higher education on both a macro- and micro-scale, it is also to be hoped that we all become a little more skilled and experienced at dealing with this so-called ‘VUCA’ environment – an environment that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Steering through these uncharted waters in the calmest way possible can be the only path to take – and it is to be hoped our leaders show us the way.
Simon Linacre Uncategorized

Book review: Association of University Presses 2018

In his latest post, Simon Linacre reviews Associaton of University Presses Directory 2018 and deems it an essential tome for the future of scholarly publishing

Many of you will be plowing through ‘Best Books of 2018’ reviews at this time of year, as is traditional in the media as time is short before Christmas, but pages still have to be filled. This will then give way to ‘Best Books of 2019’ reviews written sometime in October. Even journalists deserve some sort of break over the holidays.

As a change to this format, we at Cabells wanted to highlight a book that is neither the best nor worst but will stand you in good stead in 2019, whether you are an academic author, publisher or librarian. So, ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the Most Useful Book of 2019… (drum roll, please)… The Association of University Presses Directory 2018!

Now, the latest editions of directories rarely get much of a fanfare, so what makes the AUPresses book any different. Well, the book (printed by Thomson-Shore and available through University of Chicago Press) has been released at a time when there is much anticipation among publishers and librarians alike about the role university presses are likely to play in the years ahead. The cards seem to be falling, finally, in their favor after years of dominance by large commercial publishers. With Open Access driving the agenda, barriers to entry are falling as technology gets better and cheaper, and funding mandates potentially disrupting the marketplace, the opportunities are there for universities and their presses to effectively take ownership of research content supplied by academics.

The book itself will expertly guide anyone interested in these developments. The meat of the text includes details of scores of university presses globally which are members of AUPresses, from Abilene Christian to Yale University Press. Each press has a wealth of information on it included in the entries – address, phone numbers, distributors, online details, and most impressively of all staff registers with numbers and email addresses for every person listed. These people are also included in pages of names in an index at the back.

Even more useful, there are other sections to help those with an interest in publishing understand more deeply the university press environment. There is a sub-list of those presses who publish both books and journals, and a robust guide defining what university presses do, how to go about submitting a book manuscript, and for publishers, a smaller directory of AUPresses Association Partners who support presses in their distribution and sales.

Overall, the book has something for everyone. For publishers, it is a treasure trove of information to seek out publishing partnerships; for librarians, it is an essential listing of everyone they could ever think of contacting from university presses about their content. And for authors, it is invaluable in offering direction when it comes to that dreaded time of finding a publisher for their work. And here we find perhaps the most useful section of all – a 10-page grid that lists every university press and each subject they publish in. So, that manuscript you have in your bottom drawer on Australasian history? Better keep Athabasca and Cambridge university presses on your radar. It is hard to imagine any other resource listing that information for authors. How very useful.