We’re Still Failing to Deliver Open Access and Solve the Serials Crisis: To Succeed We Need a Digital Transformation of Scholarly Communication Using Internet-Era Principles

Green, Toby

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3333907

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…In keeping with the proposition in this paper, it was originally published as a preprint (Green, ), and I am grateful to Kent Anderson, Caroline Wagner, Greg Hampson, Dmitri Zaitsev, Stephen Curry, Giovanni Salucci, Martyn Rittman, and Daniel Schiff who took the trouble to give me comments and corrections. I am also grateful to Pippa Smart, Editor of Learned Publishing who not only gave me valuable advice and comments but also considered the paper to be a ‘success’ and therefore worthy of formal publication.…”

Section: Author’s Notementioning

confidence: 77%

Is open access affordable? Why current models do not work and why we need internet‐era transformation of scholarly communications

Green

2019

Learned Publishing

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Progress to open access (OA) has stalled, with perhaps 20% of new papers ‘born‐free’, and half of all versions of record pay‐walled; why? In this paper, I review the last 12 months: librarians showing muscle in negotiations, publishers’ Read and Publish deals, and funders determined to force change with initiatives like Plan S. I conclude that these efforts will not work. For example, flipping to supply‐side business models, such as article processing charges, simply flips the pay‐wall to a ‘play‐wall’ to the disadvantage of authors without financial support. I argue that the focus on OA makes us miss the bigger problem: today’s scholarly communications is unaffordable with today’s budgets. OA is not the problem, the publishing process is the problem. To solve it, I propose using the principles of digital transformation to reinvent publishing as a two‐step process where articles are published first as preprints, and then, journal editors invite authors to submit only papers that ‘succeed’ to peer review. This would reduce costs significantly, opening a sustainable pathway for scholarly publishing and OA. The catalyst for this change is for the reputation economy to accept preprints as it does articles in minor journals today.

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Section: Author’s Notementioning

confidence: 77%

Is open access affordable? Why current models do not work and why we need internet‐era transformation of scholarly communications

Green

2019

Learned Publishing

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“…But not everyone believes APC-based OA is a solution. Thibault et al (2018) and Green (2018) assert that these fees did not solve the serials crisis and that Green OA remains the ultimate solution to boost OA. APC-based publishing was also criticized by Shah and Gul (2013) and Tenopir et al (2017) as it disadvantages authors who cannot afford APCs especially from developing countries.…”

Section: Apc-based Open Access Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Charting the Open Access scholarly journals landscape in the UAE

Boufarss

2020

Scientometrics

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The purpose of this study is to chart the scholarly journal landscape in the UAE in order to provide a scientific perspective on research productivity, distribution, and access in the country and lay the foundations for further research in this area. The study aims also to contribute to research endeavoring to paint a global picture of scholarly publishing. We carried out a mapping of scholarly journals published in the UAE compiled from international and local sources. The resulting journal list was studied focusing on the share of OA titles, language of publication, discipline, and type of publisher. Our results show that: (1) 534 journals are published in the UAE and that the share of OA is quite noteworthy with about 64% of all online journals; (2) the APC-based OA model is prevalent with around 75% of OA journals levying a publication fee; (3) UAE journals are predominantly in English while the number of Arabic-language journals is marginal; (4) science, technology and medicine prevail as the most prevalent subject areas of the journals; and (5) commercial publishers control most of the publications especially in the medical field. The study lays a foundation for further studies on scholarly journals in the UAE. The combination of regional indexes and international directories to measure the country's scholarly journal output can also be replicated and built upon for other countries where the major international bibliometric databases do not provide a comprehensive representation of scholarly publishing activities.

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“…This might change it if article/paper download statistics became important to institution's promotions committees as an indicator of academic standing. However, if Toby Green is correct and 80% of published articles stubbornly remain behind paywalls (Green 2018; see also intended to require all publically funded (scientific) research to be published via open access routes after 2020. According to analysis published in Nature as currently conceived this would bar publically funded researchers from publishing in around 85% of scientifically focussed journals (Else 2018; see also Kwon 2018).…”

Section: The Open Access Alternative(s)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Academic publishing and open access: Costs, benefits and options for publishing research

May

2019

Politics

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This article briefly sets out a political economy of academic publishing, exploring what the costs and benefits of this model are/were for the academic community. It then moves to explore forms of open access publication available to the social science (politics and international relations) community in the United Kingdom and beyond. The article concludes by asking why (given its likely advantages), the open access model is not ubiquitous and suggests that the future of publication lies in the hands of early career researchers.

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We’re Still Failing to Deliver Open Access and Solve the Serials Crisis: To Succeed We Need a Digital Transformation of Scholarly Communication Using Internet-Era Principles

Cited by 6 publications

References 37 publications

Is open access affordable? Why current models do not work and why we need internet‐era transformation of scholarly communications

Is open access affordable? Why current models do not work and why we need internet‐era transformation of scholarly communications

Charting the Open Access scholarly journals landscape in the UAE

Academic publishing and open access: Costs, benefits and options for publishing research

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