Open Password – Monday, October 25, 2021
#990
Open Access Days – Participation – Global South – Jasmin Schmitz – gather.town – open-access-network – Laura Czerniewicz – University of Cape Town – Open Access and Social Justice – Maldistribution – Misrecognition – Misframing – Global North – Vanessa Proudman – Paywall – Publishing Wall – Open Access Journals – Subscription Journals – Internet – Local Experts – Waiver – Research4Life – Open Access Publishing Infrastructure – Marco Bargheer – SUB Göttingen – Publication Costs – Alternative Publishing Infrastructures – “Open Access Publishing Costs” Funding Program – Angela Holzer – German Research Foundation – University publishers – Central Library Research Center Jülich – Josephine Hartwig – BMBF – BISON – SLUB Dresden – TIB Hannover – Filter criteria – Journal profile – Source codes – Peter Suber – Open Access Green – Open Access Gold – Scientific publishers – Young scientists – Transformation contracts – Libraries – Repositories – Pooling of resources – Christoph Bruch – Helmholtz Open Science Office – Fabian Rack – FIZ Karlsruhe – Creative Commons Germany – “Diamond” Open Access – OPERAS – OA Diamond Capacity Center – Funding strategy – Isabella Meinecke – Tim Boxhammer – SUB Hamburg – Xenia van Edig – Standards – Small publishers – ZENODO
- InnnoCamp – Best Practice – ZB MED – Zoom – Institute of Bioinformatics Infrastructure – National Research Data Infrastructure – Consortia – Springer Nature – Council of Australian University Librarians – Gale – Imago – IOP Publishing – Open Abstracts – Crossref – Cambridge University Press – Variety – Twitter – Outsell – Kaspersky Labs – Social Media Users – Lockdown – Influencer – Followers – Digital Balance – Intolerance – David Emm – Emma Kenny – Appy
- Cover story
Open Access Days 2021 online: Real participation instead of mere concessions – eliminating disadvantages for scientists from the Global South –
By Jasmin Schmitz
- InnoCamp: Best practice examples from ZB MED – consortia of the National Research Data Infrastructure
III. International News
IV. Kaspersky Labs: Social media users seek to escape the reality of the lockdown – finding digital balance when dealing with influencers
Open Access Days 2021 online
Real participation instead of mere concessions:
discrimination against scientists
from the Global South
By Jasmin Schmitz (schmitz [minus] jasmin [AT] web [dot] de)
Jasmin Schmitz
The Open Access Days from 27th to 29th September 2021 took place online again and this year the motto was “Participation”.
Initially planned as a face-to-face event in Bern, it became clear over the course of the year that the conference would have to take place as an online event this time too.
In addition to poster and tool presentations as well as topic tables and socializing on the gather.town platform, there was also an extensive workshop and lecture program this year.
As part of the conference, the newly designed website of open-access.network was presented [1]. The network took over large parts of the organization of the online event.
At its peak, up to 400 interested people took part in the conference at the same time. This may have been due to the fact that neither participation fees were charged nor registration was required. Access data only had to be requested for the workshops via an informal email in order to avoid Zoom bombing.
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the disadvantages faced by scientists
from the Global South.
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Laura Czerniewicz from the University of Cape Town made it clear in her opening lecture entitled “Open Access and Social Justice” that open access – as it is currently partially designed – can have an undesirable effect, namely increasing existing inequalities [2 ]. Three types of injustice were described that are intertwined and should therefore be combated simultaneously in order to enable fair participation:
- Maldistribution : unequal distribution of resources and infrastructure, for example,
- Misrecognition : for example, lack of recognition of culture and knowledge,
- Misframing : problematic power relations or decision-making structures that selectively grant rights.
According to Laura Czerniewicz, the following injustices can be identified in open access and scientific publishing:
- In the Global South, around 60% of researchers have to pay the publication fees themselves. Depending on the journal and region, the amount of the fees can be the equivalent of an annual salary or more.
- In the Global North, many open access journals are run through the use of volunteers (see also Vanessa Proudman’s article below). However, this commitment is only possible in the long term if fees are paid or there is a secure income in the academic sector. This is not a given everywhere.
- The redistribution of costs only brings about a change from a “paywall” to a “publishing wall” for the Global South, with the result that research results from there are less and less noticed.
- Research that focuses on the Global South is often carried out without scientists from this region. This is shown by an analysis of magazines that deal with the topic of “economic development”. 62% of the articles came exclusively from authors from the Global North. Similar inequalities can also be found in the editorial boards. Open access journals are more diverse than subscription journals.
- The Internet, as the basis for the circulation of freely accessible publications, is controlled in many parts of the world.
- Local experts are often demoted to translators or guides in research projects instead of being given the leadership of the research group. This leads to a feeling of alienation and a lower number of submitted manuscripts from this group.
When developing solutions, care should be taken to ensure that they initiate larger and sustainable change processes and do not simply alleviate existing injustices. So-called “waivers” – i.e. the waiver of publication fees for authors from certain countries – hardly bring about any fundamental changes. Free access to scientific literature along the lines of Research4Life does not have to be sustainable either, because the free access can be revoked at any time. However, research programs that only finance mixed research teams or the development of an open access publishing infrastructure that remains in the hands of the scientific communities are helpful. There are encouraging examples of this from Latin America.
The second keynote by Margo Bargheer from the SUB Göttingen with the title “Participation through Open Access – a promise only partially kept” on the last day of the conference advocated that the Open Access movement not only concentrate on the “access” topic, but also sees itself as a champion for profound changes in scientific publishing [3]. For example, those responsible for open access could ensure that publication costs are capped in order to be able to finance as many articles as possible. Another possibility is to create alternative (publication) infrastructures so that publications can be made outside of established publishers and to create more diversity.
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The “Open Access Publication Costs” funding program
will be continued with changed rules.
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Angela Holzer from the German Research Foundation gave an overview of the applications received in 2021 in the “Open Access Publishing Costs” funding program [4]. 116 applications were submitted, 53 of them from universities, which requested around 80% of the funding. The remaining applications came from universities and institutions from the four research organizations. 95 million euros were requested for prospective article publication, 5 million for books and 4.5 million for transformation contracts. Funds for participation in SCOAP3, other memberships, OJS instances and university presses can also be applied for as part of the funding program. Only a few applications were received.
Since the volume of applications significantly exceeded the available funds, cuts had to be made in several areas:
- Forecasts were not taken into account.
- There were also reductions in requested volumes for 2018-2020.
- Funding for books was limited to a maximum of ten books.
A first round of decisions took place in September. Further decisions will follow in November/December 2021 with the subsequent dispatch of funding notices. General information about the funding round will be published in December 2021/January 2022. You will then be informed about the next round of applications. Changes to the previously applicable rules are to be expected. An analysis of previous applications shows that the data that served as the basis for the calculations was often inadequately described. In addition, hardly any statements were made about the “information budget” and the “distribution mechanisms”.
The central library of the Research Center Jülich is responsible for the accompanying monitoring on behalf of the DFG. Bernhard Mittermaier gave initial insights into this [5]: From 2023, funded institutions will provide metadata on funded publications, which will be recorded from January 1, 2022. For this purpose, a data schema coordinated with the DFG is made available in Excel format. In addition, additional data can be voluntarily supplied for import into OpenAPC [6] or the Open Access Monitor [7].
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A cross-publisher tool
for selecting open access journals.
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Josephine Hartwig presented the B!SON project funded by the BMBF [8]. The acronym stands for “Bibliometric and Semantic Open Access Recommender Network”. It is intended to help researchers find suitable open access journals for their manuscript by suggesting journals based on the title, abstract and/or bibliography. The basis is the journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals and citation data from OpenCitations. Project partners are the SLUB Dresden and the TIB Hannover. The development of the tools is in the conceptual stage.
The results of a survey were presented at the conference, which particularly examined the question of which filter criteria and information in the magazine’s profile were of interest.
The most frequently requested filter criteria were:
- 68%: Citation-based attention values (i.e. Journal Impact Factor or comparable),
- 62%: Amount of publication costs,
- 60%: language of publication,
- 58%: indexing in databases,
- 56%: Usage rights remain with the authors.
The following were particularly requested features of magazines that should be displayed in the journal profile:
- 87%: DOI assignment at the journal,
- 84%: Journal listed in relevant directories to exclude predatory publishing,
- 83%: publication costs covered by their own institution,
- 82%: Thematic orientation of the magazine (Aims & Scope),
- 73%: Amount of publication costs.
Publishers have developed similar recommender systems, but only ever suggest their own offerings. The tool from SLUB Dresden and TIB, on the other hand, is intended to suggest magazines across publishers and is data protection-compliant and free of charge for users. The underlying source codes are made transparent and published. The tool should also be locally adaptable, which means, for example, that information on how the institution covers publication costs can be displayed. A first prototype is announced for April 2022.
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What’s on our minds:
Questions and answers with Peter Suber.
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One of the highlights of the conference was the question and answer session with Peter Suber. Participants could submit questions in advance via a digital pin board or ask them in the chat during the session [9].
The following theses can be taken from the meeting:
- Milestones of the open access movement are the Budapest Open Access Initiative of 2001, the Berlin Declaration of 2003, the founding of pure open access publishers such as PLOS and the establishment of repositories for the implementation of “Open Access Green” at numerous university locations. Early mandates from research funding organizations such as Wellcome and NIH, as well as the first rights retention policies from universities that enabled secondary publication via the Green Path of Open Access, gave the movement additional impetus.
- “Open Access Green” and “Open Access Gold” should be viewed as equivalent. “Open Access Green” is justified in that young academics in particular have to publish in certain journals in order to build an academic reputation. Green solves a problem that gold does not solve. Color terminology such as gold, green, bronze, diamond, etc. should be avoided with newcomers because they suggest values that do not exist.
- Academic publishers have recognized open access as a lucrative business model and are generating income through it. This hinders the further development of Open Access because there is no pressure for publishers to change. Despite these developments, Peter Suber believes that Open Access is a success because the proportion of Open Access publications is continuously growing.
- Imparting knowledge about Open Access is an ongoing task. Young researchers are constantly entering the science system and need to be informed. There are also constant new developments.
- Transformation contracts should be viewed critically because under these contracts publication fees have to be paid to hybrid journals that generate further income through subscriptions. It is doubtful whether the desired goal of transforming the journals into original open access journals will be achieved. The fees can also reach levels that institutions can no longer afford.
- The cancellation of subscriptions by libraries has not led to massive protests from academics.
- Universities should join forces to operate a repository in order to save costs and provide a better service by pooling resources.
- There is no best possible path to more open access. If it existed, people would have walked it long ago. Currently, you can achieve more by fighting on multiple fronts.
- Even in a system in which all scholarly communication would be transitioned to open access, libraries would retain an important role in curating, preserving, and assisting in the discovery of scholarly information.
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FAQs about Creative Commons licenses –
Non-commercial “Diamond” Open Access
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The FAQs recently published by Creative Commons Germany (CCDE) were presented as part of a workshop organized by Christoph Bruch (Helmholtz Open Science Office) and Fabian Rack (FIZ Karlsruhe) (see [10]). Based on the participants’ questions, it was examined to what extent they could be answered with the information texts and where there was still room for improvement. [11]
The non-commercial “Diamond” Open Access stipulates that reading and publishing in the respective journal is free of charge. Vanessa Proudman (SPARC Europe) gave an overview of this based on a study carried out by OPERAS [12]. With 356,000 articles in 29,000 journals per year, the volume of “Diamond Open Access” articles is lower than the number of articles financed through publication fees (453,000), but they still represent a significant share of the Open Access volume . 57% of the articles are from the social sciences and humanities. 41% of magazines are owned by universities.
Non-commercial open access journals face a number of challenges:
- insufficient compliance with Plan S criteria,
- lack of indexing in databases,
- no long-term archiving,
- missing registration in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ),
- no access to DOI allocation systems,
- missing data about your own work such as the costs incurred,
- over 60% rely on the work of volunteers.
The reason for the dependency on voluntary work is probably the precarious financing of magazines in many cases. The majority of journals get by with amounts per year that correspond to the equivalent of three APC-funded articles. The money for this usually comes from the universities. 43% of the magazines stated that they were able to cover their costs, 25% made losses and 31% were unable to make any statements about their financial status because they lack the necessary information.
Measures to support non-commercial OA journals have been suggested:
- OA Diamond Capacity Center as a “community of practice” for cooperation and exchange, for example on standards, as well as the development and bundling of competencies;
- Development of a funding strategy by research funding organizations. This should also introduce criteria that are based on common industry standards.
In their presentations on magazine hosting, Isabella Meinecke and Tim Boxhammer from SUB Hamburg [13] and Xenia van Edig from TIB [14] emphasized the importance of standards, especially for smaller publishers.
Access to presentations. Lecture slides and posters can be found on ZENODO [15]. Some of the lectures were recorded and are stored in the TIB AV portal [16]. The next Open Access Days will take place – probably as a face-to-face event – from 19th to 21st. September 2022 in Bern.
Left
[1] https://open-access.network/startseite
[2] Slides available at: https://bit.ly/OA_Tage
[3] Bargheer, Margo. (2021, September 29). Participation through Open Access — a promise only partially fulfilled. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5535609
[4] Abstract available at https://sched.co/krZI
[5] Mittermaier, Bernhard. (2021, September 27). Monitoring of the DFG funding program “Open Access Publication Costs”. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5531621
[6] https://treemaps.intact-project.org/apcdata/openapc/
[7] https://open-access-monitor.de/
[8] Hartwig, Josephine, Entrup, Elias, Eppelin, Anita, Ewerth, Ralph, Hakimov, Sherzod, Hoppe, Anett, Tullney, Marco, & Wohlgemuth, Michael. (2021, September 28). B!SON – recommendation service for quality-assured open access journals. Open Access Days 2021 (OAT21), online. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5534182
[9] Abstract available at https://sched.co/kdHc
[10] https://de.creativecommons.net/faqs/
[11] Abstract available at: https://sched.co/kdFm
[12] Proudman, Vanessa. (2021, September 29). Building human and financial capacity for Diamond OA. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5535775
[13] Meinecke, Isabella, & Boxhammer, Tim. (2021, September 29). ‘Shine bright like a diamond’. How institutional publication services promote open science. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5535475
[14] van Edig, Xenia. (2021, September 27). Non-commercial is not enough. Why formal standards (should) also play a role for YOUR publication. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5530335
[15] https://zenodo.org/communities/oat21/
[16] https://av.tib.eu/
InnoCamp
Best practice examples from ZB MED
Consortia of the National Research Data Infrastructure
(ZB MED) The 10th InnoCamp is a guest at ZB MED! The event serves as an annual informal exchange between members of the Bibliothek 20+ blog, the platform for collaborative technology and innovation management. The InnoCamp is held at different facilities. Everyone who is interested in innovations in librarianship and their implementation is invited; participation is free. The event will take place via Zoom. ZB MED provides the infrastructure for this.
The InnoCamp starts on November 8th at 11 a.m. with presentations on strategic decisions as well as best practice examples from ZB MED projects and technical developments. The afternoon will initially be dedicated to the National Research Data Infrastructure. ZB MED and the cooperating Bielefeld Institute for Bioinformatics Infrastructure are involved in a total of four consortia, which introduce themselves in short lectures. The Library 20+ network will then discuss how more participation in innovative developments can be enabled.
Further information can be found at https://www.zbmed.de/ueber-uns/presse/neuigkeiten-aus-zb-med/artikel/einladen-10-innocamp-2021/
International News
Springer Nature and the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) Announce New Partnership
Following Springer Nature’s successful transformative agreements in Europe and North America, the company is pleased to announce its first TA in the Asia-Pacific region. The agreement with the Council of Australian University Librarians will give members of the CAUL consortium the ability to publish their research open access in over 2000 journals.
Gale Launches New SEL and Career Readiness Platform to Prepare Students for Life After Graduation
Gale announced the launch of Gale Presents: Imago, an online social and emotional learning (SEL) and career readiness platform available to K-12 schools. In partnership with IMAGO, the offering allows schools to infuse video-based SEL content into 5th-12th grade curriculums to improve students’ emotional intelligence in the classroom to help them thrive in their life and careers after graduation.
IOP Publishing Makes Abstracts Openly Available
IOP Publishing has joined the Initiative for Open Abstracts, a collaboration between publishers, infrastructure organizations, librarians, and researchers to promote the open availability of abstracts. IOPP will deposit abstracts of their scholarly communications with Crossref.
‘New Journals Concept’ from CUP’s Research Directions
Cambridge University Press is launching an initiative it describes as a “new concept” for the journal, bringing researchers from different fields together to explore fundamental questions which cut across traditional disciplines. CUP said the approach would “speed discovery by fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing between subject communities.
Variety Teams With Twitter to Launch Trending TV Charts
Variety and Twitter have partnered on a chart that ranks the most tweeted about TV shows across network television and streaming. The charts will detail the top 10 programs that are organically bubbling up on the social platform, analyze the day-to-day movement of the top three shows and provide a heat map of which shows are resonating across the country.
Source: Outsell
Kaspersky Labs
Social media users are looking
to escape reality of lockdown
digital balance when dealing
with influencers
(Kaspersky Labs) The COVID-19 pandemic led to increasingly one-sided relationships, so-called parasocial relationships, also in Germany, as a current Kaspersky study shows [1]. More than a third (37 percent) in Germany believe they can be friends with influencers they follow on social media. Almost one in five people (17 percent) in Germany have even sent them private messages. Although these types of relationships remain largely virtual in nature, almost half (48 percent) of users in Germany have already met influencers in real life.
During the pandemic, many people have spent more time at home and turned to virtual companionship to compensate for their lost social life. These one-sided digital contacts have an impact on the lives of many social media users. Almost 7 out of 10 (69 percent in Germany) confirm that they follow influencers in areas such as health, hobbies, style and news. Almost a third of those surveyed in Germany (31 percent) say they are dependent on influencer content and 14 percent feel some kind of loss if there is no interaction with influencers.
Many users sought direct contact with online influencers – mostly via comments under their posts (or using the reaction function to posts or stories (29 percent in Germany).
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Social media as an interface to other people
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Social media played an important role in many people’s lives during the Corona pandemic. Almost two thirds of users in Germany (56 percent) said that social media was an important interface for them with other people during the pandemic. Agreement with this statement was highest among young people between the ages of 18 and 34, who rely on social media, particularly for networking purposes. It’s worth noting that over a third of users in Germany (34 percent) said they had become less tolerant of other people on social media since the pandemic. _____________________________________________________
Digital balance is essential, especially in times of crisis.
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“Although more than a third of respondents in Germany (39 percent) and half worldwide (56 percent) have been active on social media for more than a decade, many users are still trying to find a balance between the positive and negative aspects of social media -Usage,” said David Emm, Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky. “We are in a new era where virtual relationships are becoming the norm. These one-sided relationships can often lead people to overshare private things on social media in an attempt to further these relationships. However, this can lead to a variety of negatives and unpredictable consequences – such as hacking and phishing attempts, as well as doxxing, bullying and online shaming. It is important that users are aware of the consequences of over-sharing their private lives online and find a healthier digital balance.”
“Social interaction is important, but it needs to be safe,” explains Emma Kenny, psychologist and founder of social media health and wellbeing app Appy. “Young people in particular are spending a lot of time online these days, this connectivity can be positive and far-reaching. The ability to connect with others during the pandemic has been absolutely crucial for many of us, but getting the balance right is key – especially when “It’s about parasocial relationships with influencers. It’s important that people are aware of the risks and know how to interact responsibly with influencers so that they can enjoy the full benefits of social media and avoid pitfalls.”
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