AAAS misses opportunity to advance open access

Open letter to the Society for Neuroscience

Traditionally, there have been two important media of academic publishing: scholarly journals and scholarly books. The first scholarly journal, the Journal des Sçavans, was founded by Denis de Sallo, appeared already in January 1665 in Paris, reappeared after the French Revolution as the Journal des Savants, and still exists as a leading journal in the humanities. Only a few weeks later, Henry Oldenbourg, the first secretary of the Royal Society of London, established a second scholarly journal, the Philosophical Transactions, with a focus on science. The purpose of these journals was to formalize the extensive correspondence between philosophers and scientists.1 In the 18th and the 19th century, more specialized journals gained in importance, most of which were published by learned societies. At the end of the 19th century, university presses too began to publish scholarly journals. Another traditional means of academic publishing are the various types of scholarly books, in particular monographs, edited volumes, reference works (specialist dictionaries, encyclopedias, and specialty reference manuals), and technical handbooks.2 A narrow definition of academic works would exclude textbooks and books for the broader public. Shavell (2010, 337–39) employs four criteria to determine whether a journal or book is academic in nature: (1) the authors and/or the publisher are usually academics; (2) the readers are mainly academics; (3) the content is academic in character; (4) only low royalties are paid, if any. As of today, scholarly journals are the preferred mode of academic publishing in particular in the sciences and some social sciences (e.g., economics), whereas scholarly books still play an important role in the arts, the humanities, and part of the social sciences. Whereas scholarly books are published by a large number of small national publishers in a multitude of languages, the most important scholarly journals are typically in English language and published by a few large commercial publishers. Until the mid-20th century, the most important journals were published by learned societies, before commercial publishers began to enter the academic publishing market in the 1960s and 1970s by launching new titles or acquiring existing ones. This development has led to a significant concentration of (commercial) publishers in the academic journal market.3 It is difficult to say for sure how many scholarly journals are available around the world. Some sources speak of more than 100,000, others of 87,000 or 73,000.4 In August 2018, Ulrich's Web Directory listed 33,119 active scholarly peer-reviewed English-language journals with about 3 million articles a year, complemented by an additional 9,372 journals in other languages. As an important subset, 11,655 journals with 2.2 million articles were included in the Clarivate Analytics' Journal Citation Reports (STM, 2018, 25–26). The Web of Science (WoS) database counted almost 12,500 journals in 2019 (see below, Section 2.2.1). With the mass expansion of academic education and the increasing size of faculty after World War II, publications in peer-reviewed, highly ranked journals have become an important precondition for academic careers in many disciplines, in particular in the sciences, economics, and partly in the other social sciences. In 1964, Eugene Garfield launched the Science Citation Index to calculate the impact factors of journals in science, medicine, and technology. This index was later followed by the Social Sciences Citation Index in 1973, the Arts & Humanities Citation Index in 1978 (Regazzi, 2015, 86–88), and the Emerging Sources Citation Index in 2015. These indices led to the development of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF), a metric that serves to rank a scholarly journal based on the number of citations to articles in that journal by articles in other indexed journals within a certain time period. During the same time, commercial publishers have increased their market shares to the detriment of non-for-profit publishers, such as learned societies and universities, becoming the dominant players in the market for scholarly journals. Today, the "big five" commercial academic publishers—Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and Sage—cover more than half of the market for scholarly journals. Since the 1980s, we have seen a sharp increase not just in the number of journals but in particular also in journal subscription prices, forcing many academic libraries to cancel serials subscriptions and to cut back on new monographs (the so-called serials crisis, cf. Eger & Scheufen, 2018, 23–29). These developments induced an increasing number of scholars, initially in the United States, to promote open access (OA) to scholarly articles as a replacement of or an addendum to the subscription model. After some individual initiatives in the late 1980s, the early 2000s saw the emergence of a global movement by scholars, librarians, and research sponsors, resulting in the "Budapest Open Access Initiative" (February 2002), the "Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing" (June 2003) and the "Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities" (October 2003).7 Two roads to OA can be distinguished8: First, gold OA refers to electronic journals with OA for all readers, often based on creative commons licenses. The publishers' costs are covered not by subscription fees but from other sources, such as article-processing charges (APCs)9 paid by authors, libraries, learned societies, or research sponsors, or subsidies from learned societies and other sources. Hybrid OA journals, whose numbers are rising fast, allow the authors to choose between paying an APC, thereby granting the reader OA, or not paying an APC and requiring the reader to pay for access to the article.10 A special branch of gold OA is mega-journals, the first one of which, PLOS One, was first published in 2006. In these journals, the peer review is restricted to examining only the soundness of the submitted articles but not their broader interest or impact. Also, mega-journals are not oriented towards a specific subject matter. The second road, green OA, refers to authors self-archiving pre-prints or post-prints of their papers on so-called OA repositories, potentially in addition to publication in traditional subscription-based journals. OpenDOAR listed 5,713 repositories in July 2021, of which 5,073 were classified as institutional repositories managed by universities, faculties, or other academic institutions, 364 as disciplinary (subject) repositories which aggregate research papers in specific disciplines (e.g., PubMed Central, arXiv, SSRN, and RepEc), 138 as aggregating repositories (including Academia and Scielo), and 139 as governmental repositories.11 Whereas institutional and disciplinary repositories generally respect the authors' or publishers' copyright, so-called Robin Hood or Pirate OA repositories do not. The most prominent example is Sci-Hub, founded in 2011 by Alexandra Elbakyan, a young scholar from Kazakhstan, which made over 60 million journal articles publicly available. Due to complaints by academic publishers, Sci-Hub had to switch domains several times.12 Recent years have seen the emergence of academic social networks such as Research Gate and Mendeley, as well as a stream of new forms of disseminating scientific content, including blogs, podcasts, and Facebook posts by prominent scholars. Regarding OA books, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) in June 2021 listed 43,036 academic peer-reviewed books from 621 publishers.13 The number of academic journals, as listed in the WoS database, has been growing steadily over the past two decades, from around 5,000 in 2000 to almost 12,500 in 2019 (Figure 1).14 Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) The academic journal market is dominated by a few large commercial publishers, with the "big five" accounting for more than half of the academic journals listed by the WoS in 2019: Elsevier (1,754 journals), Springer (1,406), Wiley Blackwell (1,242), Taylor & Francis (1,199), and Sage (642).15 However, due to a downturn by Elsevier that began around 2006, this dominance has declined from around 60% in 2000 to around 51.7% in 2019 (Figure 2). Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) Coupled with the advent of the internet and the concurrent increasing digitization of academic works, which through the bundling of different journals and/or formats ("big deals") facilitated second-degree price discrimination, this dominance has led to a drastic increase in subscription prices since the early 1990s (Bergstrom, 2013; Eger & Scheufen, 2018; Ramello, 2010). The resulting serials crisis—with academic libraries having to cut their journal portfolio—gave rise to a new publishing regime that offers OA to journal content. The share of pure (i.e., non-hybrid) OA journals as listed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (2021) has been increasing steadily, from around 3% of all WoS-listed journals in 2000 to more than 10% in 2019 (Figure 3). Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) and DOAJ (2021) Interestingly, pure OA journals also gained ground in terms of quality. Figure 4 shows boxplots of the impact factors16 of closed access (CA) versus OA journals over time. While CA journals enjoyed an impact factor advantage over OA journals for a long time—all location scales of the impact factor for CA journals being above the ones for OA journals—OA journals are nowadays of the same quality, notwithstanding considerable differences between disciplines (see the contribution by Eger et al. to this issue). In 2019, impact factor distributions of both OA and CA journals are at the same level. Thus, advancing both in quantity and in quality, OA journals are becoming ever more relevant. The literature has identified the following advantages of an OA regime for academic works: (1) OA publications are likely read and therefore (2) cited more widely,17 which in turn (3) raises the incentives for academic authors to publish their research results as citations increase their reputation. These observations led to a broad discussion in academia as to whether the copyright regime may impede the evolution towards a universal OA regime, with very different conclusions being drawn regarding the impact of OA from a social welfare perspective (Scheufen, 2015; Shavell, 2010). Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) and DOAJ (2021) The growing relevance of academic OA publishing warrants a closer look at the development of pure OA journals as the gold road towards OA. Figure 5 shows the number of newly launched OA journals from 2002 to 2020. Following relatively slow growth from 2002 to 2014, with fewer than 500 new OA journals per year (except 2013), the number has exceeded 1,000 in every year since, peaking in 2017, when more than 2,000 new OA journals were added to the DOAJ database. Today, the DOAJ database counts more than 16,000 OA journals in many different fields of research, published in 80 languages by publishers from 126 countries.18 Source: Author's calculations based on data from DOAJ (2021) Notwithstanding this impressive development, the relevance of OA journals varies substantially across academic disciplines (Figure 6).19 The research field with the largest attributed number of OA journals is Social Sciences (3,817), followed by Health Sciences (2,785), Technology and Engineering (1,416), and Language and Literature (1,153). By contrast, the natural science fields of Mathematics & Statistics (341), Physics & Astronomy (274), and Chemistry (181) feature only few OA journals.20 Source: Author's calculations based on data from DOAJ (2021) Remarkable differences also exist regarding a variety of OA journal characteristics (Table 1).21 Most (52%) OA journals leave the copyright of published works with the author, whereas the traditional CA regime demands that the exploitation rights are transferred to the publisher. Moreover, only around 28% of all OA journals charge APCs—a remarkable finding, as the OA regime implies the transition from a "reader pays" to an "author pays" model. Other fees (e.g., a submission fee to cover the review process) are charged by only around 2% of all OA journals. Nevertheless, author fees may constitute a significant obstacle for authors to publish in an OA venue, especially for non-tenured researchers seeking to publish in highly ranked journals, which are most likely to charge APCs (Budzinski et al., 2020). This obstacle also applies in particular to many researchers from developing countries, whose institutions rarely cover such costs. Yet 18% of OA journals provide for the possibility to waive such author fees. OA publishing may indeed be considered a form of development aid, for two reasons: First, few institutions in the developing world have so far been able to subscribe to academic journals. The OA regime can thus promote scientific participation and thereby foster the global evolution of science as a "trial and error" process. Free or cheaper access to literature for researchers in the developing world tends to increase both their output (number of publications) and input (number of references) (Mueller-Langer et al., 2020). Second, an OA regime grants access to the latest results in science for groups who were previously excluded because they are not "club" members of a university library. This includes, e.g., corporate researchers, physicians, or farmers. Notwithstanding all the changes discussed above, scholarly journals remain the most important medium of communication in many disciplines. For more than 300 years, they have been fulfilling the four key functions of registration (attribution), certification of articles (peer review), dissemination (distribution, access), and preservation (scholarly memory and permanent archiving). In recent decades, a fifth function must be added: the evaluation of researchers and their institutions.22 The increasing importance of OA articles in scholarly journals has triggered some controversial discussions, in particular regarding the questions as to whether OA negatively affects the quality of journal articles, whether OA improves the dissemination of research results, and how OA affects the competition between academic publishers as well as the distribution between academics and non-academics, between poor and rich universities, and between poor and rich countries. We shall discuss each of these questions and some related points in more detail below. In times when "alternative facts" tend to trump sound research results, academia must provide the public with reliable information. The users of this information should be sufficiently certain that the results are based on proper methods, reflect the state of science in the specific field, and were obtained independently, e.g., of any political or commercial interests.23 For that reason, strict and continuous quality control of research results is a "conditio sine qua non" for academic publishing. Facilitating the communication of content from authors to readers, the academic journal market may be characterized as a two-sided market (Rochet & Tirole, 2003). While readers look for the most important research results in their fields by top authors, the latter are interested in the journal's reputation, in wide readership, and in citations. Thus, journals with high impact factors hold the greatest attraction to both sides. With this in mind, the crucial question arises what effect, if any, OA is likely to have on the quality of academic articles. Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado in Denver, is very skeptical regarding the quality of OA articles, especially those that are financed by APCs: "By adding a financial component to the front end of the scholarly publishing process, the open-access movement will ultimately corrupt scholarly publishing and hurt the communication and sharing of novel knowledge" (Beall, 2013, 590). A weak form of "corruption" would to OA publishers' incentives to peer review and to more submitted papers in to increase from However, the commercial publishers' incentives to increase the number of articles to the detriment of the journal's quality at the the quality the APCs that the journal is able to as well as A form of "corruption" refers to the of some OA journal publishers have been to in particular young and who on publications for their or to allow authors to publish articles in OA journals, by articles with or peer academics on their the or of journals, and so In established a of publishers, which was in January in to not only from the publishers but also from OA who that the to to OA. this quality to be a one which exists only in some disciplines (e.g., economics), whereas in other disciplines, such as some OA journals are the ranked journals and there is of a quality researchers their and if academic institutions and research to the APCs for articles by journals, this is to A by is that OA may new and will new and of their will remain (Beall, 2013, 590). However, this is a of the process, of whether the was submitted to a traditional or an OA and many prominent which that articles are generally more likely to the review than and creative but ones. In their contribution to this special & in a two-sided that OA can be a feature of journals. The have seen an increasing both of data on any subject and of that serves to that data almost there has been a of articles in every For such articles, the peer for quality A can be made between pure the same data and the same are as in the and scientific which (1) different data but the same (2) the same data but new methods, or (3) new data and new A to a on (1) the of an or in previously published (2) the impact of the (3) the of and (4) the of to publish Whereas some years when data were on the of mainly of technical copyright and data are the of Regarding the first journals in have already been including an OA journal by University with a focus on Technology and and the Journal for in by Springer the years or a number of in several disciplines have that the results of many when published in highly ranked journals, not be many academics to speak of a The is to the quality of research by access to data so as to be able to results of and or the incentives to the in the first Another important question is whether digitization and the internet have facilitated the quality of of their scholarly and and of their the quality of academic researchers and of is based on which were to provide a metric for journals with each 2019, being a of the citations to all articles in a journal but not of the citations to the individual articles. In a few articles are cited and many articles are not cited at Moreover, an may also many citations for being and citations are 2018, For some journals the authors of submitted papers to related papers that were previously published in the same journal have this by the of several journals this focus on and their to their and the of to these and to with for the quality of research & in with a a to be a (STM, 2018, are induced to the but the The on research which from the on Science and Technology in 2014, is of the existing to research output and to research evaluation in the et al., the question whether the new and the and (OA) of academic publishing to and their Some authors the in OA publishing with a broader of readers and open For of the in the focus on a small number of highly ranked journals, for a all articles that a journal's criteria should be published and made financed by APCs or other This is the of mega-journals such as PLOS a who the 2000 in and & the between of publications in the top journals in and of in a of the top which over the the crucial question is how to articles at low especially in a OA the of available articles to choose journal of costs to some However, the of the as a of quality has been Thus, an important to academic publishing is to provide reliable on the quality of journal articles that are of the journal that published the the internet and for research evaluation also how research results are Regarding scholarly by other researchers, there is an discussion as to whether OA articles more or fewer citations than those with a to that is in the by & and by Eger et al. to this special Regarding by the broader the mainly is being complemented with which on or in the social reference such as and Mendeley, scholarly blogs, and In the transition from traditional subscription journals to OA, the crucial question is how to the between two the one high subscription fees may be with high journal publishers have to their to the or research the other low APCs may not for publishers to cover their and to a to publish journals. The is to competition to journal publishers to articles of quality at and and to the interested public. The of competition not on the and of OA publishing. there were only pure OA journals, publishers would for all authors had to cover the APCs from their the APCs would tend towards a that the publishers to However, in the publishers of pure OA journals, OA journals and CA journals with OA repositories, and APCs may be by or research these different to foster OA will have specific on the of are some (1) green OA is or an to as has been the in since January 2014, publishers of subscription journals difficult to increase their fees. This also the publishers of OA journals from increasing their In any a must be is too will the publishers' to publish the journal in the first if is too the on subscription fees will be A for gold OA by research the of the publishers of OA journals and thereby increase (2) the of new OA journals, this foster competition publishers of OA journals for Yet this the that many years to a and to Until the new journal will have on the fees of the journals. (3) of academic libraries can constitute a to the journal publishers, potentially the of example is the in which so far two between a of most academic libraries in on the one and Wiley and Springer as publishers of scholarly journals in all disciplines on the other is a controversial discussion whether such impede competition on the journal market to the detriment of small publishers or indeed In any such to promote the of traditional CA journals OA OA publishing may several and the from "reader pays" to "author pays" can for researchers, for in developing countries. As we have 18% of OA journals APC for such Second, or to foster OA, such as the above, may to the of researchers who to the detriment of those who do not. Moreover, publishers may be to papers from researchers from that author fees specific e.g., by authors an of gold and/or green OA may due to that from incentives such as the in science or especially for non-tenured researchers, gold OA may their careers in fields OA with and CA example for due to may be the e.g., in the field of In this a green OA publication may with a publication of a in a journal since the that a journal works that have been published In the transition to OA journals implies that authors or their pay for the of readers from all over the world to access the articles. This may be poor authors for rich the global that is available to academic articles is in which the transition to OA may the number of articles The is when many of the readers are of we can that whose faculty publish many articles also for a large share of the readership, in which any between authors and readers their as a of the transition to OA should be A number of and developments since the second half of the have the academic publishing market and triggered about the very of academic publishing. journals, which in most disciplines to be the most important medium of academic are by commercial publishers, with the top publishers more than of all journals. and the advent of the internet have these publishers to in "big with academic libraries, of which the libraries to access a wide of journals at a price per As a journal subscription prices and academic on academic journals have been increasing to the detriment of publishers and on books with these a number of national and initiatives triggered the development towards OA, a new of academic publishing. Today, a growing number of pure and OA journals are financed by subscription fees but by publication fees paid by the authors or their Moreover, institutional and disciplinary OA repositories have been established and the traditional of academic communication have been with social blogs, Another of digitization and the internet has been the facilitated and of research in many disciplines. The of this development is an increasing number of the results of be this would with copyright and and academic authors to in The discussion as to how these developments the quality control of academic journal articles, the evaluation of and their institutions, and the size and of financial means for academic publishing. This special to the discussion a of articles with some of including the evaluation of by indices & welfare of open access & the impact of OA & & access to research data & to OA in and the to OA in & We would to for The authors also open access by

The Lancet journals welcome a new open access policy

Ensuring open access for publicly funded research

This article investigates the discourses of academic legitimacy that surround the production, consumption, and accreditation of online scholarship. Using the web-based media and cultural studies journal (http://journal.media-culture.org.au) as a case study, it examines how online scholarly journals often position themselves as occupying a space between the academic and the popular and as having a functional advantage over print-based media in promoting a spirit of public intellectualism. The current research agenda of both government and academe prioritises academic research that is efficient, self-promoting, and relevant to the public. Yet, although the cost-effectiveness and public-intellectual focus of online scholarship speak to these research priorities, online journals such as M/C Journal have occupied, and continue to occupy, an unstable position in relation to the perceived academic legitimacy of their content. Although some online scholarly journals have achieved a limited form of recognition within a system of accreditation that still privileges print-based scholarship, I argue that this, nevertheless, points to the fact that traditional textual notions of legitimate academic work continue to pervade the research agenda of an academe that increasingly promotes flexible delivery of teaching and online research initiatives.

Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica (AOGS): Coming-of-age to embrace open science.

O n the eve of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a new mantra is taking hold in the halls of our headquarters. A fuller version of AAAS's newly restated mission might read “Advancing Science and Technology for the Benefit of All People.” It describes an expanding leadership role for AAAS on behalf of science and technology and their contributions to society. It derives from the recognition that in contrast to specialty or honorific societies, AAAS is meant to be inclusive. Although specialty societies may understandably choose to focus on advancing individual disciplines, the largest general scientific society in the world must have grander goals. It must serve both the broad multinational science and technology community and the society at large. The new mantra also reflects the understanding that although some individual scientists do their work solely because of its intrinsic interest, our community recognizes its broader responsibilities. Our inclusiveness makes our members not only scientists but scientist citizens: citizens of a broad science and engineering enterprise who can work together to help ensure that advances in science and technology will benefit all people. This is an enhanced focus for AAAS, not a new one. As the new chief executive officer of the association, I've been struck by the breadth and impact of our diverse ongoing programs. However, I've also been struck by how few in the science community know the scope of AAAS's work on their behalf. There is, of course, our flagship journal, Science , and our many online products that serve, for example, young investigators seeking new and alternative careers, or science journalists and policy-makers seeking the latest, hottest findings. There's our exceptional annual meeting—a place where one can sample from a fully stocked cafeteria of the latest issues and findings across all of science and technology. But AAAS also carries out many less visible but important programs. AAAS science and policy programs have become the most authoritative source for analyses of R&D funding trends and implications. They are widely used by practicing scientists, funding agency heads, and congressional policy-makers. The AAAS R&D Colloquium every spring is a major forum for discussions that often help shape the future of science funding. AAAS's Center for Science, Technology and the Congress provides vital information to policy-makers through issue papers and Capitol Hill briefings. AAAS-sponsored fellows are well placed in federal funding and policy-making agencies and offices. A wide array of science education and human resource development programs foster high national standards for elementary and secondary science education and advance the goal that all people be well equipped to enter a world dominated by science and technology. AAAS programs also help ensure increased access to science and engineering for underrepresented groups. As just one example, the association was very proud when last month President Bush presented a special mentoring award to the AAAS Entry Point! program for its success in helping disabled people enter the scientific workforce. AAAS international programs reflect the fact that we are part of a global science and engineering enterprise. They involve such diverse activities as monitoring and reporting on science and human rights issues around the world, fostering collaborations among cross-national scientific communities, and helping build scientific infrastructure in developing countries. Our mission requires that we advance science and technology and their application throughout the world. I see my primary mission as expanding the association's leadership role in and on behalf of science and innovation in a global context. As we hone our array of ongoing programs and frame new ones, meaningful impact will be the prime criterion for inclusion. A sign in my office reads “If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well!” And to expand our leadership we must also expand the visibility of AAAS programs. We need to share the “secret” that AAAS serves both its members and society so well. As we implement our new mantra, we'll be calling on members to help us better serve society; not only in academe but also in schools, public media, and the halls of government. In the coming years, as you reflect on your AAAS membership, I hope you will take ever greater pride in being part not only of the oldest general scientific society in the world but also one of the most valuable.

Plastic and reconstructive surgery: a hybrid open-access medical journal.

Journal article access: Free, open, and subscription

A Review of:
 Chang, Y-W. (2017). Comparative study of characteristics of authors between open access and non-open access journals in library and information science. Library & Information Science Research, 39(1), 8-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2017.01.002
 
 Abstract 
 Objective – To examine the occupational characteristics and publication habits of library and information science (LIS) authors regarding traditional journals and open access journals.
 Design – Content analysis.
 Setting – English language research articles published in open access (OA) journals and non-open access (non-OA) journals from 2008 to 2013 that are indexed in LIS databases.
 Subjects – The authorship characteristics for 3,472 peer-reviewed articles.
 Methods – This researcher identified 33 total journals meeting the inclusion criteria by using the LIS categories within 2012 Journal Citation Reports (JCR) to find 13 appropriate non-OA journals, and within the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) to identify 20 appropriate OA journals. They found 1,665 articles by 3,186 authors published in the non-OA journals, and another 1,807 articles by 3,446 authors within the OA journals.
 The researcher used author affiliation to determine article authors’ occupations using information included in the articles themselves or by looking for information on the Internet, and excluded articles when occupational information could not be located. Authors were categorized into four occupational categories: Librarians (practitioners), Academics (faculty and researchers), Students (graduate or undergraduate), and Others. Using these categories, the author identified 10 different types of collaborations for co-authored articles.
 Main Results – This research involves three primary research questions. The first examined the occupational differences between authors publishing in OA journals versus non-OA journals. Academics (faculty and researchers) more commonly published in non-OA journals (58.1%) compared to OA journals (35.6%). The inverse was true for librarian practitioners, who were more likely to publish in OA journals (53.9%) compared to non-OA journals (25.5%). Student authors, a combined category that included both graduate and undergraduate students, published more in non-OA journals (10.1%) versus in OA journals (5.0%). The final category of “other” saw only a slight difference between non-OA (6.3%) and OA (5.5%) publication venues.
 This second research question explored the difference in the proportion of LIS authors who published in OA and non-OA journals. Overall, authors were more likely to publish in OA journals (72.4%) vs. non-OA (64.3%). Librarians tended to be primary authors in OA journals, while LIS academics tend to be primary authors for articles in non-OA publications. Academics from outside the LIS discipline but contributing to the disciplinary literature were more likely to publish in non-OA journals. Regarding trends over time, this research showed a decrease in the percentage of librarian practitioners and “other” authors publishing in OA journals, while academics and students increased their OA contributions rates during the same period. 
 Finally, the research explored whether authors formed different types of collaborations when publishing in OA journals as compared to non-OA journals. When examining co-authorship of articles, just over half of all articles published in OA journals (54.4%) and non-OA journals (53.2%) were co-authored. Overall the researcher identified 10 types of collaborative relationships and examined the rates for publishing in OA versus non-OA journals for these relationships. OA journals saw three main relationships, with high levels of collaborations between practitioner librarians (38.6% of collaborations), between librarians and academics (20.5%), and between academics only (18.0%). Non-OA journals saw four main relationships, with collaborations between academics appearing most often (34.1%), along with academic-student collaborations (21.5%), practitioner librarian collaborations (15.5%), and librarian-academic collaborations (13.2%).
 Conclusion – LIS practitioner-focused research tends to appear more often in open access journals, while academic-focused researcher tends to appear more often in non-OA journals. These trends also appear in research collaborations, with co-authored works involving librarians appearing more often in OA journals, and collaborations that include academics more likely to appear in non-OA journals.

Editorial: Open Access on the move

This is an open letter concerning the recent launch of the new open access journal, Science Advances. In addition to the welcome diversification in journal choices for authors looking for open access venues, there are many positive aspects of Science Advances: its broad STEM scope, its interest in cross-disciplinary research, and the offering of fee waivers. While we welcome the commitment of the Association to open access, we are also deeply concerned with the specific approach. Herein, we outline a number of suggestions that are in line with both the current direction that scholarly publishing is taking and the needs expressed by the open access community, which this journal aims to serve. The first of these issues concerns the licensing terms of the journal articles. The default choice of a non-commercial licence (CC BY-NC) places unnecessary restrictions on reuse and does not meet the standards set out by the Budapest Open Access Initiative. Many large funders, including Research Councils UK and the Wellcome Trust, do not recognise this as an open license. The adoption of CC BY-NC as the default license means that many researchers will be unable to submit to Science Advances if they are to conform to their funder mandates unless they pay for the upgrade to CC BY. There is little evidence that non-commercial restrictions provide a benefit to the progress of scholarly research, yet they have significant negative impact, limiting the ability to reuse material for educational purposes and advocacy. For example, NC-encumbered materials cannot be used on Wikipedia. The non-commercial clause is known to generate ambiguities and uncertainties (see for example, NC Licenses Considered Harmful) to the detriment of scholarly communication. Additionally, there is little robust evidence to suggest that adopting a CC-BY license will lead to income loss for your Association, and the $1,000 surcharge is difficult to justify or defend. The value of the CC BY license is outlined in detail by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association. We raise an additional issue with the $1,500 surcharge for articles more than 10 pages in length. In an online-only format, page length is an arbitrary unit that results from the article being read in PDF format. Can the AAAS explain what the additional costs associated with the increased length are that would warrant a 50% increase in APC for an unspecified number of additional digital pages? Other leading open access journals, such as PeerJ, the BMC series, and PLOS ONE, offer publication of articles with unlimited page lengths. The extra costs create constraints that may adversely incentivize authors to exclude important details of their study, preventing replication and hindering transparency, all of which are contrary to the aims of scholarly publication. Therefore it seems counterproductive to impose this additional charge; it discriminates against researchers' best effort to communicate their findings with as much detail as necessary. We feel that the proposed APCs and licencing scheme are detrimental to the AAAS and the global academic community. As such, we recommend that Science Advances: 1. Offers CC BY as standard for no additional cost, in line with leading open access publishers, so authors are able to comply with respective funding mandates; 2. Provides a transparent calculation of its APCs based on the publishing practices of the AAAS and explains how additional value created by the journal will measure against the significantly high prices paid by the authors; 3. Removes the surcharges associated with increased page number; 4. Releases all data files under CC0 (with CC BY optional), which has emerged as the community standard for data and is used by leading databases such as Figshare and DataDryad. We hope that you will consider the points raised above, keeping in mind how best to serve the scientific community, and use Science Advances to add the AAAS to the group of progressive and innovative open access scholarly publishers. We hope AAAS will collaborate with the academic community to facilitate the dissemination of scientific knowledge through a journal committed to fully embracing the principles of Open Access. We kindly request that you allow your response(s) to be made public along with this letter, and look forward to hearing your response soon. (Please note that the views expressed here represent those of the individuals and not the institutions or organization with which they are affiliated)

The Reply

Open access publishing in plastic surgery has rapidly gained traction in the past decade. This study investigated the digital landscape of plastic surgery open access publishing. This was a cross-sectional bibliometric investigation of plastic surgery-focused journals. Three publication models were investigated: subscription-only journals, hybrid journals offering both paywalled and open access publishing, and open access-only journals. Eighty-two journals were investigated. In 2010, open access journals comprised 18 percent of all plastic surgery journals online, subscription journals comprised 79 percent, and hybrid journals comprised 3 percent. Conversely, in 2020, open access journals comprised 55 percent of all journals, hybrid journals comprised 45 percent, and there were no subscription-only journals. Multivariable linear regression adjusting for article type/content demonstrated that open access articles from hybrid journals [beta coefficient, 1.3; F(4, 18) = 790; p = 0.05] and high-quality open access journals [beta coefficient, 0.9; F(4, 19) = 738; p = 0.04] were significantly positively associated with number of full-text views. Although impact factor and article processing charges were positively correlated [Pearson correlation coefficient: r(25) = 0.39, p = 0.04] for open access publishing, some high-quality open access journals were found to offer fee waivers/free publishing. Lastly, level of evidence offered by articles from open access versus hybrid journals differed. Overall, this study highlighted important distinctions between trustworthy and predatory journals offering open access publishing in plastic surgery. Open access publishing in trustworthy sources offers greater visibility and is not necessarily cost-prohibitive, but some open access journals can be limited in scope (i.e., less coverage of subspecialty topics) and quality of content. Study findings were used to generate recommendations for navigating open access publishing in plastic surgery.

Obama Signs Act to Make More Federally Funded Research Open Access: NIH Requirement Extended to Other Agencies