Hybrid Journals Research Articles

Are journal archiving and embargo policies impeding the success of India's open access policy?

AbstractIndia's primary science funding agencies, the Department of Science & Technology, and the Department of Biotechnology (DST & DBT) together formulated an open access (OA) policy in 2014. This policy mandates immediate self‐archival of research articles generated from publicly funded research across all the institutions in suitable repositories. But with inadequate infrastructure and awareness, the OA mandate did not flourish as expected. This paper aims to understand whether journal policies impede the prospect of DST‐DBT OA policy and the possible routes to achieve policy compliance. The analysis presented in this paper tracks down the journal self‐archiving policies of the top 50 popular journals (among Indian authors) from each of the six STEM fields—Biology, Chemistry, Clinical‐Medicine, Engineering, Materials science, and Physics. The results show that most journals have an embargo of 12–24 months on self‐archiving of the post‐print (final author version after peer‐review), which contradicts the DST‐DBT OA mandate. The study also reveals that hybrid journals dominate, and article processing charges craft a new form of inequity for Indian STEM researchers. We expect that these findings will be helpful for the funding agencies to restructure their policies, and negotiate with journal publishers to resolve the contradictions.

Resisting the resistance (journalism): Ben Smith, Ronan Farrow, and delineating boundaries of practice

In May 2020, New York Times media columnist Ben Smith critiqued Ronan Farrow, charging Farrow with practicing “resistance journalism.” Smith’s column generated significant discussion among journalists. This article analyzed the metajournalistic discourse that emerged following Smith’s column to examine how journalism’s boundaries are negotiated and contested. “Resistance journalism” has three main elements: it is unobjective, targeted, and truth-bending. “Resistance journalism” falls outside of the boundaries of journalism, according to the discourse, due to three practices: it lacks verification, focuses on narrative, and has a propensity to advocate. We argue that the current political economic and technological disruptions within digital media and networked society are creating new spaces for the rhetorical competition over journalism to occur, upending journalistic routines and creating hybrid journalism cultures.

Despite a stressful period with the pandemic, publication is going strong: News about Annals of Applied Biology

Despite a stressful period with the pandemic, publication is going strong: News about <i>Annals of Applied Biology</i>

The interface between Macroecology and Conservation: existing links and untapped opportunities

Human activities are altering the structure of ecosystems, compromising the benefits they provide to nature and people. Effective conservation actions and management under ongoing global change rely on a better understanding of socio-ecological patterns and processes across broad spatiotemporal scales. Both macroecology and conservation science contribute to this improved understanding and, while they have different scopes, these disciplines have become increasingly interconnected over time. Here we describe examples of how macroecology has contributed to conservation science, and how conservation science can motivate further macroecological developments and applications. We identify challenges and untapped potential to further strengthen the links between these two disciplines. Major macroecological contributions include developing ecological theory, providing methodologies useful for biodiversity assessments and projections, making data more accessible and addressing knowledge gaps. These contributions have played a major role in the development of conservation science, and have supported outreach to policy makers, media, and the public. Nonetheless, a pure macroecological lens is limited to inform conservation decisions, particularly in local contexts, which frequently leads to the misuse of macroecological analyses for conservation applications, misunderstandings of research outputs, and skepticism among conservation practitioners and scientists. We propose possible solutions to overcome these challenges and strengthen links between macroecology and conservation science, including a stronger focus on ecological mechanisms and predictive approaches, and the creation of hybrid journals and meetings. Finally, we suggest new avenues for macroecological research that would further benefit conservation science.

Exploring the reach and impact of Gold and Green OA articles in hybrid journals

Does the type of open access that authors choose for their journal articles make a difference to the reach and impact of their research? &#x0D; There are an increasing number of open access policies and mandates, such as Plan S’ policy which was introduced in 2021 for researchers who have been funded by certain members of cOAlition S, and UK Research and Innovation’s policy for UKRI-funded articles from April 2022 and books from 2024. However, some policies intend to exclude authors from selecting OA in hybrid journals by restricting funding only to those journals covered by Transformative Agreements. In addition, some policies seek to increase the availability of Green OA. These policies would seem to conflict with the potential benefits to authors of publishing Gold OA in hybrid journals.&#x0D; In 2021, Springer Nature commissioned an analysis of 60,567 articles published in hybrid journals to explore the impact and reach of different types of articles (non-OA, Gold OA and Green OA). Our findings show not only that Gold OA articles attract more citations, more downloads, and higher Altmetric Attention Scores on average, compared with non-OA articles, but for the first time we will share evidence of a stronger advantage for Gold OA compared to Green OA. We will discuss the potential implications of these findings for authors, and for institutional and funder policy decisions.

Toward transparency of hybrid open access through publisher‐provided metadata: An article‐level study of Elsevier

AbstractWith the growth of open access (OA), the financial flows in scholarly journal publishing have become increasingly complex, but comprehensive data on and transparency of these flows are still lacking. The opacity is especially concerning for hybrid OA, where subscription‐based journals publish individual articles as OA if an optional fee is paid. This study addresses the lack of transparency by leveraging Elsevier article metadata and provides the first publisher‐level study of hybrid OA uptake and invoicing. Our results show that Elsevier's hybrid OA uptake has grown steadily but slowly from 2015 to 2019, doubling the number of hybrid OA articles published per year and increasing the share of OA articles in Elsevier's hybrid journals from 2.6 to 3.7% of all articles. Further, we find that most hybrid OA articles were invoiced directly to authors, followed by articles invoiced through agreements with research funders, institutions, or consortia, with only a few funding bodies driving hybrid OA uptake. As such, our findings point to the role of publishing agreements and OA policies in hybrid OA publishing. Our results further demonstrate the value of publisher‐provided metadata to improve the transparency in scholarly publishing.

Price transparency: let’s make it simple

Hybrid and subscription journals are a persistent feature of the scholarly communication landscape. Pricing for such journals, however, is based on old print rates and associated with above-inflation price increases, a lack of transparency and concerns about double-dipping. This article proposes that paywalled content be repriced based on a fixed fee per paywalled article. This proposed nominal read fee offers simple, transparent pricing that eliminates the opportunity for double-dipping.

Ferrofluid Lubrication of Optimized Spiral-Grooved Conical Hybrid Journal Bearing Using Current-Carrying Wire Model

Abstract To systematically investigate the behavior of fluid film bearing, the determination of optimal parameters is of utmost importance. The core contributions of this article are as follows: (1) modeling of the conical bearing for spiral grooves with ferrofluid lubrication using current-carrying wire model for the fixed coordinate system, (2) deriving the expressions for the magnetic field model and frictional power loss other than Reynolds equation for ferrofluid lubrication, and (3) evaluation of optimal values of spiral-grooved bearing surface for different cross-sectional shapes and that of the current-carrying wire model for magnetic field generation in ferrofluid lubrication. The generalized minimum RESidual iterative solver and the Newton–Raphson method have facilitated the solution of complex nonlinear finite element (FE) formulated governing equations. Initially, the results have been obtained for determining the optimal values of spiral groove and ferrofluid model attributes. After that, using these optimal values, corresponding performance indicators are evaluated. It was found that there exists a optimum value of different geometric features for distinct cross-sectional shapes of spiral grooves.

International disparities in open access practices in the Earth Sciences

Background: Open access (OA) implies free and unrestricted access to and re-use of research articles. Recently, OA publishing has seen a new wave of interest, debate, and practices surrounding that mode of publishing. Objectives: To provide an overview of publication practices and to compare them among six countries across the world to stimulate further debate and to raise awareness about OA to facilitate decision-making on further development of OA practices in earth sciences. Methods: The number of OA articles, their distribution among the six countries, and top ten journals publishing OA articles were identified using two databases, namely Scopus and the Web of Science, based mainly on the data for 2018. Results: In 2018, only 24%&amp;ndash;31% of the total number of articles indexed by either of the databases were OA articles. Six of the top ten earth sciences journals that publish OA articles were fully OA journals and four were hybrid journals. Fully OA journals were mostly published by emerging publishers and their article processing charges ranged from $1000 to $2200. Conclusions: The rise in OA publishing has potential implications for researchers and tends to shift article-processing charges from organizations to individuals. Until the earth sciences community decides to move away from journal-based criteria to evaluate researchers, it is likely that such high costs will continue to maintain financial inequities within this research community, especially to the disadvantage of researchers from the least developed countries. However, earth scientists, by opting for legal self- archiving of their publications, could help to promote equitable and sustainable access to, and wider dissemination of, their work.

Factors Affecting the Time to Publication in Ophthalmology Journals: A Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis

ABSTRACT Purpose: There are currently no available aids for authors when selecting ophthalmology journals to submit their manuscripts. We aim to provide comprehensive data on the duration from submission to various stages of the publication process and assess factors influencing time to publication in ophthalmology journals. Methods: A list of ophthalmology journals was obtained from the 2019 Web of Science Journal Citation Report. Journal characteristics, such as five-year impact factor, number of authors per article, journal type, and number of multi-institutional articles, were collected. The dates of submission, acceptance, electronic and print publication for all articles published in an ophthalmology journal in 2019 were determined. Results: In total, 56 journals and 8835 research articles were included. Of these articles, 3591 (40.6%) were open access and 4837 (54.7%) were multi-institutional. In 2019, most publications came from the United States of America (n = 1973), China (n = 1069) and Germany (n = 602). Significant associations were found between various predictors and a reduced mean number of days from submission to electronic publication: increased journal five-year impact factor (p = .026), more authors (p = .028), publishing in a hybrid journal (both open-access and subscription articles) versus an open-access journal (p = .021), and a reduced proportion of multi-institutional articles in a journal (p = .030). Conclusions: There is a wide variation in the time to acceptance and publication in ophthalmology journals. Authors can expect a shorter time to publication when publishing in high-impact journals.

The Scope and Implication of Mirror Journals in Academic Research

The aim is to do a narrative review on the scope and implications of Mirror Journals in academic research. The following study has been done using searches based on databases, journals, and blogs such as Elsevier, PeerJ, Nature, Science, Hindawi, The Scholarly Kitchen, and also reports of OSI Global, a global network of high-level experts and stakeholders using a combination of the following keywords: Mirror journals, hybrid journals, Open access, double-dipping, transparency, feasibility. This review starts with a brief note on the open access movement, the advent of hybrid journals and Plan S, and the challenges associated with it. The review gives an analysis of mirror journals in alleviating major issues of ‘double dipping’, economic burden, and transparency by ensuring the prestige and reputation of the parent journal to which the mirror journal is affiliated.

The Hybrid Journalism That We Do Not Recognize (Anymore)

In the past 20 years the world of journalism has been swept by a wave of structural, institutional and technological changes that have shaped the journalism that we experience today. Following conceptualization of hybrid media, the term ‘hybrid journalism’ has been used to define what journalism has become. Many scholars have subjected this label to scrutiny; they consider hybridity to be a vague term that requires a more precise conceptualization. In this paper, we propose that what to date has been called ’hybrid journalism’ has moved from the periphery to the center of the field. Adopting a communicative ecology perspective, we highlight that the changes due to technologies, which too often are regarded as merely disrupting the journalistic field, have now become established and are accepted as core components of the work of journalists today. This reconstruction work is mainly discursive and is explained by considering journalism as a discursive institution. We then explain the implications of studying journalism with acknowledgement that hybrid forms of journalism that are central in the field are hybrid.

Open access status of journals and articles in Journal Citation Reports

Purpose: There is somewhat of a difference between understanding the open access (OA) concept and practicing it by stakeholders. OA articles are mainly published by gold and hybrid OA journals, but the OA status may be confusing depending on the target databases. This study investigated the OA status of journals and articles and evaluated the extent to which OA2020 (publishing 90% of articles as OA) was achieved.Methods: This study collected OA data by combining 2014-2019 data from Journal Citation Reports at the journal level with Web of Science at the article level. Finally, 12,449 journals were analyzed focusing on gold and hybrid OA journals, and progress towards the goal of OA2020 was evaluated.Results: Even though 80.4% of Journal Citation Reports journals were gold and hybrid OA journals, only 20.9% of the articles were OA (gold OA journals, 16.6%; hybrid journals, 4.3%). The compound annual growth rate of the total articles was 4.7%, that of OA articles was 16.4%, and that of subscription articles was only 1.7%. Among the subscription journals, 77.4% had shifted to become hybrid journals, but only 5.2% of their articles were OA. Therefore, the hybrid journals were at the very early stage of OA publishing.Conclusion: Considerable progress must still be made to achieve the goal of OA2020. The influence of OA publishing will eventually expand and therefore, librarians should take interest in OA publishing for the library services.

Influence of open access journals on the research community in Journal Citation Reports

Purpose: The number of open access (OA) journals is rapidly increasing, and it is very important for librarians to understand the influence of OA journals on the research community. This study investigated the influence of the OA journals listed in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) based on various indicators.Methods: The data for this study were prepared by combining the JCR 2014 to 2019 journal list with the number of hybrid OA articles obtained by searching the Web of Science. Each journal’s JCR indicators and article processing charge were added. The influence of OA journals was compared according to OA type, whether they were published by large publishers, and whether they were top gold OA journals.Results: Gold OA journals remained weaker in terms of JCR indicators than hybrid journals. However, the top 20 gold OA journals, accounting for 27.0% of all OA articles in JCR 2014 to 2019, were superior in all JCR indicators. The top three OA publishers (MDPI, BioMed Central, and Public Library of Science) showed potential for development despite concerns regarding poor journals. The top three subscription publishers were very active in OA publishing, but their actual share of hybrid OA articles (Elsevier, 5.1%; Springer, 10.1%; and Wiley, 12.4% in JCR 2019) was still insufficient.Conclusion: Some gold OA journals showed high competitiveness and even the possibility for development beyond traditional journals. The transition of subscription journals to hybrid journals was found to be at the early stage. In light of these findings, librarians should continue monitoring the influence of OA journals.

Behavior of Conical Porous Hybrid Journal Bearing with Pseudoplastic Lubricant

In recent years, porous bearings have been increasingly used in various industrial applications because they are less noisy, have good precision, and are relatively maintenance free. In this article, the numerical analysis of a conical porous hybrid journal bearing system (CPHJBS) has been carried out. The interactive effects of permeability parameter, semi cone angle, and pseudoplastic (shear thinning) lubricant behavior on the performance of CPHJBS have been theoretically investigated. The governing Reynolds equation for a non-Newtonian lubricant in the bearing clearance space of CPHJBS is solved using a finite element model. Findings of this study indicate that the CPHJBS operating with a pseudoplastic lubricant offers a higher value of stability threshold speed margin for the lower value of semi cone angle and lower value of permeability parameter

Open Access and Article Processing Charges in Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery Journals: a Cross-Sectional Analysis.

Introduction Open access (OA) publishing often requires article processing charges (APCs). While OA provides opportunities for broader readership, authors able to afford APCs are more commonly associated with well-funded, high-income country institutions, skewing knowledge dissemination. Here, we evaluate publishing models, OA practices, and APCs in cardiology and cardiac surgery.Methods The InCites Journal Citation Reports 2019 directory by Clarivate Analytics was searched for “Cardiac and Cardiovascular Systems” journals. Sister journals of included journals were identified. All journals were categorized as predominantly cardiology or cardiac surgery. Publishing models, APCs, and APC waivers were defined for all journals.Results One hundred sixty-one journals were identified (139 cardiology, 22 cardiac surgery). APCs ranged from $244 to $5,000 ($244-5,000 cardiology; $383-3,300 cardiac surgery), with mean $2,911±891 and median $3,000 (interquartile range [IQR]: $2,500-3,425) across 139 journals with non-zero available APCs ($2,970±890, median $3,000, IQR: $2,573-3,450, cardiology; $2,491±799, median $2,740, IQR: $2,300-3,000, cardiac surgery). Average APCs were $3,307±566 and median $3,250 (IQR: $3,000-3,500) for hybrid journals ($3,344±583, median $3,260, IQR: $3,000-3,690, cardiology; $2,983±221, median $2,975, IQR: $2,780-3,149, cardiac surgery) and $1,997±832 and median $2,100 (IQR: $1,404-2,538) for fully OA journals ($2,039±843, median $2,100, IQR: $1,419-2,604, cardiology; $1,788±805, median $2,000, IQR: $1,475-2,345, cardiac surgery). Waivers were available for 51 (86.4%) fully OA and 37 (37.4%) hybrid journals. Seventeen journals were fully OA without APCs, one journal did not yet release APCs, and four journals were subscription-only.Conclusion OA publishing is common in cardiology and cardiac surgery with substantial APCs. Waivers remain limited, posing barriers for unfunded and lesser-funded researchers.

Open access journals are as likely to be referenced by the Orthopaedic literature, despite having a lower impact factor than subscription-based journals.

Background: The internet has changed the way we access and publish Orthopaedic literature. Traditional subscription journals have been challenged by the open access method of publication which permits the author to make their article available to all readers for free, often at a cost to the author. This has also been adopted in part by traditional subscription journals forming hybrid journals. One of the criticisms of open access publications is that it provides the author with a “pay to publish” opportunity. We aimed to determine if access to the journals impacts their influence. Methods: We selected the top 40 Trauma and Orthopaedic Journals as ranked by the SCImago Rank. Each journal was reviewed and assessed for the journal quality, defined by reviewing the journal impact factor and SCImago rank; influence, defined by reviewing the top 10 articles provided by the journal for the number of citations; and cost of open access publication. Results: Of the top 40 journals, 10 were subscription, 10 were open access, and 20 were hybrid journals. Subscription journals had the highest mean impact factor, and SCImago rank with a significant difference in the impact factor (p = 0.001) and SCImago rank (p = 0.021) observed between subscription and open access journals. No significant difference was seen between citation numbers of articles published in subscription and open access journals (p = 0.168). There was a positive correlation between the cost of publishing in an open access journal and the impact factor (r = 0.404) but a negative correlation between cost and the number of citations (r = 0.319). Conclusion: Open access journals have significantly lower quality measures in comparison to subscription journals. Despite this, we found no difference between the number of citations, suggestive of there being no difference in the influence of these journals in spite of the observed difference in quality.

Possibilities to Reinvent Digital Journalism to Face the Challenges of the New Technological Times

Because it involves constant change, the new technological times bring challenges: in addition to the pandemic crisis that affects everyone, among the tensions is a disruptive scenario in which platforming, algorithms, and datafication have emerged, which are related to the abuse of corporations, to which is added the crisis of journalism, challenges that require digital reinvention. Other communication problems can be indicated in a map of the communicative relations that are established and in which issues such as misinformation, sensationalism, consumerism, and pessimism can be located, to which solution alternatives are proposed. At the same time that there is crisis, promising possibilities arise such as mobile journalism, data journalism, longform journalism, experimental journalism, and promising possibilities such as adaptive journalism, sustainable journalism, experiential journalism, in addition to experiments such as artistic journalism, among others that stand alongside the consolidated practices of high-tech journalism involving platforms, human-algorithm hybrid journalism, robotic and AI journalism, of which empirical examples stand out. It arrives at the issue of hyper mediations and, moving forward, reflects on the possibilities offered by public space, regulation, and an international contract for the Internet. The methodological approach is essayistic and based on bibliographic review, and uses, as sources of evidence of the empirical cases referred to, journalistic documentation online, available on the Web. Thus, seeking to face such tensions, the purpose of this paper is to focus on possibilities of reinventing journalism through promising practices that highlight digital technologies, examining journalistic robots, use of artificial intelligence, algorithms, and other journalistic practices. As a result, several promising possibilities for the reinvention of journalism can be highlighted: (i) journalistically innovating on the Web so that it becomes a public space that allows citizen communication; (ii) consolidating the international movement to sign an Internet principles contract that includes digital journalism; (iii) contributing to improving the experience of both the communicators and the enjoyment of the interlocutors, among other imaginative possibilities and consolidated practices. Seeking a tension between these positions, we consider focusing on promising experimental practices that emphasize digital technologies, examining journalist robots, algorithms, and other journalistic experimental practices. It follows that the challenge of reinvention is to develop communicators' critical digital skills and the ability to sensitize interlocutors to feel from the other's perspective. Digital journalism can make use of different possibilities to face the challenges in new times.

Effect of Thermal Distortion on Performance of Hybrid Journal Bearing

Effect of Thermal Distortion on Performance of Hybrid Journal Bearing

Transformative agreements: Do they pave the way to open access?

AbstractTransformative agreements, also known as ‘offsetting’, ‘read and publish’, or ‘publish and read’ agreements, have shifted the focus of scholarly journal licensing from cost containment towards open access publication. An analysis of 36 full‐text transformative agreements recorded in the ESAC registry shows that ‘transformative agreement’ is an umbrella term that encompasses different kinds of contracts. We differentiate between pre‐transformative, partially transformative, and fully transformative agreements. Pre‐transformative agreements are traditional subscription licences that grant article processing charge (APC) discounts or vouchers for open access publication of a limited number of articles. Partially transformative agreements differentiate between a read fee and a publish fee to cover the processing charges of a certain number of articles. Fully transformative agreements allow unlimited open access publication of the scholarly output of the subscribing institution. In all three categories, some agreements restrict open access publication to hybrid journals, whereas others allow publication in both hybrid and gold journals. Transformative agreements are more transparent than traditional journal licences, allow authors to retain copyright, and make provisions to facilitate the management of open access workflows. It is hard to assess whether these agreements are just a temporary phase in the transition towards open access or will perpetuate the current structure of the scholarly communication system and its associated high costs.