Models Of Scholarly Communication Research Articles

Academic Librarians in Spanish-Speaking Latin America See a Growing Need for Librarian Role in Scholarly Publishing Literacy

A Review of:Buitrago Ciro, J. (2022). How are academic libraries in Spanish-speaking Latin America responding to new models of scholarly communication and predatory publishing? Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 54(3), 373–388. https://doi.org/10.1177/09610006211016533Objective – To examine the current state of knowledge among academic librarians in Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America regarding open access and predatory publishing. Furthermore, the study sought to explore actions or potential plans among this group that could allow them to better assist researchers with these aspects of scholarly publishing literacy. Design – An online survey, followed by interviews with self-selected participants. Setting – Academic libraries in Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America. Subjects – 104 librarians in the online survey and seven librarians in the interviews, each holding a position in an academic library in Spanish-speaking Latin America. Methods – An anonymous survey in Spanish consisting of 34 required questions was built with SurveyMonkey and distributed to participants between 30 July 2020 and 20 September 2020. Survey respondents were directed to contact the author via email if they wished to participate in follow-up interviews. Interviews were then conducted in Spanish over Zoom between 10 October 2020 and 10 November 2020, and the transcripts were coded and analyzed with NVivo. Main Results – Of the survey’s respondents, 31.73% indicated that their library has a scholarly communication librarian, 29.81% noted that the library receives requests for assistance with finding journals in which to publish at least once per week, and 16.35% reported this type of request at least 1-2 times per month. In specific regard to predatory publishing, almost 52.88% of respondents indicated that they never receive questions on this topic, and 25.00% answered that users seek this kind of information less than once per month. Additionally, 31.73% responded that information on predatory publishing is not available at their library, and 42.31% rated their own knowledge of predatory publishing as fair to very poor. Finally, 44.23% reported plans to develop training or information to educate their institution’s research communities about predatory publishing, and 2.88% planned to recruit a scholarly communications specialist. In interviews, all participants agreed that exchanging information with other institutions with more knowledge and services related to predatory publishing would be beneficial. Three interviewees saw a general role for the library in providing information on predatory publishing, and three others indicated that this should be a leadership role when working in conjunction with other departments. All participants saw a lack of knowledge about predatory publishing as one of the primary difficulties for academic libraries, and three reported that the survey itself had led them to recognize the importance of the library’s role in scholarly communication literacy and create plans for their library to assist researchers in regard to predatory publishing. Conclusion – Academic libraries in Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America are not yet offering robust support for researchers concerning predatory publishing, but there is growing recognition of the issue, as well as interest in further developing expertise among librarians. Collaboration and exchanges of information with other institutions with more developed resources related to predatory publishing is viewed positively and may build upon existing knowledge of open access publishing.

Overcoming Challenges to Open Research Practices – A Perspective From the Global South: A Commentary on “(Why) Are Open Research Practices the Future for the Study of Language Learning?”

Overcoming Challenges to Open Research Practices – A Perspective From the Global South: A Commentary on “(Why) Are Open Research Practices the Future for the Study of Language Learning?”

Scholarly communication: a concept analysis

Purpose“Scholarly Communication” is a frequent topic of both the professional and research literature of Library and Information Science (LIS). Despite efforts by individuals (e.g. Borgman, 1989) and organizations such as the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) to define the term, multiple understandings of it remain. Discussions of scholarly communication infrequently offer a definition or explanation of its parameters, making it difficult for readers to form a comprehensive understanding of scholarly communication and associated phenomena.Design/methodology/approachThis project uses the evolutionary concept analysis (ECA) method developed by nursing scholar, Beth L. Rodgers, to explore “Scholarly Communication” as employed in the literature of LIS. As the purpose of ECA is not to arrive at “the” definition of a term but rather exploring its utilization within a specific context, it is an ideal approach to expand our understanding of SC as used in LIS research.Findings“Scholarly Communication” as employed in the LIS literature does not refer to a single phenomenon or idea, but rather is a concept with several dimensions and sub-dimensions with distinct, but overlapping, significance.Research limitations/implicationsThe concept analysis (CA) method calls for review of a named concept, i.e. verbatim. Therefore, the items included in the data set must include the phrase “scholarly communication”. Items using alternate terminology were excluded from analysis.Practical implicationsThe model of scholarly communication presented in this paper provides language to operationalize the concept.Originality/valueLIS lacks a nuanced understanding of “scholarly communication” as used in the LIS literature. This paper offers a model to further the field's collective understanding of the term and support operationalization for future research projects.

Model(s) of the future? Overlay journals as an overlooked and emerging trend in scholarly communication

Abstract: Overlay journals, a potentially overlooked model of scholarly communication, have seen a resurgence due to the increasing number of preprint repositories and preprints on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) related topics. Overlay journals at various stages of maturity were examined for unique characteristics, including whether the authors submitted their article to the journal, whether the peer reviews of the article were published by the overlay journal, and whether the overlay journals took advantage of opportunities for increased discovery. As librarians and researchers seek new, futuristic models for publishing, overlay journals are emerging as an important contribution to scholarly communication.

Toward Open Science: Contributing to Research Culture Change

Advancing open science across the complex and decentralized research ecosystem remains challenging to fully enact for a variety of reasons. Specific open science initiatives, including journal policy changes, preregistration, and Registered Reports represent existing opportunities for publishers, societies, institutions, funders, and researchers to contribute to more coordinated culture change across research communities. In a November 2021 post1 in The Scholarly Kitchen, Roger Schonfeld suggested that the current model for scientific scholarly communication may be ill-suited to improve and sustain public confidence and trust in science as it moves toward greater openness and transparency. The increasing politicization of science,2–4 along with related challenges in effectively managing the public communication of science, intensifies the need to build and sustain trust in the scientific process. After outlining proposed priorities for the scholarly communications community to contribute to trust-building in science, Schonfeld ultimately points to the need for greater coordination and collaboration across stakeholders in the global knowledge system—publishers, senior research officers, policy makers, institutions, funders, and libraries—to sustain a trusted information environment. System-level coordination and collaboration is a convergent theme across the open science reform movement.5–7 The recent adoption8 of UNESCO’s Recommendation of Open Science9 by all 193 member states offers a new signal of intentionality and a normative framework for global system coordination. The COVID-19 pandemic spurred coordination and implementation of open initiatives among various stakeholders across the scholarly communications system who aligned to thwart a global crisis. Specifically, the statement issued in January 2020 by the Wellcome Trust on “Sharing […]

How are academic libraries in Spanish-speaking Latin America responding to new models of scholarly communication and predatory publishing?

The topic of predatory publishing and ways to combat it is garnering considerable attention in many parts of the developed world, where academic librarians are emerging as leaders in this regard. However, less is known about how this phenomenon is playing out in developing regions, including Spanish-speaking Latin America. This study presents the results of a survey of 104 academic librarians in this region, along with follow-up interviews with seven respondents. The findings reveal that scholarly publishing literacy in general, and predatory publishing in particular, currently has low visibility in this part of the world, although there is growing recognition of and increasing concern about the issue. Although there is some debate about whether scholarly publishing literacy should be the sole responsibility of the library, many participants agree that the library has a role to play. Moreover, while most of the librarians who participated perceive that they have a solid knowledge of open access, they are less confident in their understanding of predatory practices and are seeking to increase their skills and knowledge in this regard to better support researchers at their institutions. To address this shortcoming, academic librarians in the region have expressed an interest in receiving training and in participating in international collaborations with other libraries that have already developed resources or programming in this area.

Scaling Small; Or How to Envision New Relationalities for Knowledge Production

Within the field of open access (OA) publishing, community-led publishing projects are experimenting increasingly with new forms of collaboration and organisation. They do so by focusing on setting up horizontal alliances between independent projects within a certain sector (e.g., scholar-led presses), or vertically across sectors with other not-for-profit organisations (e.g., through collaborations with libraries, universities, and funders), in order to create multi-stakeholder ecologies within scholarly publishing. Yet at the same time, imaginaries for future modes of OA knowledge production are still controlled through demands for ‘scalability’ and ‘sustainability’, which are both seen as preconditions for scholarly communication models and practices to succeed and to be efficient. But they are also prerequi­sites to receive funding for publishing projects or infrastructure development. The scalability of open models is perceived as essential to compete in a landscape dominated by a handful of major corporate players.Drawing on our work with the Radical Open Access Collective, the ScholarLed consortium, and the Community-led Open Publishing Infrastructures for Mono­graphs (COPIM) project, this article outlines an alternative organisational prin­ciple for governing community-led publishing projects based on mutual reliance, care, and other forms of commoning. Termed ‘scaling small’, this principle eschews standard approaches to organisational growth that tend to flatten community diversity through economies of scale. Instead, it puts forward the idea that scale can be nurtured through intentional collaborations between community-driven pro­jects that promote a bibliodiverse ecosystem while providing resilience through resource sharing and other kinds of collaboration. Following Anna Tsing’s recom­mendations to keep in mind how reimagining our knowledge practices requires we pay particular attention to articulations between the scalable and the nonscalable (Tsing, 2012), what is needed to enable this is, first and foremost, a rethinking of existing systems and infrastructures and how they currently function – systems that have historically developed and been continuously remade to encourage fur­ther scalability. We further explore the possibilities of scaling small with particular reference to Anna Tsing’s work on the ‘latent commons’ and Massimo De Angelis’ discussion of ‘boundary commoning’, examining how these concepts are on display within the Radical Open Access Collective, ScholarLed and the COPIM project. As we will argue, reimagining the relations within publishing beyond a mere calcula­tive logic, i.e., one that is focused on assessing the sustainability of alternative models, is essential in not-for-profit OA publishing environments, particularly if we want new forms of collaboration to arise and to redefine the future of scholarly publishing in communal settings.

The Factors Significant to the Introduction of Institutional Open Access Policies: Two Case Studies of R-1 Universities

INTRODUCTION US universities are increasingly unable to afford research journal subscriptions due to the rising prices charged by for-profit academic publishers. Open access (OA) appears to be the most backed option to disrupt the current publishing model. The purpose of this study is to understand the factors significant to the introduction of institutional OA policies at selected United States R-1 universities. METHODS An in-depth qualitative study, including interviews with stakeholders, was conducted on two R-1universities with OA policies that have been implemented for at least five years. results The results of this study reveal that while the perceived sustainability of the scholarly communication business model was an initial driver, open dissemination of knowledge was the primary factor for the development of institutional policies. discussion Open dissemination of knowledge aligns with the mission of both institutions. Interviewees believe that a wider and more open dissemination of the institution’s research cost could positively affect their faculty’s research impact, which could then affect the institution’s reputation, rankings, classifications and funding. CONCLUSION While the initial driver for exploring OA scholarly communication for both institutions was the perceived unsustainability of the scholarly communication model, the most important factor that led to the creation of their policies was the desire to disseminate the faculty’s scholarship.

Development of an open peer review system using blockchain and reviewer recommendation technologies

In order to create a transparent and sound academic communication ecosystem centered on researchers, we developed a system that applied blockchain technology to an open peer review system. In this study, an open peer review system was developed based on Hyperledger Fabric, which is a private blockchain. The system can be operated in connection with the reviewer recommendation module of the existing submission management system. In the reviewer recommendation module, reviewers are recommended by excluding co-authors and colleagues after an expertise test. The blockchain system performs an open peer review process based on smart contracts, while the submission management system selects reviewers for peer review. A service broker intervenes between these two systems for data interchange. The system developed herein is expected to be used as a researcher-centered scholarly communication model in the open science era, in which the intervention of publishers is minimized, and authors and reviewers (as researchers) are centered.

Gaming the Publishing Industry: Exploring Diverse Open Scholarship Models in Digital Games Studies

The emergent field of digital game scholarship has developed along unique communicative lines, illuminating alternative models and diversified potentials for scholarly communication. Following the decline of print-based magazine journalism, the rise of moderated aggregator sites, such as Kotaku, Polygon, and Rock Paper Shotgun has exposed many independent voices to larger audiences. Much of the scholarship cited in current academic work can be found online at sites like Critical Distance (which uses “roundups, roundtables, podcasts, and critical compilations” to encourage dialogue between “developers, critics, educators and enthusiasts”), First Person Scholar, a middle-state publication that combines “the timeliness and succinctness of a blog, while retaining the rigor and context of a conventional journal article” (Hawreliak), highly polished and curated online zines such as Heterotopias, and from quality video bloggers such as Noah Caldwell Gervais and short-form documentary creators such as Gvmers. These heterogeneous alternatives collectively model a publishing plasticity and adaptiveness, establishing a culture of open scholarship practices, inclusive and diverse voices, and a rapid deployment of ideas and perspectives. This paper argues that emergent models of scholarly communication explored by the game studies community include but also moderate the reactive energies of social media and the toxicity of “gamer” culture.

Assessing Determinants of Perceived Ease of Use of Institutional Repositories by Lecturers in Nigerian Universities

Institutional repositories (IRs) present platform to disseminate research findings to complement the traditional scholarly communication model. The use of IRs is beneficial to authors, host institutions, libraries and society at large. Despite the numerous benefits of IRs, there is low deposit of scholarly works by lecturers and the investment on IRs seems to be a waste. This study examined determinants of perceived ease of use (PEOU) of IRs by lecturers in Nigerian universities. A survey of lecturers received 857 respondents. Awareness, anchor and adjustment factors were found to be determinants of PEOU of Institutional repositories by lecturers in Nigerian Universities.

Open Access Institutional Repository (OA/IR) Security and Ethical Encounters

The article probes security and ethical issues encountered by the library of the Bindura University of Science Education (BUSE), Zimbabwe, in the daily operations of its institutional repository (IR). The digital era has resulted in innovative scholarly publishing and communication models that are transforming the teaching, learning, and research landscape on a global scale. The study employed a qualitative approach to generate descriptive data on security and ethical challenges experienced at the BUSE library. Research data were collected through document analysis of existing library reports, reports from the library’s information and communication technology (ICT) staff, and focus group discussions. The research population was drawn from library ICT staff and librarians. The researchers used a case study design to explore the research problem. The BUSE library established an IR for the purposes of archiving and enabling open access to its scholarly output. The study revealed that there were legal and ethical issues undermining the security and ethical use of the BUSE IR, particularly cyber threats and unauthorised access. The study makes recommendations on how to overcome the challenges in order to enhance the security of the IR.

Challenges of Information Infrastructures for Open Science and Academic Libraries

Purpose/Thesis: The paper reviews the main concepts of information infrastructure, information environment, and information behavior of researchers in the context of digital revolution. The concept of open science and new models of scholarly communication are considered.Approach/Methods: Related studies of information infrastructure and information behavior of researchers are analyzed. We report on the results of a series of qualitative studies of information behavior and of information ecology of the academic environment in Slovakia based on interviews with doctoral students, expert researchers and information managers. We apply a previously deve­loped original methodology of concept mapping.Results and conclusions: The results allow us to re-consider relevance assessment in the digital environment and to present a model of the information ecology in the information environment. We present the analyzed data represented by the concept maps which show the attitudes of rese­archers to open science, economic models of science and values of researchers. The final model of academic information ecologies is explained, and a new interactive model of the academic library is presented.Practical implications: We suggest the implications for the development of information science and for the education of information professionals.Originality/Value: Original models emphasize values of academic research, values of information, value-added services of academic libraries, and value-sensitive design of digital libraries.

Professional Ethics, Copyright Legislation and the Case for Collective Copyright Disobedience in Libraries

ABSTRACTAustralian library and information science (LIS) professionals face conflicting legal and ethical obligations in relation to copyright. As law-abiding citizens, they have a legal duty to adhere to the Australian Copyright Act 1968. However, as LIS professionals, they are expected to uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and access of information as outlined by the code of conducts of professional associations such as the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) and the American Library Association (ALA). This article explores the paradoxical relationship between copyright compliance and LIS’s professional ethics. A comparison between the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and core LIS values reveals that legislative guidelines contradict the aims and principles of the LIS profession. Consequently, a case can be made for collective copyright disobedience within the LIS profession. Collective acts of copyright disobedience such as online piracy and the Freedom of Access to Information and Resources (FAIR)’s Cooking for Copyright campaign have influenced major copyright reforms and the advent of new scholarly communication models. Based on these results, it can be argued that collective copyright disobedience by LIS professionals is not only justified, but necessary to fulfilling professional and ethical responsibilities.

Modelling Open Social Scholarship Within the INKE Community

Given the current state of digital technology, there is a clear opportunity to revamp scholarly communication into a multi-faceted, open system that integrates and takes advantage of the near-ubiquitous global network. In doing so, the values of collaboration, sharing, and transparency inherent to open social scholarship can be integrated into knowledge dissemination methods. The Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) community is currently organized around the idea of open social scholarship, but putting this into practice will involve assessing and revising INKE’s own scholarly communication processes. In this paper, we explore the current state of open access to academic research and ruminate on next steps, beyond open access. We consider the role of collaboration in contemporary academic practice, and the importance of transparency in regards to multiplayer work. Further, we examine the standard scholarly communication model, especially as it pertains to INKE. Finally, we make recommendations and suggest alternatives for transforming our stock scholarly communication models into open social scholarship practices.

Spreadable Jams: Implementing Social Scholarship through Remodeled Game Jam Paradigms

Game design communities often come together during ‘Game Jams,’ open social events in which game makers creatively respond to a design provocation by generating numerous prototypes over a short period of time. Such prototypes are often discussed between participants at the end of the event, then shared with a larger public audience. This fruitful process, which encourages collaborative sharing rather than competition between participants, differs in purpose, structure and outcome from many existing models of academic scholarship and scholarly communication. Inspired by the potential of such events, this paper argues that the game jam paradigm, and more generally, ‘spaces apart,’ can be effectively adopted, adapted, and repurposed to facilitate a broader social generation and dissemination of research creation prototypes, modelling an alternative kind of scholarly making in the humanities that runs parallel to, and is as equally valued and valid as, existing publication models.

The Methodologies of Open Social Scholarship

Implicit in the notion of understanding and enacting open social scholarship is that there is something broken with the current model of scholarly communication. This introduction outlines issues in the current models of academic publication while the essays explore potential futures in the academic publishing industry.

The price of gold: The KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access

Watch the VIDEO.We need to ask ourselves why we support Open Access: is our main goal to provide free and unrestricted access to the results of scholarly research to everyone who might be interested, or is it to change the current model for scholarly communication because we consider it inefficient as well as too expensive? If our main goal is to open up research results as much as possible, there seems to be little reason to part ways with legacy publishers, who should – after initial resistance – prove to be willing partners as long as academic institutions are equally willing to pay. If, on the other hand, the intention is to introduce a new model for scholarly communication that operates according to cost-effective standards, then it seems very unlikely for academic institutions to achieve this together with the same partners, who have worked according to a commercial logic for decades. In short: do we want evolution or revolution?If we want a revolution, then it will not be brought by Green OA, which provides too little challenge for the traditional model for the publication and distribution of scholarly work. It will also not be brought by for-profit Gold OA, which is extremely expensive (even more so than the traditional model) and keeps commercial partners in control of the dissemination of research results. Therefore, an alternative model for no-profit Gold OA is on the rise, namely Fair Open Access. Publications in Fair Open Access are immediately freely available to all, are produced according to cost-effective (rather than commercial) principles and guarantee full control of researchers over the entire publication process.KU Leuven has been supporting Green OA through its institutional repository Lirias for many years already. As it is clear, however, that Green OA provides some but certainly not all of the solutions, the university was looking to intensify its efforts to maximize scholarly exchange, collaboration and innovation. This resulted in the establishment of the KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access in March 2018. This fund provides financial support for the production costs of OA monographs published by Leuven University Press as well as articles in selected OA journals, on the condition that these journals are published according to the Fair OA model and maintain the highest academic standards.This paper analyses current business models for OA, explains the reasoning behind the establishment of the KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access, discusses its day-to-day operation and presents its initial results.

From Open Access to Open Science: innovation in scholarly communication

Open Science is often presented as the overarching “umbrella” of Open Access and Open Data, amongst others. In this article, we start from the finding that, for many years, Open Access to knowledge and research has been a generally accepted principle in Latin America. The Open Access movement in Latin America can even be considered a global pioneer with regards to raising the visibility of research output through channels outside the traditional scholarly communication model. In terms of Open Data, the LEARN project (2015-2017) has come to the conclusion that, while important challenges remain in terms of actual implementations of policies, institutions in Latin America (and the Caribbean) are generally well aware of the importance of research data management (RDM) and seem to accept the general principle of openness of data from publicly funded research. This makes Latin America, in principle, well positioned to move towards Open Science, as a way to rethink the traditional scholarly communication model, and explore more innovative, transparent and inclusive ways to exchange research output on a regional and global level.

The ‘upside down’: exploring offset pricing models and article deposit terms at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

In the ‘normal’ world of retail and commerce you pay for an item and receive the item. In the world of academic journals you prepay for a journal which you might later receive and you might then get some money back (depending on what journals you did or did not receive). In the world of offset pricing you prepay, then you pay again, and you sometimes use vouchers; you might get a discount the following year, then you might get money back (or you might not). Are publishers knowingly placing barriers to offset models, and not transparently offsetting the APCs to the subscription cost, in order to raise more income? Where a publisher is operating a hybrid open access model, institutions wish to offset the cost of the university’s APCs against their subscription fees, and avoid effectively paying twice. The new business model of scholarly communication is based on shifting the costs from subscriptions to publishing. Can we get to a mutually beneficial position where the author can deposit the accepted version of the article into the institutional repository without any embargo period if the institute agrees to pay the subscription fee on an ongoing basis? This article will explore how resolving the inherent complexities in offsetting models will save libraries money and also time wasted on tedious and unnecessary administration work. Researchers do not want to know about offsetting agreements nor should they need to know. It is difficult enough to do, and write up, valuable research without having to do further research on offset pricing models. If libraries can organize as groups at regional or international level, more favourable licensing agreements, including standardized offset pricing model language, can be leveraged which will be advantageous to all parties: publishers, libraries and, most importantly, authors. Publishers need to understand that, while the goal is ultimately to by-pass the necessity for APCs, this approach is an attempt to reimagine the business model, not to put them out of business. While profit margins may be the bottom line for the majority of publishers, it is clear from our University’s recent communications with these publishers that the existing publishing model will change, and the questions remaining are by how much and how long it will take to implement the change. This article builds on a breakout session given by the author at the 2018 UKSG Conference. A corrigendum article related to this work can be found here: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.454