Open Access Group Research Articles

S1243 Superior Quality Indicators for Colonoscopies Scheduled by Open Access Compared to GI-Office: It Is Time to Expand Its Use During the COVID-19 Crisis!

INTRODUCTION: Open access (OA) colonoscopies are defined as those scheduled without a GI office visit. OA is becoming more routine, as it can decrease cost of unnecessary office consultations. One issue related to OA procedures is patient acceptance and preparedness for procedures. However, there is limited research on adequacy of bowel preparation (BP), patient compliance, and detection of adenomas in OA colonoscopies. METHODS: This study was a cross-sectional study of 60 patients using split BP for colonoscopies. Patient consent was obtained, and surveys were administered before procedures. Patient age, BMI, gender, education level, prior c-scope and constipation history were collected. Patient compliance with the prep was self-reported. BP adequacy and adenomas detected were recorded. Adequate BP was defined as excellent and good, and inadequate BP was defined as fair and poor. Patients were asked three questions on a scale from 1 to 5 qualifying the BP instructions (Table 1). 5 indicated complete agreement with the statement and 1 indicated no agreement. SPSS was utilized to analyze the data using chi square and Mann-Whitney tests. RESULTS: Complete data for BP adequacy was collected for 56/60 patients. 21 participants (38%) were scheduled by OA, and 35 participants (62%) were scheduled after GI-office visit. Adequate BP was more frequent in 86% (18/21) of patients in the OA group compared to 60% (21/35) of patients in the GI-office group (P = 0.043). Patients in the OA group had higher self-reported compliance and adenoma detection but were not significant (Figure 1). There was no statistical difference between the OA and GI-office groups for age, BMI, gender, education level, history of constipation, and prior c-scope (Table 2). OA group patients reported better review and explanation of the BP instructions compared to GI-office patients. No statistical difference was found in how well the patients understood the importance of BP (Table 1). CONCLUSION: This study has shown that OA colonoscopies were associated with more adequate bowel preparation. This could be explained by patients' self-motivation or more time spent reviewing and explaining the significance of completing BP. This study supports the use of OA procedures as a standard of care, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is causing a significant disruption in normal office operations. It also supports the notion that BP adequacy may start with spending sufficient time discussing split prep instructions with patients.Figure 1.: Quality of bowel prep, patient self-reported compliance, and adenomas detection among the Open access group and GI office group . 86% of patients in the OA group had adequate bowel prep compared to 60% of patients in the GI-office group (P = 0.532). 73% of patients in the OA group were compliant compared to 65% of patients in the GI-office group. (P = 0.043). 38% of patients in the OA group had adenomas detected compared to 28% of patients in the GI-office group (P = 0.419).Table 1.: Mean rank and P-values comparing OA vs GI-office for the 3 qualifying questions regarding comprehension of Bowel Prep instructionsTable 2.: Demographics of patient population

Why article-level metadata is important to monitor agreements

The Knowledge Exchange (KE) Monitoring Open Access (OA) task and finish group has undertaken research on agreements with OA elements (e.g. agreements with APC discounts, offsetting agreements, read and publish agreements) set between consortia from KE countries and major publishers between 2016 and early 2019. It assessed agreements with OA elements to investigate what OA article-level metadata consortia request from publishers and what metadata publishers deliver to consortia.
 With more academic publishing agreements including OA elements, publishers must account for the articles published OA. For example, article processing charges may be paid directly by authors, institutions or research funders and the paying entity has the right to know what research it has funded. Another example includes agreements with a cap on the number of articles that can be published OA. In these cases, consortia and institutions must monitor how many articles are being published OA and they can only do so if publishers deliver OA article-level metadata reports on a regular basis.
 With Plan S research funders requiring a full transition to OA by 2021, the delivery of OA metadata becomes critical to monitor publishers’ compliance with Plan S requirements for transformative arrangements.
 In its research, the KE Monitoring OA group used recommendations issued by KE and the Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges (ESAC) initiative to develop a list of OA article-level metadata to evaluate if consortia requested OA metadata and if publishers delivered it. The research findings showed that not all consortia agreements requested the OA metadata as recommended by KE and ESAC. Most importantly, none of the publishers provided all the metadata that the consortia requested. Publishers also did not deliver exactly the same OA metadata across countries and this may be due lack of consistency in their practices.
 The research findings can be used as a benchmark to monitor how major publishers were performing in KE countries until early 2019 and prior to Plan S comes into effect in 2021. To assist in the process OA metadata collection, the KE Monitoring OA task and finish group created a template based on the KE and ESAC recommendations that consortia can use as a guideline for what OA metadata to request from publishers and that publishers can use as a reporting tool.

Open Access Papers Have a Greater Citation Advantage in the Author-Pays Model Compared to Toll Access Papers in Springer and Elsevier Open Access Journals

Open Access Papers Have a Greater Citation Advantage in the Author-Pays Model Compared to Toll Access Papers in Springer and Elsevier Open Access Journals

Contribution of the institutional repositories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to the webometric indicators of their home institutions

Starting from the perspective of Webometrics, this paper explores the improvement effect of institutional repositories (IRs) on their home institutions with respect to web presence and visibility. Taking 19 IRs from institutions affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) as study samples, we calculate the contribution of IRs to the webometric indicators of their home institutions in terms of four indicators: page counts, PDF counts, URL mention counts, and link counts. According to their open-access (OA) status, the IRs of CAS were divided into an OA group and a non-OA group, which were compared with respect to differences in the above indicators as well as browse counts and download counts. The results of the study show that: (1) IRs showed a relatively significant positive improvement with respect to Google page counts, Scholar page counts, and Google PDF counts, although the improvement effect with respect to Scholar PDF counts was almost nonexistent; (2) repositories presented a certain improvement effect with respect to URL mention counts, but the contribution of link counts was limited; and (3) OA repositories manifested noticeable advantages in terms of Google PDF counts, URL mention counts, and download counts. We conclude that IRs can improve the web presence and visibility of their home institutions, while OA IRs offer more benefits to their home institutions.