Articles in Insights cover open access publishing from many perspectives. Our summer highlighted an article by Rachel E. Scott and her colleagues exploring the perspectives of faculty in a medium-sized university. The results reiterate the persistence of a high degree of scepticism regarding the quality of peer review and business models associated with OA publishing. Perhaps, one reason for this is the increasing challenge of distinguishing between journals that can be trusted and those that should be avoided. Cenyu Shen and Leena Shah’s article provides an in-depth guide to Predatory publishing practices, and what researchers should know before submitting their manuscript. Ronald Snijder points out that open access book platforms have been available for over a decade and although each platform shows usage data, there is confusion about how well an individual book is performing overall. His article suggests a new metric as a possible solution. Forthcoming articles include Athanasia Salamoura and Giannis Tsakonas on the perennial challenges of open access monitoring. Julie Baldwin and Paul Cavanagh will ask ‘When will we be transformed?’ and Elaine Sykes will go further asking if it could finally be time to rethink Scholarly Communications.
Collaboration is a theme across several articles recently published in Insights. Helen Moore and her colleagues shared a case study about the collaboration between the UK White Rose University Consortium to explore the potential of OER and to create guidance in the form of an OER toolkit that could be used across all three institutions, and more widely. Anthony Cond and colleagues shared their case study of building cross-publisher collaboration on equity, diversity, inclusivity and belonging. We will soon publish an article by Keith Nockels, Heena Karavadra, and Khadidja Kelalech about how collaboration with students has led to the co-creation of a reading list diversity toolkit.
Emily Henderson outlines the opportunities for libraries to combat the research anxiety felt by undergraduate students in STEM fields. Librarians can be instrumental in addressing research anxiety and ultimately contribute to improving STEM retention, especially among under-represented student groups. On a similar theme, we will shortly publish an article by Hannah Crago, about the Essex Student Journal which is providing undergraduates with the opportunity to publish in an open access journal.
Anyone fortunate enough to hear Adetoun A. Oyelude’s powerful presentation about Indigenous or traditional knowledge (IK) at this year’s UKSG conference will be delighted to learn she has written for Insights on this subject. She assesses the activities undertaken to preserve indigenous knowledge and suggests how library and information science professionals could more efficiently handle this knowledge preservation with respect for culture.
Alice Prochaska’s article is a timely reminder about the role of librarianship in times of conflict. She considers the work of libraries and archives in a broad historical and contemporary context of conflict and war. Destroying libraries has been part of warfare for millennia, and so has the looting of great written treasures. The article looks at the impact of current conflicts on people’s access to books and reading, and efforts to protect and restore libraries and create opportunities to read.
There will be plenty more for you to read in Insights over the coming winter months. Coming up is Huw Grange on how minority languages are excluded from scholarly publication, Pasipanodya Ian Machingura Ruredzo and colleagues on the barriers to open science in public health in Africa. Marjorie Bardiau and Christophe Dony will share a case study of IF-journals included in the 2021 Journal Citations Report and Deni Auclair, Jamie Carmichael and Jessie Thibodeau will discuss the roadblocks to robust metadata in scholarly communications.
With all things to do with AI very much a focus in the news recently, we thought we might also take this opportunity to remind you about an article we published this time last year by Michael Upshall. He provides a framework for evaluating AI-based tools, without the need to have detailed technical knowledge. The criteria for evaluation described are crucial for the successful use of AI.
We send our thanks to the wonderful authors who have shared their insights with us, and the peer reviewers who have worked so hard. We hope you too might be inspired to write for Insights, sharing your research, case studies, opinions, and reviews.
Lorraine and Steve