As most of Europe sizzles in previously unheard of temperatures, and cities such as London are set to become among the hottest places on the planet, here at Insights we continue to seek out the hottest topics of interest to our readership, so that you will have an opportunity to chill out and read some fascinating articles from industry experts across the scholarly communications sector.
As the scholarly publishing world continues its slow but inexorable progress towards a more open model, we are pleased to have brought you our characteristic selection of perspectives on the changing open access (OA) environment.
Heinz Pampel, Open Science Officer at Helmholtz Association, brought us his article, From library budget to information budget: fostering transparency in the transformation towards open access, examining the relationship between transition to OA publishing and financial concerns. In it, he argues that the variety of funding models for APCs and the need for data monitoring to promote cost transparency require an integrated view of the financial dimension, which looks beyond the traditional library budget and which comprehensively targets all financial flows.
Graham Anderson, Jade Heyman and Maggie Simmons presented the perspective of three smaller society publishers (The Royal Society, the Microbiology Society and the Geological Society) in their article, How transformative agreements are actually transforming the subscription system: a society publisher’s perspective. Acknowledging that transformative agreements (TAs) are useful tools to accelerate the growth in OA for small publishers with limited resources, they examine the advantages and impact of TAs for smaller society publishers, noting that collaboration with institutions and consortia is key to realizing mutual goals and managing agreements. They offer invaluable advice to other societies looking to mobilize their resources and improve their systems in order to move away from paywall and subscription models.
Having looked at transformation from society publisher perspectives, we were also able to bring you a library perspective on Assessing and managing transitional read and publish deals, in the shape of Helen Monagle and Wendy Taylor’s case study of how the University of Salford is managing its open access transition. In it, they explore the processes and challenges of assessing and managing TAs to maximize resources and publishing opportunities in the context of a teaching-intensive and research-informed university. They also attempt a little crystal ball gazing, reflecting on how libraries can continue to adapt as the scholarly landscape evolves.
We returned to the publisher perspective with Implementing the Declaration on Research Assessment: a publisher case study, an article by Victoria Gardner, Mark Robinson and Elisabetta O’Connell. In this work, the authors tackled the issues around the role of metrics in scholarly communication, in particular the misapplication of journal metrics. They present a case study of how one large academic publisher (Taylor & Francis) has signed up to the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), providing an overview of the process undertaken and offering some guidance to others considering becoming a signatory.
We have also been ensuring that we continue to reflect the global information environment in which we operate, so we have been delighted to bring you articles from authors around the globe. Flora Charles Lazarus and Rajneesh Suryasen present an Indian perspective on online learning in their article The quality of higher education through MOOC penetration and the role of academic libraries in which they examine the potential of massive open online courses (MOOCs) for enhancing the quality of higher education in emerging economies, such as India. The authors explore issues relating to MOOC integration and look to identify the key drivers for the adoption of a MOOC-based curriculum.
Ronald Snijder continues the global perspective in his article, Big in Japan, Zimbabwe or Brazil – global reach and national preferences for open access books, which analyses the effect of internationalization on publishing and argues that languages other than English play an important role. He examines the tensions inherent in adopting English as the ‘lingua franca’ of global publishing versus local languages that provide a better cultural ‘fit’. Taking the OAPEN Library as his case study, the author examines the preference of global readers in a systematic manner to assess the role of books, especially those written in non-English languages.
Over the coming months we will be taking our usual summer publication break, but we still have lots of fascinating and informative content to bring you through the rest of the year. Look out for articles on topics as diverse as ethical acquisitions, the e-book crisis, open source repositories and eliminating bias in peer review.
In the meantime, have an absolutely wonderful summer (for those in the northern hemisphere, at least) and we look forward to continuing to receive article proposals and submissions from you in the coming months and years.
Lorraine and Steve
Back to the Insights home page: https://www.uksg.org/publications