Ulrich Herb

No agreement with Frontiers in Germany   As Bernhard Mittermaier, head of the central library of the Forschungszentrum Jülich, announced yesterday, there will be no agreement with Frontiers in Germany. The negotiations between the Forschungszentrum Jülich and the Open Access Publisher Frontiers on a nationwide framework contract did not succeed.

No agreement with Frontiers in Germany

At the beginning of June, Clarivate Analytics, vendor of the Impact database Web of Science, among others, informed about the launch of the Publisher Analytics Report. The press release mentions the following features prominently: “The ready-to-use reports provide a snapshot of journals’ performance and inform competitor analysis. They will help publishers to easily plan robust, evidence-based strategies, based on the publisher-independent”.

The next step in benchmarking in science: Clarivate Analytics launches Publisher Analytics Reports

According to a press release by Springer Nature there is a new contract of the group with Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).  The deal is based on the principle of  “read and publish” and shall fulfill the requirements of Plan S. As noted by Springer Nature the “agreement limits the costs of publishing all UK articles open access (OA) while maintaining access to all of Springer’s subscription articles.

Springer Nature reaches £9.6&nbsp;million agreement in the UK – not included: Nature-branded titles

While Finland entered into a nationwide consortium with the publishing house Elsevier, the neighbouring country Sweden did not take this step. After twenty years of business relationships with Elsevier, the Bibsam Consortium decided not to renew the agreement with the scientific publisher.  Bibsam wants to support the Swedish government’s requirement to publish all scientific output of the country in Open Access by 2026 – without embargoes.

Sweden cancels agreement with Elsevier

APC-Verwaltung in Bibliotheken   Am 31.05. halte ich einen Vortrag beim diesjährigen Bibliothekskongress, und zwar in der öffentlichen Sitzung der dbv-Kommission Erwerbung und Bestandsentwicklung.

APC-Verwaltung in Bibliotheken

*When citing or referring please provide this DOI:10.6084/m9.figshare.6714038*nnRecently, I gathered data from the Bielefeld Search Engine BASE on the percentage of journal articles, books and doctoral theses published Open Access, licensed under Creative Commons Licenses and under Open License between 2013 to 2017.nnSince dissertations have been published electronically and Open Access for a long time, they have traditionally been a document

Stagnating Open Science compliance for doctoral theses?

Just like last summer I produced an Open Access Heatmap using data provided by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). I calculated the number of Open Access Journals per country as listed by the DOAJ (this quite trivial data can be downloaded as a CSV file here). Using this CSV file with the online service CartoDB I produced the following heatmap visualizing the number of Open Access Journals per country.


Open Access Heatmap 2015

Dear readers of my blog: Today I do not want to write about scientific publishing or share my thoughts on it with you. Rather, I need your help! nnI want to create a list of the services Elsevier created or acquired. So far I know of theses services:nn n     the publishing house  n     databases (eg. Scopus, Science Direct)  n     a repository


The Elsevier empire &#8211; which services belong to it?

Here is an update on a study we are conducting at scidecode science consulting.

Update on the scidecode study on Persistent Identifiers (PIDs)

Hier nur eine kurze Ergänzung zum Posting über APC-Verwaltung und Bibliotheken, die ich auslagere, um besagtes Posting nicht aufzublähen.

Open Journal Systems (OJS) Installationen in Deutschland

As the Open Access publication service F1000Research announced on January 10th it was acquired by one of the largest publishers of scientific content: Taylor &amp;

Taylor &amp; Francis acquires F1000Research

Anlässlich der Open-Access-Tage 2017 in Dresden referierte ich in der Session “Debatten” dazu, inwiefern sich Open Access zu einem kommerziellen und exklusiven Modell entwickelt. Die Folien zum Vortrag sind via slideshare verfügbar und auf dieser Seite eingebettet.nnEs existiert auch eine zitierfähige Version auf Zenodo:nHerb, Ulrich (2017). Open Access: Von Inklusion zu Exklusivität?

Open Access: Von Inklusion zu Exklusivität?

Der Wissenschaftsverlag Elsevier wird sich bereits seit längerer Zeit nicht mehr mit wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken über tragfähige finanzielle Konditionen zum Bezug von Elseviertiteln einig. Die Konflikte in zahlreichen Ländern, darunter neben anderen auch Deutschland und Finnland, schwelen.nnForscher in Finnland haben nun einen neuen Elsevierboykott gestartet.

No Deal, no review: Elsevierboykott in Finnland

Ende Februar ging mir eine Pressemitteilung zu wonach ResearchGate (RG), ein soziales Netzwerk für Wissenschaftler, eine Finanzierung in Höhe von 52,6 Millionen US-Dollar  durch Wellcome Trust, Goldman Sachs Investment Partners &amp; Four Rivers Group sowie  altbekannte ResearchGate-Investoren wie Bill Gates, Benchmark und Founders Fund erhält.


52,6 Millionen USD-Geldspritze für ResearchGate

Miguel Navas F. postete gestern auf Twitter einen Link zu einer Heatmap, die den Open-Access-Anteil unter allen Journalen eines Landes darstellt. Die Heatmap ist als interaktive Google Spreadsheet angelegt und unter https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RW5fmFfkcXBlt2E0Vz1P-zaQJXSEIJhCiVoiG8KYHcQ/pubchart?oid=1841277340 erreichbar – weswegen ich sie leider nicht direkt hier einbinden kann.


Heatmap: Anteil der Open-Access-Journale pro Land

Just as 2015 and 2014 I produced an Open Access Heatmap using data provided by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). I calculated the number of Open Access Journals per country as listed by the DOAJ (this quite trivial data can be downloaded as a CSV file here, it was retrieved from the DOAJ yesterday). Using this CSV file with the online service CartoDB I produced the following heatmap visualizing the number of Open Access Journals per


Open Access Heatmap 2016

Vor Jahren entschloss ich mich, eine Promotion in Informationswissenschaft anzugehen. Das Vorhaben dümpelte lange vor sich hin und nahm erst Fahrt auf, als ich meine Stelle an der Saarländischen Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek vorübergehend auf 50 % reduzierte, um in Sachen Promotion voranzukommen.


&#8220;Das ist unkollegial!&#8221; &#8211; aber warum sollte man umsonst arbeiten?

While I was working on a longer text, I gathered – more or less as a by-product – information from studies and reports on the (first copy) costs of a scientific article. As a result, it can only be noted that the information available on these costs (and related costs as margins) are very different and really difficult to compare. The latter confirms my impression that there is a huge lack of transparency in the scientific publications market.


First copy costs of scientific articles &#8211; a short overview

Wissenschaftler tun sich oft noch schwer damit, ihren Lesern (oder Nutzern) Rechte einzuräumen, die über das reine Rezipieren (oder Konsumieren) ihrer Texte hinaus gehen – sogar wenn sie diese Open Access publizieren.


Creative Commons Lizenzen und Open Access Journals

Laut einer Pressemitteilung des Social Science Research Network (SSRN) wurde der Dienst von Elsevier aufgekauft: http://www.ssrn.com/en/index.cfm/ssrn-joins-mendeley-elsevier/. Während Springer anscheinend (s. die Fusion mit Nature) eher auf die Ausweitung des konventionellen Verlagsgeschäfts setzt, orientiert sich der Springer-Konkurrent Elsevier (neben der auch bei Springer anzutreffenden Beteiligung an Open-Access-Konsortien) eher an


Science goes Open Access: Honi soit qui mal y pense

In June 2014 I analysed the data of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) to find out to what extent Open Access Journals in Sociology (as listed by the DOAJ) charge their authors with publication fees (or article processing charges APCs). A CSV-file offered for download by the DOAJ did not contain any information on APCs, in fact the whole APC-column was empty, so I gathered the information manually from the DOAJ’s search interface.


Numbers and shares of Open Access Journals in Sociology charging publication fees

Ende 2016 berichtete ich in Telepolis über die geplatzten Verhandlungen des Projekts DEAL mit dem Wissenschaftsverlag Elsevier, deren Ziel es war – unter für Bibliotheken akzeptablen finanziellen Bedingungen – ein nationales Konsortium zum Bezug von Closed-Access-Zeitschriften des Verlages inklusive Open-Access-Optionen zu verhandeln. Auch in Finnland stand eine landesweite Einigung mit Elsevier vor dem Scheitern.


Elsevier: Konflikte in Taiwan, Finnland, Peru und Deutschland

As The Verge reports Microsoft acquires GitHub.

As

 The Verge

reports Microsoft acquires GitHub. According to

 The Verge

GitHub was “last valued at $2 billion back in 2015, but it’s not clear exactly how much Microsoft has paid to acquire GitHub.”

 The Verge

also considers the purchase as a promotion of Microsoft’s open source strategy and suspects the acquisition could meet mistrust in the open source scene.

Microsoft acquires GitHub

Tendenziell sympathisiere ich mit den Altmetrics, den alternativen Metriken, ermöglichen sie es Wissenschaftlern doch Resonanz auf Werke zu dokumentieren, die sich nicht in Zitationen manifestiert. Zudem können Altmetrics auch Referenzen auf Daten und Software (oder allgemeiner Nicht-Text-Objekte) in Social Media oder anderen Datenspeichern erfassen und so Wissenschaftlern Credit für die Publikation dieser Objekte verschaffen. Theoretisch.


Impact-Lotterie mit Impactstory

And again a by-product of my dissertation thesis: I compared the numbers and shares of journals from all disciplines using

 Creative Commons (CC) licenses

with the numbers and shares of Open Access journals from Sociology using CC licenses. The date of data collection was June 8, 2014, the data source was the

 Directory of Open Access Journals DOAJ

, it listed 9.834 journals at the date mentioned.

Editors of sociological Open Access journals seem hesitant to adopt Open Knowledge principles

A few weeks ago an interview that I did with Frank Müller was published in the online magazine telepolis. It has the title

 Wissenschaftliches Fehlverhalten – von der Randerscheinung zum Flächenbrand

(in English: S

 cientific misconduct – from marginal phenomenon to wildfire

). Frank Müller has been gathering questionable scientific publications from the natural and material sciences for years.

Scientific misconduct – from a marginal phenomenon to a wildfire

Photo by Internet Archive Book Images   nn&lt;span title=”Elseviers Einkaufbummel (man erwarb u.a. PLUM Analytics) kontert Clarivate Analytics durch den Kauf von publons.nn”&gt;Elsevier’s shopping spree (including the newest acquisition PLUM Analytics) is countered by Clarivate Analytics’ purchase of publons.nnBoth companies are already competing because they keep the two most important citation and impact databases in their portfolios with


Clarivate Analytics acquires publons

Photo by Clearly Ambiguous nnNun erschien das in diesem Blog bereits erwähnte, von Konstanze Söllner und Bernhard Mittermaier herausgegebene

 Praxishandbuch Open Access

:nnK. Söllner &amp; B. Mittermaier (Hrsg.),

 Praxishandbuch Open Access

. De Gruyter.

Darf man in einem Buch zu Open Access publizieren, das 119,95 € kostet?

Originally published as: Ulrich Herb (2016). Wissenschaftsjournale: Boykott, Verhandlungen und Vorwurf des Missbrauchs der Marktmacht.

Academic journals: boycotts, negotiations and allegation of abuse of market power

Bereits im Sommer wurde bekannt, dass Thomson Reuters sich von seinem Angebot Web Of Science (WoS) trennt. Die Zitationsdatenbank sowie einige andere Produkte der Intellectual-Property-Sparte des Konzerns gehen in den Besitz der ONEX Group über, einer Private Equity Gesellschaft, zu deren Portfolio z.B. auch Angebote aus dem Gesundheits- und Food-Bereich und Versicherungen gehören.


Web Of Science wird ab 2017 von Clarivate Analytics vertrieben

Jeffrey Beall, dessen Pauschalisierungen zu Predatory Open Access ich nicht teile und dessen Injurien gegen integre Open-Access-Journale mich oft stören, liefert in seinem Blog Scholarly Open Access immer wieder Hinweise auf Auswüchse im wissenschaftlichen Publikationswesen.


Journal zahlt Autoren für Zitate ihrer Artikel

Am 23.09.2016 hielt ich im Rahmen der Tagung

 Forschungsmetriken als Dienstleistung: Herausforderungen und institutionelle Wirkungen

am Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung WZB einen Vortrag mit dem Titel

 Forschungsmetriken und Impact in den Sozialwissenschaften

. Im Mittelpunkt stand die Frage, ob Altmetrics besser als Zitationsdaten geeignet sind, den Impact (was immer man darunter verstehen mag)

Impact messen in den Sozialwissenschaften und der Soziologie &#8211; mit Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar oder Altmetrics?

Nachdem sich die niederländischen Universitäten Anfang November 2014 nicht mit dem Verlag Elsevier über die Lizenzierung dessen wissenschaftlicher Zeitschriften verständigen konnten, gelang ihnen wenig später eine Einigung mit einem anderen Branchenriesen: Springer Publishing. Mit dem Springer-Deal gehen die Niederländer zugleich einen neuen Weg, denn der Vertragsabschluss umfasst nicht nur die Subskription bzw.


Systemerhaltend: Der niederländische Open-Access-Deal mit Springer

Last week (at the 22nd of August) I downloaded data from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and calculated the number of Open Access Journals per country as listed by the DOAJ (this quite trivial data can be downloaded as a CSV file here). Using this CSV file with the online service CartoDB I produced this heatmap visualizing the number of Open Access Journals per country.


Open Access Heatmap 2014

Just another by-product of my dissertation thesis on Open Science in the Social Sciences: Last saturday (June 14, 2014) I had a look at the ten countries that publish the most Open Access journals and the share of journals charging their authors with article processing charges (APCs) per country.


The prevalence of Open Access publication fees

Dies wurde in Deutschland anscheinend kaum bekannt: Vor einigen Tagen entfernte das Wissenschaftlernetzwerk

 Academia.edu

auf Aufforderung des Wissenschaftsverlags

 Elsevier

Artikel von seinem Server, die Autoren als Acadamia-Nutzer dort im Open Access verfügbar gemacht hatten.

Elsevier lässt Artikel aus Wissenschaftsnetzwerk Academia.edu löschen

Nicht nur die Begutachtung wissenschaftlicher Anträge zur Forschungsförderung und die Einreichung von Artikeln zur Publikation in Journalen haben Gemeinsamkeiten. Forschungsförderung und Publikationen zeigen auch beide den sogenannten Matthäus-Effekt: “Denn wer da hat, dem wird gegeben, dass er die Fülle habe;


Matthäus-Effekt &#038; Forschungsförderung

Der Entwurf für ein neues Landeshochschulgesetz (LHG) in Baden-Württemberg hat es in sich. Dort findet sich unter dem zu reformierenden §44 Abs.


Naht das erste Open Access Mandat in Deutschland?

On August 17, it was announced that the collaborative writing tool Authorea had been acquired by Atypon that is in turn a part of Wiley Publishing.

Wiley acquires the Collaborative Writing Tool Authorea

Readers of my blog know that some weeks ago I last asked the community for information on services that are owned by Elsevier. I needed the information to prepare a talk on data collection on science and event logging in science. I will soon publish my talk, together with a resume. As suggested in my talk, Elsevier uses the technology of the


Elsevier launches new Repository BioRN

Clarivate Analytics, owner of the database Web of Science and services as publons, acquired Kopernio. Kopernio facilitates the search for Open Access documents. For pay-walled articles to which you have no access, Kopernio is looking for an alternative Open Access version. Unlike unpaywall, a similiar tool, using Kopernio requires registration.

Clarivate Analytics acquires Kopernio

nnThe American Psychological Association (APA) announced a pilot project “to monitor and seek removal of unauthorized online postings of APA journal articles”. According to SHERPA/RoMEO the APA is a green publisher that allows to post articles published in its journals under the following conditions:nn n     Authors’ pre-print on a web-site  n     Authors’ pre-print must be labeled with date and accompanied with statement that paper has not

APA starts monitoring unauthorized internet posting of published articles

In September, a journalistic article on Diamond Open Access (by Wolfgang Benedikt Schmal and myself) and a preprint on Transformative Open Access Agreements (by Laura Rothfritz, Wolfgang Benedikt Schmal, and myself) were published. On Diamond Open Access &amp;

On Diamond Open Access &amp; Transformative Agreements

A contract study on the qualitative perception of Open Access was completed at the end of last year.

Study on the qualitative perception of Open Access

The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) has announced a Green Open Access Deal with Wolters Kluwer:  “The parties have agreed that academic articles from these 27 journals will be eligible for publishing in the public domain 6 to 12 months after the date of their publication on Navigator and Wolters Kluwer’s other platforms.” The agreement covers 27 law journals.

The Netherlands reach Green Open Access Deal with Wolters Kluwer

The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and Cooperation E-Medien Österreich (KEMÖ) have signed a three-year contract with the publishing house John Wiley and Sons Inc.

Austria agrees with Wiley on a national Open Access consortium

nnThe Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is considered to be an important registry for quality-checked Open Access books – even if not all peer reviewed books are listed there. Two days ago, on 23.01.2018, I took a quick look at the ratio of books per publisher.nnOn that day, DOAB listed 254 publishers who had registered 10,502 books.

Books per Publisher: Data from the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)

nnVor knapp einem Jahr klagten Wissenschaftler der Universität Konstanz gegen die Open-Access-Satzung ihrer Hochschule.

Bundesverfassungsgericht muss die Zulässigkeit der Konstanzer Open-Access-Satzung klären

nnElsevier’s shopping tour continues. Readers of my blog know that in April I published a provisional and incomplete list of services that are owned by Elsevier. Since then Elsevier launched the Preprint-Server BioRN, based on the infrastructure of the Social Science Research Network SSRN (purchased last year).  Yesterday the Dutch publishers announced the acquisition of bepress.

Elsevier acquires bepress

nnOn August 1, 2017, 9,621 journals were listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).Only 32 publishers published more than 20 of these journals and thus have a quantitatively significant influence on Open Access. PLOS can not be found among them, but still has influence – more qualitative than quantitative.nnThese 32 publishers publish 2,950 journals, which are 31% of all journals listed in the DOAJ.nnAt this date, the DOAJ

Commercial Open Access Publishers in the DOAJ

This week, I had some encounters with Diamond Open Access that got me thinking, especially about the connotations of “Diamond Open Access”. These include invoice-like payment requests from a Diamond Open Access platform, editors switching their journal from Hybrid to Diamond Open Access, purchase offers for Diamond Open Access journals and the intention of the German Research Foundation DFG to set up a service centre to further develop and

Diamond Open Access: Connotations and recent encounters

The Forschungszentrum Jülich and Frontiers signed a Memorandum of Understanding for a German Consortium with the Open Access publisher Frontiers.

A German Consortium with the Open Access publisher Frontiers is to be set up. In February, the Forschungszentrum (in charge of the negotiations) and the publisher signed a Memorandum of Understanding for a new agreement that will allow researchers to publish in Frontiers journals in a streamlined procedure.

German Consortium with the Open Access publisher Frontiers

Just as 2016, 2015 and 2014 I produced an Open Access Heatmap 2020. It shows how many Open Access journals are published per country using data provided by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).  The heatmap can be found here or embedded some lines below.

Open Access Heatmap 2020

The Library Journal two days ago informed about an interesting patent granted to the Social Network ResearchGate: “ResearchGate Granted U.S. Patent 10,282,424: ‘Linking Documents Using Citations’”. The abstract describes the patent as follows…“Aspects of the present disclosure relate to linking documents using citations. A server accesses a stored document in a data repository.

ReseachGate is granted a patent for (semantic) citation analysis

Publiziert als / zitieren als: Herb, U. (2018). Zwangsehen und Bastarde. Information – Wissenschaft &amp; Praxis, 69(2-3), S. 81-88. DOI:10.1515/iwp-2018-0021 Zusammenfassung Taucht das Wort „Wissenschaft“ im Zusammenhang mit Big Data auf, denkt man zumeist an…  Read more of Zwangsehen und Bastarde. Wohin steuert Big Data die Wissenschaft?

Publiziert als / zitieren als:


 Herb, U. (2018). Zwangsehen und Bastarde. Information – Wissenschaft &amp;

Zwangsehen und Bastarde. Wohin steuert Big Data die Wissenschaft?

nnAfter Iversity’s insolvency in 2016 the Holtzbrinck Group invested in Iversity. Some days ago Springer Nature’s acquisition of the e-learning startup was reported.nnIversity’s news on the acquisition (in German language) provides some more information, here is a translated piece of it: “For the free of charge course offers (MOOCs) currently offered on the platform, iversity provides a guarantee of existence for the foreseeable future.

Springer Nature acquires E-Learning Platform Iversity

nnTwo days ago Clarivate Analytics announced a partnership with Impactstory to make Open access content easier for researchers to use. Clarivate operates the citation database Web of Science and plans to support the development of Impactstory’s oaDOI-service.nnThis service identifies 90 million Open Access articles, particularly important is its integration into unpaywall.org.

Partnership between Clarivate Analytics and Impactstory

Christian Gutknecht published an exciting posting on the Swiss EUR 57 million Elsevier deal in which he outlines the transformative Open Access agreement between Elsevier and swissuniversities. Since Germany has been trying for years to reach such a contract with Elsevier, it is worth comparing it with the two transformative contracts with Wiley and Springer Nature in Germany, which were reached and coordinated by Project DEAL.

Open Access Transformation in Switzerland &#038; Germany

In a study published two days ago, Miriam Redi, Dario Taraborelli and Jake Orlowitz examined the proportion of scientific references in Wikipedia articles that were published in Open Access. For the survey, the authors checked data for works referenced in Wikipedia against data from unpaywall.org. According to Redi, Taraborell &amp;

Open Access Sources in Wikipedia

nnThe Altmetrics service Altmetric.com announced yesterday that it tracks now discussions about books listed on Amazon in social media and other not primarily scientific publications.

Altmetric.com tracks discussions about books listed in Amazon

nnIn preparation for a presentation at the Open Access Days in Dresden, I collect information on the shares of commercial publishers in the APC-based Open Access business.nnWhen I deal with this topic, I always stumble upon the publisher Frontiers:nn Back in 2013 Nature reported “Nature Publishing Group buys into open-access publisher” and noted: “the company [Nature Publishing Group] said it was taking a majority investment”.  n Wikipedia tells

What is the relationship between Springer Nature &amp; Frontiers?

Unter dem Titel “Kalibrierung der Wissenschaft – wohin führt uns die Digitalisierung?” veranstaltet das Internationale Zentrum für Kultur- und Technikforschung (IZKT) in Stuttgart eine virtuelle Podiumsdiskussion zur datengetriebenen Wissenschaftssteuerung, an der auch ich teilnehme wegen meiner Publikationen zu Datenkapitalismus in der Wissenschaft. Die Veranstaltung startet morgen um 18:00 Uhr und endet um 20:00 Uhr.

Podiumsdiskussion zu datengetriebener Wissenschaftssteuerung

nnUnter Nutzung der Open-Access-Policy des Verlages De Gruyter publizierte ich eben die Verlagsversion zu einem vor einem Jahr erschienen Artikel auf Zenodo:nnHerb, U. (2017). Open Access zwischen Revolution und Goldesel. Eine Bilanz fünfzehn Jahre nach der Erklärung der Budapest Open Access Initiative.

 Information. Wissenschaft &amp; Praxis

,

 68

(1), 1–10.

Open Access zwischen Revolution und Goldesel – Verlagsversion online

Pablo de Castro (University of Strathclyde), Laura Rothfritz, research assistant and PhD candidate at the Berlin School of Library and Information Science at Humboldt University Berlin, Joachim Schöpfel (Université de Lille) and I will do a study on Risks and Trust in pursuit of a well functioning Persistent Identifier infrastructure for research commissioned by Knowledge Exchange (KE). The project aims to identify the best possible strategic

Study on Risks and Trust in pursuit of a well functioning Persistent Identifier infrastructure

As some people abroad were interested in my earlier posts on the German DEAL contracts, I have decided to summarise here some key points of the new contracts with Wiley, Springer Nature and Elsevier. The three contracts differ in some aspects, but at least there are two issue they have in common: They are

 opt-in contracts

, only those organisations that actively join the contract will benefit from the conditions.

The German DEAL contracts

As the year nears its end, it’s time for a look back at 2023 … My university job  Summa cum Fraude   In 2023, a project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) entitled Summa cum Fraude ended, which was dedicated to the question of how journals/publishers react to reports of obviously faked/erroneous publications – usually, soberingly, not at all.

A look back at 2023

Letzte Woche bin ich auf eine Analyse gestoßen, die ich im Winter 2019 durchgeführt habe und deren Ergebnisse ich hier gerne teilen möchte. Ziel meiner Studie war es, herauszufinden, welche Tätigkeitsbereiche oder Dienstleistungen in einer bibliothekswissenschaftlichen Fachpublikation aus dem deutschsprachigen Raum thematisiert werden.

Publikationskompetenz als Aufgabe von Bibliotheken

While preparing a workshop I was looking for journal ratings &amp; rankings in the Social Sciences &amp; Humanities and would like to share my information here. At the same time, I would like to encourage readers to make additions to the comments. Social Sciences: Journal ratings &amp; rankings

 GESIS List

(Mostly German):

Journal Ratings &amp; Rankings in the Social Sciences &amp; Humanities

Heute erschien mein Interview mit Leonid Schneider über Paper Mills, die gegen Geld scheinwissenschaftliche Publikationen inklusive gefälschter Forschungsdaten erstellen und so das Publikationssystem korrumpieren. Diese Publikationen schaffen es in schöner Regelmäßigkeit in Peer-Review-geprüfte Journale. Betroffen sind aber nicht vorrangig die bekannten Predatory Publishers, sondern anerkannte Journale arrivierter Verlage.

Paper Mills korrumpieren das Publikationssystem

Elsevier acquires the profiling service Parity. It is thus further expanding its existing portfolio of science management services. Elsevier acquires the profiling service Parity   According to Elsevier’s press release Parity provides “high-accuracy entity resolution, profiling and recommendations for STM content and applications in the world of research.

Elsevier acquires the profiling service Parity

The Norwegian consortium for higher education and research and the publishing house Elsevier agreed two days ago to a national license. This provides Norwegian researchers not only access to articles published in Elsevier’s journals (including the society journals as The Lancet or CELL Press) but also the opportunity to publish their results Open Access. Seven universities and 39 research institutions will benefit from the two-year agreement.

Norway and Elsevier meet a eighteen million Euro agreement including a Gold Open Access clause

Yesterday, the National Contact Point Open Access (Germany) sent a mail to several mailing lists in which it pointed to a list of highly cited Open Access journals. According to the mail, this list could be helpful in motivating scientists to publish in Open Access journals [translated by the author of this posting]: “From now on, an overview is available under the resources category with approx.

What is Open Access about? Debates at the heart of the Open Access movement

A few hours ago, Elsevier issued a press release on the agreement with the Finnish consortium FinElib that put an end to the #nodealnoreview boycott. Below you will find some information about it:  nn There is no comprehensive Open Access clause. Elsevier promises to provide “Finnish researches with incentives to publish open access if they so choose.

News about the Elsevier agreement in Finland

While in Germany the boycott of the publisher Elsevier which was initiated by the DEAL project continues, an agreement was reached in Finland between Elsevier and the FinElib consortium, but the details are still unclear. The Website NoDealNoReview.org states: “For the time being, the only thing we can say for sure is that Elsevier subscriptions will not be cancelled in the beginning of 2018.

Finnish consortium FinELib reaches agreement with Elsevier

nnStockholm University Library** ** has monitored gold and hybrid publication charges (or Article Processing Charges APCs) for Open Access publishing at Stockholm University. The results are published on OpenAccess.se in a short posting  by Lisa Lovén andnLiisa Hänninen.nnThe University of Stockholm has spent 2.967.093 Swedish Krona (SEK) between January and August 2017 for APCs.

Concentration in Commercial Open Access: Data from the University of Stockholm

nnHere is a short publication notice: One year after publication in German, an anthology edited by Peter Weingart and Niels Taubert has now also been published in English – “The Future of Scholarly Publishing: Open Access and the Economics of Digitisation”.nn nnThe bibliographic data of the book which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence are:nn  Weingart, P., &amp; Taubert.

“The Future of Scholarly Publishing: Open Access and the Economics of Digitisation”

nnNot only the The Jussieu Call for Open Science and Bibliodiversity but also the European Union as a research funder seems to be paying attention to the problem of the commercialisation of Gold Open Access.nnAs OpenAire has posted the EU published a Call for proposals for Alternative Funding Mechanism for non-author fee based Open Access Publishing.

Funding for Alternative Funding Mechanisms for non-author fee based Open Access Publishing

Yesterday Elsevier announced the launch of Chemistry Research Network, ChemRN. After the launch of BioRN ChemRN is another spin-off of SSRN, the Social Science Research Network, acquired by Elsevier in 2016.  ChemRN will host not only Research Paper Series but also subscription journals.

Elsevier launches new Chemistry Research Network ChemRN

Today Elsevier published its vision of Open Access, written by Gemma Hersh, and suggests a route that is neither green nor gold, but a mixture of it, one could say blue Open Access: Articles published by European institutions should be available Gold Open Access within Europe and – if deposited on a repository – Green Open Access outside of Europe.

Elsevier &amp; Open Access: “the primary reason to transition to gold open access should not be to save money”

Sci:Debug

In September, a journalistic article on Diamond Open Access (by Wolfgang
Benedikt Schmal and myself) and a preprint on Transformative Open Access
Agreements (by Laura Rothfritz, Wolfgang Benedikt Schmal, and myself)
were published.

### On Diamond Open Access & Transformative Agreements {#on-diamond-open-access-transformative-agreements .wp-block-heading}

In 2023, 56% of research articles were published as Open Access, with
42% in Gold Open Access (OA) journals and 14% in hybrid journals,
marking a significant rise since 2018. Despite this growth, many
advocates of OA are pushing for Diamond Open Access, where publications
are free for both authors and readers. Why do they think a turn to
Diamond OA is so important? For which problem should Diamond OA be the
solution?

On the one hand, critics argue that Gold OA has created barriers for
poorer researchers and eroded editorial standards. On the other hand,
transformative agreements have not reduced the power of commercial
publishers -- this is also the main result of our paper on
Transformative OA Agreements (TAs).

TAs between academic publishers and research institutions are
widespread, with the ESAC Initiative documenting over 1,000 contracts in
its database. By web-scraping this data, we utilised the ESAC data and
conducted an in-depth analysis using both qualitative and quantitative
methods. Our findings suggest that research institutions are effectively
"trapped" in these agreements. Rather than facilitating a transition to
full Open Access, the current system keeps academia in a hybrid model,
which strengthens the market power of traditional publishers, reduces
competition, and increases costs for libraries and universities.

But can Diamond OA really overcome these weaknesses of Gold OA and
TAs/hybrid OA and provide both comprehensive and inclusive Open Access
that is attractive to researchers? Benedikt Schmal and I are not so
euphoric in this regard and ask whether Diamond OA faces challenges that
have been insufficiently discussed so far, such as misconceptions about
its costs and sustainability.

References:

Laura Rothfritz, Wolfgang Benedikt Schmal, Ulrich Herb (2024). Trapped
in Transformative Agreements? A Multifaceted Analysis of \>1,000
Contracts (arXiv:2409.20224).
arXiv. [http://arxiv.org/abs/2409.20224](http://arxiv.org/abs/2409.20224){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"}

Ulrich Herb & Wolfgang Benedikt Schmal (2024). [The benefits of diamond
are not crystal
clear](https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-europe-views-of-europe-2024-9-the-benefits-of-diamond-are-not-crystal-clear/){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"}. Researchprofessional News, 26.09.2024


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<figcaption>“<a
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target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Diamond Age</a>” by <a
href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/44124348109@N01" target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer">jurvetson</a> is licensed under <a
href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" target="_blank"
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This week, I had some encounters with Diamond Open Access that got me
thinking, especially about the connotations of "Diamond Open Access".
These include invoice-like payment requests from a Diamond Open Access
platform, editors switching their journal from Hybrid to Diamond Open
Access, purchase offers for Diamond Open Access journals and the
intention of the German Research Foundation DFG to set up a service
centre to further develop and consolidate the Diamond Open Access
landscape in Germany.

**First**, (in my work as an Open Access administrator at my university)
I received a payment notice that looked a lot like an APC invoice (and
could have been easily mistaken for one at first glance), but was not.
The invoice was sent by a non-commercial Diamond Open Access platform,
which requested payment because a scientist from my university had
published an article on this platform.

I understand Diamond Open Access as Open Access that does not require
unit payments (like an APC). If you label a platform as Diamond, but
then send out an APC-like payment request (including payment terms
etc.), you are

- not transparent about your business model/pricing, which is always
 blamed on legacy publishers
- you pretend that the Diamond Open Access service is sustainable, what
 it is not
- you totally water down the term Diamond, because then all Gold Open
 Access publishers like MDPI can also label themselves as Diamond, as
 long as the APCs are not paid by authors, but by libraries.

**Second**, I learned that the editorial board of the Hybrid Open Access
Journal *[The Journal of Political Philosophy
(JPP)](https://politicalphilosophyjournal.org/){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"}* resigned and now publishes the Journal
Political Philosophy on the Open Library Humanities platform as Diamond
Open Access. It was not the desire for pure open access that drove the
decision, but Wiley's desire to publish more hybrid articles to generate
higher revenues: ["Wiley's decision was reportedly prompted by a dispute
with Goodin \[the editor\] over whether the journal should accept more
articles. Wiley had been pushing the journal to publish more articles
per year because of the turn towards open-access publishing agreements,
which generate fees for the publisher on a per-article basis. Goodin
resisted this, and he and the other members of the editorial team
refused to stay on because they were unable to get assurances that
they'd have "requisite editorial control and discretion to maintain the
quality and reputation of the JPP in the face of Wiley's desire to boost
significantly and indefinitely the number of articles published by the
JPP."](https://dailynous.com/2024/01/12/solidarity-among-philosophers-leads-to-new-journal-political-philosophy/){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"} This highlights a clear advantage of Diamond
Open Access -- given it is sustainably funded (which might not be the
case for a)), there will be no interest in boosting the publication
output as this will not generate higher revenues, whereas Hybrid Open
Access benefits financially from more published units. Thanks to Najko
Jahn for [the hint on the IP OA mailing
list](https://lists.fu-berlin.de/pipermail/ipoa-forum/2024-January/msg00040.html){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"}.

**Third**, I learnt (again via [postings on the IP OA mailing list, on
this occasion from Thomas Gerdes/ Armin
Günther](https://lists.fu-berlin.de/pipermail/ipoa-forum/2024-January/msg00045.html){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"}) that operators of Diamond Open Access
journals sometimes receive purchase offers for these journals. Armin
Guenther suspects in the linked post that "some journals are then
continued on dubious journal platforms and are supposed to generate
money via APCs, with largely no quality control (i.e. the predatory
journal model). (...) But there are also sometimes serious purchase
offers from publishers who are obviously interested in marketing a
journal." This financial interest in Diamond Open Access implicitly
refers to the fact that the term Diamond Open Access is loaded with
connotations. Some (not explicitly Armin Günther) equate it with
*non-profit Open Access* (or define it as a subset of it) and find it
difficult to label Open Access for authors not paying APCs as Diamond if
the journal is published by a commercial publisher. Others implicitly
claim that Diamond Open Access must be Scholar-Led per se (a term that
is also vaguely defined). I would consider Society Journals (I am
thinking here of publications by learned societies such as the Royal
Society of Chemistry RSC, Association for Computing Machinery ACM,
American Psychological Association APA, American Chemical Society ACS)
to be Scholar-Led, which are often not Open Access and certainly not
offered at low subscription costs. If they are published in Open Access
they are also not necessarily published under a Diamond model (e.g. the
society journal of the European Sociological Association ESA, [European
Societies,](https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=reus20){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"} is published by Taylor & Francis) in the Gold
Open Access model.

**Fourth,** the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG (German Research
Foundation)  [invites proposals for the establishment of a Service
Centre to further develop and consolidate the Diamond Open Access
landscape in
Germany](https://www.dfg.de/en/news/news-topics/announcements-proposals/2024/ifr-24-02){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"}. The DFG also seems to understand Diamond
Open Access to mean non-profit services: "With its non-profit-oriented
approach, the Diamond model offers considerable potential for
establishing a publication system that is oriented towards the needs of
science and the humanities." One of the main goals seems to be the
much-needed consolidation of the fragmented non-profit Diamond Open
Access landscape, in which many organisations with limited resources
offer Open Access journals: "The tasks of this Service Centre will
include the provision, clustering and arrangement of basic services and
also developing advisory services. Other objectives include the
subject-specific and international networking and coordination of
decentralised services and the promotion of innovation." This call is in
line with the [DFG's
support](https://www.dfg.de/en/news/news-topics/announcements-proposals/2022/info-wissenschaft-22-26){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"} for the [Action Plan for Diamond Open
Access](https://www.scienceeurope.org/our-resources/action-plan-for-diamond-open-access/){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"} as proposed by Science Europe, cOAlition S,
OPERAS, and the French National Research Agency (ANR) and in line with
the idea of a [federated global community of Diamond Open
Access](https://thd.hypotheses.org/296){target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer noopener"} as discussed by Pierre Mounier (OpenEdition,
OPERAS) & Johan Rooryck (cOAlition S). However, it is not really in line
with the [German DEAL
contracts](https://scidebug.com/2023/12/28/the-german-deal-contracts/){data-type="post"
data-id="7136"}, which include Transformative Agreements (at least in a
transitional phase), Hybrid Open Access and Gold Open Access.

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