tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/academic-publications-32889/articlesAcademic publications – The Conversation2022-09-15T13:19:55Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1896752022-09-15T13:19:55Z2022-09-15T13:19:55ZRemoving author fees can help open access journals make research available to everyone<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483777/original/file-20220909-7447-on5881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C35%2C6000%2C3952&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Open access journals make peer-reviewed research available to anyone interested.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Open access (OA) journals are academic, peer-reviewed journals that are free and available for anyone to read without paying subscription fees. To make up for lost subscription revenue, many journals instead charge author fees to researchers who wish to publish in them. These fees can reach <a href="https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2264">thousands of dollars per article</a>, paid out of publicly funded research grants. </p>
<p>This costs <a href="https://doi.org/10.29173/cais1262">Canadians millions of dollars annually</a>, and lines the pockets of major publishers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502">whose profit margins rival those of Pfizer</a>. However, <a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4558704">thousands of OA journals don’t charge author fees</a>, proving that publishing in open access journals doesn’t have to be this expensive.</p>
<p>I work as an academic librarian at McGill University, serving as an on-campus expert on open access publishing. According to <a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.153">research conducted by myself and a colleague</a>, Canada is home to <a href="https://doi.org/10.7939/DVN/EPSJJR">nearly 300 no-fee, open access journals</a>. This is important, as author fees serve as a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00157">barrier for many researchers to make their work available for anyone interested</a>. </p>
<h2>Cost of publishing</h2>
<p>Typical costs of publishing an academic journal include salaries for copy editors, typesetters and translators, and fees for technical infrastructure such as web hosting and submission systems. There are also costs associated with running non-OA journals, such as managing paywalls, subscription payment systems and salaries for sales personnel. </p>
<p>Publishing a journal requires money, <a href="https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.27468.2">but that amounts to only 10 to 15 per cent of what publishers charge authors to make their work open access</a>. Author fees are disproportionate with publishing costs, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00016">correlate to the journal’s prestige</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.4119/unibi/2931061">impact</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.22673">profit model</a>. </p>
<p>In this environment, <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2019/06/04/the-gold-rush-why-open-access-will-boost-publisher-profits/">author fees will continue to increase so long as someone can pay for it</a>. It also means that open access publishing privileges a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00091">certain set of researchers</a>. </p>
<h2>A case study</h2>
<p>McGill University Library supports a no-fee, OA science journal called <em><a href="https://seismica.library.mcgill.ca/">Seismica</a></em>, which publishes peer-reviewed research in seismology and earthquake science. <em>Seismica</em> represents an alternative to rising author fees, such as <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/madhukarpai/2020/11/30/how-prestige-journals-remain-elite-exclusive-and-exclusionary/"><em>Nature</em>‘s controversial</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abf8491">$10,000+ open access author fee</a>. </p>
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<p>A community of nearly 50 researchers and international scientists make up <a href="https://seismica.library.mcgill.ca/about/editorialTeam"><em>Seismica</em>’s editorial team</a>. McGill Library covers the technical costs for <em>Seismica</em>, including <a href="https://www.doi.org/index.html">DOI registration</a>, preservation, web hosting and management of the manuscript submission platform. </p>
<p>Volunteer labour provided by the <em>Seismica</em> team handles the journal’s operations: soliciting reviewers, reviewing submissions and publishing accepted manuscripts. The journal is also responsible for creating its own author guidelines, updating its website and promoting itself. <em>Seismica</em> provides authors with preformatted templates to reduce time spent on layout and production.</p>
<p>McGill Library is one of many Canadian libraries supporting journals in this manner. Of the nearly 300, no-fee OA Canadian journals we researched, 90 per cent were supported in some way by academic libraries. </p>
<h2>Community value</h2>
<p>Journals aren’t simply about publishing papers; to be successful, they must be recognized and valued by the community. At <em>Seismica</em>, significant effort and resources have gone into <a href="https://doi.org/10.31223/X5304V">grassroots community building</a>. In a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3999612/">publish-or-perish culture</a>, launching a new journal isn’t enough — it must be valued and respond to its community’s needs in order to attract submissions. </p>
<p>Editors and peer reviewers contribute their time to journals as a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1600-0498.12290">part of their service to their profession</a>. Some researchers and editors are dissatisfied with providing volunteer labour to publishing companies producing millions of dollars in profits. No-fee, scholar-led journals provide an attractive alternative; this has certainly been a <a href="https://doi.org/10.31223/X5304V">motivating factor for the editorial team at <em>Seismica</em></a>.</p>
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<p><em>Seismica</em> is unique as a no-fee, OA science journal. Our research identified that <a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.153">Canadian STEM journals were nearly 40 per cent less likely to be open access than journals in other disciplines</a>. This is also true globally. One study found that humanities and social sciences journals represented <a href="https://doi.org/10.6087/kcse.277">60 per cent of no-fee, OA journals</a>, compared to 22 per cent in science and 17 per cent in medicine. </p>
<p>Furthermore, science and medicine journals make up the majority of fee-charging, OA journals. This is likely because these journals were early adopters of the author-fee model; researchers publishing in them also had larger grants available to pay these fees. </p>
<h2>Future publishing models</h2>
<p>As author fees charged by the <a href="https://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10280">big publishers skyrocket</a>, libraries, universities and funding agencies should encourage alternative publishing models. No-fee, OA journals can serve this need, but can be <a href="https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1990">precarious</a> and require <a href="https://www.scienceeurope.org/our-resources/action-plan-for-diamond-open-access/">support</a>. </p>
<p>Canada, for example, has a <a href="https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/scholarly_journals-revues_savantes-eng.aspx">grant to support journals in the social sciences and humanities</a>, but no such grant exists at the federal level for science and medical journals. Canada has also been a leader in launching a <a href="http://partnership.erudit.org/principles">cooperative funding model for open access journals</a>. </p>
<p>The focus here, too, has been on arts and humanities and social sciences. Canadian libraries, universities, funding agencies and nonprofit publishers should continue working together to ensure a sustainable, affordable publishing system for all disciplines.</p>
<p>Author fees limit affordable open access for researchers, particularly those without grant funding. Supporting no-fee OA journals is one way forward.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189675/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Lange received funding from the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) - Research in Librarianship grant. </span></em></p>Some open access journals — those that don’t charge their readers a fee — require that researchers pay to publish with them. Removing author fees helps more researchers to publish their work.Jessica Lange, Scholarly Communications Librarian, McGill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1778072022-03-07T01:55:38Z2022-03-07T01:55:38ZAustralia has lost 140 journals in a decade. That’s damaging for local research and education<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449951/original/file-20220304-8225-4q0crx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3172%2C2094&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>At least 140 Australian journals <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1448">ceased publication</a> in the past decade. While there are still more than <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1446">650 Australian journals</a>, 75% of the discontinued ones served the arts, social sciences and humanities disciplines. The loss of journals has significant implications for local scholarship.</p>
<p>Journal discontinuation damages research. Scholarly communities and the discourse that develops around a journal might be lost or damaged. The content of journals that are the result of the hard work of researchers – publicly funded work in most cases – is jeopardised.</p>
<p>Our recently published <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1448">research</a> shows establishing and maintaining journals has become increasingly challenging. Australian journals need more support from the higher education and publishing sectors and better strategies for sustainable editorial and publishing practices.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/book-publishing-sidelined-in-the-game-of-university-measurement-and-rankings-157885">Book publishing sidelined in the game of university measurement and rankings</a>
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<h2>Why do local journals matter?</h2>
<p>Academics need suitable journals to publish in, especially as journal articles are the key output assessed in research evaluation exercises such as <a href="https://www.arc.gov.au/excellence-research-australia">Excellence in Research for Australia</a>. While large international commercial publishers publish plenty of journals in many fields, national or local journals are important. </p>
<p>Domestic journals better accommodate articles on local issues. This is not limited to social and cultural issues such as Indigenous matters. Australia is unique in many aspects, including ecology, economy, geology and so on. </p>
<p>Research communities and discourses form around these journals. Editors direct research in their field through their editorial practices. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-plugging-into-well-connected-colleagues-can-help-research-fly-71223">How plugging into well-connected colleagues can help research fly</a>
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<p>Local journals also support the national education system. They inform practices, especially in fields such as medicine where practices differ from country to country. </p>
<h2>Why do journals discontinue?</h2>
<p>Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1448">study of discontinued journals</a> and a survey of their editors showed several key factors were at work. These include:</p>
<ul>
<li>a lack of funding and support</li>
<li>unsustainable reliance on voluntary work for editorial processes</li>
<li>increasing workload pressures on academics who have less time to review and edit submitted articles </li>
<li>a metric-driven culture that puts pressure on authors to publish in highly ranked journals, at the expense of local journals.</li>
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<p>As one editor of a discontinued journal said:</p>
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<p>“Potential replacement editors were unwilling to take on the workload of editorship and management given the pressure to focus on Q1 publication [in journals ranked in the top 25%].”</p>
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<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1446">Australian journal publishing</a> is characterised by journals belonging to non-profit organisations (364, 55.9%) and universities (168, 25.8%). As these journals are mostly self-published by their owners, the issues we identified are very likely to adversely impact more journals as economic conditions worsen. </p>
<p>Of the discontinued journals, 54% belonged to educational institutions and 34% to non-profit organisations. They had been operating for an average of 19 years.</p>
<p>Moreover, while humanities and social sciences are well represented in the disciplinary focus of Australian journals, a large proportion of the discontinued journals were from these fields. Yet local journals might be more needed in many of these fields where research issues are more likely to be of local significance.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/indigenous-scholars-struggle-to-be-heard-in-the-mainstream-heres-how-journal-editors-and-reviewers-can-help-157860">Indigenous scholars struggle to be heard in the mainstream. Here's how journal editors and reviewers can help</a>
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<h2>It’s getting harder for journals to survive</h2>
<p>Journal publishing has become a challenging task. It’s complicated by many different business models and a competitive market. Small publishers are disappearing as large international publishers acquire them. </p>
<p>Sometimes institutions fund the cost of publishing. Without such funding, journals have to charge either their readers (a subscription fee), or their authors (an author processing charge, APC), or both (hybrid). </p>
<p>A subscription-based journal published by a small publisher might struggle to find subscribers; libraries are less likely to subscribe to individual journals due to their reliance on vendor and publisher-curated packages, or “big deals”. </p>
<p>To publish open access with an APC, a journal has to compete with many other such journals. Some of these competitors (such as those published by Frontiers or MDPI) are well-resourced. They benefit from state-of-the-art technology for managing editorial and publishing processes. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/making-australian-research-free-for-everyone-to-read-sounds-ideal-but-the-chief-scientists-open-access-plan-isnt-risk-free-171389">Making Australian research free for everyone to read sounds ideal. But the Chief Scientist's open-access plan isn't risk-free</a>
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<p>Journals can, of course, outsource their publishing side to a commercial publisher, as 162 Australian journals have already done. These journals are mostly published as hybrid journals. </p>
<p>But such a decision might come at a cost as the direction of the journal might not be aligned with that of the new publisher. For instance, the editor in chief of the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) was <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h2392">sacked over his opposition to outsourcing</a> the journal’s sub-editing and production functions to Elsevier. All 19 members of the journal’s editorial advisory committee subsequently resigned. </p>
<p>Some local journals operate in niche areas that cater to a very small reader audience. These journals are simply not attractive for commercial publishers.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Masked woman looking through journals on a shelf" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449953/original/file-20220304-8225-zqq0wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449953/original/file-20220304-8225-zqq0wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449953/original/file-20220304-8225-zqq0wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449953/original/file-20220304-8225-zqq0wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449953/original/file-20220304-8225-zqq0wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449953/original/file-20220304-8225-zqq0wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449953/original/file-20220304-8225-zqq0wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Some local journals haven’t survived the pandemic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<h2>What can be done?</h2>
<p>It is natural and inevitable that some journals will cease publication as fields evolve. And about 100 journals were established in Australia over the past decade. However, the overall decline in journal numbers is concerning – especially as the global trend is one of growth. </p>
<p>The already precarious financial condition of the higher education sector has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-2-years-of-covid-how-bad-has-it-really-been-for-university-finances-and-staff-172405">made worse by the pandemic</a>. <a href="https://andrewnorton.net.au/2022/02/10/university-job-losses-in-the-first-year-of-covid-19/">Many academic jobs</a> have been lost. Some journals – <a href="https://www.flinders.edu.au/college-business-government-law/who-we-are/law-research">Flinders Law Journal</a>, for example – have discontinued because of COVID. </p>
<p>Enthusiasm alone is not enough to sustain journal publishing. Every journal needs to have a robust business strategy and have undertaken proper contingency planning. </p>
<p>Research is needed to develop strategies for sustainable editorial and publishing operations. Research policymakers must be mindful of the impact of their policies on local journals.</p>
<p>Finally, higher education as a whole needs to be more supportive of journal publishing and the activities associated with it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177807/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Three-quarters of the academic journals that folded served the arts, social sciences and humanities. The losses weaken the academic communities and activities that formed around these journals.Hamid R. Jamali, Associate Professor and Associate Head, School of Information and Communication Studies, Charles Sturt UniversityAlireza Abbasi, Senior Lecturer and Director of Postgraduate Studies, School of Engineering and IT, UNSW SydneySimon Wakeling, Lecturer, School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1718212021-12-02T15:12:00Z2021-12-02T15:12:00ZWhat can we gain from open access to Australian research? Climate action for a start<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434916/original/file-20211201-19-1wky2ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C307%2C3421%2C2274&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The COP26 meeting has sharpened the world’s focus on climate change. To adapt and thrive in a world of reduced emissions, Australian businesses and communities need access to the technologies and innovation made possible by the nation’s researchers. But most Australian research is locked behind publisher paywalls. </p>
<p>Open access to research has become an important strategy to speed innovation. Making COVID-19-related research and data publicly accessible to fast-track the development of vaccines, treatments and policies is one example. </p>
<p>Given the gravity of the global climate emergency, it seems reasonable also to use open access to help speed green innovation.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/all-publicly-funded-research-could-soon-be-free-for-you-the-taxpayer-to-read-111825">All publicly funded research could soon be free for you, the taxpayer, to read</a>
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<p>But, as Prime Minister <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/24/australian-universities-to-vie-for-coalitions-200m-research-funding-boost">Scott Morrison recently noted</a>, research systems driven by a “publish or perish mindset” do little to spur innovation. Scholarly communication models that lock research behind paywalls slow the flow of new knowledge from researchers into real-world innovation. </p>
<p>Australian universities pay hundreds of millions of dollars in subscription fees each year for access to publications by Australian researchers. Businesses, policy advisers, think-tanks and private individuals who don’t have access to a university library must either pay separately for access or miss out. </p>
<p>This is despite the fact Australia invests an estimated <a href="https://oa2020.org/wp-content/uploads/POSTER_12_OpenAccessForAustralia_poster_DrCathyFoley.pdf">A$12 billion of taxpayer money</a> each year in research and innovation, according to Chief Scientist Cathy Foley. Action is needed to ensure this publicly funded research can be translated into innovation for the wider economy.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/making-australian-research-free-for-everyone-to-read-sounds-ideal-but-the-chief-scientists-open-access-plan-isnt-risk-free-171389">Making Australian research free for everyone to read sounds ideal. But the Chief Scientist's open-access plan isn't risk-free</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>How does Australia compare to the world?</h2>
<p>International research communities are already using open-access strategies to maximise the impacts of climate-related research. Our analysis of publication data* shows between 2011 and 2020 the proportion of research on climate change that is open access rose from 30% to 50%. This is consistent with an <a href="https://theconversation.com/all-publicly-funded-research-could-soon-be-free-for-you-the-taxpayer-to-read-111825">accelerating international shift</a> towards “public access to publicly funded research”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434118/original/file-20211126-19-15dfiku.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Bar chart showing percentage of open access research publications on climate change by country" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434118/original/file-20211126-19-15dfiku.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434118/original/file-20211126-19-15dfiku.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434118/original/file-20211126-19-15dfiku.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434118/original/file-20211126-19-15dfiku.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434118/original/file-20211126-19-15dfiku.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434118/original/file-20211126-19-15dfiku.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434118/original/file-20211126-19-15dfiku.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>But Australia has <a href="https://theconversation.com/2020-locked-in-shift-to-open-access-publishing-but-australia-is-lagging-150284">lagged behind the rest of the world</a> in making research open access.</p>
<p>More than half of the Australian research on climate change published in the past decade is behind a paywall. This puts Australia on par with the US and Canada – but well behind our nearest neighbour Indonesia, as well as most of Europe. </p>
<p>Australia’s low rates of open access have implications for communities in need of information about how to adapt to a warming world. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434119/original/file-20211126-17-5ckhn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="graph showing Australian trends in categories of open access to climate research and all research from 2011 to 2020" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434119/original/file-20211126-17-5ckhn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434119/original/file-20211126-17-5ckhn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434119/original/file-20211126-17-5ckhn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434119/original/file-20211126-17-5ckhn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434119/original/file-20211126-17-5ckhn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434119/original/file-20211126-17-5ckhn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434119/original/file-20211126-17-5ckhn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/2020-locked-in-shift-to-open-access-publishing-but-australia-is-lagging-150284">2020 locked in shift to open access publishing, but Australia is lagging</a>
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<h2>Australia’s research sector is pushing back</h2>
<p>The Council of Australian University Libraries (<a href="https://www.caul.edu.au/">CAUL</a>) is leading the push for open access to Australian research. So-called “transformative agreements” are one aspect of its strategy. These are deals with publishers that cover both subscription access to articles that are still behind paywalls and open-access publishing rights for articles by Australian researchers. </p>
<p>In 2021 the CAUL signed transformative agreements with five major publishers.</p>
<p>Foley argues that a “gold” route to open access (paying publishers not to lock articles behind paywalls) is likely to cost less than Australian universities already pay for subscription access: <a href="https://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/news-and-media/unlocking-academic-library-open-access">between A$460 million and A$1 billion</a>. </p>
<p>Foley wants a sector-wide approach that would result in all Australian research being published in open access, and all Australians able to access the journals that universities subscribe to.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/science-publishing-has-opened-up-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic-it-wont-be-easy-to-keep-it-that-way-142984">Science publishing has opened up during the coronavirus pandemic. It won't be easy to keep it that way</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>What more needs to be done?</h2>
<p>So will the latest transformative agreements make it easier to access research needed to tackle climate change?</p>
<p>The short answer is “yes, but we need to do more”. </p>
<p>A few big commercial publishers dominate scholarly publishing. </p>
<p>So far CAUL has signed deals with only two of the largest publishers of climate-related research: Wiley and Springer Nature. The Springer Nature deal excludes many of its most prestigious titles, including the journal Nature. </p>
<p>If the deals with Springer Nature and Wiley had applied to all 2020 publications, our analysis suggests they would have made up to 200 more articles immediately accessible on publication. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434120/original/file-20211126-17-3yzn33.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Chart showing numbers of published Australian research papers on climate change by publisher from 2011 to 2020." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434120/original/file-20211126-17-3yzn33.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434120/original/file-20211126-17-3yzn33.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434120/original/file-20211126-17-3yzn33.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434120/original/file-20211126-17-3yzn33.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434120/original/file-20211126-17-3yzn33.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434120/original/file-20211126-17-3yzn33.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434120/original/file-20211126-17-3yzn33.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>Deals with the Big Five publishers will create a step change in the amount of Australian climate change research that is freely accessible. But there is a danger they will further lock in the monopolies of a few players. </p>
<p>Australian researchers could make a bigger difference to open access by making their work available through other online sharing platforms. Discipline platforms like arXiv, Pubmed Central or university systems like <a href="https://eprints.qut.edu.au/cgi/search/archive/advanced/?dataset=archive&screen=Search&_action_search=Search&refereed=EITHER&title_merge=ALL&title=climate+change&id_number_merge=ALL&id_number=&creators_name_merge=ALL&creators_name=&editors_name_merge=ALL&editors_name=&divisions_merge=ANY&abstract_merge=ALL&abstract=&documents_merge=ALL&documents=&keywords_merge=ALL&keywords=&subjects_merge=ANY&date=&datestamp=&publication_merge=ALL&publication=&series_merge=ALL&series=&isbn_merge=ALL&isbn=&issn_merge=ALL&issn=&event_title_merge=ALL&event_title=&publisher_merge=ALL&publisher=&facilities_merge=ANY&funding_agency_merge=ALL&funding_agency=&funding_id_merge=ALL&funding_id=&satisfyall=ALL&order=-date%2Fcreators_name%2Ftitle">QUT’s ePrints</a> are examples. </p>
<p>Our analysis found less than 40% of Australia’s 2019 research output is accessible through these platforms. Australian researchers could make 1,400 articles on climate change more accessible by depositing them in a free open access repository today. </p>
<p>Tackling climate change and improving access to research are both complex and controversial issues. In each case, thinking through the implications in the short, medium and long term will be key to helping Australia achieve its goals. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>* Data statement: data were obtained from Crossref metadata, Unpaywall, Microsoft Academic and the Global Research Identifier Database, via the data infrastructure developed by the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative, Curtin University. “Climate change” is a topic category available from Microsoft Academic and this was supplemented by a search for terms associated with UN Sustainable Development Goal 7, “clean energy” and “net zero”.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171821/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy Montgomery has received funding from Springer Nature for research relating to Open Access. She is also affiliated with a number or organisations involved in Open Access scholarly communication, including as a recipient of funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and as a member of the Scientific Committees for the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and the OAPEN Open Access Books Toolkit. Montgomery is non-executive director of the not-for-profit consultancy Collaborative Open Access Research and Development (COARD).
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cameron Neylon has received funding from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Springer Nature, the Arcadia Fund, Arnold Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and other organisations for research relating to Open Access. He is also affiliated or has an advisory role with a number or organisations involved in Open Access scholarly communication, including as part of the Initiatives for Open Citations and for Open Abstracts, an Advisory Board Member of Open Book Publishers, and others. Neylon is a non-executive director of the not-for-profit consultancy Collaborative Open Access Research and Development (COARD).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karl Huang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Open access to COVID-19 research accelerated the development of solutions. The urgency of climate change demands the same approach, but more than half of Australian research is still behind paywalls.Lucy Montgomery, Program Lead, Innovation in Knowledge Communication, Curtin UniversityCameron Neylon, Professor of Research Communications, Curtin UniversityKarl Huang, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Culture and Technology, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1713892021-11-15T19:10:06Z2021-11-15T19:10:06ZMaking Australian research free for everyone to read sounds ideal. But the Chief Scientist’s open-access plan isn’t risk-free<p>Chief Scientist Cathy Foley is leading an <a href="https://oa2020.org/wp-content/uploads/POSTER_12_OpenAccessForAustralia_poster_DrCathyFoley.pdf">open access strategy for Australia</a>.
Foley estimates the Australian government invests A$12 billion a year of public money in research and innovation only for most of the publications that eventuate to be locked behind a paywall, inaccessible to industry and the taxpayer. At the same time, Australian universities and others pay publishers an estimated <a href="https://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/news-and-media/unlocking-academic-library-open-access">$460 million to $1 billion a year</a> to see this published work. </p>
<p>Inspired by the European open-access initiative <a href="https://theconversation.com/all-publicly-funded-research-could-soon-be-free-for-you-the-taxpayer-to-read-111825">Plan S</a>, Foley’s goal is to make all publicly funded Australian research publications free for the public to read. This is to be done through a sector-wide agreement between universities and publishers. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/2020-locked-in-shift-to-open-access-publishing-but-australia-is-lagging-150284">2020 locked in shift to open access publishing, but Australia is lagging</a>
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<p>The multinational publishers of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) research – Elsevier, Springer Nature Group, Wiley and Clarivate – are talking with the Chief Scientist. But no new sector funding is available from the government. The idea is it will pool the funds that universities currently pay to publishers to finance new sector-wide <a href="https://oaaustralasia.org/2021/05/25/what-are-transformative-agreements/">transformative agreements</a>. These are also known as “<a href="https://caul.libguides.com/read-and-publish">read and publish</a>” agreements. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1455694409702391811"}"></div></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/2020-locked-in-shift-to-open-access-publishing-but-australia-is-lagging-150284">Australia has lagged behind</a> Europe and America in making research open access. That’s despite it being required by funders like the National Health and Medical Research Council (<a href="https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/resources/open-access-policy">NHMRC</a>) and Australian Research Council (<a href="https://www.arc.gov.au/policies-strategies/policy/arc-open-access-policy">ARC</a>). </p>
<p>Transformative agreements could help redress the problem. However, these agreements are also a new business model. </p>
<h2>Two existing models: green and gold</h2>
<p>When publishers accept a journal article for publication they negotiate with authors about the licence terms that will apply to its distribution. Most publishers will issue contracts that allow for open access. It’s usually achieved in one of two ways. </p>
<p>The “green model” involves researchers placing copies of their work in an online open-access repository. Often the pre-editing and layout version is made available because the publisher denies permission to make the “version of record” accessible to non-subscribers, even in the university institutional repository. Sometimes authors can negotiate green access but with a delay of at least 12 months and up to several years. </p>
<p>The “gold model” guarantees the article will immediately be made available free to readers. It usually involves authors or their institutions paying an up-front article processing charge (APC) to publishers. </p>
<p>APCs can be steep. Costs map the “prestige” of the journal and what the market will bear. The <a href="https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/journals-books/journals">huge diversity in fees</a>, even from the same publisher, shows these are unrelated to any real-world cost of article processing. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/increasing-open-access-publications-serves-publishers-commercial-interests-116328">Increasing open access publications serves publishers' commercial interests</a>
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<p>Both green and gold open-access publishing can increase the social capital or reputation of the author. For the publisher, it increases the asset value of the much-cited text and the associated journal. </p>
<p>However, in the business of scholarly communication, individual articles are not of significant value. Commercial products emerge from the accumulation of individual copyrights. Publishers bundle works under recognisable titles to be sold back to the sector as database subscriptions and data-driven research services and platforms.</p>
<p>Data related to citations, reads and downloads can be sold to third parties. These include the ARC to underpin its ranking of universities and grants. </p>
<p>Large publishers monitor repositories and sharing sites that often house green open-access papers. They do this both to capture the data generated and to reduce the potential of these outlets to challenge the need for commercial library subscriptions. </p>
<p>For example, Elsevier’s research products include Scopus, SciVal, Science Direct, Mendeley, Pure, Academia and bepress/SSRN. Elsevier has taken copyright infringement action against independent sharing sites such as <a href="https://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/2019/02/14/giving-the-authors-a-voice-in-litigation-an-acs-v-researchgate-update/">Sci-Hub and ResearchGate</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431604/original/file-20211112-19-sl3q8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Paywall page of Science journal requesting payment for individual article or login by subscribers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431604/original/file-20211112-19-sl3q8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431604/original/file-20211112-19-sl3q8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431604/original/file-20211112-19-sl3q8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431604/original/file-20211112-19-sl3q8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431604/original/file-20211112-19-sl3q8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431604/original/file-20211112-19-sl3q8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431604/original/file-20211112-19-sl3q8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paywalls have limited access even to research publications relating to open access.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dullhunk/6875255365/in/pool-open-access-irony-award/">Dunk/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/science-publishing-has-opened-up-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic-it-wont-be-easy-to-keep-it-that-way-142984">Science publishing has opened up during the coronavirus pandemic. It won't be easy to keep it that way</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>What is the transformative agreement business model?</h2>
<p>With transformative agreements, universities agree to pay a fee that covers both subscriptions and costs for their future open-access publishing. These agreements do not necessarily reduce subscription costs. </p>
<p>Some agreements create a “read fee” for subscription access to existing academic literature, with open-access publishing apparently permitted at no extra cost. Others limit how many articles will be published as open access by the institution or discount article processing costs. Many include an annual fee increase of 2-3% to cover inflation. </p>
<p>In Australia, the Council of Australian University Librarians (<a href="https://www.caul.edu.au/news">CAUL</a>) has taken the lead on negotiating transformative agreements on behalf of its member institutions. It is not yet clear who would negotiate agreements with publishers under the Chief Scientist’s plan, if the funding is not directly paid by universities but by government.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1313408247156690944"}"></div></p>
<p>In the UK, the introduction of Plan S has raised concerns for the future of humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS), which also face the <a href="https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/the-costs-of-publishing-monographs/">higher costs of monograph publishing</a>. Were Foley’s negotiations to proceed with the big STEM publishers first, HASS, Australian and independent publishers could find themselves locked out of open access, as the pooled fund runs dry. A sustainable transition to open access <a href="https://blog.scholasticahq.com/post/developing-transformative-agreement-small-publisher/">requires arrangements with a variety of publishers</a>. </p>
<p>Pooling funds and collective negotiation are helpful in achieving better open-access outcomes. However, greater financial transparency and accountability over who benefits from academic copyright are required for Plan S-style agreements. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/all-publicly-funded-research-could-soon-be-free-for-you-the-taxpayer-to-read-111825">All publicly funded research could soon be free for you, the taxpayer, to read</a>
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<p>There are risks in taking money from universities that are <a href="https://theconversation.com/budgets-1bn-research-boost-is-a-welcome-first-step-billions-more-plus-policy-reforms-will-be-needed-147662">struggling to fund research</a>. Their <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/technology-and-innovation/research-and-experimental-development-higher-education-organisations-australia/latest-release">grants already do not cover the full cost of academic research</a>. One outcome is pressure to increase teaching-only positions.</p>
<p>As global open-access advocacy organisation SPARC reported in its <a href="https://sparcopen.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-Landscape-Analysis-101421.pdf">2021 update</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The past year has seen more [commercial] deals that led to more concentration, loss of diversity, and ultimately to the academic community’s lessening control over its own destiny.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Academics provide a free service to commercial publishers by researching, writing, reviewing and editing journals without payment. Universities pay for this labour, which generates the intellectual property relied on by publishers. Recognising this value could help us cut better deals with publishers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171389/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathy Bowrey receives funding from the Australian Research Council. This research is based on ARC DP200101578 Producing, managing and owning knowledge in the 21st century university.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kimberlee Weatherall works for the University of Sydney. She also receives funding from the Australian Research Council. This research is based on ARC DP200101578, Producing, managing and owning knowledge in the 21st century university.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kylie Pappalardo receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is the recipient of an ARC DECRA Fellowship (DE210100525) and a Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery Project (DP200101578) Producing, managing and owning knowledge in the 21st century university. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marie Hadley receives funding from the University of New South Wales, to work as a postdoctoral researcher/collaborator on the ARC DP2001101578 'Producing, Managing and Owning Knowledge in the 21st Century University'.</span></em></p>The idea is publicly funded Australian research should be free for the public to read when published. But if it means taking money from universities struggling for research funding, that poses risks.Kathy Bowrey, Professor, Faculty of Law, UNSW SydneyKimberlee Weatherall, Professor of Law, University of SydneyKylie Pappalardo, Senior Lecturer, School of Law, Queensland University of TechnologyMarie Hadley, Lecturer, Newcastle Law School, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1537612021-03-15T12:53:31Z2021-03-15T12:53:31ZHip-hop professor looks to open doors with world’s first peer-reviewed rap album<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388885/original/file-20210310-15-189tilm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C41%2C1997%2C1227&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hip-hop professor A.D. Carson</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Addison</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a rap artist who is also a professor of hip-hop, I always make it a point to have my songs reviewed by other artists I admire.</p>
<p>So when I released “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372">i used to love to dream</a>” – my latest album – in 2020, I turned to Phonte Coleman, one half of the <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/little-brother-interview-phonte-big-pooh-drake-influence-reunion.html">trailblazing</a> rap group Little Brother.</p>
<p>“Just listened to the album. S— is dope!” Phonte texted me after he checked it out. “Salute!”</p>
<p>I responded with sincere appreciation for his encouraging words. I told him they meant a lot to me, especially coming from him. </p>
<p>“Nah, bro. The bars are on point,” he replied. “Much love and respect.”</p>
<p>This informal conversation with a <a href="https://www.xxlmag.com/whos-drakes-favorite-rapper-like-for-real/">highly esteemed rapper</a> – one whose work I’ve studied and hold in high regard – is perhaps the most resounding affirmation I can ask for as an artist.</p>
<p>The situation is similar in academia. That is, in order to establish oneself as a serious scholar, an academic must get their work – typically some sort of written product – published in a peer-reviewed journal, which is a journal in which works are evaluated by others in a given field to ensure their relevance and quality.</p>
<p>As a rap artist and academic, I wondered if I could do the same thing with my new album. Could I get my album “published” through an academic press?</p>
<p>Thankfully, I have discovered that the answer was “yes.”
In August 2020, my album became what Michigan Publishing described as the “<a href="https://www.publishing.umich.edu/stories-of-impact/rethinking-peer-review">first ever peer-reviewed rap album published by a university press</a>.” This is a development that I believe could open doors for scholars from all kinds of different backgrounds – including but not limited to hip-hop scholars – to contribute new forms of knowledge.</p>
<h2>New methods</h2>
<p>“With this new form of scholarship comes a new approach to the peer review and production process,” the University of Michigan Press <a href="https://www.publishing.umich.edu/stories-of-impact/rethinking-peer-review">stated</a> in an article about my work.</p>
<p>But in order to get a peer-reviewed rap album, it’s not like I just went into the studio, rapped over some beats and hoped for the best. I presented liner notes and created a documentary about how I made the album, which I refer to as a “mixtap/e/ssay” – an amalgamation of the words “<a href="https://artists.spotify.com/blog/the-significance-of-the-mixtape-in-the-streaming-era">mixtape</a>,” which is a sampling of an array of select songs, and “essay.” I also submitted articles that help explain how the music relates to certain academic conversations, events in society and my own life.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A man records an album next to a microphone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388887/original/file-20210310-23-1fd83rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388887/original/file-20210310-23-1fd83rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388887/original/file-20210310-23-1fd83rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388887/original/file-20210310-23-1fd83rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388887/original/file-20210310-23-1fd83rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388887/original/file-20210310-23-1fd83rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388887/original/file-20210310-23-1fd83rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘i used to love to dream’ is a semi-autobiographic take on Carson’s life growing up.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amy Jackson</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For instance, since the album is semi-autobiographical and I am from Decatur, Illinois, I note how in May 2020, my hometown was listed as America’s <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/south-west-fastest-growing.html">third-fastest shrinking city</a>. Since my album deals with Black life, I note how USA Today ranked Decatur as one of “<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/11/16/racial-disparity-cities-worst-metro-areas-black-americans/38460961/">the 15 worst cities in America for Black people</a>” in terms of various metrics, such as household income, educational attainment, homeownership, incarceration and life spans.</p>
<p>My album – which is free and open source – deals with topics that range from race and justice to identity and citizenship.</p>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 500px; height: 406px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=734046536/size=large/bgcol=333333/linkcol=0f91ff/artwork=small/transparent=true/" seamless="" width="100%" height="400"><a href="https://aydeethegreat.bandcamp.com/album/i-used-to-love-to-dream">‘i used to love to dream’ by A.D. Carson.</a></iframe>
<h2>Confronting societal ills</h2>
<p>In the lyrics, I reflect from where I am now – in my career as an assistant professor of hip-hop at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville – on my memories growing up and living in the central Illinois town. </p>
<p>The content of the album demonstrates this, covering issues like the war on drugs and its legacy in the 1980s and 1990s and contrasting it with the current opioid crisis on the song “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372.cmp.7">crack, usa</a>”; the seeming inevitability of police killings of Black people and how we might prepare ourselves and our loved ones on “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372.cmp.8">just in case</a>”; and the trap of incarceration and institutionalization presented on “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372.cmp.10">nword gem</a>.” It also provides space for processing mental health matters like trauma, alienation, alcoholism and depression with tracks like “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372.cmp.6">ampersand</a>,” “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372.cmp.9">stage fright</a>” and “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372.cmp.12">asterisk</a>.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2HBw0Wpka5o?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>I published my album with University of Michigan Press because I believe it’s important that hip-hop – and hip-hop scholarship – occupies a space that’s not an “exotic other” and, instead, functions as a way of knowing, similar to, but distinct from, other resources such as a peer-reviewed paper or book.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380300/original/file-20210123-17-1blrlbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of students sit on desks while using their laptops in a classroom." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380300/original/file-20210123-17-1blrlbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380300/original/file-20210123-17-1blrlbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380300/original/file-20210123-17-1blrlbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380300/original/file-20210123-17-1blrlbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380300/original/file-20210123-17-1blrlbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380300/original/file-20210123-17-1blrlbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380300/original/file-20210123-17-1blrlbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Professor A.D. Carson and students in the Rap Lab at the University of Virginia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Miguel 'MiG' Martinez</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In order to review my album as an academic work, the academic publisher had to “come up with appropriate questions for the evaluation of a sonic, rather than written, work.”</p>
<p>“The press’s standard peer review questions consider purpose, organization, and audience,” the University of Michigan Press has <a href="https://www.publishing.umich.edu/stories-of-impact/rethinking-peer-review">stated</a>. “While many of those general themes were captured in the questions developed for ‘i used to love to dream,’ the process for coming up with new questions was much more collaborative.”</p>
<h2>Is higher ed ready?</h2>
<p>I must admit – both before and during my doctoral studies – I was skeptical of the formal peer-review process. My thought was, what is the university to ask hip-hop to prove itself?</p>
<p>But my skepticism faded once I saw the responses from the anonymous scholars who reviewed my album. Based on their insightful feedback, I got the sense that they truly understood Black music and Black rhetoric. They encouraged me to consider how to present the album online in a way that would help audiences better understand the content, which is part of the reason I included the <a href="https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372.cmp.4">short documentary</a> about the making of the album.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>This is not my first academic foray using rap. I actually <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/07/15/537274235/after-rapping-his-dissertation-a-d-carson-is-uvas-new-hip-hop-professor">earned my Ph.D.</a> for writing a <a href="http://phd.aydeethegreat.com">rap album</a>.</p>
<p>I appreciate that hip-hop is sometimes celebrated in the academic world, but it seems to me that a lot of the excitement focuses on hip-hop as a particular kind of content rather than what it teaches people about other things in the world, many of which aren’t hip-hop.</p>
<p>For me, hip-hop is like a telescope, and the topics I discuss are like celestial bodies and galaxies. Taking that astronomical analogy a step farther, I would ask: Does it make sense to spend more time talking about the telescope that brought those faraway objects into focus and a sharper view? Or should more time be devoted to discussing the actual phenomena that the telescope enables people to see?</p>
<p>I can fully understand and appreciate how hip-hop – being not just a telescope but a powerful telescope – would generate a fair amount of discussion as a magnifier. At the same time, at some point society should be able to both focus on the potency of the lens of hip-hop and also concentrate on what hip-hop brings into view.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153761/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>A.D. Carson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Can college professors rap their way into academic publishing? One professor makes an album to prove they can.A.D. Carson, Assistant Professor of Hip-Hop, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1538862021-02-02T19:05:51Z2021-02-02T19:05:51ZJournal papers, grants, jobs … as rejections pile up, it’s not enough to tell academics to ‘suck it up’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381599/original/file-20210201-21-x1nz3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C5034%2C3364&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">fizkes/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most academics regularly submit papers and compete for grants and promotions. These endeavours are necessary for their success but often end in rejection. </p>
<p>Responses to rejection in academia have typically been individually focused. Most discussions of the topic describe what academics themselves can do to cope with rejection. </p>
<p>For example, in a watershed tweet in 2017, <a href="https://twitter.com/nhoputs?lang=en">Nick Hopwood</a> posted a picture of his <a href="https://nickhop.wordpress.com/2017/06/21/my-wall-of-rejection-and-why-it-matters/">office wall</a> papered with rejection letters. Academics were encouraged to celebrate rather than commiserate rejection, spawning the #NormaliseRejection hashtag. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/please-reject-me-a-survivors-guide-to-publish-or-perish-1278">Please reject me: a survivor's guide to 'publish or perish'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"877406216300843009"}"></div></p>
<p>But, as we explored in <a href="https://ro.uow.edu.au/jutlp/vol17/iss5/19/">our recent paper</a>, persistent rejection is problematic, and focusing on the individual academic is not the whole solution. </p>
<h2>Just how toxic is the rejection culture?</h2>
<p>Academics’ careers are strongly linked to their <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1017/edp.2019.16">success in publishing</a> and funding applications. Unfortunately, rejection rates are high, ranging from <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/15127289.pdf">50%</a> in general journals to <a href="https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/editorial-criteria-and-processes">92%</a> in prestigious outlets like Nature. The Conversation, too, rejects most submissions.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-guide-to-how-we-decide-what-to-publish-in-politics-and-society-75536">A guide to how we decide what to publish in Politics and Society</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Such high levels of rejection have three adverse consequences. </p>
<p>First, it squanders a valuable opportunity for professional learning and development. Learning sciences show clearly described <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/npjscilearn201613">success criteria</a> and constructive, task-specific <a href="http://area.fc.ul.pt/en/artigos%20publicados%20internacionais/The%20Power%20of%20Feedback_Hattie_Timperley2007_77_1_81_112.pdf">feedback</a> promote effective learning and development. Yet these are lacking in many decisions on publication or grant submissions. </p>
<p>In our teaching of students, we adopt this nuanced, incremental and developmental approach because it improves learning. In contrast, academic publication or funding decisions can be binary: submissions are rejected or accepted, with little or nothing in between. What’s missed in the process is a powerful learning and developmental opportunity for the academics whose work has presumably been assessed and evaluated.</p>
<p>Second, it wastes an inordinate amount of academics’ time, contributing to their well-documented <a href="https://theconversation.com/survey-of-academics-finds-widespread-feelings-of-stress-and-overwork-130715">excessive workload</a>. <a href="https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/3/5/e002800.full.pdf">One study</a> showed that for one round of a funding scheme in Australia researchers altogether spent more than 500 years of their time preparing proposals. Most of their proposals did not get funded. </p>
<p>Third, rejection culture on top of excessive workloads <a href="https://www.mja.com.au/system/files/issues/211_11/mja250414.pdf">contributes to stress and anxiety</a> among academics. Mental health issues have significant impacts on their work satisfaction, productivity and <a href="https://www.mja.com.au/system/files/issues/211_11/mja250414.pdf">general well-being</a>. </p>
<p>Mental health problems among academics are already at an <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-academics-and-students-have-mental-health-problems-than-ever-before-90339">all-time high</a>. These problems occur at <a href="https://srhe.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075079.2020.1793934#.YBCuj-gzaUk">twice the rate</a> of the general population, an incidence higher even than among <a href="https://uobrep.openrepository.com/handle/10547/622171">police or medical staff</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="woman with head in hands is distressed by what she has just read on her laptop" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381601/original/file-20210201-21-8aq9cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381601/original/file-20210201-21-8aq9cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381601/original/file-20210201-21-8aq9cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381601/original/file-20210201-21-8aq9cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381601/original/file-20210201-21-8aq9cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381601/original/file-20210201-21-8aq9cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381601/original/file-20210201-21-8aq9cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rejection culture is a factor in the high rates of mental health problems among academics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">fizkes/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-academics-and-students-have-mental-health-problems-than-ever-before-90339">More academics and students have mental health problems than ever before</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>This is what institutions can do</h2>
<p>Most papers on academic rejection focus on how the individual can improve their response – the so-called “suck it up” response. We argue, in contrast, that systemic or institutional responses can reduce the toxicity of the culture. Our recommendations for change fall into three main categories. </p>
<p>First, make success criteria clear prior to applications and provide timely and targeted feedback afterwards. The opportunity costs of applying for grants, funding and publications – time and effort that could have been invested in something else – would then be minimised. </p>
<p>This approach could involve pre-submission quality assessments. This can involve communities of academics assessing the quality of manuscripts before they are submitted for publication; journal editors would then only expend resources on the ones most likely to succeed. This would ensure academics pursue only submissions that are most likely to succeed. </p>
<p>When funders and editors approach researchers directly and “commission” proposals, that greatly reduces the opportunity costs. The <a href="https://www.macfound.org/">MacArthur Foundation</a>, for example, now commonly does this. </p>
<p>Second, the process of publication can be improved in several ways. For a start, editors can reduce the number of submissions forwarded for peer review. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.mja.com.au/system/files/issues/211_11/mja250414.pdf">Researchers</a> have studied the benefits of providing authors with prompt decisions and specific feedback aimed at improving chances of future publication. When the submissions review history is included too, it ensures the incremental improvements from feedback are not wasted. Future reviewers also appreciate this as it avoids the problem of different reviewers rejecting for conflicting reasons.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/peer-review-has-some-problems-but-the-science-community-is-working-on-it-99596">Peer review has some problems – but the science community is working on it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Third, prioritising the mental health of academics at an institutional level will lessen the impacts of the rejection culture. Institutions can and should provide awards that recognise performance in writing and research – independent of publication metrics – ideally without any time-consuming application process. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/unis-want-research-shared-widely-so-why-dont-they-properly-back-academics-to-do-it-151375">Unis want research shared widely. So why don't they properly back academics to do it?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Institutions can also take steps to maximise <a href="https://www.rit.edu/provost/sites/rit.edu.provost/files/images/05_Fountain%20Newcomer%2020160916.pdf">mentorship and collaboration</a> among academics. The recruitment of peer mentors enhances <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lisa_Bowman-Perrott/publication/267392499_Academic_Benefits_of_Peer_Tutoring_A_Meta-Analytic_Review_of_Single-Case_Research/links/56708d0f08aececfd5532be8/Academic-Benefits-of-Peer-Tutoring-A-Meta-Analytic-Review-of-Single-Case-Research.pdf">professional learning</a>, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/oti.154">research productivity</a> and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002246698501900410">community and social connection</a>. </p>
<p>Some journals have already <a href="https://bild-lida.ca/journal/">successfully adopted</a> initiatives that involve the recruitment of peer mentors to journal editorial teams who, like peer reviewers, volunteer their time to work collaboratively with authors to improve their manuscripts for publication. </p>
<p>To maximise the benefits to society from the academy’s pursuit and dissemination of new knowledge, academics need to function at their best. The current culture of rejection doesn’t help them do this. </p>
<p>There is little point in relying on academics to just suck it up or celebrate their failure – institutions need to play their part. A cultural problem requires a cultural solution.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/2020-locked-in-shift-to-open-access-publishing-but-australia-is-lagging-150284">2020 locked in shift to open access publishing, but Australia is lagging</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Clarification: An embedded tweet seeking to comfort academics whose work has been rejected by publishers depicts a supposed Einstein rejection letter, which is a fake. As embedded tweets lack explanatory captions, it has been removed from the article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153886/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelly-Ann Allen is an honorary Fellow of the Centre for Positive Psychology, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, and a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society and College of Educational and Developmental Psychologists. Kelly-Ann is an international affiliate of the American Psychological Association (APA) and a member of APA D15 (Educational Psychology) and APA D16 (School Psychology). Kelly-Ann is the Editor-in-Chief of the Educational and Developmental Psychologist and Journal of Belonging and Human Connection. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr. Gregory Donoghue is a consulting reviewer of The Educational and Developmental Psychologist journal. For his work in projects not related to this article, he has received Special Research Initiative funding from The Australian Research Council through the Science of Learning Research Centre, University of Melbourne (SRI 120300015). No conflicts of interest exist in relation to the publication of this article.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Saeed Pahlevansharif is an Associate Professor at Taylor’s University, Malaysia, and an Adjunct Professor at Saito University College, Malaysia. Saeed is the Director of Centre for Industrial Revolution and Innovation (CIRI). He is the editor-in-chief of Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Administration and the editor of Taylor’s Business Review. Saeed has received several research grants for projects not related to this article. There is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this article.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Hattie and Shane Jimerson do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The rejection culture of academia is damaging. Rejections are inevitable, but there are better ways of managing the process that don’t leave individuals to bear the whole burden of coping.Kelly-Ann Allen, Senior Lecturer, School of Education, Monash UniversityGregory Donoghue, Honorary Research Fellow, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of MelbourneJohn Hattie, Professor, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of MelbourneSaeed Pahlevansharif, Associate Professor, Taylor's UniversityShane Jimerson, Professor of Counseling, Clinical and School Psychology, University of California, Santa BarbaraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1502842021-01-03T18:57:17Z2021-01-03T18:57:17Z2020 locked in shift to open access publishing, but Australia is lagging<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374711/original/file-20201214-20-7isptm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C385%2C5574%2C3713&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/surreal-painting-opened-door-open-book-606475526">Bruce Rolff/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For all its faults, 2020 appears to have locked in momentum for the open access movement. But it is time to ask whether providing free access to published research is enough – and whether equitable access to not just reading but also making knowledge should be the global goal.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/L5rVH1KGBCY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">An explanation of open access and how the system of having to pay for access to published research came about.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Australia the first challenge is to overcome the apathy about open access issues. The term “open access” has been too easy to ignore. Many consider it a low priority compared to achievements in research, obtaining grant funding, or university rankings glory.</p>
<p>But if you have a child with a rare disease and want access to the latest research on that condition, you get it. If you want to see new solutions to climate change identified and implemented, you get it. If you have ever searched for information and run into a paywall requiring you to pay more than your wallet holds to read a single journal article that you might not even find useful, you will get it. And if you are watching dire international headlines and want to see a rapid solution to the pandemic, you will probably get it.</p>
<p>Many publishing houses temporarily threw open their paywall doors during the year. Suddenly, there was free access to research papers and data for scholars researching pandemic-related issues, and also for students seeking to pursue their studies online across a range of disciplines.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/science-publishing-has-opened-up-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic-it-wont-be-easy-to-keep-it-that-way-142984">Science publishing has opened up during the coronavirus pandemic. It won't be easy to keep it that way</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374703/original/file-20201214-15-1jxoc5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Graphic showing benefits of open access" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374703/original/file-20201214-15-1jxoc5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374703/original/file-20201214-15-1jxoc5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374703/original/file-20201214-15-1jxoc5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374703/original/file-20201214-15-1jxoc5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374703/original/file-20201214-15-1jxoc5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374703/original/file-20201214-15-1jxoc5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374703/original/file-20201214-15-1jxoc5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://theblogworm.blogspot.com/2014/05/open-access-publishing-growing-area-at.html">Safia Begum/The Blogworm/Aston University</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In October 2020, UNESCO <a href="https://en.unesco.org/covid19/communicationinformationresponse/opensolutions">made the case for open access to enhance research and information</a> on COVID-19. It also joined the World Health Organisation and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in <a href="https://en.unesco.org/news/unesco-who-and-high-commissioner-human-rights-call-open-science">calling for open science</a> to be implemented at all stages of the scientific process by all member states.</p>
<p>There is clearly an appetite for freely available information. Since it was established earlier this year, the <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/cord19">CORD-19</a> website has built up a repository of more than 280,000 articles related to COVID-19. These have attracted tens of millions of views.</p>
<h2>Europe has led the way</h2>
<p>Europe was already ahead of the curve on open access and 2020 has accelerated the change. Plan S <a href="https://www.coalition-s.org/">is an initiative for open access</a> launched in Europe in 2018. It requires all projects funded by the European Commission and the European Research Council to be published open access.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/all-publicly-funded-research-could-soon-be-free-for-you-the-taxpayer-to-read-111825">All publicly funded research could soon be free for you, the taxpayer, to read</a>
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<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374697/original/file-20201214-13-1ck6zbf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Chart showing growth in number of open access repositories" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374697/original/file-20201214-13-1ck6zbf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374697/original/file-20201214-13-1ck6zbf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374697/original/file-20201214-13-1ck6zbf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374697/original/file-20201214-13-1ck6zbf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374697/original/file-20201214-13-1ck6zbf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374697/original/file-20201214-13-1ck6zbf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374697/original/file-20201214-13-1ck6zbf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Growth in the number of open access repositories listed in the international Registry of Open Access Repositories.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access#/media/File:ROAR_growth.png">Thomas Shafee/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A <a href="https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Cost-Benefit-analysis-for-FAIR-research-data_KI0219023ENN.pdf">2018 report</a> commissioned by the European Commission found the cost to Europeans of not having access to FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) research data was €10 billion ($A16.1 billion) a year.</p>
<p>In 2019, open access publications accounted for 63% of publications in the UK, 61% in Sweden and 54% in France, compared to 43% of Australian publications.</p>
<h2>Australia is lagging behind</h2>
<p>Australia’s flagship Australian Research Council has <a href="https://www.arc.gov.au/policies-strategies/policy/arc-open-access-policy">required all research outputs to be open access</a> since 2013. But researchers can choose not to publish open access if legal or contractual obligations require otherwise. This caveat has led to a relatively low rate of open access in Australia.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374694/original/file-20201214-23-1ngrkwg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="chart showing numbers of publications that are open access and behind paywalls" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374694/original/file-20201214-23-1ngrkwg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374694/original/file-20201214-23-1ngrkwg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374694/original/file-20201214-23-1ngrkwg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374694/original/file-20201214-23-1ngrkwg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374694/original/file-20201214-23-1ngrkwg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374694/original/file-20201214-23-1ngrkwg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374694/original/file-20201214-23-1ngrkwg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The increase in the numbers of open access publications in Australia has been gradual.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://openknowledge.community/dashboards/coki-open-access-dashboard/">Open Access Dashboard/Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI)</a></span>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-spend-millions-on-accessing-results-of-publicly-funded-research-88392">Universities spend millions on accessing results of publicly funded research</a>
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<p>The Council of Australian University Librarians (<a href="https://www.caul.edu.au/">CAUL</a>) and the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group (<a href="https://aoasg.org.au/">AOASG</a>) have long carried the torch for open access in Australia. But, without levers to drive change, they have struggled to change entrenched publishing practices of Australian academics.</p>
<p>Our Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) project has examined open access across the world. We have analysed open access performance of individuals, individual institutions, groups of universities and nations in recent decades. The COKI <a href="http://openknowledge.community/dashboards/coki-open-access-dashboard/">Open Access Dashboard</a> offers a glimpse into a subset of this international data, providing insights into national open access performance.</p>
<p>This analysis shows a steady global shift towards open access publications.</p>
<p>For example, in November 2020, Springer Nature <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03324-y">announced</a> it would allow authors to publish open access in Nature and associated journals at a price of up to €9,500 (A$15,300) per paper from January 2021. This was a signal change for the publishing industry. One of the world’s most prestigious journals is overturning decades of closed-access tradition to throw open the doors, and committing to increasing its open access publications over time.</p>
<p>At the moment, the pricing of this model enables only a select group to publish open access. The publication cost is equivalent to the value of some Australian research grants. Pricing is expected to become more affordable over time.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374699/original/file-20201214-24-65jouc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Chart showing open access publication options" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374699/original/file-20201214-24-65jouc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374699/original/file-20201214-24-65jouc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374699/original/file-20201214-24-65jouc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374699/original/file-20201214-24-65jouc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374699/original/file-20201214-24-65jouc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374699/original/file-20201214-24-65jouc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374699/original/file-20201214-24-65jouc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A quick guide to open access publishing: for researchers who wish to do this the required fee can be a significant deterrent.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.openaire.eu/a-quick-guide-to-open-access">OpenAire</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/increasing-open-access-publications-serves-publishers-commercial-interests-116328">Increasing open access publications serves publishers' commercial interests</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>It’s not just about access to facts</h2>
<p>This international trend is a positive step for fans of freely available facts. However, we should not lose sight of other potentially larger issues at play in relation to open knowledge – that is, a level playing field for access to both published research and participation in research production. </p>
<p>Put another way, we need to pursue not only equity among knowledge takers but also among knowledge makers if we are to enable the world’s best thinkers to collaborate on the planet’s signature challenges.</p>
<p>All of this is good news for people who love to access information – but the bigger overall question for the higher education sector is about the conventions, traditions and trends that determine who gets to be considered for a job in a lab or a library or a lecture theatre. There is much more to be done to make our universities open for all – a future of equity in knowledge making as well as taking.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150284/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy Montgomery receives funding from the Arcadia Fund, which supports work to preserve endangered cultural heritage, protect endangered ecosystems, and promote access to knowledge. She also receives funding from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation for work relating to open access. In addition to this, Montgomery is Director of Research for COARD: a not-for-profit consultancy providing insight into the use and impact of open access books and journals.</span></em></p>In many other countries, a majority of research publications are now open access, but the system of paying for access still dominates academic publishing in Australia.Lucy Montgomery, Program Lead, Innovation in Knowledge Communication, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1224292019-08-29T13:39:12Z2019-08-29T13:39:12ZWhat patents and publications reveal about China-Africa science collaboration<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289459/original/file-20190826-8856-1y3jd4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=143%2C772%2C5739%2C4643&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Slowly, Chinese and African researchers are beginning to collaborate more.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Blablo101/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>China has enjoyed a close economic relationship with a number of African countries for many decades. It has been particularly involved in supporting African countries’ infrastructure projects. </p>
<p>As far back as the 1960s it <a href="https://www.tazarasite.com/our-history">helped build</a> the Tanzania Zambia Railway. More recently, it’s invested in railway structures in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.co.za/here-are-150-million-rand-projects-in-africa-funded-by-china-2018-9">Ethiopia</a>, <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-03/25/c_137922762.htm">Kenya</a> and <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2018/04/chinas-role-nigerian-railway-development-and-implications-security-and">Nigeria</a>. It also contributed enormously to building the African Union’s headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria; and a new parliament building in Harare, Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>These and similar investments have been celebrated <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2018-12-19-china-is-investing-in-africa-and-thats-a-good-thing/">by some</a> and made others sceptical. Some scholars, for instance, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/03/china-invest-60-billion-across-continent-raising-fears-new-colonialism/">believe</a> that recent Chinese activities on the continent amount to a “new form of colonialism”.</p>
<p>We wanted to investigate a different type of collaboration between the People’s Republic of China and countries in Africa: how they work together in science and technology (S&T). So we <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/JUXUNXE8JVWVQH4YNBGG/full?target=10.1080%2F14765284.2019.1647004">set out</a> to examine the number of research publications that involved authors from China and any African countries. We also explored how many patents have been obtained collaboratively between Chinese experts and those from African countries.</p>
<p>We chose these measures because scholarly publications (research papers) are generally considered as the base measure of research output. Patents, meanwhile, are viewed as the technological output or the applied aspect of scientific research. For instance, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) uses <a href="https://www.oecd.org/sti/inno/Bibliometrics-Compendium.pdf">these indicators</a> <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/data/oecd-science-technology-and-r-d-statistics/main-science-and-technology-indicators_data-00182-en">to measure</a> the performance of any innovation system. </p>
<p>We found an increase in both collaborative publications and patents between 1975 and 2017. During that time there were 12 700 collaborative articles involving Chinese and African authors. But this was limited to researchers from very few African countries – among them South Africa, Egypt and Morocco – that are comparatively stronger in science and technology infrastructure than many others on the continent. </p>
<p>We believe the rise in collaboration between China and some African countries is a good thing. Along with its booming economy, China is the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-00927-4">second largest</a> producer of scientific research articles (the US is first) and patents in the world. African researchers could benefit enormously from working closely with their Chinese counterparts. Ultimately this would be good for their countries.</p>
<h2>Study findings</h2>
<p>For our study, we drew publication data from <a href="https://apps.webofknowledge.com/WOS_GeneralSearch_input.do?product=WOS&search_mode=GeneralSearch&SID=E3Pmr2EYuqiO2Mnkwtg&preferencesSaved=">Web of Science</a>. This is a scholarly literature database maintained by Clarivate Analytics. The database is used for literature searches and citation analysis. For patents, we turned to the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s <a href="https://www.wipo.int/patentscope/en/">PATENTSCOPE</a> database.</p>
<p>We retrieved data about joint publications involving Chinese and African researchers, focusing our search on the period from 1975 to 2017. In terms of research papers, there has been a marked increase. In 2007 there were only 263 collaborative research papers; in 2017, there were 3 211 joint papers among Chinese and African researchers. </p>
<p>We found that Morocco, Egypt and South Africa dominated both the publication and patent collaboration with China. This makes sense, as these three countries have fairly well developed S&T infrastructure. That would equip them to work better with China than other African countries that do not have sufficient resources or infrastructure. We also found that they collaborated more widely with other countries outside Africa. </p>
<p>Countries in Africa with weaker science and technology capabilities could reach out to Chinese researchers and institutions to help learn more, grow their output and even develop their infrastructure.</p>
<h2>Room for growth</h2>
<p>Our findings suggest that the collaborative relationship between China and some African countries is growing – slowly. In the long run, sustainable linkages will be crucial to help African research gain a foothold in the global science and technology chain. So the relationship with China should be developed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122429/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Swapan Kumar Patra is affiliated with Tshwane University of Technology as Career Advancement Research Fellow. He is part of the H2020 project on Global Value Chain. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mammo Muchie holds a DST/NRF SARChI Chair in Innovation Studies and is also part of the EU-HORIZON 2020 Research on Global Value Chain.</span></em></p>We wanted to investigate how the People’s Republic of China and countries in Africa work together in science and technology.Swapan Kumar Patra, Tshwane University of TechnologyMammo Muchie, DST-NRF SARChI Chair in Innovation Studies, Tshwane University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1203232019-07-15T12:03:16Z2019-07-15T12:03:16ZUniversity of California’s showdown with the biggest academic publisher aims to change scholarly publishing for good<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283903/original/file-20190712-173338-1gov2o5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=311%2C0%2C4985%2C3581&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">For now, it's going to be trickier for the University of California community to access some academic journals.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/michelle658/6022758297">Michelle/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>This month, academic publisher Elsevier <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/07/11/elsevier-ends-journal-access-uc-system">shuttered</a> the University of California’s online access to current journal articles. It’s the latest move in the high stakes <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-uc-elsevier-20190711-story.html">standoff</a> between Elsevier, the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-uc-elsevier-20181207-story.html">world’s largest publisher of scholarly research</a>, and the University of California, whose scholars <a href="https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2018/chapters/chapter-9.html">produce about 10%</a> of the nation’s research publications.</p>
<p>Last February, Elsevier chose to continue providing access to journals via its <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com">ScienceDirect</a> online platform after UC’s <a href="https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-terminates-subscriptions-worlds-largest-scientific-publisher-push-open-access-publicly">subscription expired</a> and negotiations broke down. With its instant access now cut off, the UC research community will learn firsthand what it’s like to rely on the open web and other means of accessing critical research.</p>
<p>The UC-Elsevier showdown made headlines because it’s symptomatic of the way the internet has failed to deliver on the promise to make knowledge easily accessible and shareable by anyone, anywhere in the world. It’s the latest in a succession of cracks in what is widely considered to be a <a href="https://www.researchinformation.info/news/new-report-warns-%E2%80%98failing-system%E2%80%99-scholarly-publishing">failing system</a> for sharing academic research. <a href="https://leadership.ucdavis.edu/people/mackenzie-smith">As the head of the research library at UC Davis</a>, I see this development as a <a href="https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/publisher-negotiations/uc-and-elsevier-impact/">harbinger of a tectonic shift</a> in how universities and their faculty share research, build reputations and preserve knowledge in the digital age.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Accessing a journal no longer means going to a periodicals room.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/13873472463/in/faves-52792775@N00/">Newton W. Elwell/Boston Public Library/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Moving from stacks to screens</h2>
<p>Here’s how things traditionally worked.</p>
<p>Universities have always subscribed to scientific journals so their researchers can study and build on the work that came before, and won’t needlessly duplicate research they never knew about. In the print age, university library shelves were lined with journals, available for any researcher or – in the case of public universities like the University of California – any member of the public to peruse and learn from.</p>
<p>Now, for almost all journals, and a growing number of books, libraries sign contracts to license access to digital versions. Since academic publishers moved their journals online, it has become rare for libraries to subscribe to printed journals, and researchers have adapted to the convenience of accessing journal articles on the internet.</p>
<p>Under the new business model of licensing access to journals online rather than distributing them in print, for-profit publishers often lock libraries into bundled subscriptions that wrap the majority of a publisher’s portfolio of journals – <a href="https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals">almost 3,000 in Elsevier’s case</a> – into a single, multimillion dollar package. Rather than storing back issues on shelves, libraries can lose permanent access to journals when a contract expires. And members of the public can no longer read the library’s copy of a journal because the licenses are limited to members of the university. Now the public must buy online copies of academic articles for an average of US$35 to $40 a pop. </p>
<p>The shift to digital has been good for researchers in many ways. It is far more convenient to search for articles online, and easier to access and download a copy – provided you work for an institution with a paid subscription. Modern software makes organizing and annotating them simpler, too. With all of these benefits, no one would advocate for going back to the old days of print journals. </p>
<p>Online access to journals did not improve the picture overall. Despite digital copies of articles costing nothing to duplicate and the cost of producing an article online being lower than in the past, the cost to libraries of licensing access to them has continued to experience <a href="https://www.arl.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/5yr_ongoing-resource-expenditures_by_type.pdf">hyperinflation</a>. <a href="https://theconversation.com/academic-journal-publishing-is-headed-for-a-day-of-reckoning-80869">No library</a> can afford to license all the journals its faculty and students want access to, and many researchers around the world are shut out completely. Compounding the problem, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502">consolidation in the scholarly publishing market</a> has reduced competition significantly, causing even more price inflexibility.</p>
<h2>Excessive profits?</h2>
<p>Academic publishers certainly bear costs. They pay for professional editors and programmers, they manage the peer review process, they market their journals and so on. However, their revenues far exceed these costs and are among the highest of any companies in the world. Elsevier’s profit margin is reported to be <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kittyknowles/2018/06/13/blockchain-science-iris-ai-project-aiur-elsevier-academic-journal-london-tech-week-cogx/">nearly 40%</a>, far higher than even Apple at <a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/profit-margins">around 23%</a>.</p>
<p>Where social media platforms like Facebook profit from – and indeed, would not exist without – the content generated by users, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/04/the-guardian-view-on-academic-publishing-disastrous-capitalism">the parallel is true</a> for academic journals. Companies like Elsevier receive articles from university faculty and other researchers for free, summarizing research that was often publicly funded by government grants. Then other faculty and researchers serve on their editorial boards and peer-review those articles for free or a nominal fee. Finally the company publishes them in journals available only behind a paywall.</p>
<p>And there’s the rub: the paywall. The great promise of the internet was that it would make <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free">knowledge more freely and easily accessible</a>. In the world of academic research – where new discoveries are made and new knowledge is born – the hope 20 years ago was that the advent of online platforms would make research articles universally available. It would also bring down the cost of publishing scholarly journals and, consequently, begin to reduce the multimillion dollar subscription costs borne by universities and other research institutions.</p>
<p>Instead, articles are not readily available to everyone, subscription costs have continued to rise, and subscribers’ rights have eroded, including what they can do with articles they buy and their ability to provide long-term access to them.</p>
<p>What happened to sharing knowledge with the people who need it, funded or created it?</p>
<h2>A model for the digital age</h2>
<p>Maybe it’s time to just blow up the whole system and start over. But today’s scholarly system of sharing knowledge evolved over hundreds of years and contains certain qualities – peer review of accuracy, editorial judgment, long-term preservation – that still matter deeply.</p>
<p>While research products – books, journals and articles – would definitely benefit from modernization in the digital age, we at the University of California are focusing on fixing the business model first. Paywalls and online subscriptions may make sense in other parts of the media ecosystem, but it’s not a good model for academic publishing, where authors and reviewers are paid by universities and research grants (with public money) rather than by publishers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The open access movement would get rid of paywalls and let anyone read anything for free.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/set-ornate-gates-heaven-opening-under-158678495">Inked Pixels/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fortunately, the academy has another option for a publishing business model that can better achieve the promise of the internet: open access. In that model, authors, or their funders or institutions, pay the publisher a fee to cover the cost of publishing each article. In exchange, the articles are made freely available for everyone to read online, anywhere, anytime. Article quality is preserved by the same unpaid peer-review system. Libraries at research institutions could shift their payments from licenses and subscriptions to publication fees for their affiliated authors. The cost is theoretically the same, but everyone can read everything for free. </p>
<p>The University of California has long <a href="https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/open-access-policy/">supported the ideals of open access</a> – allowing everyone in the world to access the knowledge created by its faculty and researchers, for the benefit of all. In fact, since open access became an option for publishing, more and more UC authors, following the <a href="https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375">global trend</a>, have independently chosen to pay their publisher a fee in order to make their article freely available to the public.</p>
<p>But those fees come on top of the <a href="https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/why-uc-split-publishing-giant-elsevier">tens of millions of dollars</a> that the university is already paying the publisher for access to the same articles. This “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-science-of-the-tax-dollar-double-dip-1459379449">double dipping</a>” by publishers was the final straw in UC’s resolve to change the system.</p>
<p>Several years ago, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_Sp-B_0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I worked</a> with colleagues within the University of California and other academic research institutions to study the <a href="https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/icis/uc-pay-it-forward-project/">costs of publishing with this open access model</a>. We found that, while costs would shift and more research-grant funds may need to be applied to publishing fees, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5703/1288284316481">overall it would be affordable</a> for research universities, at least in North America where libraries are relatively well funded. With these results, UC could see a way out of its dilemma. </p>
<p>When UC’s contract with Elsevier was up for renewal, we resolved to put our ideas into practice and pursue the twin goals of increasing open access to UC’s research while containing or lowering our journal-related costs – and finally achieving something of the promise of the internet. While I was not on UC’s negotiating team, I was among the group of faculty and library leaders that worked closely with them and decided to take this step.</p>
<p>Now, UC’s researchers will have to find other ways to get Elsevier journal articles than the online access they have become accustomed to. Many of those articles are already <a href="https://www.the-scientist.com/daily-news/open-access-on-the-rise-study-31125">freely available</a> on the web and the rest can be borrowed from libraries or requested from authors. There are also a growing number of tools like <a href="https://unpaywall.org/">Unpaywall</a>, which searches the web for free copies of articles, to help researchers with that transition. But for busy researchers with little time to spare, convenience is king, and they’ll likely soon learn from experience why achieving 100% open access to research articles is so important.</p>
<p>UC’s goals are ambitious and their implementation will be complex. Changing a system this intricate is akin to modernizing the FAA’s air traffic control system – a million planes are in the air at any moment and altering anything can have serious consequences elsewhere. But we have to start somewhere or the whole system is at risk, and UC has placed its bet. We join an expanding <a href="https://oa2020.org/mission/#eois">global movement</a>, and we believe we’re now on the path to a better system for sharing knowledge in the 21st century.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/university-of-californias-break-with-the-biggest-academic-publisher-could-shake-up-scholarly-publishing-for-good-112941">an article</a> originally published on March 7, 2019.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120323/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>MacKenzie Smith receives funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>The UC libraries let their Elsevier journal subscriptions lapse and now the publisher has cut their online access. It’s a painful milestone in the fight UC hopes may transform how journals get paid.MacKenzie Smith, University Librarian and Vice Provost for Digital Scholarship, University of California, DavisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1160912019-04-30T07:55:06Z2019-04-30T07:55:06ZHow to approach the revolution in scholarly publishing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271444/original/file-20190429-194627-ue5mzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">By opening up academic journals to a broader audience, everyone benefits.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is a digital revolution underway. It’s changing how many things are done – including scholarly publishing. The way that academic research is published, and its availability, has shifted over time. </p>
<p>Academic and scholarly journals used to be available only in hard copy. Then came fairly ubiquitous internet access. This ushered in increasingly expensive subscription access to digital copies of journals. And then open access publishing arrived. Today it’s becoming increasingly easy and free to access academic research that was once hidden behind pay walls in specialist journals.</p>
<p>This changing landscape prompted the <a href="http://www.assaf.org.za">Academy of Science of South Africa</a> to carefully study the potential impact of the digital revolution on scholarly publishing. <a href="http://research.assaf.org.za/handle/20.500.11911/49">The Academy’s first report on the topic</a> was published in 2006. Presciently, it advocated that the digital revolution would radically change both the nature of and access to scholarly published material. It recommended that journals published in southern Africa should embrace open access online publishing to improve the visibility and accessibility of research. </p>
<p>The Academy implemented many of the report’s recommendations. It established the <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/">SciELO SA</a> journal platform and peer review of South African journals. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://research.assaf.org.za/handle/20.500.11911/73">second report</a> was published three years later. It dealt with scholarly book publishing. Its recommendations included a call for books to attract higher numbers of publication units in the Department of Higher Education and Training’s evaluation of publication outputs from universities. This meant that books generated increased funding for universities. </p>
<p>Now the Academy has produced its <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11911/114">third study</a> of scholarly publishing. It contains recommendations we hope will equip academics, scholars and publishers in South Africa and elsewhere in the region with the tools to navigate the next five to ten years. </p>
<p>Among other things, the report calls for quality over quantity when it comes to locally produced scholarly journals. It also recommends that these should all be open access. Discussions are needed at a national level about affordable, sustainable article processing charges. These are the fees that journals charge to accept, edit and publish articles.</p>
<h2>Recommendations</h2>
<p>The report presents a bibliometric analysis of all forms of peer-reviewed scholarly publishing in South Africa between 2004 and 2014 – books, journal articles and conference proceedings. The analysis was carried out by the <a href="http://www0.sun.ac.za/crest/">Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology</a> at Stellenbosch University.</p>
<p>This yielded many positive findings. Among them are the effectiveness of the Department of Higher Education and Training’s <a href="http://www.dhet.gov.za/Policy%20and%20Development%20Support/Research%20Outputs%20policy_2015.pdf">publication incentive funding</a>. </p>
<p>But there are concerns, too. The analysis found evidence of academics publishing in predatory journals and conference proceedings. In these instances, academics paid for their research to be published without it going through peer review or any proper assessment process. There were also examples of questionable editorial practices; for instance, editors or members of editorial boards publishing in their own journals. </p>
<p>Academics and institutions must be more vigilant when it comes to identifying and avoiding predatory publishers and conferences. Editors of scholarly journals should be required to adhere to the National Scholarly Editors Forum <a href="https://www.assaf.org.za/index.php/programmes/scholarly-publishing-programme/national-scholarly-editors-forum">code of conduct</a>.</p>
<h2>The ASSAf report</h2>
<p>This historical view of the South African system’s performance was complemented by a set of recommendations for its future. The main finding was that open access publishing should be mandatory and publicly funded data generated by universities, should be freely available.</p>
<p>These are some further key recommendations outlined in the report.</p>
<p>First, South Africa needs a smaller set of sustainable high-quality local scholarly journals. These must all be online and open access. They must be indexed on <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/">SciELO SA</a> or international indexes that screen out predatory journal publishers.</p>
<p>Second, the National Scholarly Editors’ Forum needs to reach an agreement with non-commercial journal publishers about affordable article processing charges. These could replace subscriptions. </p>
<p>Alongside this process, the Departments of Higher Education and Training and of Science and Technology, universities and their libraries, and the country’s National Research Foundation need to discuss how article processing charges could be funded from current expenditure on journal subscriptions.</p>
<p>There also need to be urgent discussions among these role players and multi-national mega publishers of commercial journals. These publishers often charge high article processing charges, offer subscription models that aren’t affordable for South African and other developing country institutions, or both. More affordable deals need to be negotiated.</p>
<p>Finally, a national, regional and continental debate is needed to develop a system of high-quality journals for Africa. These journals would provide visibility for scholarship on the continent while at the same time minimising the deleterious effects of predatory publishing and dubious editorial practices.</p>
<h2>Moving forward</h2>
<p>These recommendations are based on the assumption that the research community and the institutions that support it can ensure a credible, affordable, and reputable scholarly publication system in South Africa. This can happen if all these stakeholders are proactive.</p>
<p><em>Susan Veldsman, Director: Scholarly Publication Unit at the Academy of Sciences in South Africa, co-authored this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116091/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robin Crewe received funding from the National Research Foundation and the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wieland Gevers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In South Africa, open access publishing should be mandatory and publicly funded data generated by universities, should be freely available.Robin Crewe, Professor of Zoology and Senior Research Fellow, Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of PretoriaWieland Gevers, Emeritus Professor of Medical Biochemistry, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1129412019-03-08T01:28:07Z2019-03-08T01:28:07ZUniversity of California’s break with the biggest academic publisher could shake up scholarly publishing for good<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262542/original/file-20190306-100784-oqhxay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=155%2C248%2C2355%2C1691&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Libraries subscribe digitally to academic journals – and are left with nothing in the stacks when the contract expires.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/maveric2003/137231015">Eric Chan/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The University of California recently made international headlines when it <a href="https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-terminates-subscriptions-worlds-largest-scientific-publisher-push-open-access-publicly">canceled its subscription</a> with scientific journal publisher <a href="https://www.elsevier.com/">Elsevier</a>. The twittersphere <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ucelsevier">lit up</a>. And Elsevier’s parent company, RELX, saw its stock <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-stocks/uk-main-index-bounces-back-on-wpp-strength-relx-tumbles-idUKKCN1QI42N">drop 7 percent</a> in response to the announcement.</p>
<p>A library canceling a subscription seems like a simple, everyday business decision, so what’s the big deal?</p>
<p>It was not just the clash-of-the-titans drama between the University of California, whose scholars <a href="https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2018/chapters/chapter-9.html">produce nearly 10 percent</a> of the nation’s research publications, and Elsevier, the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-uc-elsevier-20181207-story.html">world’s largest publisher</a> of academic research. </p>
<p>The story made headlines because it’s symptomatic of the way in which the internet has failed to deliver on the promise to make knowledge easily accessible and shareable by anyone, anywhere in the world. The UC-Elsevier showdown was the latest in a succession of cracks in what is widely considered to be a <a href="https://www.researchinformation.info/news/new-report-warns-%E2%80%98failing-system%E2%80%99-scholarly-publishing">failing system</a> for sharing academic research. <a href="https://leadership.ucdavis.edu/people/mackenzie-smith">As the head of the research library at UC Davis</a>, I see this development as a harbinger of a tectonic shift in how universities and their faculty share research, build reputations and preserve knowledge in the digital age.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262544/original/file-20190306-100796-1cwusvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Accessing a journal no longer means going to a periodicals room.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/13873472463/in/faves-52792775@N00/">Newton W. Elwell/Boston Public Library/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Moving from stacks to screens</h2>
<p>Here’s how things traditionally worked.</p>
<p>Universities have always subscribed to scientific journals so their researchers can study and build on the work that came before, and won’t needlessly duplicate research they never knew about. In the print age, university library shelves were lined with journals, available for any researcher or – in the case of public universities like the University of California – any member of the public to peruse and learn from.</p>
<p>Now, for almost all journals, and a growing number of books, libraries sign contracts to license access to digital versions. Since academic publishers moved their journals online, it has become rare for libraries to subscribe to printed journals, and researchers have adapted to the convenience of accessing journal articles on the internet.</p>
<p>Under the new business model of licensing access to journals online rather than distributing them in print, for-profit publishers often lock libraries into bundled subscriptions that wrap the majority of a publisher’s portfolio of journals – <a href="https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals">almost 3,000 in Elsevier’s case</a> – into a single, multi-million dollar package. Rather than storing back issues on shelves, libraries can lose permanent access to journals when a contract expires. And members of the public can no longer read the library’s copy of a journal because the licenses are limited to members of the university. Now the public must buy online copies of academic articles for an average of US$35 to $40 a pop. </p>
<p>The shift to digital has been good for researchers in many ways. It is far more convenient to search for articles online, and easier to access and download a copy – provided you work for an institution with a paid subscription. Modern software makes organizing and annotating them simpler, too. With all of these benefits, no one would advocate for going back to the old days of print journals. </p>
<p>But this online system did not improve the picture overall. Despite digital copies of articles costing nothing to duplicate and the cost of producing an article online being lower than in the past, the cost to libraries of licensing access to them has continued to experience <a href="https://www.arl.org/storage/documents/5yr_ongoing-resource-expenditures_by_type.pdf">hyperinflation</a>. <a href="https://theconversation.com/academic-journal-publishing-is-headed-for-a-day-of-reckoning-80869">No library</a> can afford to license all of the journals that its faculty and students want access to, and many researchers around the world are shut out completely. Compounding the problem, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502">consolidation in the scholarly publishing market</a> has reduced competition significantly, causing even more price inflexibility.</p>
<h2>Excessive profits?</h2>
<p>Academic publishers certainly bear costs. They pay for professional editors and programmers, they manage the peer review process, they market their journals and so on. However, their revenues far exceed these costs and are among the highest of any companies in the world. Elsevier’s profit margin is reported to be <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kittyknowles/2018/06/13/blockchain-science-iris-ai-project-aiur-elsevier-academic-journal-london-tech-week-cogx/">nearly 40 percent</a> far higher than even Apple at <a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/profit-margins">around 23 percent</a>.</p>
<p>Where social media platforms like Facebook profit from – and indeed, would not exist without – the content generated by users, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/04/the-guardian-view-on-academic-publishing-disastrous-capitalism">the parallel is true</a> for academic journals. Companies like Elsevier receive articles from university faculty and other researchers for free, summarizing research that was often publicly funded by government grants. Then other faculty and researchers serve on their editorial boards and peer-review those articles for free or a nominal fee. Finally the company publishes them in journals available only behind a paywall.</p>
<p>And there’s the rub: the paywall. The great promise of the internet was that it would make <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free">knowledge more freely and easily accessible</a>. In the world of academic research – where new discoveries are made and new knowledge is born – the hope 20 years ago was that the advent of online platforms would make research articles universally available. It would also bring down the cost of publishing scholarly journals and, consequently, begin to reduce the multi-million dollar subscription costs borne by universities and other research institutions.</p>
<p>Instead, articles are not readily available to everyone, subscription costs have continued to rise, and subscribers’ rights have eroded, including what they can do with articles they buy and their ability to provide long-term access to them.</p>
<p>What happened to sharing knowledge with the people who need it, funded or created it?</p>
<h2>A model for the digital age</h2>
<p>Maybe it’s time to just blow up the whole system and start over. But the system of sharing knowledge that scholars have today evolved over hundreds of years and contains certain qualities – peer review of accuracy, editorial judgment, long-term preservation – that still matter deeply.</p>
<p>While research products – books, journals and articles – would definitely benefit from modernization in the digital age, we at the University of California are focusing on fixing the business model first. Paywalls and online subscriptions may make sense in other parts of the media ecosystem, but it’s not a good model for academic publishing, where authors and reviewers are paid by universities and research grants (with public money) rather than by publishers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262775/original/file-20190307-82688-17ky3w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The open access movement would get rid of paywalls and let anyone read anything for free.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/set-ornate-gates-heaven-opening-under-158678495">Inked Pixels/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fortunately, the academy has another option for a publishing business model that can better achieve the promise of the internet: open access. In that model, authors, or their funders or institutions, pay the publisher a fee to cover the cost of publishing each article. In exchange, the articles are made freely available for everyone to read online, anywhere, anytime. Article quality is preserved by the same unpaid peer-review system. Libraries at research institutions could shift their payments from licenses and subscriptions to publication fees for their affiliated authors. The cost is theoretically the same, but everyone can read everything for free. </p>
<p>The University of California has long <a href="https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/open-access-policy/">supported the ideals of open access</a> – allowing everyone in the world to access the knowledge created by its faculty and researchers, for the benefit of all. In fact, since open access became an option for publishing, more and more UC authors, following the <a href="https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375">global trend</a>, have independently chosen to pay their publisher a fee in order to make their article freely available to the public.</p>
<p>But those fees come on top of the <a href="https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/why-uc-split-publishing-giant-elsevier">tens of millions of dollars</a> that the university is already paying the publisher for access to the same articles. This “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-science-of-the-tax-dollar-double-dip-1459379449">double dipping</a>” by publishers was the final straw in UC’s resolve to change the system.</p>
<p>Several years ago, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_Sp-B_0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I worked</a> with colleagues within the University of California and other academic research institutions to study the <a href="https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/icis/uc-pay-it-forward-project/">costs of publishing with this open access model</a>. We found that, while costs would shift and more research-grant funds may need to be applied to publishing fees, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5703/1288284316481">overall it would be affordable</a> for research universities, at least in North America where libraries are relatively well funded. With these results, UC could see a way out of its dilemma. </p>
<p>When UC’s contract with Elsevier was up for renewal, we resolved to put our ideas into practice and pursue the twin goals of increasing open access to UC’s research while containing or lowering our journal-related costs – and finally achieving something of the promise of the internet. While I was not on UC’s negotiating team, I was among the group of faculty and library leaders that worked closely with them and decided to take this step.</p>
<p>Our goals are ambitious and their implementation will be complex. Changing a system this intricate is akin to modernizing the FAA’s air traffic control system – a million planes are in the air at any moment and changing anything can have serious consequences elsewhere. But we have to start somewhere or the whole system is at risk, and UC has placed its bet. We join a <a href="https://oa2020.org/mission/#eois">global movement</a> that began in Europe and is expanding around the world, and we believe we’re now on the path to a better system for sharing knowledge in the 21st century.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112941/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>MacKenzie Smith receives funding from Mellon Foundation, IMLS, NSF. </span></em></p>Digital publishing hasn’t resulted in the free and open access to information many envisioned. Universities are increasingly fed up with a system they see as charging them for their own scholars’ labor.MacKenzie Smith, University Librarian and Vice Provost for Digital Scholarship, University of California, DavisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/847722018-05-25T04:05:37Z2018-05-25T04:05:37ZDemasi cleared, but images in science continue to attract intense scrutiny<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188112/original/file-20170929-22252-yjf7x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A western blot allows scientists to detect specific proteins in tissue samples. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/analyzing-gel-results-413933920?src=xM7Qkr-p70y5DEmr37VUjg-1-4">from www.shutterstock.com </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Science reporter Maryanne Demasi was last month <a href="https://www.adelaide.edu.au/research-services/oreci/integrity/inquiries/docs/summary-panel-report-for-publication-9-may-2018.pdf">cleared of allegations of research misconduct</a> in relation to her University of Adelaide PhD thesis published in 2004. </p>
<p>The allegations were investigated by an independent panel convened by the University of Adelaide’s <a href="https://www.adelaide.edu.au/research-services/oreci/">Office of Research Ethics, Compliance and Integrity</a>. It comprised a former justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia and three professors of medical science not linked with the University of Adelaide. </p>
<p>There were 17 allegations about images in Demasi’s thesis. The question before the panel was whether the images “had been duplicated and/or manipulated in a manner that deviated from the applicable standards at the relevant time”. </p>
<p>All of the impugned images depicted the results of experiments to detect proteins or RNA molecules. The techniques to do this are known as “western blot” and “northern blot”, respectively.</p>
<p>In 14 cases the <a href="https://www.adelaide.edu.au/research-services/oreci/integrity/inquiries/docs/summary-panel-report-for-publication-9-may-2018.pdf">panel found</a> no image duplication had taken place. In the remaining three cases Demasi “admitted that she had duplicated or probably duplicated the relevant impugned images” – but the panel “could not be satisfied that the duplication constituted a deviation from the applicable standards at the relevant time”.</p>
<p>It’s not clear whether blot images are the focus of The Journal of Biological Chemistry’s <a href="http://www.jbc.org/content/292/38/15993.full">expression of concern</a> in 2017 regarding one of Demasi’s scientific papers published in 2003. </p>
<p>Demasi firmly denies any research misconduct in both her thesis and research papers. But what are western and northern blots? And why do they attract such scrutiny? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-we-edit-science-part-1-the-scientific-method-74521">How we edit science part 1: the scientific method</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Detecting proteins</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188099/original/file-20170928-28945-bsrjth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188099/original/file-20170928-28945-bsrjth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188099/original/file-20170928-28945-bsrjth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188099/original/file-20170928-28945-bsrjth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188099/original/file-20170928-28945-bsrjth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188099/original/file-20170928-28945-bsrjth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1221&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188099/original/file-20170928-28945-bsrjth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1221&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188099/original/file-20170928-28945-bsrjth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1221&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A good western blot will show the entire membrane, from 250 kilodaltons to 10 kilodaltons, and be clean except for the protein of interest. Each band represents a different sample so should be visually different.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author's own western blot</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Westerns blots detect proteins, and are a commonly used and sensitive scientific technique. The image they produce may look like a nondescript smudge, but western blots are in fact a very useful way to home in on a specific protein in a complex mixture of biological materials, such as blood or tissue. </p>
<p>Western blots are used in the diagnosis of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8223404">Lyme disease</a>, for example. This is because infection with the bacterium that causes Lyme (<em>Borrelia burgdorferi</em>) leaves a unique fingerprint of proteins in a patient’s blood. </p>
<p>Western blots also enable researchers to determine changes in proteins in response to a drug regimen. In my own lab, I routinely run western blots to measure changes in protein profiles in response to a dietary supplement that we are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21678421.2016.1221971">trialling</a> for the treatment of motor neuron disease. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-we-know-dont-know-and-suspect-about-what-causes-motor-neuron-disease-79409">What we know, don’t know and suspect about what causes motor neuron disease</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84772/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachael Dunlop receives funding from private donors. </span></em></p>Western and northern blots help scientists identify specific proteins and RNA molecules in experimental samples. But results can be manipulated.Rachael Dunlop, Honorary Research Fellow, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/929992018-03-08T11:40:18Z2018-03-08T11:40:18ZPerish not publish? New study quantifies the lack of female authors in scientific journals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209364/original/file-20180307-146694-c6r2ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=123%2C119%2C2110%2C1541&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's not good if women's research isn't in the library stacks.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/9o8YdYGTT64">Redd Angelo on Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Publish or perish” is tattooed on the mind of every academic. Like it or loathe it, publishing in high-profile journals is the fast track to positions in prestigious universities with illustrious colleagues and lavish resources, celebrated awards and plentiful grant funding. Yet somehow, in the search to understand why <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/11624/to-recruit-and-advance-women-students-and-faculty-in-science">women’s scientific careers often fail to thrive</a>, the role of high-impact journals has received little scrutiny. </p>
<p>One reason is that these journals don’t even collect data about the gender or ethnic background of their authors. To examine the representation of women within these journals, with our colleagues Jason Webster and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zoE5t6YAAAAJ&hl=en">Yuichi Shoda</a>, we delved into MEDLINE, the online repository that contains records of almost every published peer-reviewed neuroscience article. We used the <a href="https://genderize.io">Genderize.io</a> database to predict the gender of first and last authors on over 166,000 articles published between 2005 and 2017 in high-profile journals that include neuroscience, our own scientific discipline. The results were dispiriting.</p>
<h2>Female scientists underrepresented</h2>
<p>We began by looking at first authors – the place in the author list that traditionally is held by the junior researcher who does the hands-on research. We expected over <a href="https://www.sfn.org/careers-and-training/faculty-and-curriculum-tools/training-program-surveys">40 percent to be women</a>, similar to the percentage of women <a href="https://www.sfn.org/careers-and-training/faculty-and-curriculum-tools/training-program-surveys">postdocs in neuroscience</a> in the U.S. <a href="https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/worldwide/japan/gender-equality-human-resources-research-and-marie-sklodowska-curie-actions">and Europe</a>. Instead, fewer than 25 percent first authors in the journals Nature and Science were women.</p>
<p>Our findings were similar for last authors, the place typically held by the laboratory leader. We expected the numbers to match large National Institutes of Health grants, which are a similarly rigorous measure of significance, scientific sophistication and productivity; <a href="https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2014/08/08/women-in-biomedical-research/">30 percent are awarded to women</a> – comparable to the proportion of <a href="http://www.sfn.org/nqmfp">women tenure-track faculty in neuroscience</a>. The proportion of women last authors was half what we expected – just over 15 percent of last authors in Science and Nature were women. </p>
<p><iframe id="E6h69" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/E6h69/8/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1101/275362">Our study, published online</a> and highlighted in a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02833-1">letter printed in the journal Nature</a>, focused on neuroscience. We made <a href="https://goo.gl/x4s1iE">our code accessible</a>, and we’re thrilled that students in other fields are already beginning to examine the gender breakdown of bylines in their own disciplines. </p>
<p>One thing our data mining study doesn’t reveal is why women are so seriously underrepresented. But a large literature suggests that gender bias almost certainly plays a role. </p>
<h2>Bias in the publishing pipeline</h2>
<p>One place bias occurs is when scientists themselves undervalue the scientific contributions of women. One analysis found that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000001261">women are more likely to be the person performing experiments</a>. Despite this, they are more likely to be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0066212">in the less prestigious “middle” author position</a>. Anecdotally, many laboratory leaders have observed that male students tend to be more proactive about negotiating their position in the author list than women.</p>
<p>Bias can also influence the reviewing process. Researchers at the Ohio State University found that, when reviewers are randomly assigned to evaluate scientific work ostensibly submitted by a female or a male author, they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1075547012472684">rated the work written by male authors as having higher rigor</a>. An analysis of peer-review scores for postdoctoral fellowship applications in Sweden revealed a system that was “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/387341a0">riddled with prejudice</a>” – women were given lower competence ratings than men who had less than half their publication impact. Bias may be particularly strong when expectations are high – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0150194">qualities like “brilliance” are far more likely to be attributed to men</a>. This may be why we found the proportion of women authors was negatively correlated with journal “impact factor.”</p>
<p>Finally, bias occurs within the editorial process.
Nature, in a series of editorials spanning more than a decade, has observed that its editors are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/4381078c">less likely to ask</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/491495a">women to write</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/541435b">commissioned pieces</a>.</p>
<p>Do women fail to “lean in”? Female authors may be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-017-0052-6">less likely to submit</a> to high-profile journals. Success rates for elite journals are low – for instance, in Nature, less than <a href="https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/editorial-criteria-and-processes">10 percent of submissions make it into print</a>. In many fields, the publication delay associated with a failed submission means there’s a high risk of being scooped by another research team. If a female scientist estimates her chance of success more conservatively than a man, for whatever reason, she will be more likely to play it safe.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209392/original/file-20180307-146697-llpfdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209392/original/file-20180307-146697-llpfdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209392/original/file-20180307-146697-llpfdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209392/original/file-20180307-146697-llpfdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209392/original/file-20180307-146697-llpfdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209392/original/file-20180307-146697-llpfdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209392/original/file-20180307-146697-llpfdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209392/original/file-20180307-146697-llpfdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Author lists in journals should reflect who is doing science today and not the ‘old, white men’ of yore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/zeH-ljawHtg">Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Holding journals accountable</h2>
<p>Scientific publishing is staggeringly profitable: In 2017, Elsevier reported <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/elseviers-profits-swell-more-ps900-million">profits of over US$1.2 billion</a>. These companies rely heavily on the scientific community, both as authors of the journal content they are selling and as reviewers. Given the profit they make and the outsized influence they wield over scientific careers, it seems obvious that journals have a moral and perhaps even a legal responsibility to make sure the process is equable.</p>
<p>We believe journals need to take full responsibility for ensuring social equity across the publishing pipeline: encouraging women to submit, ensuring that women receive fair reviews, and enforcing equity in the editorial process.</p>
<p>There are some obvious first steps. The scientific community should demand that journals collect data about gender and ethnicity for article submissions and acceptances, and these data should be publicly available. That way researchers can choose to avoid (or even boycott) journals with a poor track record. Researchers should insist that reviewers be given more specific review criteria – such as requirements to explain their ratings of significance and impact, as well as their assessment of scientific quality, as is done at the <a href="https://grants.nih.gov/grants/peer/critiques/rpg.htm">NIH</a> and the <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappg17_1/pappg_3.jsp#IIIA">National Science Foundation</a>. Finally, it is past time for journals to adopt mandatory double-blind reviewing.</p>
<p>While the representation of women authors may not have changed over the last decade or so, the attitude of the scientific community has transformed. When I (Ione Fine) was an undergraduate at Oxford, I was told casually by a professor that “women don’t run with the ball intellectually” – even though I was interviewing him for a feminist magazine! (For 20 years, I have wondered whether this reflected extraordinary arrogance combined with a singular lack of tact or sheer idiocy.) But the only thing that made the comment surprising was the context – his attitude was commonplace.</p>
<p>These days there is an overwhelming consensus in our scientific community that scientific talent is not gendered. <a href="https://www.ecu.ac.uk/equality-charters/athena-swan/athena-swan-members/">Universities</a>, <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10593/nsf10593.htm">funding agencies</a>, <a href="http://www.sfn.org/nqmfp">conference organizers</a> and individual laboratory leaders around the world are all working to resolve this problem. It is time for the journals to “lean in.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92999/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Women are underrepresented in academic science. New research finds the problem is even worse in terms of who authors high-profile journal articles – bad news for women’s career advancement.Ione Fine, Professor of Psychology, University of WashingtonAlicia Shen, Ph.D Candidate in Psychology, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/679372016-11-16T23:11:58Z2016-11-16T23:11:58ZIndonesia’s knowledge sector is catching up, but a large gap persists<p>Academic publications are important reflections of the strength of the research community in a country. A strong research community fuels innovation in the economy. It’s also the bedrock for generating high-quality evidence to inform policy decisions.</p>
<p>Indonesia, the largest economy in Southeast Asia and the fourth-most-populous country in the world, wields substantial economic and political influence in the Asia-Pacific region. It has the potential to make important contributions through academic research and the dissemination of knowledge emerging from Indonesian universities. </p>
<p>In the last four years Indonesia has rapidly increased its academic publications output. Indonesia’s publication output increased tenfold with an average annual growth rate of 15%, growing from 538 in 1996 to 5,499 in 2014. </p>
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<p>This may ultimately help Indonesia produce high-value goods for export, such as chemicals, electronics and bio-medical manufacturing. It would also quicken its transition to a middle-income country.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/541338/ind-16-9-ref-stern-review.pdf">Lord Nicholas Stern noted</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Whilst creativity, ideas and questioning are of value in their own right, economies and societies which invest more in research generally show faster rates of growth in output and human development. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Still behind</h2>
<p>However, Indonesia still has a lot of catching up to do to be on par with other countries in the region and other middle-income countries in publishing academic articles. </p>
<p>Between 1996 and 2008 Indonesia published just over <a href="http://www.scimagojr.com/">9,000 scientific documents</a>. That figure places Indonesia more than 13 years behind other lower-middle-income countries like Bangladesh or Kenya. </p>
<p>Indonesia trails even further behind neighbouring upper-middle-income countries such as Thailand and Malaysia or high-income countries such as Singapore. </p>
<p>Singapore, South Africa and Mexico still each produce three times as many academic publications as Indonesia. </p>
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<p>The <a href="https://dfat.gov.au/about-us/publications/Documents/indo-ks-design.pdf">low production of academic papers</a> by Indonesian research institutions is one of the symptoms of a weak knowledge sector. </p>
<p>In 2014 Indonesia accounted for only 0.65% of academic publications in the ASEAN region. It produced just over 0.2% of global publications. Compared to the size of the economy and population of Indonesia there’s a substantial gap between actual and potential research output. </p>
<p>Indonesia produces the lowest number of academic publications per US$1 billion of GDP (2.2 publications per US$1 billion of GDP), compared to neighbouring ASEAN countries and partner countries of the G20. The Philippines produces 2.7 and Vietnam 7.2 academic publications per US$1 billion of GDP. </p>
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<p>Indonesia has also failed to maximise the <a href="http://www.scidev.net/global/policy-brief/international-scientific-collaboration-a-quick-gui.html">potential for international collaborations</a> in recent years. International collaborations help scientists to access knowledge and expertise, and apply them to local problems. They also enhance domestic scientific capabilities through the exchange of knowledge and experience.</p>
<p>Until 2011 67% of publications involved co-authorship, but by 2014 this had fallen to 44%. Previously, Indonesian authors were more collaborative than authors from countries with much higher publication output. </p>
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<h2>Indonesia’s potential</h2>
<p>If Indonesia continues to produce academic publications at the current rate it may eventually overtake other ASEAN countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia. Indonesia may also overtake key G20 partners such as South Africa and Mexico, which have had lower growth rates.</p>
<p>Indonesia’s academic articles are also informing other research. Other researchers are citing more and more academic articles by Indonesian academics. </p>
<p>Between 1996 and 2011 Indonesia’s average annual increase in cited publications was 16%. This is lower than China and Singapore. But higher than the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and other countries.</p>
<p>This does, however, reflect a lower absolute increase in cited publications compared to other middle-income G20 economies given the smaller total publication output of Indonesia. There is still progress to be made. </p>
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<p>Indonesia’s researchers have shown progress in producing knowledge. But it must catch up to close the gap in academic publications with other countries. </p>
<p>To do so, Indonesia has to continue building a culture of research in its universities. This means funding basic research and innovation. </p>
<p>Government organisations should commission research directly from Indonesian universities and research centres to support public policy decisions. The government should also create incentives to promote private and philanthropic investment in research. </p>
<p>Indonesia has made an important start on funding research through the creation this year of the <a href="http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/10/12/has-indonesia-s-science-moment-arrived.html">Indonesian Science Fund</a>. This is the first competitive, peer-reviewed research fund in the nation. </p>
<p>Changes in regulations and rules are needed to guide research commissioning to support public policy. There should also be a change in attitude and expectations among policymakers.</p>
<p>Here too there are signs of progress. The government is considering changing procurement regulations to incentivise policy makers to commission research from Indonesian universities and research institutes.</p>
<p>All of this points to a cultural shift that values research. Creating a culture of research in universities cannot be done by researchers alone. It needs leadership from the government and university rectors, and clear signals that research is valued and used. </p>
<p>Academic publication is the visible indicator of a healthy research environment. As the culture of research is built and the research environment grows, publications will grow. Then we will see Indonesia catch up with – and perhaps surpass – other countries in the region and produce the knowledge and research evidence required by a rapidly growing economy to <a href="https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Accelerating-Innovation?WT.mc_id=20161018124154_AcceleratingInnovation_BG-TW&WT.tsrc=BGTW&linkId=30063675">innovate</a>. </p>
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<p><em>This piece was co-authored by Fred Carden, Principal in Using Evidence Inc and Senior Research Advisor to the <a href="http://www.ksi-indonesia.org/index.php/about-2/">Knowledge Sector Initiative</a>, a joint program between the Indonesian and Australian governments supporting the use of better research, analysis and evidence in public policy.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67937/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Tilley is a researcher in the Research and Policy in Development programme of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). This blog is based on research undertaken with the Knowledge Sector Initiative in Indonesia. The views expressed in this blog do not reflect the views of the Government of Australia, the Government of Indonesia, ODI, or the Knowledge Sector Initiative. None of the entities accept any liability arising as a result of this publication.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arnaldo Pellini is a researcher in the Research and Policy in Development programme of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the Programme Lead for Learning at the Knowledge Sector Initiative. This blog is based on research undertaken with the Knowledge Sector Initiative in Indonesia. The views expressed in this blog do not reflect the views of the Government of Australia, the Government of Indonesia, ODI, or the Knowledge Sector Initiative. None of the entities accept any liability arising as a result of this publication.
</span></em></p>Indonesia has the potential to make important contributions through academic research and the dissemination of knowledge emerging from Indonesian universities.Helen Tilley, Research Fellow, Overseas Development InstituteArnaldo Pellini, Research Fellow, Overseas Development InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.