Hello fellow journalologists,
Last week I asked if anyone had more information about Japan’s open access plans. A reader kindly pointed me in the direction of the Official letter from Cabinet office of Japan (the web page can be found here) and also provided an AI assisted translation:
Implementation of Immediate Open Access for Academic Papers Funded by Public Funds
- From the 2025 fiscal year, recipients (including corporations) of competitive research funds that are newly solicited and subject to immediate open access under public funds will be required to immediately upload their academic papers and supporting data to institutional repositories or other information platforms upon publication in academic journals.
- The competitive research fund systems subject to immediate open access will be those primarily aimed at producing academic papers, as determined by relevant ministries and agencies.
- The scope of immediate open access includes peer-reviewed academic papers (research papers reviewed and published in electronic journals, including the author’s final draft) and supporting data (research data required and publicly disclosed from the perspective of ensuring transparency and reproducibility, as stipulated in the writing guidelines and publication regulations of the electronic journals).
So, there will be no embargo period, but there’s no mention of mandating a CC BY license.
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News
Staff at Nature and dozens of other leading science journals will walk out on 20 June, after National Union of Journalists (NUJ) members overwhelmingly voted in favour of industrial action over a pay dispute.
In their ballot, which saw a 90% turnout, 93% of staff supported strike action. The planned action will include a number of strike days as well as working to rule, scheduled throughout June and July.
NUJ press release
JB: That’s about as conclusive as a vote gets, which gives a good indication of the strength of feeling among the UK-based NUJ members. Research Professional News ran a story (paywall) that included more information about the proposed strike:
An email from Nature’s National Union of Journalists (NUJ) committee—seen by Research Professional News—details 24-hour strikes planned for 20 and 24 June, as well as 4, 9, 22 and 24 July. A further 48-hour strike is planned on 30-31 July.
The NUJ press release finishes with:
Nature staff balloted to strike in the early 1990s, when the journal was owned by Macmillan, but action was averted when the company returned to the negotiating table. Should these strikes go ahead, it will not only be the first time that Nature staff have downed tools, but it is potentially the first time that an issue of the weekly journal will be missed in its 155-year history.
The Journalology newsletter has covered various stories over the past 2 years centred around the increasing tension between editors and journal owners; this is another example to add to the list.
Four months ago I wrote a post on LinkedIn that struck a chord. The opening line was:
Is editorial expertise truly valued by scholarly publishers? I’m increasingly of the opinion that the answer is often “no”.
I wrote the first draft on the way home from the APE conference, off the back of conversations that I had with colleagues working at a number of different publishers. Many people feel that editors are undervalued by our industry.
For years researchers had tried to improve Alzheimer’s outcomes by stripping amyloid proteins from the brain, but the experimental drugs all failed. Aβ*56 seemed to offer a more specific and promising therapeutic target, and many embraced the finding. Funding for related work rose sharply.
But the Science investigation revealed evidence that the Nature paper and numerous others co-authored by Lesné, some listing Ashe as senior author, appeared to use manipulated data. After the story was published, leading scientists who had cited the paper to support their own experiments questioned whether Aβ*56 could be reliably detected and purified as described by Lesné and Ashe—or even existed. Some said the problems in that paper and others supported fresh doubts about the dominant hypothesis that amyloid drives Alzheimer’s. Others maintained that the hypothesis remains viable.
Science (Charles Piller)
JB: Wow. As the Science story notes:
The study has been cited nearly 2500 times, and would be the most cited paper ever to be retracted, according to Retraction Watch data.
One aspect of publishing that China seems less interested in pursuing is open access. The country produces hundreds of thousands of open-access articles each year, and the total is growing fast, but as a proportion of all research output, it remains lower than the rest of the world: just under half of China’s 2022 articles were open access, according to data from Dimensions, compared with 65% for non-China papers. There are only around 178 English-language open-access journals published in China, just 0.9% of the total registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals — although this does not include all of the journals that are co-published by Chinese and international organizations.
Although the Chinese government and many leading institutions officially support open access, they remain suspicious of it, says Goncharoff, especially the trend towards gold open access. “China is quite resistant to gold open access. They see it as a Western business model that is being foisted on them,” he says. The gold model could be costly for China. Goncharoff estimates that if most publishing shifts to gold open access, China might have to spend three to four times more on APCs than it does now, even with some declines in subscription costs.
Nature Index (Brian Owens)
JB: This news feature provides an excellent overview of what’s happening in China. If you read one article this week, read this one.
Starting on 1st November 2024, the Journal Comparison Service (JCS) will exclusively accept data supplied using the Information Power (IP) framework and will no longer support the Fair Open Access (FOAA) framework.
The decision to rely only on a single framework follows a recommendation from the JCS Advisory Panel, which emphasized the need for end users to easily compare data about services provided and prices charged across all journals.
JCS has been using the two frameworks since its launch, as they both responded to the cOAlition S requirement for price transparency to all funded articles. Data usage from publishers participating to the JCS reveals that 59% of them use the IP framework and 41% opt for the FOAA framework, while a significant 86% of journal titles provide data utilizing the IP framework.
Plan S (announcement)
JB: It always seemed odd that they used two frameworks. Transparency is good in theory, but interpreting these data in a meaningful way is far from straightforward.
To promote greater equity, inclusion, and transparency, AGU Publications has updated its
authorship policy across its journals portfolio to include a policy on global research collaborations. Researchers submitting to AGU journals will now be encouraged — and AGU journal editors may request — to include their local collaborators as co-authors when they meet the AGU Publications authorship criteria or otherwise recognize them in the Acknowledgement section. When appropriate, the policy also encourages authors to include an “Inclusion in Global Research” statement addressing the ethical and scientific considerations applicable to the study. Authors are also encouraged to consider the recommendations from “
The TRUST CODE — A Global Code of Conduct for Equitable Research Partnerships” when conducting and reporting their research.
Eos (announcement)
We are delighted to announce PREreview has received a three-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support research communities in adopting and advocating for open and equitable peer-review practices.
Over the next three years, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we will develop and implement outreach strategies to engage diverse audiences more effectively. By empowering more Champions to create, adapt, and share resources for community-led, socially-conscious review, we will foster greater community growth within local groups. Additionally, we will conduct targeted research to optimize our offerings for specific groups, including instructors, students, and patients.
PREreview (press release)
CCC, a leader in advancing copyright, accelerating knowledge, and powering innovation, announced its collaboration with key industry stakeholders to launch the Leiden Institute for FAIR and Equitable Science (LIFES). In recognition of the challenges that exist with data reuse within the global research community, LIFES is a joint effort by an international public-private partnership of eleven academic and private organizations to build a wide and diverse network of public and private members that want to incorporate FAIR data principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and equitable data reuse within their organizations.
Copyright Clearance Center (press release)
JB: Another FAIR initiative, announced in April, also came on my radar this week: TIER2 Pilot 8: Towards a common understanding of reproducibility and FAIRness. This excerpt may interest journal editors:
The goal of Pilot 8 is to co-create and evaluate an Editorial Reference Handbook designed to foster a shared understanding of what is required to assist reproducibility and FAIRness. While some journals have internal guidance on promoting and enabling reproducible and FAIR data, there is little consensus among publishers. The planned co-creation and test of an Editiorial Reference Handbook will help operationalise data checks to assist reproducibility and provide editors with a harmonised set of data checks.
ChronosHub is excited to announce the launch of a new author interface, designed to significantly enhance the author experience throughout the entire publishing process. Building on ChronosHub’s platform for publishers, this innovative interface serves as a unified solution, seamlessly integrating all of a publisher’s author-facing systems to provide a consistent and streamlined experience.
At the heart of the launch is the new ChronosHub author dashboard. This centralized hub provides authors with a single place for accessing all publisher interactions, integrating data from existing ChronosHub publisher modules as well as other selected systems.
ChronosHub (announcement)
JB: Meanwhile, Morressier is getting ready to launch their new publishing platform with a webinar scheduled for June 25: Introducing Journal Manager: 33% More Efficient, 3x Faster Submissions, 25% More Acceptances. I’m looking forward to hearing the evidence for these bold claims, especially the last one. As I understand it, the platform is related to this announcement from March last year: IOP Publishing and Morressier partner to develop journal submission system.
Kriyadocs is excited to announce a new partnership with Global Campus, a leading provider of AI-powered solutions for academia and research. This collaboration aims to enhance peer review workflows by integrating Global Campus’s advanced tools for finding reviewers and academic experts into Kriyadocs’ comprehensive peer review platform.
Global Campus offers sophisticated tools leveraging semantic search and content-based matching, enabling users to discover relevant academic experts and literature efficiently. By integrating these tools into Kriyadocs, this partnership will enhance the peer review process, ensuring that manuscripts are matched with the most suitable reviewers and experts.
Global Campus and Kriyadocs (press release)
We are pleased to announce that our Diamond Open Access Journals at Cambridge platform has launched in May and can be accessed at
https://diamond-oa.lib.cam.ac.uk/home. This service will be available initially as part of a one-year pilot project undertaken by the Open Research Systems (ORS) and Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) teams within Cambridge University Library (CUL).
Unlocking Research (announcement)
She points out that it may ultimately fall to taxpayers to pay for diamond open access, if public research institutions and research funding organisations choose to support non-profit scholarly communication instead of signing deals with big publishers.
Both Johnson and the European University Association agree that diamond will not replace the commercial publishing system, at least not in the short term, and that there is a need to boost the non-profit model’s prestige for it to be adopted more widely. For now, it is likely to continue as a complementary system, in need of more funding.
Diamond is based on the idea that the academic community, rather than commercial players, should be at the heart of scholarly communications. Making that a reality will take more than just punchy political statements—a radical change in culture needs everyone to put their money where their mouth is.
Research Professional News (Frances Jones)
JB: This news feature provides a good overview of some of the Diamond OA initiatives.
The Diamond OA Standard (DOAS) is a new tool brought to you by the DIAMAS project to promote quality in Diamond open access (OA) publishing. Serving as both a technical guide and a practical benchmarking resource, DOAS combines comprehensive guidelines with a self-assessment tool to elevate standards in scholarly publishing.
DIAMAS (announcement)
Wiley, one of the world’s largest publishers and a global leader in research and learning, today announced a new partnership with OA Switchboard, a community-driven initiative that facilitates information sharing about open access publications between funders, institutions and publishers.
OA Switchboard enables funders, institutions, and publishers to send, receive and respond to a pre-defined set of standardized messages between them, or via their dedicated partner’s system. Wiley will support OA Switchboard’s “reporting made easy” offering by supplying publicly-available metadata for open access articles published in Wiley’s journals.
Wiley (press release)
JB: Wiley is the first large publisher to join OA Switchboard, according to the press release.
Editage, the flagship brand of Cactus Communications (CACTUS), a leading science communication and technology company, announces the integration of its popular expert services and cutting-edge AI products into a unified platform. This strategic initiative aims to offer researchers a comprehensive platform by consolidating all products and services designed for academia under one roof. This new platform will enhance the efficiency and productivity in scholarly communication and publication by offering Editage’s 900,000+ users seamless, single-point access to the entire array of researcher solutions.
Cactus Communications (press release)
Kudos, the platform for showcasing research, has announced a partnership with BJUI to summarise and further disseminate key articles, leveraging AI to maximise awareness and impact.
Kudos now offers AI-generation of plain language summaries for research publications. This capability accelerates the pace and scale at which research publications can be explained and disseminated. Kudos AI Summaries are carefully engineered to conform to Kudos’ proven structure, with short titles, alongside explanations of what the research is about, and why it is important – all elements that are associated with increased readership and citations.
Kudos (press release)
JB: The press release includes this statement, which makes me nervous: “Authors can check and edit the summaries if they wish, but they don’t need to.” A BJUI representative says that they are happy with the quality control processes in place.
Research Horizon Navigator draws on trusted data from the Web of Science Core Collection™ and uses a novel methodology developed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)™ to identify new topics emerging in articles, reviews and conference proceedings published in the past five years, as well as a new indicator which measures the interdisciplinarity of each emerging topic. Within Research Horizon Navigator, each topic is labeled with a research theme assigned by generative AI. Each topic also offers an interactive visualization showing how papers are connected and includes an overview where users can explore which authors and institutions have contributed.
Clarivate (press release)
JB: This is being presented as a tool for research institutions, but it could also be useful for publishers who are looking for new areas to move into.
Kriyadocs is delighted to announce a strategic partnership with Clear Skies, a pioneer in detecting fraudulent research produced by papermills, i.e., businesses that produce fake, poor-quality journal articles resembling genuine research.
Clear Skies’ Papermill Alarm utilizes big data, Large Language Models, AI, and network analysis to detect signs of fraudulent research. This advanced detection capability will be available in the Kriyadocs submission and peer review system, enabling the Kriyadocs community to seamlessly identify fraudulent content produced by papermills. By incorporating Clear Skies' unique data-driven solutions, Kriyadocs aims to further support its global clientele of publishers in ensuring the robustness and credibility of published research.
Kriyadocs and Clear Skies (press release)
As we reported earlier this week, the editorial office at Nutrients told Solange Saxby, a postdoctoral research fellow at Dartmouth Health in Lebanon, NH, in May that it didn’t consider apparent overlap between a 2023 paper and her 2020 thesis plagiarism “because thesis materials are not classified as prior publications.”
Yesterday, MDPI did a 180, blaming a “mismatch in their internal communications” for the responses Saxby received.
“As a publisher, we do not support the statement that ‘the behavior did not amount to plagiarism because the prior work was a thesis,’” Rui Duarte, the public relations manager for the company, said. “While we strive to maintain high standards of service and clear communication, occasional errors can occur.”
Retraction Watch (Dawn Attride)
JB: When I read the original Retraction Watch story, I nearly choked on my tea. Of course this is plagiarism. How could it be otherwise? This isn’t a communication error. The editorial office got it completely wrong.
Other news stories
Elsevier journal issues 73 expressions of concern for manipulated peer review
Software that detects ‘tortured acronyms’ in research papers could help root out misconduct
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Opinion
In 2013, the editors of several BMJ journals established a policy that they would not publish research funded partly or wholly by the tobacco industry. The launch of our updated tobacco policy strengthens this stance. In addition to excluding research funded by the tobacco industry, our journals will also exclude work where authors have personal financial ties to the tobacco industry. Journals will exclude both research and non-research content with ties to tobacco companies. The policy applies to all BMJ journals, expanding from the smaller group of BMJ journals behind the 2013 policy (The BMJ, Heart, Tobacco Control, Thorax, and BMJ Open).
The BMJ (Helen Macdonald et al)
JB: The accompanying news feature provides useful background: Tobacco funded research: how even journals with bans find it hard to stem the tide of publications.
It’s an opinion column. If it’s not going to stir up some debate, spark some meaningful conversation, or even make somebody mad, it’s not much of an opinion. If you try to please everyone, we’ll figure it out. You don’t have to push it as much as I do, but we want you to have something to say that will provoke further discourse, including disagreement.
Science Forever (Holden Thorp)
We’ve looked at four open access movements and touched on several more. Every one of them has failed. And they have failed, mostly, because of opposition, obstruction and short-term opportunism on the part of publishers who have exchanged their original mission for shareholder value optimization.
But each wave has washed further up the beach.
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week (Mike Taylor)
JB: There’s an alternative explanation, but we should whisper it quietly because it won’t be popular. The open access movement has progressed slower than many people would have liked because most academics don’t really care about open access.
Top down mandates from funders have created much of the progress, rather than because of widespread enthusiasm from the grass roots. All the author surveys that I’ve seen over the years put things like publication speed, journal prestige and impact factor ahead of whether a journal is open access or not.
Demand needs to come before supply.
You can read Jessica Polka's speech from the debate here: SSP debate, part 2: Jessica Polka opposing “the open access movement has failed”
Other opinion articles
MDPI Insights: The CEO's Letter #12 - First Term as CEO, Tu Youyou Award, Books Report
Does AI get an A+? Assessing a ChatGPT editorial
Practical Advice for Implementing Double Anonymous Peer Review: Ask the Editorial Experts
Championing Preprints: A Call for Recognition in African Research Settings
Jam Session for Manuscript Editors
An Industry-Wide Effort to Ensure Research Integrity
Towards Conversational Discovery: New Discovery Applications for Scholarly Information in the Era of Generative Artificial Intelligence
Improving the Performance of Research Journals: Lessons Learned from the Visual Abstract
Origin and evolution of the “publish or perish” phenomenon
DOAJ’s Role in Supporting Trust in Scholarly Journals: Current Challenges and Future Solutions
Webinars
If you want to learn about some of the core challenges facing the scholarly publishing community, this list of webinars could be of interest:
I’ll try to keep the Google Doc updated. Please help me by sending details of webinars that you’re hosting (just hit reply to this message).
And finally...
A Journalology reader, Jennifer Regala, recently changed jobs and wrote The Story of the JU Fanny Pack Trilogy: The Last Rodeo for Science Editor. The special relationship between the USA and the UK only goes so far; we have very different understandings of the meaning of the word “fanny” (also, for the record, “pants” get worn under trousers).
Putting aside the challenges of language for one moment, Jennifer provides many examples of conference swag in her article. I’m generally a pretty laid back kind of a fella, but I totally lost my rag when Nature Metabolism themed beachballs and frisbees arrived in the office. Swag should be at least vaguely related to the journal that its promoting, in my humble opinion.
My biggest conference-swag-related meltdown happened in 2002. We had invited some of the world’s leading neurologists to a launch event for our new Lancet journal. The marketing team had ordered some brain-shaped chocolates as a give away, which was a lovely idea. Unfortunately the cortex-shaped delicacies were attached to green ribbons that had “The Lancelot Neurology” emblazoned on them.
Until next time,
James