Tag Archives: Top News

More News from the OA Publishing Fund

OA Publishing Fund, ,

Joshua Klugman, Associate Professor of Psychology and Sociology, is one of the latest recipients of the Libraries’ pilot Open Access Publishing Fund, which provides financial support to Temple faculty who publish their research in open access journals. Klugman’s article, “Essential or Expendable Supports? Assessing the Relationship between School Climate and Student Outcomes” was just published by the open access journal Sociological Science. Sociological Science was launched in 2014 by sociologists from Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and other leading universities. The journal aims to get cutting-edge sociological research out in the world as quickly as possible.

Klugman’s article contradicts the findings of the influential book, Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago (2010), which argues that school climate has a significant impact on students’ academic outcomes. Klugman finds that a better school climate does not make much of a difference when it comes to outcomes like test scores and graduation rates. He concludes, however, that it could be that school climate matters, but that it is just very difficult to measure. As a result, Klugman suggests that schools might think twice before spending significant time and resources on climate surveys.

We asked Professor Klugman why he was interested in making his work openly available. He told us: “My article has important things to say to school administrators and policymakers (namely, they should not waste their time and money on school climate surveys). Sociological Science is a reputable journal, run by top sociologists, and the fact it is open access means these decision-makers can access my article and come to their own conclusions.”

To learn more about Professor Klugman’s research, read his recent interview with Temple’s College of Liberal Arts. To learn more about the Libraries’ OA Publishing Fund, click here.

Owning Your Impact

Publishing, ,

ownyourimpact

“Measure a thousand times, cut once” by Sonny Abesamis is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Scholars are routinely called upon to demonstrate the impact of their research, whether for tenure and promotion, or for grant and fellowship applications. Traditionally, citation counts and journal impact factors were used to determine research impact. Today, there is widespread acknowledgement that both of these metrics are seriously flawed. One recent study, for example, showed that men cite their own papers 56% more than women (which means some men may have inflated citation counts). Another study pointed out that publishing in a journal with a high impact factor does not necessarily mean that your own work will be highly cited. Still, it’s clear that traditional metrics are not going away. Just last December, the publisher Elsevier launched their own journal impact calculator, CiteScore.

Metrics can cause significant anxiety among scholars. While such anxiety is understandable (no one wants to be reduced to a number), the more proactive a scholar is when it comes to documenting their impact, the better off they will be. Scholars should learn to take control of their metrics, and use them to craft their own story about their research. There are four main ways to do this:

First, build and maintain your online presence. Make sure your faculty profile on your department page is up to date. Register for an ORCID iD and use it. Create profiles on various academic social networks, and on Google Scholar. Consider having your own website. Join Twitter and connect with colleagues around the world.

Second, make as much of your work openly available as you can. People can’t cite or talk about your work if they can’t read it. Publish your research in open access journals, or post a preprint or postprint to a disciplinary repository. Can’t do either of these things? Figure out alternative ways of sharing your scholarship. Blog or tweet about research in progress. Use Figshare or Slideshare to call attention to unpublished scholarly output. Or, ask your publisher if you can share a small part of your monograph (such as the table of contents) on an academic social networking site (such as Academia.edu or ResearchGate).

Third, keep track of your citations. Regularly check your citations on Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar. But be skeptical of the results, particularly if you are a humanities scholar. Edited collections, for example, are often not indexed. New journals may also not be indexed. Ultimately, your best bet is to do your own research on who is citing you by searching the appropriate databases for your field (such as JSTOR, Proquest, or Google Books). Once you have a list of all your citations, dig a little deeper. Quantity matters, but so too does quality. If you can show that you are being cited by leaders in your field, or by scholars from outside your discipline, you can make a stronger case for your impact.

Fourth, pay attention to altmetrics. Altmetrics can provide you with more details about your research impact than citation counts alone. Most sharing platforms make it easy for you to see how many people are viewing or downloading your scholarship (disciplinary repositories usually offer scholars similar analytics). Sign up for ImpactStory to help keep track of what people are saying about your work on social media. Try searching the Open Syllabus Explorer to see the frequency with which your book or article is taught and what related work is taught alongside it. Here again, however, it’s important to remember that existing tools can only tell you so much. You must do additional research to really find out all the ways in which your work is being used.

For more information on enhancing your impact, check out the Library’s guide to the topic.

First Recipients of Pilot OA Publishing Fund Chosen

OA Publishing Fund, ,

mgb2

The Libraries support Open Access publishing in a number of different ways. Recently, we launched a pilot Open Access Publishing Fund, which provides money to help Temple researchers cover the costs associated with publishing in an Open Access journal. We are happy to announce that our first recipients of the fund come from Laura H. Carnell Professor of Physics Xiaoxing Xi’s research group. You can read their article, “MgB2 ultrathin films fabricated by hybrid physical chemical vapor deposition and ion milling,” published in the most recent issue of APL Materials, here.

The paper’s lead author, Narendra Acharya, took the time to tell us a little bit about the group’s work: “Magnesium diboride (MgB2) is a superconducting material that allows electricity to be passed through it without any loss unlike in normal wires we use in households. Due to the unique property of this material, it can be used in various sensitive electronic devices. Our particular goal was to grow and fabricate a very thin MgB2 film. This thin film is then used to make hot electron bolometers and superconducting nanowires. Hot electron bolometers are used in astronomy to detect invisible radiation called THz frequency (this frequency is similar to a radio signal but more difficult to detect) coming out of our galaxy or interstellar bodies. By detecting these THz frequencies scientists can get information about any elements or molecules such as oxygen, carbon dioxide, or water present in any planets or solar system in our galaxy or beyond. If present, these elements may signify the possibility of life. Since THz frequency is emitted by many materials, these devices can also be used to detect various materials in a security check system. Similarly, superconducting nanowires can be used to speed up satellite communication. In our paper we present the growth and preparation of ultrathin MgB2 film for use in such devices. At Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, scientists have already demonstrated an improved performance of these devices by using our films.”

The authors told us that they wanted to submit their work to APL Materials because it is a highly regarded new journal in the field. In addition, they liked the idea of making their research freely available to people across the globe, especially because MgB2 ultrathin films have many potential uses.

Congratulations to all the authors on this innovative research! Be sure to check back with our blog in the future to learn about other recipients of the fund.

New Pilot Open Access Publishing Fund

OA Publishing Fund, ,

open

“Teaching Open Source Practices, Version 4.0” by opensource.com is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

NOTE: These are the guidelines for the 2016-2017 OA Publishing Fund. To see the new guidelines for 2017-2018, go here.

We are excited to announce that the Libraries have established a pilot Open Access Publishing Fund for 2016-2017. The fund is open to all Temple tenured or tenure-track faculty members. Postdoctoral fellows and graduate students may also apply, as long as there is at least one tenured or tenure-track faculty member listed as a co-author on the article.

The Libraries’ goal in starting an Open Access Publishing Fund is to promote new forms of scholarly communication. There are a rising number of high-quality open access publishers whose business model depends on the fees they collect from authors (often referred to as article processing charges, or APCs). Authors are increasingly interested in making their work available open access, as it helps them reach new and wider audiences. However, the costs involved can be a deterrent. We hope this Fund will help remove this financial barrier, encouraging authors to experiment with new and innovative publishing models. Over fifty universities across the country currently maintain some kind of Open Access Publishing Fund.

Authors with a journal article that has been accepted or is under consideration by an open access publisher are encouraged to apply. Authors simply fill out a brief application with their information, a copy of the article, and a copy of the journal acceptance letter (if available). Funds will be available on a first come, first served basis. The Libraries will aim to make a final decision regarding the application within two weeks’ time. If the request is approved, payment will be made directly to the publisher, upon receipt of an official invoice from the publisher. The Libraries cannot reimburse authors.

Some details to note:

Applicant Eligibility

  • Applicants must be a Temple University tenured or tenure-track faculty member OR a postdoctoral fellow/graduate student with a tenured or tenure-track faculty member listed as a co-author.
  • Applicants with external grant funding that could cover, either in whole or in part, the cost of any publication and processing fees are ineligible.
  • Applicants must agree to deposit a copy of their publication in our Digital Library.

Publication Eligibility

  • The publication must take the form of a peer-reviewed journal article.
  • Publications in “hybrid” open access journals will not be supported.
  • The journal must be listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
  • The publisher must be a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), or clearly follow the membership criteria of the organization.

Additional Limitations

  • Each author may request up to $1,500 total per fiscal year.
  • Funding will cover publication and processing fees only. Funds may not be used for reprints, color illustration fees, non-open access page charges, permissions fees, web hosting for self-archiving, or other expenses not directly related to open access fees.
  • For applicants who have not yet submitted for publication, requests will be conditionally approved awaiting official acceptance by the publisher. All conditional approvals will expire six months after notification. Applicants must provide a copy of the acceptance letter before the invoice is processed.
  • Fees are pro-rated for multi-authored articles. That is, if more than one author from Temple applies for funding support for the same article, the APC will be divided equally. Co-authors not affiliated with Temple are not supported.

Questions? Contact Mary Rose Muccie (maryrose.muccie@temple.edu) or Annie Johnson (annie.johnson@temple.edu).

Talking to Students About Textbook Affordability

Events, Textbook Affordability Project, ,

alt textbook table

Image courtesy of Kaitlyn Mashack.

August 29th marked the beginning of the fall semester at Temple. As students started classes again, we thought it would be the perfect time to talk to them about affordable textbooks. So, we set up a table in the hall of Paley Library, and, armed with some flyers and our brightly-colored display of OpenStax textbooks, got to work. We thought we’d be doing most of the talking, but it turned out our students had a lot to say on this topic. Here are a few of their stories:

One student was very upset when she realized that her psychology textbook was going to cost her $200. She came to the Library to see if we had a copy, and was disappointed when she found out we didn’t have it (the Library has some textbooks in the collection, but doesn’t actively collect them). She told us she could rent a copy of the textbook for around $50, but before she does that she wants to keep trying to find a free copy. What’s the problem with this scenario? Well, while this student looks for a free or low-cost copy, she’s not actually doing the reading in the class. Instead, she’s falling further and further behind.

We also spoke with a biochemistry major who has never bought a textbook. He said he refuses to pay for textbooks because they’re too expensive and he just can’t afford them. He generally relies on Interlibrary Loan to get his textbooks. When it comes to lab manuals, he just photocopies them. He admitted that although this method has worked for him, it’s extremely time consuming. Wouldn’t it be great if instead of trying to track down free copies of his books every semester, he could spend that time studying?

Another student was in the Library looking for a copy of her $250 calculus textbook. Once again, the Library didn’t have it, and she wasn’t sure what to do. She did not have the money to purchase such an expensive book. We pointed her to the Open Textbook Library and found a couple of different options. She said she was going to ask her instructor if she could use one of the open textbooks instead.

To end on a positive note, we were excited to hear from a number of students who are taking a general chemistry class this semester from Professor Michael J. Zdilla. Zdilla assigns his students the Introductory Chemistry textbook from OpenStax. This textbook is available online, and is completely free for students to read, download, and print out. All the students we spoke with were thrilled that they didn’t have to pay for a similar commercial textbook.

Want to learn more about how the Library is supporting the use of affordable textbooks on Temple’s campus? Check out our Alternate Textbook Project.

What to Know About “Predatory” Publishers

In the News, ,

predatorypublishers

“Little roar” by Becker1999 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

UPDATE: Since this post originally appeared, Beall’s List has been taken down.

Recently, the term “predatory” publisher has become a buzzword among many in academia. “Predatory” publishers run online, open access (OA) journals that will accept almost any paper submitted. They offer little in terms of copy editing or peer review. Journal websites may include false information about impact factors, editorial board members, and other affiliations. “Predatory” publishers often spam authors via e-mail to encourage them to submit their work.

These publishers profit from this scheme by charging authors various publication fees. Authors are willing to pay such fees because of the “publish or perish” culture of academia. They are usually unaware that they are dealing with a “predatory” publisher, or may not become aware until their article has been published.

The term “predatory” publisher was coined by controversial librarian Jeffrey Beall in 2010. Beall currently maintains a list of suspected “predatory” publishers on his website. Because not all “predatory” publishers on Beall’s list are alike (and in fact, some may not be predatory at all), many scholarly communications experts prefer to use the terms “questionable” or “low-quality.”

In addition to Beall’s List, a number of high-profile stings have tried to expose the questionable practices of these publishers and their journals by submitting nonsense or significantly flawed papers. One Harvard medical researcher, for example, submitted an article to 37 questionable journals entitled “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?: The Surgical and Neoplastic Role of Cacao Extract in Breakfast Cereals.” The actual text of the article was randomly generated. 17 journals accepted the paper, promising to publish it if he would pay the $500 fee. Of course, it’s important to note that this is not a problem limited to OA journals–traditional subscription journals have also been known to publish faked work. To see a few examples, check out the blog Retraction Watch, which monitors all of the retractions in scientific journals.

Whatever you want to call them, hundreds of “predatory” publishers do exist, and according to a 2015 study, the number is growing rapidly. Last Friday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) made it clear that they are paying attention to this phenomenon: they filed a complaint against well-known “predatory” publisher OMICS Group. OMICS Group publishes over 700 open-access journals in a wide variety of disciplines, from business and management to chemistry to political science. According to the FTC, OMICS Group is not upfront with scholars about the publication fees its journals charges. In addition, OMICS Group journals do not allow authors to withdraw their articles. The FTC also pointed out that a subsidiary of OMICS Group runs scam conferences where they advertise the appearance of academics who never agreed to participate.

So exactly how concerned should scholars be about this phenomenon? In general, “predatory” publishers are not a huge threat to most scholars, especially if you do your research before submitting your article to a journal or agreeing to serve on a journal editorial board. Asking your colleagues if they have heard of the journal before is a good first step. Be aware, however, that many OA journals are just starting out, so they may not have the same name recognition as top journals in the field that have been around for decades.

Second, check out the journal’s website. Do you recognize any of the scholars on the editorial board? If so, do they list their work for the journal on their own faculty profile page? Are any author fees clearly stated somewhere (if you are in the humanities, know that most OA humanities journals do not charge any publishing fees)? Remember: just because a journal charges a fee, does not make it predatory. Many reputable OA journals rely on article processing charges (APCs) to recoup their costs.

Finally, check out the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) to see if your publisher or journal is listed. In order to be included in the DOAJ, applications are reviewed by four different people. And in May of this year, the DOAJ announced it was taking additional steps to make sure that the directory is a trustworthy source of information.

Still not sure if the journal you are interested in publishing in passes muster? Contact the Libraries for help.

Project to Watch: SocArXiv

In the News, , ,

socarxiv

In a recent post, we argued that preprints are having a moment. Here’s further proof: this week, the Center for Open Science and the University of Maryland launched a new repository for social science research, called SocArXiv (the name comes in part from the well-known preprint repository arXiv). Currently, there is a temporary home for the repository here, with a more robust platform coming in the near future. In addition to preprints, SocArXiv also accepts conference papers, working papers, datasets and code. The project is being led by Philip N. Cohen, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland. The steering committee includes scholars, librarians, and open access advocates.

Interested in submitting? Just e-mail socarxiv-Preprint@osf.io from your primary e-mail address. Put the title of your work in the subject line, and the abstract in the body of your e-mail. Then attach the work as a PDF or Word file. Finally, hit send. Your scholarship should appear on the site shortly and you should be automatically registered for an Open Science Framework account. Use this account to go into the page for your work on the site and add any relevant tags. Just make sure that you have the rights to anything you post. If you’re not sure, check your publication agreement or search SHERPA/RoMEO, a database of publisher copyright and self-archiving policies. And remember: this method of submission is only temporary. Once the permanent SocArXiv platform is up and running we will update this post.

Some researchers may wonder why they should post their work to SocArXiv, when there are so many other options, including another open access repository, the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). SSRN was founded in 1994 by Wayne Marr, a professor of finance, and Michael Jensen, and professor of business administration. It includes scholarship from a range of disciplines, from accounting to economics to political science. The business model of SSRN has always been different than most other open access repositories. Unlike arXiV, which is based at Cornell University and funded by grants and library support, SSRN is a privately-held corporation. While all deposited papers are free for users to read, SSRN also offers paid content to users through its partnerships with other publishers (such as Wiley-Blackwell). In May of this year, a major change came to SSRN when the platform was bought by Elsevier, a large Dutch company that publishes some of the world’s top journals. Elsevier also owns the reference manager Mendeley. SSRN’s management claims that all the scholarship on the site will remain free. They also argue that Elsevier’s ownership will only make SSRN better, providing them with the resources they need to make much needed improvements in the design and functionality of the site. Many scholars, librarians, and other experts, however, are worried. They wonder what Elsevier will do with all the scholarly data it now owns, and how the company will try to monetize that data. Similar concerns have been raised about other popular scholarly sharing platforms, including Academia.edu and ResearchGate. Kevin Smith, the Dean of Libraries at the University of Kansas, has called this trend “the commodification of the professoriate.”  SocArXiv, then, offers a non-commercial alternative that puts scholars’ interests first.

New Digital Publishing Platforms Scholars Need to Know About

Uncategorized,

Digitalbook

UPDATE: The Manifold platform has now launched.

Are you in the process of writing a book or journal article? Have you been thinking about how you might present some or all of your research digitally? Over the past ten years, university presses, libraries, and others in higher education have started building the infrastructure necessary to support the creation of high-quality, peer-reviewed digital work. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has provided the start-up funds for many of these projects. One of the first digital publishing platforms that the Mellon Foundation funded was Scalar, which was developed at the University of Southern California on behalf of the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture. Scalar is currently being used by a number of different publishers, including the University of California Press and Duke University Press, to publish both born-digital scholarship and digital companions to print monographs. Scholars can also use Scalar to self-publish their work. Recently, the Mellon Foundation has funded other exciting efforts in this area. All share a common belief that scholars and publishers need to think beyond the traditional print monograph. Here are four new projects, all currently in development, worth watching:

Vega is a digital publishing platform being developed under the direction of West Virginia University for books, journals, projects, data sets, and other scholarly output. The Vega team is particularly interested in streamlining the production and editorial process for publishers. Unlike some existing platforms (such as Open Journal Systems), Vega will be completely customizable. Look for it to launch in 2018.

Editoria is a digital-first book production platform being developed by the California Digital Library, the University of California Press and the Collaborative Knowledge Foundation. Like Vega, it is designed to simplify the publishing workflow process in order to help lower production costs. A beta version of Editoria is planned for release in late 2016/early 2017.

Fulcrum is a digital publishing platform being developed by the University of Michigan Library and Press. Fulcrum will make it easier for authors who want to link their source material to their scholarship. The resulting digital piece can be published as a supplement to a print book, or can even take the place of a print book. One of Fulcrum’s early adopters will be Lever Press, a new press run by a group of leading liberal arts colleges that plans to publish open access, digitally native scholarly monographs.

Manifold Scholarship is a digital book production platform being developed by the University of Minnesota Press and the GC Digital Scholarship Lab at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Similar to Scalar, Manifold aims to help authors create media-rich scholarship that is nonlinear and allows for reader feedback. Although the Manifold platform is not yet live, the University of Minnesota Press has begun considering potential book projects.

 

The Past, Present, and Future of Preprints

In the News, ,

arXiv

Preprints seem to be having a moment. Last week, the registration agency CrossRef announced that they will soon allow members to assign DOIs (digital object identifiers) to preprints, just as they do for published articles. In making this change, CrossRef is acknowledging that preprints are an important part of the scholarly publishing ecosystem. In addition, back in March, a group of biologists made it into the New York Times for advocating for the use of preprints in their own discipline. At the same time, many academics still don’t know much about preprints or why they matter.

In general, a preprint is a piece of scholarship that has not yet been peer reviewed (and thus, hasn’t been published in a scholarly journal). It is related to a postprint, which has been peer reviewed, but has not been properly formatted by the publisher. Confusingly, the term preprint is sometimes also used to describe a postprint. Preprints have a long history, but people have been trying to collect and distribute them in a more formal way since the 1940s. The first online archive for preprints, arXiv, was launched in 1991 by Paul A. Ginsparg, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (Ginsparg is now a professor at Cornell University). Ginsparg hoped that arXiv (originally called xxx.lanl.gov) would help “level the research playing field,” by granting anyone with an internet connection access to the latest scholarship in high-energy physics, for free. He also knew it would help researchers get their work out into the world faster than ever before. Almost twenty-five years later, arXiv hosts over 1 million preprints from disciplines including mathematics, computer science and statistics. As New York University Professor of Physics David Hogg noted in a recent Wired article, “When I give seminars, I give the arXiv numbers for my papers. Why? Because I know that my arXiv papers are available to any audience member, no matter what their institutional affiliation or library support.” Thanks in part to the success of arXiv, scholars in other disciplines are now considering making drafts of their work public, including those in the humanities. In CORE, the Modern Language Association’s new digital repository, 25% of the articles are preprints or postprints.

So, why should academics, particularly those outside of the sciences, care about preprints? These days, more and more scholars are sharing copies of their work online (see our recent post on Academia.edu). Since most scholars do not own the copyright to their work, however, they may not have permission from the publisher to do so. One way to get around this is by sharing a preprint. While the vast majority of publishers will not allow a scholar to make the final version of their article (also known as the publisher’s version/PDF) freely available, they often allow the sharing of a preprint and/or postprint through an institutional repository or a personal website. According to SHERPA/RoMEO, a database of journal policies, 79% of publishers formerly allow for some kind of self-archiving.

It’s important to point out that not everyone in the academy agrees that the posting of preprints is a good idea. Some scholars worry that if they share their ideas too early, they might get stolen. Others correctly note that a preprint is not a substitute for a peer-reviewed journal article (which remains the gold standard for getting tenure). Finally, there are more general concerns about sharing work before it has been thoroughly vetted or revised. However, one recent study compared over 9,000 preprints from arXiv to their final published versions. The authors ultimately found that there were very few differences between the two versions.

Have you shared a preprint of your work online before? Why or why not?