Cancer Research UK’s decision to stop funding article processing charges marks a significant shift in how they approach open access. In its April 1st announcement (not an April Fool), the organisation argues that, despite years of investment, the current APC-driven model of open access publishing “hasn’t worked” in delivering a system that is genuinely accessible …
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My new monograph Publishing Beyond the Market: Open Access, Care, and the Commons is published this week by the University of Michigan Press. You can download it or purchase a print copy here https://press.umich.edu/Books/P/Publishing-Beyond-the-Market. Here’s the blurb: Publishing Beyond the Market argues that the move to open access should focus less on the free accessibility …
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The highly prestigious journal Nature this week announced that it is going to be publishing all peer reviews alongside the articles it publishes. This means that the reviews attached to each publication will be available for all to read, although reviewer identities will remain anonymous unless they opt to sign their review. Nature says this …
Continue reading “Transparency as a substitute for governance: on Nature’s open review process”
As a 2024-5 Open Future Fellow, I explored AI across the research and publishing lifecycle. The output of this research is available as a report here: https://openfuture.eu/publication/governing-the-scholarly-ai-commons Summary: In recent years, commercial publishers and information analytics companies have increased their reliance on AI-based technologies to conduct a range of tasks across the research lifecycle. From …
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I’ve just published a preprint on F1000 Research of a new article on community-led publishing projects at the University of Cambridge. It’s co-authored with Dr. Mandy Wigdorowitz at the University of Alabama. Title: “I just very much love the journal”: Understanding the community-led publishing landscape at the University of Cambridge DOI: https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.161163.1 Abstract: Background A …
I’m guest editing a special issue for the Journal of Electronic Publishing on open research for the humanities and social sciences. The call for papers is below: Call for papers: Special Issue on Open Research for the Humanities and Social Sciences Abstract submission deadline: 30 January 2025 In recent years, research production and communication in …
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Today Janneke Adema and I published a new article in the journal New Formations entitled ‘‘Just One Day of Unstructured Autonomous Time’: Supporting Editorial Labour for Ethical Publishing within the University’. The article will be available in our repositories but is also currently freely accessible via the New Formations site: https://journals.lwbooks.co.uk/newformations/vol-2023-issue-110/abstract-9909/ (although I’m not sure …
In the past week, three senior research strategy figures at the University of Oxford have called for removing the open access ‘burden’ from the rules for the next Research Excellence Framework (REF). For the past REF excercise, open access has been a requirement for all submitted journal articles and UKRI are also now consulting on …
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Last week, The Scholarly Kitchen posted an article by Angela Cochran,Vice President of Publishing at the American Society of Clinical Oncology, about the inability of publishers to deal with research fraud. She writes: “The bottom line is that journals are not equipped with their volunteer editors and reviewers, and non-subject matter expert staff to police …
Continue reading “Research integrity, preprints and where should the responsibility lie?”
Open access policy mandates have never been an effective way of convincing researchers of the benefits of exploring alternative, open publishing practices. Forcing someone to do something will not help them engage with the reasons for doing it. Instead, the mandate feels like a simple tickbox exercise that can be ignored once fulfilled. Apathy and …
