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A new 5-year agreement was signed by Wiley and Germany’s DEAL Consortium

 

Wiley, a leading academic publisher of STEM journals, recently announced its decision to enter into a five-year agreement with DEAL Consortium in Germany. This consortium represents a collaboration of more than 1000 academic institutions of Germany.

The drift in scholarly communications has favored open access publishing, and the evolution of the hybrid model of publishing. The needs of the scholarly community will be better addressed by this partnership.

Thanks to this five-year deal, Wiley will now offer open access articles freely to authors of leading institutions in Germany. Thus, the readability and access to content would increase from Wiley’s portfolio of journals. Let us understand how this agreement benefits the research ecosystem of Germany.

The deal will facilitate a better understanding of all the scholarly institutions associated with OA publishing in Germany. The investment needs of journals would be recognized as they deliver high quality content with greater impact to researchers.

The deal also enables the development of a better infrastructure in terms of workflows. Thus, both the parties have agreed to support readers, authors, and librarians involved in the OA movement. Finally, all the institutions of the consortium will benefit from training sessions and workshops held by the well-established team of Wiley.

The deal between DEAL Consortium and Wiley is going to support a new wave of Open Access movement in Germany. This would be immensely beneficial to gain path-breaking results in the research community of Germany.

Kudos to the five-year agreement that dwells on supporting both the publishers and researchers associated with OA movement. The collaborative approach of Wiley has been much appreciated by DEAL Consortium of Germany. The cooperation model is sustainable.

 

 

 

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A partnership between ResearchGate and Taylor & Francis eases access to scholarly publications

A partnership has been announced between ResearchGate and Taylor & Francis, making it a new development in the field of STEM publishing. ResearchGate is a leading professional network of researchers, enabling collaboration and sharing of research publications.

Taylor & Francis is a renowned publisher of journals and books in the academic world. With this partnership, Taylor & Francis would provide access to 200 high quality journals to researchers registered at ResearchGate.

ResearchGate has specifically designed a new service entitled “Journal Home” to cater to the growing demands of journals. All the 200 journals would get enhanced visibility on ResearchGate platform. A profile will be created for each journal on ResearchGate, which would be accessible to researchers throughout the platform. Every journal title will also have an article page, benefitting sharing, collaboration, and networking.

This development is interesting as it plans to make more than 100,000 recorded versions of open access articles freely readable on ResearchGate platform. All the articles written henceforth will be included in the 70 completely OA journals and be available for viewership on ResearchGate.

Taylor & Francis is an important name in the field of academic publisher. It has published cutting-edge research from various disciplines, such as sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Since Researchgate platform has more than 25 million researchers, this partnership would benefit the publisher immensely. It would increase the readership of viewers and engage the interest of new audiences.

The founders of ResearchGate have expressed their gratitude to the publishers: Taylor & Francis. They will be embarking on a new journey as they make so many articles freely accessible. Most scientific content is hidden till today under the restrictions of a paywall, thanks to subscription journals. ResearchGate supports the OA model of publishing in academia, paving a new way for researchers in developing countries.

 

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The influence of impact factor in open access publishing

 

The trends in open access publishing are the talking point of most academicians in scholarly publications. One of the most commonly misunderstood topics is the correlation between impact factors and open access journals.

One of the most significant benefits of publishing open access is that the article is freely accessible to everyone to read. Thus, valuable research data can be disseminated to a broader audience, and the article’s impact factor may increase.

Is the impact factor helpful in assessing the quality of research papers? Is open access publishing suppressing the efficacy of the impact factor? Well, some open access journals have an impact factor, while many do not endorse these metrics.

An open-access journal may not have an impact factor due to the following reasons: the scope and aim of the journal may be in the Arts & Humanities sector, such that it is not enlisted in the SSCI (Social Science Citation Index) or the SCI (Science Citation Index). These are databases that present the impact factors of journals.

The OA journal may be relatively new, and the process of application of indexing in SCI and SSCI databases may not have occurred. In the case of fairly old journals, the editorial board has to make an effort to apply to indexing processes.

However, most prestigious OA journals have an impact factor, but that does not mean other OA journals have published low quality research. On the contrary, the impact factor indicates the quality of research even in subscription journals of the same discipline.

Now, let us understand the complex aspects on which the impact factor depends. In general, patterns of citations in a particular subject area and the type of articles a journal publishes are taken into account before giving an impact factor to the journal.

For example, an open-access journal may be well-read by the masses. Its content is freely available to everyone and is not restricted by a paywall, like in subscription journals. An ordinary reader may expect the articles to be highly cited. However, if the readership is mainly due to medical practitioners, the articles won’t be highly cited.

Most researchers consider the impact factor of the journal before publishing an article. However, researchers and funders are moving beyond the scope of impact factor to assess the merits of scientific research. Today, they are exposed to a wider range of metrics, which enable a better assessment of the quality of research.

Furthermore, in open-access journal, the article is available online and is free to read for everyone and anywhere in the world with internet access. Therefore, the research published in open access journals will have a broader impact as it generates lots of downloads by researchers worldwide.

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An acquisition deal between Brill and Wageningen Academic Publishers

Brill, the leading academic publisher from Europe, has made a strategic acquisition of Wageningen Academic Publishers this week. Brill publishes journals, books, and periodicals in humanities, social science, law, and biology.

The shareholders of Wageningen Publishers have agreed to sell all their shares and enable Brill publishers to acquire a 100% stake in the business. With this acquisition, Brill gained all titles of Wageningen Academic Publishers, which had journals and books in food science, health, animal studies, agriculture, and environment.

The publishers primarily published Open Access (OA) journals, books, and conference proceedings. In the year 2021, the total estimated revenue of Wageningen Academic Publishers (WAP) was around 1 million EUR. With the acquisition of WAP, Brill will strengthen its stand in the academic publishing domain of biology, which is seeing a spurt in new titles and issues.

Moreover, Brill’s main objective is to foray into emerging disciplines, such as agriculture and the environment. Therefore, it has to have publications that address global challenges. Furthermore, many researchers receive scholarships in these fields as they are all related to climate change.

According to Brill’s CEO, Peter Coebergh, WAP was an excellent international publisher in agriculture and biology. Moreover, it included a lot of journals that were highly attractive to researchers. With the acquisition of WAP, Brill has now taken on a humungous task of creating an interdisciplinary ecosystem of Science and International laws on climate change and the environment.

The portfolio of interdisciplinary journals will showcase the strong presence of open access models of publishing and research. Furthermore, according to managing directors and shareholders of WAP, the acquisition makes WAP a part of the Brill family, thereby further consolidating its programs on current titles of journals and books.

The purchase is effective from 15 April 2022 and marks a significant development in academic publishing.

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How to do journal selection for your manuscript?

Many factors have to be considered while doing right journal selection for your manuscript. Most novice researchers do not know the factors to be considered before submitting the manuscript to a journal. If the journal is not related to the topic of your research, the article would be rejected even without being subjected to peer review process. Now, let us understand which factors need to be considered for journal selection.

  • Topic of research: Each journal has aims and scopes, which should be explored and matched with the topic of research. Suppose a researcher has written an article on novel therapies for lung cancer, then the researcher should submit the paper to a journal whose name and scope is aligned with lung cancer therapy.
  • Types of articles: Many journals publish a certain type of article. Full length paper will not be published in a journal that publishes only case study. Moreover, a systematic review would not be appropriate for publication in a journal of manuscripts.
  • Journal’s impact factor: Before submitting a paper to a journal, always consider the impact factor of the journal. Greater the impact factor of the journal, higher is the visibility of the article. Papers published in high impact journals usually receive greater citations and credibility.
  • Journal’s target audience: The content of the article should be compliant with the target audience of the journal. If an article is about latest medications and therapies, then the article would be read by a clinical journal and not by a chemical journal. There are many interdisciplinary fields of study, such as robotic surgery in bioinformatics. These papers are read by both surgeons and biomedical engineers.
  • Length of the article: Most journals have laid down strict wordcount restrictions. In general, most biomedical journals do not want abstracts that are more than 250 words. Similarly, most academic journals accept papers that have a wordcount of 3000-5000 words. A pre-press service author education company should be hired to concise the article and abstract and adhere to wordcount restrictions. These wordcount limits are usually displayed in the “Instructions to Authors” Tab of the journal’s website.
  • The type of journal: Science Citation Index (SCI), Open Access (OA), and Hybrid are the three types of journals in academic publishing. The leading publishers are Elsevier, Springer, Nature, Wiley, etc. In general, most Asian researchers publish in SCI journals, while most European researchers prefer to publish in OA journals. Today, hybrid mode of publishing includes the benefits of both SCI and OA journals, so it is now used by researchers all across the world.

Based on these factors, researchers should select three closely related journals for publication of their manuscript.

 

 

 

 

 

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MIT ends publisher contract with Elsevier due to disputes over Open Access Model

 

The University of California (UC) took a bold decision last year by terminating its contract with Elsevier as it could no longer afford the high publishing costs of the very popular open access model of publishing. In June 2020, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) followed the footsteps of UC and terminated its contract with Elsevier, stating that the publisher did not provide a business proposal that aligns with the Publisher Contracts Framework of MIT.

This is a major jolt to the world of academic publishing, given that UC has more than 280,000 students and as much as 227, 000 faculty members. On the other hand, MIT has approximately 24,000 students studying at its campus currently. The MIT Framework of Publishing Ethics was introduced in the year 2019, and more than 100 academic institutions have openly supported this framework within just one year of publication.

The Framework emphasizes on disseminating latest research studies free of cost and immediately. Moreover, it acknowledges the publication output of authors and institutions in academia. The main goal of this framework is to support “open sciences” without barriers. According to Chris Bourg, the director of MIT Libraries: All the faculty member of MIT are disappointed to know that Elsevier could not reach a consensus with the MIT Publishing Framework; however, all the staff members and students across the country stand by the principle of “open science and knowledge without barriers.”

The negotiations between publishing giant Elsevier and MIT officials failed because the institute wanted all scholarly articles to deposited in MIT repositories immediately after their publication. Elsevier has never really implemented the concept of automated deposit for scholarly articles. Presently, Elsevier has the “read and publish” model of open access publishing, which does not align with the MIT Framework of Publication Ethics.

In the year 2019, UC had challenged the open access policies of Elsevier and was disgruntled with the publisher’s enormous monetary expenses. The officials at UC did not like the exorbitant article processing fees charged by Elsevier for providing “open access publishing option” to UC authors. Moreover, UC wanted Elsevier to draft a contract that allows 100% open access to all articles written by UC authors.

On the other hand, Elsevier offered “the open access model” on a much smaller number of journals, yet the cost of publication was increased significantly for UC authors. The officials at the UC issued a press release stating that they could not bear the publication cost of $30 million over a three-year period, yet they wanted to achieve 100% open access model of publishing.

In the proposal provided by Elsevier, UC authors had to forgo access to a number of subscription-based journals of Elsevier. Moreover, Elsevier did not provide any financial assistance to authors who lacked research grants. However, UCLA’s student newspaper Daily Bruin published a recent report stating that the effect of Elsevier’s ban was not really pronounced on librarians and researchers working at the campus. Very few students and researchers have complained about how the ban has negatively impacted their work.

To make amends, UCLA came up with an innovative “Inter-Library Loan program” that provides subsidized access to articles from libraries located outside the UC campus; these libraries may be located in the US or abroad. However, librarians at the UCLA campus have seen only a slight increase in the number of students availing this program. The increase has been only 15 to 20 percent of the projected value. This means that both students and researchers are now subscribing to articles of other publishers.

According to Virginia Steel, a librarian working at the UCLA campus, the effect of the ban on Elsevier has not really been dramatic. However, the officials at UC and MIT were open to a fresh round of negotiations with Elsevier; however, they both stand firm on the principle of “open access publishing.” The officials of Elsevier are now focusing their efforts on renewing negotiations with officials of both universities.

If Elsevier manages to come up with a contract that aligns with MIT’s Framework of Publication Ethics, then it would be strong step in propagating latest scientific studies to the general public. Although Elsevier shares the ethos of the MIT Framework, it is still not sure how to make a dramatic shift in its subscription-based model of academic publishing. Nevertheless, Elsevier is determined to find out a middle path that satisfies both the parties, thereby promoting the interests of the global community of researchers.

The year 2020 seems to be challenging the monopoly of Elsevier, a leading scientific publisher with a global presence. Interestingly, Elsevier’s negotiations also failed to impress officials at the State University of New York (SUNY) and University of North Carolina (UNC). Both these universities have also not renewed their contract with Elsevier. The officials at the UNC said that Elsevier is not really providing affordable publishing solutions, so they would not go ahead and renew subscription to 2000 e-journals. The UNC officials said that they would be subscribing only to a few selected journals of Elsevier from May 1, 2020.

Following on the footsteps of UNC, the officials at SUNY also decided not to renew their contract with Elsevier for “ScienceDirect” but they declared to subscribe to a short list of titles from Elsevier’s stock of journals. The negotiations between SUNY officials and Elsevier had taken place over a period of one year, but all those efforts seemed futile in changing the minds of the university officials.

The charges proposed by Elsevier were found to be too exorbitant by officials of SUNY. The “open access model of publishing” has changed the dynamics of academic publishing, and Elsevier no longer has an overwhelming control over the content. The officials of SUNY were of the opinion that the publishing charges proposed by Elsevier were inflated to make a whopping profit.

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Identify world’s leading journals in the Journal Citation Reports published by Web of Science

Clarivate Analytics is a leading player in the STM publishing industry, providing truthful insights into the world of academic publishing. On the 29th of June, 2020, Clarivate Analytics released its Journal Citation Reports (JCR), an important document that is published annually on the Web of Science. The JCR document is important for the global academic community as it provides an insight into high-quality academic journals of the international community.

All academic journals are ranked on the basis of several indicators, visualizations, and data. The report is a quantitative estimate of the impact created by academic journals in their field of study. The report specifically scrutinizes the quality of research published in prestigious journals and how they were promoted to the international community of researchers.

To compile this report, Clarivate Analytics team made use of the 2019 data presented in the Web of Science Core Collection, which is a flagship brand of the company and a global citation database that is publisher-neutral. Clarivate Analytics invited a global team of experts to curate the structured data presented in the 2019 Web of Science Core Collection.

To accurately evaluate the impact factor of academic journals, the team of experts carefully evaluated the content presented in the selected collection of books, conference proceedings, and journals. This report is used to estimate the true worth of a journal in the academic community, which consists of researchers, editors, publishers, investors, and librarians. Their main goal is to promote high-impact journals to a diverse set of audiences.

Although vast data of metrics is available in the JCR report, the most widely used metric is the “ Web of Science journal impact factor” in academic publishing. So, what really are the key highlights of the JCR report published in 2020? Let us first explore the selection criteria for the inclusion of journals. In the 2020 JCR report, the experts have added 351 new journals to the inclusion list.

Out of them, 178 journals are completely “Open Access” in nature. Given that most researchers have flocked to the OA model of publishing, JCR report included 1600 OA journals in 2020. Nevertheless, JCR report has compiled the impact-factor of 12,000 journals from 236 research fields of hard sciences and social sciences. These journals were selected from 83 countries spread across five continents of the earth.

The JCR report of 2020 has evaluated the open access publishing model through new descriptive data. This implies that the report includes data on the access model used for reading articles of each journal. Thus, the JCR report of 2020 provides transparent, publisher-neutral information to the community of researchers on whether they can access “free-to-read” articles in a journal.

Moreover, the report also provides information on whether the articles can be re-used through Creative Commons Licenses, which are usually issued through “gold open access model”. Finally, the report presents the overall citations and the volume of content presented by each journal.

One of the key highlights of the JCR report is the fact that it includes 7487 hybrid journals in its 2020 edition. Moreover, these hybrid journals are innovatively classified in order to enable readers to quickly identify the following features of these journals: 1) The number of papers published through the conventional subscription model, and 2) the number of papers published through the Creative Common Licenses, which establishes the “gold open access model.”

Now that we know the classification criteria of each type of journal, let’s explore the objectives behind the journal selection process. In the JCR report of 2020, Clarivate Analytics has excluded 33 journals that did not conform to the standards of academic integrity. Thus, the JCR report of 2020 has excluded 0.27% of the listed journals.

These journals have exhibited anomalous behavior in terms of citation. There have been strong evidences to prove that the journals had many cases of self-citation and stacked citation. These situations do not conform with the disciplinary norms put forth by the JCR review committee of experts.

Another important disciplinary action exercised by the JCR review committee is as follows: An “Editorial Expression of Concern” was issued to as many as 15 academic journals, which contained one or more published articles with an unusually high number of journal citations. These citations were disproportionately associated with JIF. The editorial board of Clarivate Analytics will scrutinize low-quality content of this type to prevent any distortions of the Journal Impact Factor.

Keith Collier is a senior vice president of products at the Science Group of Clarivate Analytics. In a press release of the 2020 JCR report, Keith Collier issued the following statement: Web of Science Citation Reports has been providing unbiased data on journal citations for the past 40 years, so the academic community has been following this report consistently for these many years.

It gives a glimpse of the world’s leading journals in the field of hard sciences and social sciences. The research community includes all academic editors, librarians, researchers, publishers, and institutions. They can carefully evaluate the selected journals to make informed decisions about their publications. The report helps them understand citation trends of academic journals.

In the year 2020, Clarivate Analytics made concerted efforts to accelerate the pace of innovation in academia. They have updated the parameters of self-citation and added a new paradigm of descriptive data, which will provide the research community with a better insight on the evolving models of academic publishing.

In the 2020 JCR report, a wide number of indicators are used for evaluating each journal’s profile. The most noteworthy among them is the “Web of Science Impact Factor.” It indicates the average frequency of citation received by a journal in a particular year.

Moreover, the report also presents “Immediacy Index,” which indicates the frequency of citing an average article from a journal in the same year of publication. After classifying the journals according to their category, the journal impact factor indicates the rank of the journal. This metric is expressed in terms of percentile.