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Over the last few years, the publishing industry has experienced significant changes and developments, most of which have had a positive influence on scholarly publishing. For instance, the gradual popularity of open access publishing has contributed to the wider access and readership of published materials. Also, the recent development in the abilities of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to assist in the publication process is laudable for its potential. The gradual shift from print to online publication is also a commendable development in global publishing. Not without their own challenges, these developments, among others, have mostly impacted global publishing in a positive way. In the current study, the researchers' argument stems from the notion that although these developments are invaluable, there are accompanying impediments that publishing professionals as well as publishing outlets must consider. In response to these developments, role‐players in the publishing industry must constantly reassess their publishing processes in order to carefully manage and negotiate what is termed by this study as a 'double‐edged sword' (capable of having positive and negative consequences). This study reviews existing studies, draws views from publishing experts, and seeks opinions from scholars to establish methods of negotiating some of the key developments in global publishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The list of potential, possible or probable predatory scholarly open access (OA) publishers compiled by Jeffrey Beall was examined to determine the effect of their inclusion upon authors, and a possible bias against OA journals. Manually collected data from the publication archives of a sample of 250 journals from Beall publishers reveals a strong tendency towards a decline in their article output during 2012–2020. A comparison of the subset of 506 Beall journals indexed in Scopus with a benchmark set of other OA journals in Scopus with similar characteristics shows that Beall journals reveal as a group a strong decline in citation impact over the years, and reached an impact level far below that of their benchmarks. The Beall list of publishers was found to be heterogeneous in terms of bibliometric indicators but to be clearly differentiated from OA journals not included in the list. The same bibliometric comparison against comparable non‐OA journals reveal similar, but less marked, differences in citation and publication growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the research data policies of China's scholarly journals to provide a regional perspective. In total, 1243 science, technology, and medicine (STM) journals in the Chinese Science Citation Database (CSCD) were examined in June and July of 2021. The findings show that the existence and attitudinal strength of the research data policies of China's scholarly journals are weak overall, but differences exist across journals with different languages, publishers, disciplines, access models and metrics. A large imbalance exists between English‐language journals and Chinese‐language journals in setting their research data policies. The existence and attitudinal strength of the research data policies of journals co‐published by Western publishers and Chinese publishers are much stronger than those of journals published solely by Chinese publishers. In terms of discipline, journals belonging to the life sciences have stronger attitudes towards research data sharing. Open access model journals and hybrid model journals are better than subscription model journals in opening and sharing research data. The higher the impact factor (IF) and CiteScore of a journal, the more likely the journal is to have data policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Agency of Research and Development from Chile is proposing, for the first time, a national OA policy aiming to ensure access to the scientific knowledge contained in publications resulting from research projects and graduate thesis. Since no information regarding APC expenditure in Chile is available, this study examined the cost of APC for the 2019 publications that included at least one Chilean affiliation. The total expenditure for the year 2019 was estimated at USD 9,129,939. The results confirm that almost one third of the total APC was spent on publications from Health & Medical Sciences, research area with the highest APC (USD 6000). Furthermore, five commercial publishers collected 52% of the total APC expenditure. Unfortunately, the cost of publishing in some journals is so high that it causes detrimental effects on the research capacity of under resourced individuals. In the Chilean scenario, APC is not well suited to scale as most universities do not have an OA budget to support researchers that are eager to publish their work in OA journals. Perhaps the implementation of an OA policy ought to be accompanied by sustainable APC funding grants aimed at supporting under resourced researchers that want to make their research freely available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at whether there is evidence to support two prevailing assumptions about open access (OA). These assumptions are: (1) fully OA journals are inherently of poorer quality than journals supported by other business models and (2) the OA business model, that is, paying for publication, is more 'competitive' than the subscription journal access business model. The assumptions have been discussed in contemporary industry venues, and we have encountered them in the course of their work advising scholarly communications organizations. Our objective was to apply data analytics techniques to see if these assumptions bore scrutiny. By combining citation‐based impact scores with data from publishers' price lists, we were able to look for relationships between business model, price, and 'quality' across several thousands of journals. We found no evidence suggesting that OA journals suffer significant quality issues compared with non‐OA journals. Furthermore, authors do not appear to 'shop around' based on OA price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key points Automated responsiveness is efficient and reassuring, but personalized responsiveness makes an author feel valued. On a very practical level, authors value timely peer review, perhaps above anything else. The perceived drop in copyediting and production quality is a common author gripe. Publishers need to be open about open access – many authors are not as knowledgeable as assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the first of two Learned Publishing articles in which we report the results of a series of interviews with senior publishers and editors exploring open access megajournals ( OAMJs). Megajournals (of which PLoS One is the best known example) represent a relatively new approach to scholarly communication and can be characterized as large, broad-scope, open access journals that take an innovative approach to peer review, basing acceptance decisions solely on the technical or scientific soundness of the article. This model is often said to support the broader goals of the open science movement. Based on in-depth interviews with 31 publishers and editors representing 16 different organizations (10 of which publish a megajournal), this paper reports how the term 'megajournal' is understood and publishers' rationale and motivations for launching (or not launching) an OAMJ. We find that while there is general agreement on the common characteristics of megajournals, there is not yet a consensus on their relative importance. We also find seven motivating factors that were said to drive the launch of an OAMJ and link each of these factors to potential societal and business benefits. These results suggest that the often polarized debate surrounding OAMJs is a consequence of the extent to which observers perceive publishers to be motivated by these societal or business benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on scholarly communication and open access ( OA) in Korea. Drawing on a range of databases, articles, and reference sources, it provides unique insights. In contrast to the UK/ US model of scholarly communication, in Korea, most scholarly journals are published by discipline-based scholarly societies and research institutes affiliated to universities. Payment for publication is the norm, and typically features article processing charges and scholarly society membership fees for both OA and toll access ( TA) journals. Online access to journals in Korea is provided by commercial vendors who enter into contracts with the scholarly societies for exclusive use. Three online access models apply - TA, gold OA, and dual access - with the use of these models varying between disciplines. In parallel with this access provided by commercial vendors, there are a number of government-funded open access repositories (OARs) to which university researchers are requested to deposit their research outputs, as well as OARs run by universities and other research institutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses attitudes of academic authors toward open access ( OA) and the frequency of choosing OA publication venues. The research looks particularly at differences between authors based in countries with a gross domestic product per capita less or greater than US$18,000 (called periphery and core countries, respectively). The data were obtained with an online survey sent to 107,296 scholars listed on the mailing lists belonging to De Gruyter Open from December 2015 to January 2016. A total of 1,012 responses were received. Authors from the periphery countries publish their articles in gold OA more often and they also pay OA publication fees equally often as those based in the core countries. The reasons for that are complex, involving both their preference to publish in OA and the composition of the publishing market in the periphery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the ways through which subscription-based scholarly journals have converted to open access. The methodology included a comprehensive literature review of both published and 'grey' literature, such as blog posts and press releases. Eight interviews were also conducted with stakeholders representing different parts of the scholarly publishing landscape. Strategies of conversion for different types of journals are presented at multiple levels (publishers, national, research funders, organizational, and so on). The identified scenarios are split into two main categories, those that rely heavily on article processing charges and those that can operate without relying on author-side financing. Despite there being interesting and important shared traits among many converted journals, individual circumstances largely dictate what options for conversion are viable for a journal. There is no single solution that works for every journal but rather a broad selection of different solutions, among which selection should be well informed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Question everything and seek answers [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the changing culture of publishing. Topics discussed include the growing importance of publishing in high impact (IF) or indexed journals, the effect of open access publishing on the quality of information, and an imbalance caused by freedom of the Internet where there is an abundance of content but without regard for the needs of the readers.

This study examines the payment policies of a list of standalone predatory open access journals available on scholarlyoa.com. It is found that 72% do charge article publication fees (APCs), which is a higher percentage than found in DOAJ journals. The mean number of articles published during 2013 was 227, but ranged from 4 to 2,286 articles. The majority of journals charge low APCs and can be assumed to have modest annual incomes. There was no correlation between the amount of APC charged and the number of articles published. Comparing the number of journals charging APCs compared to the percentage from DOAJ, the findings suggest a connection between predatory practices and charging author fees. However, a comprehensive assessment of the dynamics of open access journal publishing beyond author charges should be done to avoid using APCs alone as a measure of whether a journal is predatory or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Transfer Code of Practice was launched in 2008 as a set of best-practice guidelines to be followed when a journal changes publisher, with the aim of ensuring uninterrupted access to content for subscribers. The Code has now been updated to reflect the continued evolution of the academic publishing process driven by new technologies, policies, and publishing practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the aspects of open access publishing and suggests ways for scholars to differentiate between legal and illegal publishers. Topics include steps to be followed by publishers in order to be deemed legal like inclusion of citations and object identifiers, technical evaluation of scholarly journals and complying with ethical and legal frameworks. Also discussed is the importance of peer review of scholarly articles.

The article presents one of the main findings of an international study of 4,000 academic researchers that examined how trustworthiness is determined in the digital environment when it comes to scholarly reading, citing, and publishing. The study shows that peer review is still the most trustworthy characteristic of all. There is, though, a common perception that open access journals are not peer reviewed or do not have proper peer-review systems. Researchers appear to have moved inexorably from a print-based system to a digital system, but it has not significantly changed the way they decide what to trust. They do not trust social media. Only a minority - although significantly mostly young and early career researchers - thought that social media are anything other than more appropriate to personal interactions and peripheral to their professional/academic lives. There are other significant differences, according to the age of the researcher. Thus, in regard to choosing an outlet for publication of their work, young researchers are much less concerned with the fact that it is peer reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors offer insights on ways to determine fake open access journals. They discuss the growth in the number of new journals and publishers, the importance of peer review in determining fake journals, the occurrence of counterfeit web sites that are identical to those of scammers, and the cost of publishing articles on the Internet.

In this paper we map the scientific journals from Ibero-American countries indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus. Data were collected from the journals' websites. Of 879 journals in the two databases, Spain accounted for 35.6% of the titles, Brazil 28.5%, and the remaining 11 countries together 35.9%. Medicine had the most titles in almost all countries, with 28.9% of the total, followed by agricultural and biological sciences (particularly in Brazil) with 14.9%, and social sciences with 11.5%. A digital format was used by 95% of the journals and 82% were open access, with an even higher level of open access in Latin America. The publishers were mainly universities (37.7%) and associations (31.1%). Ibero-American countries, with the exception of Spain, do not have a long tradition as scientific journal publishers, but in the last few years they have gained in importance as players in scientific communication with the use of new business models for journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the characteristics of 462 open access (OA) journals being published in India under the green, gold and hybrid models. The sample of journals was selected from DOAJ, IndianJournal.com and Open J-Gate. Journal characteristics were measured in terms of growth, subjects, publishers, and citations under each model. While characteristics such as growth, subject, and publisher have been identified by exploring the journal's website only, the citation count of these journals has been calculated by using Google Scholar and the Indian Citation Index. The gold road is now the most popular form of OA publishing in the subcontinent. There is a great variation in the size of OA journals and in their publishers. One publisher has more than 77 journals, but 264 publishers publish a single journal only. Overall, the OA journal landscape is greatly influenced by a few key publishers and journals. While 43% of journals charge publication fees and the fees vary from as low as US$10 to as high as US$400, the highest impact factor of the gold OA journals has been noted as 0.58. The data presented here suggest that publication fees are not a major barrier to authorship within the fields of computer science, pharmacy, and medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly every major publisher offers open access content of some sort, but open access metadata standards are non-existent amongst content providers. Users, librarians, content providers, and technology vendors who offer OpenURL resolvers and discovery services all stand to benefit from standardized ways to indicate what content is open access and what is not. Additionally, all stakeholders would benefit from a standardized method by which one can ascertain what form of open access any content may be; indeed, there are many definitions of open access. There is ample evidence that every publisher handles their content metadata differently and this creates inefficiencies in the scholarly information supply chain and leads to user confusion. Many initiatives are currently working on solutions to these problems including the NISO KBART workgroup, NISO's Open Discovery Initiative, and NISO's very recently created Open Access Initiative. There are also pre-existing concepts based on services, such as CrossRef's CrossMark service and discovery systems that hold promise with respect to open access content and metadata. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Plantwise knowledge bank is an open access, online resource that provides information to users involved in plant health systems in the developing world. The challenge was to deliver dependable information that could serve users with widely differing needs and understanding and to get actionable knowledge to subsistence farmers in particular. This was met by bringing together resources across CABI, particularly by supplementing core publishing capabilities with the knowledge, skills and understanding of the internationally based scientific staff and their network of collaborators. An iterative development process, with scoping, wireframes and prototype delivery, was undertaken with constant feedback from global users. Content needed to be repurposed from CABI's own databases, brought in from international partners and freshly created, and then delivered to each user in a structure that was easy to navigate and had easy-to-use tools to add value. The product has been widely well received and ongoing development will be guided by lessons learned and new requirements as the Plantwise programme expands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continued development of open access policies, it is important to promote consensus-building projects with the various stakeholders. This article gives an account of how such collaboration has facilitated the construction of the project Héloïse. This project is a French information service dedicated to describing the policies of French publishers on the self-archiving of scientific publications. Héloïse represents a real tool of mediation whose development involved much debate between publishers and research stakeholders. This article seeks to demonstrate that the development of trust between the actors involved in the project was a major component of its success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the increasing influence of corporate funders in scholarly publishing. According to the author, funders are taking an active role in ensuring that their funding yields findings. The author also discusses the trend toward author-pays publication and the effects of the endless capacity of the Internet and the increasing influence of funders via open access on innovation in scholarly publishing.

Scholarly publishing has seen a decade of rapid proliferation of business models and emerging technologies. Together with globalization of the publishing market and new challenges, this evolution has also led to rapid advancements in management tasks even within small publishing houses. The outcome of this change for the stakeholders, including researchers, authors, and shareholders, is unclear, and a return to a more cohesive, integrated approach is desirable. One major obstacle must be overcome: organizational inertia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the emergence of authors as consumers with considerable purchasing power in the publishing chain of a new publishing economic model whereby open access (OA) articles are available free of charge to all readers, whilst revenue to cover publication costs comes from authors' fees. Some early evidence suggests that publishers are engaged in competition for the new consumers, and their efforts are shifting from marketing and selling subscriptions, to marketing and selling publishing venues (OA journals). Within this context, the article suggests that RSS is a very important cost-effective marketing tool if used properly and can play an important role in the marketing and dissemination process of OA articles, in particular when those articles are published in hybrid journals. The article presents real examples of TOC RSS feeds produced by leading publishers and shows that the benefits and effectiveness of those RSS fees are directly related with the availability, quality and richness of its content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growth of numerous open and free tools for creating, curating, and publishing content on the Internet, the process of authoring and publishing scholarly journals remains an expensive, time-consuming process that can require significant up-front investment and technical expertise. Annotum, an open source, open access, open process authoring and publishing system based on WordPress, provides a simple, free tool for creating peer-reviewed scholarly journals online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article processing charge (APC) is currently the primary method of funding professionally published open access (OA) peer-reviewed journals. The pricing principles of 77 OA publishers publishing over 1,000 journals using APCs were studied and classified. The most commonly used pricing method is a single fixed fee, which can either be the same for all of a publisher's journals or individually determined for each journal. Fees are usually only levied for publication of accepted papers, but there are some journals that also charge submission fees. Instead of fixed prices, many publishers charge by the page or have multi-tiered fees depending on the length of articles. The country of origin of the author can also influence the pricing, in order to facilitate publishing for authors from developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digitization of journal content and its availability online has revolutionized journal publishing in recent years, resulting in both opportunities and challenges for traditional journal publishers. The explosion of data and the emergence of new players such as Google, new business models like Open Access, and new content consumers and producers, for example, China are significantly changing the face of journal publishing. It is not yet clear what the impact of these changes will be but by continuing to collaborate with our existing stakeholders and building partnerships with these newcomers, as well as by maintaining and promoting the quality of our content, we can ensure our future growth and success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the 1,608 journals covered by the Chinese Science & Technology Journal Citation Reports (2005 edition), we analyzed the open access (OA) publishing situation of Chinese scientific journals. From this database we identified 91 journals offering full OA; a further 139 journals offered delayed OA. Data collected at three different time points (January 2006, July 2006, and January 2007) showed that the OA status of these journals is not stable; some OA journals subsequently became non-OA. Most of the Chinese OA journals are not part of a larger aggregation, but are published independently. Relatively more OA journals are published in the fields of medicine and biology. Citation indicators of OA journals were found to be higher than those of non-OA journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University presses were founded in the late 19th century to help alleviate a problem of market failure, namely insufficient demand in the commercial marketplace to sustain a publishing operation on the basis of sales alone. Now, in the face of claims about another type of market failure - insufficient funds to sustain library subscriptions to STM journals - calls have come forth to change the economic model of publishing from sales-based to grants-based, offering the fruits of knowledge free to all users with an Internet connection. This paper examines both the challenges and the opportunities that the variants of 'open access' present to university presses, as they seek to fulfill their traditional mission of disseminating knowledge 'far and wide' while remaining sustainable as businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author-pays model (open access publishing funded through author charges) is dependent on authors having access to financial support at the time their research papers are accepted. We conducted an author survey to determine the availability of external funding for publication charges at different points in the research process. Of the 377/524 (72%) who responded, 62% (233/377) received external funding to support their study, but with notable differences between journals. Only 25% (95/377) could withdraw funds from a grant at the time of paper acceptance. The grant was closed at this time for almost half (105/233.45%) of those who were externally funded. Non-externally funded research was largely supported through departmental resources (56%, 80/144) or carrying out research in own time (63%, 91/144). To conclude, a large proportion of published research is not externally funded, and many funded researchers do not have access to financial support at the time their paper is accepted for publication. INSET: Box 1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on a research study commissioned by ALPSP into the factors affecting journal cancellations and, in particular, on the impact of the free availability of journal articles via open access repositories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authors in different disciplines exhibit very different behaviours on the so-called 'green' road to open access, i.e. self-archiving. This study looks at the self-archiving behaviour of authors publishing in leading journals in six social science disciplines. It tests the hypothesis that authors are self-archiving according to the norms of their respective disciplines rather than following self-archiving policies of publishers, and that, as a result, they are self-archiving significant numbers of publisher PDF versions. It finds significant levels of self-archiving, as well as significant self-archiving of the publisher PDF version, in all the disciplines investigated. Publishers' self-archiving policies have no influence on author self-archiving practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A summary of the findings of a study which included an in-depth exploration of journal business and pricing models of nine learned societies in the context of their requirements and of the open access (OA) business model. Detailed information on current trends in revenue costs and surplus is included. The article considers whether and how OA can be adopted by the representative sample of STM publishers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potential dangers of open access journals to the publishing activities of learned societies and thus to their financial stability and to the other activities they support ate described. The interests of scientists in respect of access to research information may be opposed to their interests as members of learned societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses some problems related to open access (OA) journals for scholarly publications. According to the author, advancements in Internet technology have made it simple to create a website to host a journal. However, the author says that many scholars have become victims of e-mail spams from publishers for submissions. The author says that many publishers are performing invasive marketing through e-mail and dealing with submissions in an unprofessional manner.

Comments on the listing of journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals. Percentage of journals that are not accessible online; Publication of articles in the journals; Media date of the first available article in open access journals.

The article focuses on issues related to open access to scientific research and scholarship. Open access advocates play to the fears of scientific policymakers when they argue that restricted access to scientific writings has a direct economic cost. The barrier to entry that really matters to authors may be a barrier to getting published, which is a feeling that they are not being treated fairly or taken seriously by the establishment rather than a barrier to getting hold of what is published by others.