Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing
Citation: Jonathan P. Tennant, Harry Crane, Tom Crick, Jacinto Davila, Asura Enkhbaya, Johanna Havemann, Bianca Kramer, Ryan Martin, Paola Masuzzo, Andy Nobes, Curt Rice, Bárbara Rivera-López, Tony Ross-Hellauer, Susanne Sattler, Paul D. Thacker, Marc Vanholsbeeck Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing.
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Summary
Literature review and commentary on ten often debated issues on open scholarly publishing. Issues were crowdsourced on twitter and distilled into list of ten by authors.
1: Will preprints get your research ‘scooped’?
No, preprints prevent scooping by providing a public record, and there is virtually no evidence of scooping through history of preprints starting with arXiv in 1991.
2: Do the Journal Impact Factor and journal brand measure the quality of authors and their research?
No, JIF is simplistic and has various bad effects, some stemming from misuse and manipulation.
3: Does approval by peer review prove that you can trust a research paper, its data and the reported conclusions?
No, some examples of misses and manipulation are cited, along with the replication crisis.
4: Will the quality of the scientific literature suffer without journal-imposed peer review?
No, journal-imposed peer review diminishes appropriate skepticism, authors want more and different peer review, but more testing is needed.
5: Is Open Access responsible for creating predatory publishers?
No, based on first definition of predatory journal, many non-OA journals are predatory. Unethical use of some OA business models and lack of access in some regions to publishing in recognized journals contribute to predatory publishing.
6: Is copyright transfer required to publish and protect authors?
No.
7: Does gold Open Access have to cost a lot of money for authors, and is it synonymous with the APC business model?
No, 74% of journals listed in DOAJ do not have an APC.
8: Are embargo periods on ‘green’ OA needed to sustain publishers?
No, lack of evidence short or zero embargoes impact subscriptions.
9: Are Web of Science and Scopus global platforms of knowledge?
No, they are under represent non-North American or European, and non-English language journals; studies using their data to report on scientific [under]production in other regions are flawed.
10: Do publishers add value to the scholarly communication process?
Yes, however unclear more than the costs they impose.
Theoretical and Practical Relevance
Another summary: https://blog.dshr.org/2019/05/ten-hot-topics.html
