Ninth Level Ireland

“I recently wrote a short ‘comment’ for the American Journal of Bioethics. The piece is 1788 words long, the names and affiliations of my co-author and myself included. So that will make for 3, perhaps 4 printed pages, right? Now, Taylor and Francis, the publisher of the AJoBE offered the possibility to make this piece Open Access. Price: $2,950. I say: ridiculous …” (more)

[Ingrid Robeyns, Crooked Timber, 17 May]

“Regulars at this blog will be familiar with the dim view that I have of impact factors, in particular their mis-appropriation for the evaluation of individual researchers and their work. I have argued for their elimination …” (more)

[Stephen Curry, Reciprocal Space, 16 May]

“Submitting a paper to a new open access journal can be a risky venture: More and more companies are popping up with an offer to publish a report for a fee but deliver less than expected …” (more)

[Jocelyn Kaiser, ScienceInsider, 9 May]

“In response to last week’s piece on how open access will enhance academic freedom, Kyle Grayson responds by outlining three key reasons why open access will directly – and indirectly – erode academic freedom in the arts, humanities, and social sciences …” (more)

[Impact of Social Sciences, 9 May]

“I declare that the serials crisis, the event that gave birth to the open-access movement, is over. I base my declaration on my observations as an academic librarian and on the scholarly literature …” (more)

[Scholarly Open Access, 7 May]

“Of course we need evidence-based published science, says Peter Scott, but we also need to make room for creative thinking, which does not always lead to publication …” (more)

[Guardian, 6 May]

“… Instead of access issues, I think what we’ve begun arguing about has been about how best to publish, what to publish, and when to publish — thereby positioning convenience for the benefit of authors against selectivity for the benefit of a community. Convenience is not the same as speed, however …” (more)

[Kent Anderson, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2 May]

“On April, 8, I was quoted in a New York Times article about questionable open-access publishers and questionable conferences. Since that day I’ve been happy to receive many emails, some with suggestions about possible publishers and standalone journals to add to my lists …” (more)

[Scholarly Open Access, 30 April]

“Are politicians stealing our academic freedom? Is their fetish with open access publishing leading to a ‘pay to say’ system for the rich? Will the trendy goal of making publicly financed research freely available skew the world of scholarship even more in the direction of the natural sciences? I don’t think so …” (more)

[Curt Rice, Impact of Social Sciences, 30 April]

“Academic publishing and open access alternatives to the subscription-based system were discussed last week in front of the Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) Parliamentary Select Committee. Ann McKechin MP shares her thoughts on the discussion …” (more)

[Impact of Social Sciences, 21 April]

“The power of funding alone should not be enough to override academic freedom, argues Curt Rice, nor does open access automatically skew the world of scholarship …” (more)

[Guardian Professional, 22 April]

“Today, SPARC released a new community resource, Article-Level Metrics – A SPARC Primer, delving into Article-Level Metrics (ALMs) an emerging hot topic in the scholarly publishing arena …” (more)

[Greg Tananbaum, Scholarship 2.0, 18 April]

“Data being made available online is growing at a rate of 50% per annum, and this includes data at the heart of the Humanities – data which forms a critical part of our cultural and social heritage. This event will include short presentations from our guest speakers, and a lively dialogue with the audience in a panel format, followed by a wine/coffee reception that will allow for the dialogue to continue in a less formal setting …” (more)

[Digital Repository Ireland, 18 April]

“The recent sale of Mendeley to Elsevier for upwards of US$65 million (some estimates have pegged the sale at closer to US$100 million) has outraged open access (OA) and open data advocates, who had come to believe that Mendeley was on the side of the angels …” (more)

[Kent Anderson, The Scholarly Kitchen, 17 April]

“When the august state of Illinois bruited about open-access legislation meant to apply to publicly-funded institutions, the Loon honestly believed it no more than a strange, though encouraging, fluke. She didn’t even bother to mention it here. Now New York is considering it as well …” (more)

[Gavia Libraria, 16 April]

“The UK coalition government, desperate to address sluggish growth, is promoting open access publishing, which aims to make peer-refereed journal articles available online at no cost to readers …” (more)

[Abby Ghobadian, Yehuda Baruch and Mustafa Özbilgin, FT.com, 7 April]

“It should come as no surprise that Elsevier’s venture into ‘open access’ involves creating a new hybrid of free and toll access. In brief, authors publishing in Elsevier’s new open access journals have an option of Creative Commons licenses (good), but are also expected to sign an exclusive license agreement …” (more)

[The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, 5 April]

“It’s a rare thing indeed that a parliamentary question gets asked about academic library subscriptions but that’s exactly what happened in Dáil Éireann on 3rd March 2013 …” (more)

[DarkRepository, 30 March]

“Michael Eisen doesn’t hold back when invited to vent. ‘It’s still ludicrous how much it costs to publish research — let alone what we pay’, he declares. The biggest travesty, he says, is that the scientific community carries out peer review — a major part of scholarly publishing — for free, yet subscription-journal publishers charge billions of dollars per year …” (more)

[Richard Van Noorden, Nature News & Comment, 27 March]

“The entire editorial board of a US academic journal has resigned in protest over restrictions that would require scholars to wait up to 18 months before making their published research more widely available on open access, or pay a fee of nearly $3000 …” (more)

[Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation, 26 March]