BREAKING THE GLASS; Science, December 5, 2024

 SOFIA MOUTINHO , Science; BREAKING THE GLASS

In the end he got the waiver, but the experience turned him away from commercial journals published in the Global North and toward a model that has flourished in Latin America: nonprofit open-access journals. These publications, usually run by academic institutions or scientific societies, charge relatively low APCs, in what’s known as the gold model, or nothing at all, known as the diamond model. Science analyzed nearly 20,000 journals listed in a repository of open-access journals between 2019 and 2023, and found that one in four diamond model journals is published in Latin America. Most—83%—are noncommercial, based at universities.

Latin America is also a global pioneer in trying to overcome a long-standing challenge for noncommercial journals in the Global South: invisibility. Most are published in languages other than English, the lingua franca of science, and only a small fraction of them are indexed in international citation and index systems. “I know that my papers will probably not be read on the same scale as if I published in a high-impact journal,” says Oliveira, whose first published paper appeared in Nature. That lack of visibility adds to the inequities facing scientists in the Global South who seek alternatives to commercial publishers, with their high fees or subscription paywalls.

So Latin American academics have developed platforms that gather in one place papers that would otherwise be scattered across individual journal websites and university libraries, boosting their visibility. The upstart platforms are a model for the rest of the world, says Johan Rooryck, executive director of Coalition S. The United Nations, for instance, highlighted the Latin American model during a summit last year aimed at expanding the diamond model of publishing. By continually promoting affordable open access, Latin American platforms “show us the way on how to achieve an equitable publishing model at a larger scale than just a local scale,” Rooryck says."

Thousands of published studies may contain images with incorrect copyright licences; Chemistry World, October 28, 2024

 DALMEET SINGH CHAWLA, Chemistry World ; Thousands of published studies may contain images with incorrect copyright licences

"More than 9000 studies published in open-access journals may contain figures published under the wrong copyright licence.

These open-access journals publish content under the CC-BY copyright licence, which means that anyone can copy, distribute or transmit that work including for commercial purposes as long as the original creator is credited. 

All the 9000+ studies contain figures created using the commercial scientific illustration service BioRender, which should technically mean that these are also available for free reuse. But that doesn’t appear to be the case.

When Simon Dürr, a computational enzymologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in Switzerland, reached out to BioRender to ask if two figures produced using BioRender by the authors of both studies were free to reuse, he was told that they weren’t. The company said it would approach both journals and ask them to issue corrections.

Dürr runs an open-source, free-to-use competitor to BioRender called BioIcons and wanted to host figures produced using BioRender that were published in open access journals because he thought they would be free to use. According to Dürr, he followed up with BioRender near the end of 2023, flagging a total of 9277 academic papers published under the CC-BY copyright licence but never heard back on their copyright status. In total, Dürr says he found 12,059 papers if one includes other copyright licences that restrict commercial use or have other similar conditions."

A Science Journal Invokes ‘the Creator,’ and Science Pushes Back; Wired.com, 3/3/16

Madison Kotack, Wired.com; A Science Journal Invokes ‘the Creator,’ and Science Pushes Back:

"After a couple days of getting batted around in social media and comments sections, the journal retracted the whole paper. No editors from PLoS ONE responded to requests for comment.

Since PLoS ONE is open-source, it’s tempting to wonder if this kind of mistake calls into question the quality of all open-access scientific journals? PLoS ONE‘s website describes its editorial and peer-review practices, but also says that it can publish faster than old-school journals because it leaves out “subjective assessments of significance or scope to focus on technical, ethical and scientific rigor.”

Yet somehow Creationism got past peer review.

On the other hand, the old big-dog journals have their problems, too—plagiarism, errors, and so on. “I don’t think this will mean anything for open access journals, and it shouldn’t, because it happens at top journals, too,” says Jonathan Eisen, chair of PLoS Biology‘s advisory board and a big-time advocate for open-access (though unaffiliated with PLoS ONE)."

Academics Want You to Read Their Work for Free; Atlantic, 1/26/16

Jane C. Hu, Atlantic; Academics Want You to Read Their Work for Free:

"Whitaker, who founded two other Elsevier journals and has a combined 50 years of editorial experience with the company, came into his new position after he heard about the former Lingua board’s actions and contacted Elsevier to express his dismay. “I disagreed with just about everything they were doing,” he said. He came out of retirement to sign a new contract with Elsevier in early January, and has since recruited several interim editors. He says that he and his editorial staff have received a fair amount of animosity from Glossa supporters.

But Whitaker stands firmly in favor of for-profit publishing; noting that publishers’ profits allow them to invest in new projects. (Elsevier gave Whitaker funds to found two new journals—Brain and Cognition and Brain and Language.) Plus, he says, profits ensure longevity. “That’s one of the many reasons I support the idea of a publisher that makes money,” he says. “Lingua will be here when I retire, and Lingua will be here when I die.”

The fate of Cognition, meanwhile remains to be seen. Barner and Snedeker plan to submit their petition to Elsevier on Wednesday. “The battle has been taken from a very small region—linguistics—to a much larger one,” says Rooryck. Barner and Snedeker are staying silent about their long-term plans, but their request sends a clear message to publishers: Scientists are ready for change."

Frauds: 17 Medical Journals Publish This Scientist’s Fake Medical Research; Higher Perspective, 1/15

Higher Perspective; Frauds: 17 Medical Journals Publish This Scientist’s Fake Medical Research:

"Mark Shrime, a Harvard scientist pursuing a PhD in health policy wanted to see just how easy it is to get medical research published in various medical journals. Every day he says he receives at least one request from an open-access medical journal asking to publish his research.

The catch? They only need $500 to publish it.

So Shrime decided to see how easy it would be to public a bogus article. So he made one up using www.randomtextgenerator.com. He titled the article “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?” and wrote that the authors were Pinkerton A. LeBrain and Orson Welles. The articles subtitle was “The surgical and neoplastic role of cacao extract in breakfast cereals.”

Shrime submitted his bogus article to some 37 journals, and two weeks later, 17 journals had accepted it. Note: They haven’t published them yet, but say they’re ready to just as soon as Mr. Shrime sends them that $500."