Scholarly Publishing Commons^™

Building A Better Landscape For Research Dissemination, Scott Horowitz

Chemistry and Biochemistry: Faculty Scholarship

Let’s take a moment to think about where we’ve come to in scientific publishing. Once upon a time, journals and their publishers played an absolutely critical role in science’s growth and successes.  Many journal publishers are for-profit enterprises, and they still want to make profits even if they no longer serve an important purpose. By controlling the information, they can still force people to pay for services that are obsolete and manipulate the system in ways that stymie progress to maintain their market. Open access did not have the power to change this. Altogether, things are in bad shape. I …

Peer Review Of Open Educational Resource Textbooks, Todd Seguin, Helen Bischoff

The Southeastern Librarian

This article presents an investigation of the state of peer review for Open Educational Resource (OER) Textbooks, which denotes the variability of peer review practices across OER platforms. The environ-mental scan highlights the critical finding that the perception of quality between OER textbooks and commercially published or traditional textbooks is often linked to the presence or absence of a formal, pre-publication peer review process. Findings emphasized a strong preference on behalf of adopters and potential authors of OER textbooks to have a standardized process or guidance for pursuing pre-publication peer review. Thus, there is potential for future researchers, platforms, and …

The Importance Of Graduate-Student-Led Academic Journals Within Library And Information Science, Odin Halvorson

School of Information Student Research Journal

Graduate-student-led academic journals play a crucial role in fostering early career researchers' engagement with scholarly discourse within the field of Library and Information Science (LIS). This paper highlights the significance of these journals by examining their contributions to professional development, peer review practices, and inclusivity. Through a case study of the Student Research Journal (SRJ) at San Jose State University’s iSchool, I demonstrate how student-led journals provide invaluable experiential learning opportunities in leadership, organization, and research skills. The SRJ exemplifies these benefits by achieving international recognition with minimal resources, showcasing its impact-to-cost ratio. This paper also discusses the journal's role …

Gender And Peer Review, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Getting Published And Raising Research Visibility, Pin Pin Yeo

Research Collection Library

Embarking on publishing your research can be exciting yet daunting. This seminar will guide you through crafting a compelling paper, navigating the submission process, and enhancing your paper's visibility. Learn what editors and reviewers seek, how to select the right journal, and how to publicise your research effectively. Whether you're a seasoned researcher or new to publishing, join us to amplify the impact of your work and share your discoveries with the world.

Information Ethics, Publishing And Plagiarism Among Academics, Philip Chike Aghadiuno, Simon Shachia Oryila

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The need for academics to be authority in their fields of specialisation is a fundamental requirement of the academic life. Yet, some academics do not wish to undergo the rigorous career path to excellence in teaching and research. Other younger academics wish to but do not know how to go about it. It is in the light of this that this article examines the inter-relationship between information ethics, publishing and plagiarism in the life of an academic. It also examines the gains of a productive academic life and how failure to publish or uphold ethical conduct in research or publishing …

Stories Of Open: Opening Peer Review Through Narrative Inquiry (Acrl Publications In Librarianship No. 76), Emily Ford

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Peer review processes in scholarly publishing are often hidden behind layers of opacity, leaving authors—and even reviewers—with many questions about the process. Open peer review is one way to improve the practice. It can shorten the time between manuscript submission and publication, hold reviewers accountable for their work, make more apparent the hidden labor of reviewing and editing, allow for collaborative discourse between authors and reviewers, and more. Even with these benefits, open peer review is not widely accepted or understood. Few academic librarians have experienced it, and each implementation can be different; anything open is highly nuanced and contextual. …

10 Years Of Excellence: Celebrating The Journal, Authors, Editors, And Readers, Catherine Liebau-Nelsen

School of Information Student Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Open Peer Review, Christine L Ferguson

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

In this issue of Serials Review, the Balance Point column delves into issues surrounding peer review, paying particular attention to open peer review. Beginning with some discussion of the history and development of peer review, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of traditional peer review, the column addresses open peer review (OPR) processes and the pros and cons of OPR. Topics such as the mechanisms of open peer review, faculty credit for peer review, as well as open peer review in the Library and Information Science (LIS) field are also touched on.

Reimagining Peer Review, Emily Ford

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

As you may recall, the 2020 Critical Library and Pedagogy Symposium instituted an open peer review process—not masking submitters’ names and other identifying information—to review proposed sessions. This decision came after the committee noted a lack of diversity in accepted sessions using a closed review process. Using open peer review allowed the committee to balance accepted proposals and offer a diverse range of views and experiences among presenters. This hour-long facilitated discussion will examine bias and power structures inherent in peer review. It will be an interactive session that allows participants to critically examine their views and previous experiences with …

Lessons Learned From Teaching Scholarly Communication Alongside A Student-Run Journal, Melissa Seelye

FIMS Presentations

This presentation describes the development and evolution of the Scholarly Communication and Open Access Publishing course in the Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program at Western University. The course has been offered as an online elective once a year since 2018, and its initial impetus was to provide a sustainable peer review model for the MLIS student-run journal Emerging Library & Information Perspectives (ELIP). Students in the class are tasked with peer reviewing submissions and providing additional quality control during the production process, but the journal complements the curriculum, as opposed to driving it. Experiential learning opportunities are …

Developing A Research Data Policy Framework For All Journals And Publishers, Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Natasha Simons, Azhar Hussain, Rebecca Grant, Simon Goudie

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

More journals and publishers – and funding agencies and institutions – are introducing research data policies. But as the prevalence of policies increases, there is potential to confuse researchers and support staff with numerous or conflicting policy requirements. We define and describe 14 features of journal research data policies and arrange these into a set of six standard policy types or tiers, which can be adopted by journals and publishers to promote data sharing in a way that encourages good practice and is appropriate for their audience’s perceived needs. Policy features include coverage of topics such as data citation, data …

Moving Peer Review Transparency From Process To Praxis, Emily Ford

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Scholarly publications often work to provide transparency of peer-review processes, posting policy information to their websites as suggested by the Committee on Publication Ethics’ (COPE) Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Publishing. Yet this falls short in providing peer-review transparency. Using examples from an interview-based qualitative study, this article argues that scholarly publications should move from peer-review process transparency to a praxis of transparency in peer review. Praxis infers that values inform practices. Scholarly publications should therefore use clear communication practices in all matters of business, and bolster transparency efforts, delineating rights and responsibilities of all players in …

Navigating Content And Peer Review In An Online Journal, Kelley F. Rowan

Digital Commons Southeastern User Group (DC SEUG) 2019

This session explores the use of Digital Commons as both a hosting site and peer review and management tool for the creation of an online journal. In 2018 Florida International University (FIU) Libraries launched Athenaeum: Scholarly Works of the FIU Libraries Faculty and Staff. Athenaeum is meant to collect both published and unpublished articles, conference posters, and presentations of library faculty and staff as they pertain to librarianship. The goal is to provide librarians with another discovery layer for their scholarly work and to help new librarians acquire peer reviewed articles by offering peer review before inclusion in Athenaeum. …

Gender Differences In Peer Review Outcomes And Manuscript Impact At Six Journals Of Ecology And Evolution, Charles W. Fox, C. E. Timothy Paine

Entomology Faculty Publications

The productivity and performance of men is generally rated more highly than that of women in controlled experiments, suggesting conscious or unconscious gender biases in assessment. The degree to which editors and reviewers of scholarly journals exhibit gender biases that influence outcomes of the peer‐review process remains uncertain due to substantial variation among studies. We test whether gender predicts the outcomes of editorial and peer review for >23,000 research manuscripts submitted to six journals in ecology and evolution from 2010 to 2015. Papers with female and male first authors were equally likely to be sent for peer review. However, papers …

Completion Of An Experiment, Michael J. Imperiale, Ira Blader, Patricia Bradford, Sarah E. F. D'Orazio, W. Paul Duprex, Craig D. Ellermeier, Ana Fernandez-Sesma, Katherine Mcmahon, Aaron Mitchell, Marcela F. Pasetti, Susannah Tringe

Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Redefining The Review Process For Collaborative Librarianship, Jill Emery, Michael Levine-Clark

Collaborative Librarianship

No abstract provided.

The Effectiveness Of Journals As Arbiters Of Scientific Impact, C. E. Timothy Paine, Charles W. Fox

Entomology Faculty Publications

Academic publishers purport to be arbiters of knowledge, aiming to publish studies that advance the frontiers of their research domain. Yet the effectiveness of journal editors at identifying novel and important research is generally unknown, in part because of the confidential nature of the editorial and peer review process. Using questionnaires, we evaluated the degree to which journals are effective arbiters of scientific impact on the domain of Ecology, quantified by three key criteria. First, journals discriminated against low‐impact manuscripts: The probability of rejection increased as the number of citations gained by the published paper decreased. Second, journals were more …

Considering Developmental Peer Review, Wendi Arant Kaspar, Sarah Hare, Cara Evanson, Emily Ford

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

This editorial is a collaborative discussion of College & Research Libraries’ open peer review experiment, representing the unique perspectives and voices of those playing roles.

Scholarship As An Open Conversation: Using Open Peer Review In Library Instruction, Emily Ford

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

This article explores the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy’s frame, Scholarship as a Conversation. This frame asserts that information literate students have the disposition, skills, and knowledge to recognize and participate in disciplinary scholarly conversations. By investigating the peer-review process as part of scholarly conversations, this article provides a brief literature review on peer review in information literacy instruction, and argues that by using open peer review (OPR) models for teaching, library workers can allow students to gain a deeper understanding of scholarly conversations. OPR affords students the ability to begin dismantling the systemic oppression that blinded peer review and …

Language And Socioeconomics Predict Geographic Variation In Peer Review Outcomes At An Ecology Journal, C. Sean Burns, Charles W. Fox

Information Science Faculty Publications

Papers submitted by scientists located in western nations generally fare better in the peer review process than do papers submitted by scientists from elsewhere. This paper examines geographic variation in peer review outcomes (whether a manuscript is sent for review, review scores obtained, and final decisions by editors) for 3529 submissions over a 4.5 year period at the journal Functional Ecology. In particular, we test whether geographic variation in language and socioeconomics are adequate to explain most or are all of this variation. There was no relationship between the geographic regions of handling editors and the decisions to send …

Advancing An Open Ethos With Open Peer Review, Emily Ford

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Guest Editorial

Open source. Open access. Open data. Open notebooks. Open government. Open educational resources. Open access workflows. To be open is to have a disposition favoring transparent and collaborative efforts.

Open is everywhere. Since the late 90’s when developers in Silicon Valley adopted the term ‘open source’ (suggested by Christine Peterson), the open movement has grown by leaps and bounds. The developers, who met after the web browser company Netscape made its source code open, articulated that ‘open’ “…illustrated a valuable way to engage with potential software users and developers, and convince them to create and improve source code …

Recruitment Of Reviewers Is Becoming Harder At Some Journals: A Test Of The Influence Of Reviewer Fatigue At Six Journals In Ecology And Evolution, Charles W. Fox, Arianne Y. K. Albert, Timothy H. Vines

Entomology Faculty Publications

Background: It is commonly reported by editors that it has become harder to recruit reviewers for peer review and that this is because individuals are being asked to review too often and are experiencing reviewer fatigue. However, evidence supporting these arguments is largely anecdotal.

Main body: We examine responses of individuals to review invitations for six journals in ecology and evolution. The proportion of invitations that lead to a submitted review has been decreasing steadily over 13 years (2003–2015) for four of the six journals examined, with a cumulative effect that has been quite substantial (average decline from 56% of …

Can Scientists And Their Institutions Become Their Own Open Access Publishers?, Karen Shashok

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

This article offers a personal perspective on the current state of academic publishing, and posits that the scientific community is beset with journals that contribute little valuable knowledge, overload the community’s capacity for high-quality peer review, and waste resources. Open access publishing can offer solutions that benefit researchers and other information users, as well as institutions and funders, but commercial journal publishers have influenced open access policies and practices in ways that favor their economic interests over those of other stakeholders in knowledge creation and sharing. One way to free research from constraints on access is the diamond route of …

Being Critical And Constructive: A Guide To Peer Reviewing For Librarians, Katherine G. Akers

Library Scholarly Publications

Not applicable

Keeping Up With… Open Peer Review, Emily Ford

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Open Peer Review is a current and developing practice in scholarly publishing that librarians need to continue to explore and discuss. To that end ACRL should continue to support experiments with and conversations about OPR in its publications. As academic librarians, we observe and engage with new practices in scholarly communication, and OPR should be no exception. Whether academic librarianship embraces OPR as a model of peer review for its publications, or we simply observe experiments in other disciplines, we can position ourselves to better support our patrons and our publishing ventures by examining OPR.

Opening Review In Lis Journals: A Status Report, Emily Ford

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Introduction: Peer-review practices in scholarly publishing are changing. Digital publishing mechanisms allow for open peer review, a peer review process that discloses author and reviewer identities to one another. This model of peer review is increasingly implemented in scholarly publishing. In science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines, open peer review is implemented in journal publishing processes, and, in the humanities and social sciences, it is often coupled with new scholarship practices, such as the digital humanities. This article reports findings from an exploratory study on peer-review and publishing practices in Library and Information Science (LIS), focusing on LIS’s relationships …

Data From: Opening Review In Lis Journals: A Status Report, Emily Ford

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

This data includes a .csv file with data from survey responses. The following abstract describes the research study. The purpose of this study was to gain an overview of open peer review practices and attitudes of scholarly journal editors in the field of Library and Information Science. The survey posed questions regarding current publishing and review practices, and inquired about changes journals may have made to publication and review processes. Survey participation was solicited from 253 journal editors of LIS journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals and Journal Citation Reports. 42 complete responses and 11 incomplete responses …

What Is Era Really Measuring?, Lyndall Adams, Clive Barstow, Paul Uhlmann

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

How successful is ERA in measuring creative research? The ERA (2015) results would appear to advantage: citations over peer review, traditional research over non-traditional outputs and certain geographical locations over others. If indeed this is true, what are the implications for the future development of NTOs in this country given the recent article by NAVA (Winikoff, 2016), presenting the debate about the state of play of our art schools as one of survival and loss. The case for survival is one that needs to be closely examined where local and geographical factors are at play.

The Relationship Between Manuscript Title Structure And Success: Editorial Decisions And Citation Performance For An Ecological Journal, Charles W. Fox, C. Sean Burns

Entomology Faculty Publications

A poorly chosen article title may make a paper difficult to discover or discourage readership when discovered, reducing an article's impact. Yet, it is unclear how the structure of a manuscript's title influences readership and impact. We used manuscript tracking data for all manuscripts submitted to the journal Functional Ecology from 2004 to 2013 and citation data for papers published in this journal from 1987 to 2011 to examine how title features changed and whether a manuscript's title structure was predictive of success during the manuscript review process and/or impact (citation) after publication. Titles of manuscripts submitted to Functional Ecology …