scholarly journals Increasing the volume of Gold Open Access journals in SSHA

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rolf Halse ◽  
Lena Cecilie Linge

Currently, there is an apparent lack of Gold Open Access journals in Social Science, Humanities and Arts (SSHA), as showcased by the open letter the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) sent to the SSHA communities 16 May 2019. DOAJ asserts in the letter that they agree 100% that DOAJ’s coverage of SSHA journals is insufficient. The implications of the lack of available outlets for research articles by SSHA grantholders in the early years of Plan S implementation may include disadvantages for researchers in the fields. A mandatory criterion for Plan S compliant OA journals is that they must be registered in the DOAJ. One consequence of the lack of coverage is when SSHA scholars seek funding from any of the research agencies or funders that are part of cOAlition S, as scholars will encounter difficulties in finding relevant quality Gold OA journals in which they can publish their research. This could impair SSHA scholars’ chances of receiving grants. Because of the ongoing and accelerated changes to the scholarly publication landscape today, there is a need to support SSHA communities with identifying quality journals which qualifies as Gold OA. To achieve ‘true’ Gold OA status a journal needs to be indexed in DOAJ, as Gold OA journals are in practice defined by their inclusion in this directory. The European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS) provides a curated register of peer reviewed journals in the social sciences, arts and humanities. Today ERIH PLUS includes 7,473 scientific journals, and 2,220 of the journals are also listed by DOAJ. Furthermore, ERIH PLUS covers 1,469,204 scholarly Gold OA publications, according to data from Dimensions. However, less than half of these, 712,135 publications, are today indexed in DOAJ. Dimensions (free version) classifies Gold OA publications in the following way: “Gold – refers to articles in fully accessible open access journals that are available immediately upon publication without a license”. In this project we seek to identify DOAJ inclusion candidates from the group of journals that have published the 757,069 Gold OA publications that are not listed in DOAJ, according to Dimensions data. We will work with editors/editorial staff of journals that we identify as having the potential to be indexed by DOAJ. The goal is to increase the volume of Gold OA journals in SSHA. We will contact, present arguments and provide support to journal editors in order to convince them to apply for inclusion in DOAJ. In the poster, we will outline and describe some of the key tasks for the project in order to reach our goal. The project that we will briefly outline will center on: Describing incentives for obtaining ‘true’ Gold OA status for SSHA journals Identifying journals in ERIH PLUS for possible DOAJ inclusion Efforts to flip SSHA journals to ‘true’ Gold OA

Mousaion ◽  
10.25159/1262 ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Williams Nwagwu ◽  
Salmon Makhubela

This article reports on an examination of the uptake and status of open access journals (OAJs) in Africa based on the listing of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The article addresses the questions of the pattern of distribution of OAJs in Africa and examines the distribution of the oldest closed access journals that have migrated to the open access (OA) platform; the distribution of the publishers; and the licensing regime and publication languages. We first downloaded all the content of the DOAJ into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and then into Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, after editing. For data on publishers, the list of publishers was pasted into the MS Excel spreadsheet and physically sorted. As at November 2014, the total volume of OAJs globally registered in the DOAJ was 10 152, including those born closed which have now migrated to the OA platform. Globally, Europe produced the largest number of journals, followed by Asia, North America, South America and Africa. South America produced the highest number of journals per country. Egypt had the highest number of journals through the activities of one organisation, Hindawi. A journal of African origin is the oldest closed access journal in the DOAJ database; while corporations dominate OAJ publishing. Generally, OA uptake in Africa is considerably low. We suggest that the DOAJ should be proactive in sensitising publishers and other stakeholders in Africa about their services and the benefits, and how to include their journals in the database.


2013 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 368-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marisa L. Ramirez ◽  
Joan T. Dalton ◽  
Gail McMillan ◽  
Max Read ◽  
Nancy H. Seamans

An increasing number of higher education institutions worldwide are requiring submission of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) by graduate students and are subsequently providing open access to these works in online repositories. Faculty advisors and graduate students are concerned that such unfettered access to their work could diminish future publishing opportunities. This study investigated social sciences, arts, and humanities journal editors’ and university press directors’ attitudes toward ETDs. The findings indicate that manuscripts that are revisions of openly accessible ETDs are always welcome for submission or considered on a case-by-case basis by 82.8 percent of journal editors and 53.7 percent of university press directors polled.


Author(s):  
Anna Mura ◽  
Tony J. Prescott

The Living Machines approach, which can be seen as an exemplar methodology for a wider initiative towards “convergent science,” implies and requires a transdisciplinary understanding that bridges from between science and engineering and to the social sciences, arts, and humanities. In addition, it emphasizes a mix of basic and applied approaches whilst also requiring an awareness of the societal context in which modern research and innovation activities are conducted. This chapter explores the education landscape for postgraduate programs related to the concept of Living Machines, highlighting some challenges that should be addressed and providing suggestions for future course development and policy making. The chapter also reviews some of the within-discipline and across-discipline programs that currently exist, particularly within Europe and the US, and outlines an exemplar degree program that could provide the multi-faceted training needed to pursue research and innovation in Living Machines.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Ernst ◽  
Judith Schulte

Researchers not actively seeking information about Open Access and scholars who are not actively informed by their institutions might be concerned about publishing Open Access due to lack of information. Questions such as “Why is Open Access necessary and what do I gain?”, “What happens to my rights as an author?”, and “Why was I not told about this discount before I paid the full APC from my project fund?” might come up. This workshop is directed at representatives of research organizations and universities (e.g. Open Access offices, project coordinators, and interested researchers) on the topic of helping researchers finding answers to these questions and advocating for Open Access in the humanities and social sciences. The workshop seeks to discuss aspects that have been identified by participants priorly as most pressing to discuss. We therefore invite all registered participants to fill in a short survey by 12 October 2020. For any questions, please don’t hesitate contacting Elisabeth Ernst and Judith Schulte ([email protected]) OPERAS is the European Research Infrastructure for open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities. Its Special Interest Group on “Advocacy” works on topics related to the communication and advocating of Open Access in the social sciences and humanities and of those disciplines.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Bennett ◽  
Robin Roth

Conservation actions most often occur in peopled seascapes and landscapes. As a result, conservation decisions cannot rely solely on evidence from the natural sciences, but must also be guided by the social sciences, the arts and the humanities. However, we are concerned that too much of the current attention is on research that serves an instrumental purpose, by which we mean that the social sciences are used to justify and promote status quo conservation practices. The reasons for engaging the social sciences, as well as the arts and the humanities, go well beyond making conservation more effective. In this editorial, we briefly reflect on how expanding the types of social science research and the contributions of the arts and the humanities can help to achieve the transformative potential of conservation.


Publications ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Erik Frantsvåg ◽  
Tormod Eismann Strømme

Much of the debate on Plan S seems to concentrate on how to make toll-access journals open access, taking for granted that existing open access journals are Plan S-compliant. We suspected this was not so and set out to explore this using Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) metadata. We conclude that a large majority of open access journals are not Plan S-compliant, and that it is small publishers in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) not charging article processing charges (APC) that will face the largest challenge with becoming compliant. Plan S needs to give special considerations to smaller publishers and/or non-APC based journals.


Heliyon ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (7) ◽  
pp. e04522
Author(s):  
Thu-Trang Vuong ◽  
Manh-Toan Ho ◽  
Minh-Hoang Nguyen ◽  
Thanh-Huyen T. Nguyen ◽  
Thanh-Dung Nguyen ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ángel Borrego

This study aimed to measure the impact of digital heritage collections by analysing the citations received in scholarly outputs. Google Scholar was used to retrieve the scholarly outputs citing Memòria Digital de Catalunya (MDC), a cooperative, open-access repository containing digitized collections related to Catalonia and its heritage. The number of documents citing MDC has grown steadily since the creation of the repository in 2006. Most citing documents are scholarly outputs in the form of articles, proceedings and monographs, and academic theses and dissertations. Citing documents mainly pertain to the humanities and the social sciences and are in local languages. The most cited MDC collection contains digitized ancient Catalan periodicals. The study shows that Google Scholar is a suitable tool for providing evidence of the scholarly impact of digital heritage collections. Google Scholar indexes the full-text of documents, facilitating the retrieval of citations inserted in the text or in sections that are not the final list of references. It also indexes document types, such as theses and dissertations, which contain a significant share of the citations to digital heritage collections.


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