Towards Responsible Publishing | Plan S

<p>Seeking input from the research community to establish a community-based scholarly communication system Why discussing Responsible Publishing is important In the five years that have elapsed since the publication of the Plan S principles, the move towards full and immediate Open Access (OA) has become global and irreversible. However, academic publishing practices are not keeping […]</p>

Open peer review urgently requires evidence: A call to action

Open Peer Review is gaining prominence in attention and use, but to responsibly open up peer review there is an urgent need for additional evidence. This Perspective proposes a preliminary research agenda and issues a call-to-action.

The strain on scientific publishing

Scientists are increasingly overwhelmed by the volume of articles being published. Total articles indexed in Scopus and Web of Science have grown exponentially in recent years; in 2022 the article total was approximately ~47% higher than in 2016, which has outpaced the limited growth - if any - in the number of practising scientists. Thus, publication workload per scientist (writing, reviewing, editing) has increased dramatically. We define this problem as the strain on scientific publishing. To analyse this strain, we present five data-driven metrics showing publisher growth, processing times, and citation behaviours. We draw these data from web scrapes, requests for data from publishers, and material that is freely available through publisher websites. Our findings are based on millions of papers produced by leading academic publishers. We find specific groups have disproportionately grown in their articles published per year, contributing to this strain. Some publishers enabled this growth by adopting a strategy of hosting special issues, which publish articles with reduced turnaround times. Given pressures on researchers to publish or perish to be competitive for funding applications, this strain was likely amplified by these offers to publish more articles. We also observed widespread year-over-year inflation of journal impact factors coinciding with this strain, which risks confusing quality signals. Such exponential growth cannot be sustained. The metrics we define here should enable this evolving conversation to reach actionable solutions to address the strain on scientific publishing.

What Is A Repository For? – Building the Commons

What Is A Repository For? – Building the Commons