Juan Pablo Alperin

The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles

Despite growing interest in Open Access (OA) to scholarly literature, there is an unmet need for large-scale, up-to-date, and reproducible studies assessing the prevalence and characteristics of OA. We address this need using oaDOI, an open online service that determines OA status for 67 million articles. We use three samples, each of 100,000 articles, to investigate OA in three populations: (1) all journal articles assigned a Crossref DOI, (2) recent journal articles indexed in Web of Science, and (3) articles viewed by users of Unpaywall, an open-source browser extension that lets users find OA articles using oaDOI. We estimate that at least 28% of the scholarly literature is OA (19M in total) and that this proportion is growing, driven particularly by growth in Gold and Hybrid. The most recent year analyzed (2015) also has the highest percentage of OA (45%). Because of this growth, and the fact that readers disproportionately access newer articles, we find that Unpaywall users encounter OA quite frequently: 47% of articles they view are OA. Notably, the most common mechanism for OA is not Gold, Green, or Hybrid OA, but rather an under-discussed category we dub Bronze: articles made free-to-read on the publisher website, without an explicit Open license. We also examine the citation impact of OA articles, corroborating the so-called open-access citation advantage: accounting for age and discipline, OA articles receive 18% more citations than average, an effect driven primarily by Green and Hybrid OA. We encourage further research using the free oaDOI service, as a way to inform OA policy and practice.

Geographic variation in social media metrics: an analysis of Latin American journal articles

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of how the potential of altmetrics varies around the world by measuring the percentage of articles with non-zero metrics (coverage) for articles published from a developing region (Latin America). Design/methodology/approach – This study uses article metadata from a prominent Latin American journal portal, SciELO, and combines it with altmetrics data from Altmetric.com and with data collected by author-written scripts. The study is primarily descriptive, focusing on coverage levels disaggregated by year, country, subject area, and language. Findings – Coverage levels for most of the social media sources studied was zero or negligible. Only three metrics had coverage levels above 2 per cent – Mendeley, Twitter, and Facebook. Of these, Twitter showed the most significant differences with previous studies. Mendeley coverage levels reach those found by previous studies, but it takes up to two years longer for articles to be saved in the...

The academic ethics of open access to research and scholarship

In this article, we present the case for regarding the principles by which scholarly publications are disseminated and shared as a matter of academic ethics. The ethics of access have to do with recognizing peoples right to know what is known, as well as the value to humanity of having one of its best forms of arriving at knowledge as widely shared as possible. The level of access is often reduced by the financial interests of publishers in a market in which there is little sense of a rational order, given huge discrepancies in prices for similar products. At the same time, there are risks to limiting researchers’ access to scholarly resources, both for the quality of the knowledge that is not entirely open to review and for the production of new knowledge that it might inspire. Then, there are issues of access beyond the academy for professional practice and out of human interest, for both of which undue limitations raise what are, for us, more than academic ethical questions.

Brazil’s exception to the world-class university movement

The continued importance of university rankings has only served to fuel the growth of the ‘world-class’ university movement. There is a growing impression that, in a globalised and interconnected world, no country can do without a world-class university. No country, that is, except Brazil. While Brazil has the resources necessary to create a world-class university, evidence suggests there has been no attempt to create one. This paper draws on data from various sources to show that the government has instead focused on improving the quality of higher education in Brazil but has done so with a focus on national outcomes. Through government policies, Brazil has incentivised research, increased the number of doctoral degrees awarded and improved the quality of doctoral programmes. While these are the types of improvements needed for a world-class university, there is no evidence to indicate an interest in joining the world-class university movement.

Authorial and institutional stratification in open access publishing: the case of global health research

Using a database of recent articles published in the field of Global Health research, we examine institutional sources of stratification in publishing access outcomes. Traditionally, the focus on inequality in scientific publishing has focused on prestige hierarchies in established print journals. This project examines stratification in contemporary publishing with a particular focus on subscription vs. various Open Access (OA) publishing options. Findings show that authors working at lower-ranked universities are more likely to publish in closed/paywalled outlets, and less likely to choose outlets that involve some sort of Article Processing Charge (APCs; gold or hybrid OA). We also analyze institutional differences and stratification in the APC costs paid in various journals. Authors affiliated with higher-ranked institutions, as well as hospitals and non-profit organizations pay relatively higher APCs for gold and hybrid OA publications. Results suggest that authors affiliated with high-ranked universities and well-funded institutions tend to have more resources to choose pay options with publishing. Our research suggests new professional hierarchies developing in contemporary publishing, where various OA publishing options are becoming increasingly prominent. Just as there is stratification in institutional representation between different types of publishing access, there is also inequality within access types.

Making headlines: An analysis of US government-funded cancer research mentioned in online media

Background Considerable resources are devoted to producing knowledge about cancer, which in turn is disseminated to policymakers, practitioners, and the public. Online media are a key dissemination channel for cancer research. Yet which cancer research receives media attention is not well understood. Understanding the characteristics of journal articles that receive media attention is crucial to optimize research dissemination. Methods This cross-sectional study examines journal articles on cancer funded by the US government published in 2016, using data from PubMed and Altmetric to determine whether an article received online media attention. Frequencies and proportions were calculated to describe the cancer types and continuum stages covered in journal articles. Results 16.8% of articles published on US government-funded research were covered in the media. Published journal articles addressed all common cancers. Roughly one-fourth to one-fifth of journal articles within each cancer category received online media attention. Media mentions were disproportionate to actual burden of each cancer type (ie, incidence and mortality), with breast cancer articles receiving the most media mentions. Cancer prevention and control articles received less online media attention than diagnosis or therapy articles. Conclusion Findings revealed a mismatch between prevalent cancers and cancers highlighted in the media. Further, journal articles on cancer control and prevention received less media attention than other cancer continuum stages. Media mentions were not proportional to actual public cancer burden nor volume of scientific publications in each cancer category. Results highlight a need for continued research on the role of media, especially online media, in research dissemination.

Identifying diffusion patterns of research articles on Twitter: A case study of online engagement with open access articles:

The growing presence of research shared on social media, coupled with the increase in freely available research, invites us to ask whether scientific articles shared on platforms like Twitter diffuse beyond the academic community. We explore a new method for answering this question by identifying 11 articles from two open access biology journals that were shared on Twitter at least 50 times and by analyzing the follower network of users who tweeted each article. We find that diffusion patterns of scientific articles can take very different forms, even when the number of times they are tweeted is similar. Our small case study suggests that most articles are shared within single-connected communities with limited diffusion to the public. The proposed approach and indicators can serve those interested in the public understanding of science, science communication, or research evaluation to identify when research diffuses beyond insular communities.

The evaluation of scholarship in academic promotion and tenure processes: Past, present, and future

Review, promotion, and tenure (RPT) processes significantly affect how faculty direct their own career and scholarly progression. Although RPT practices vary between and within institutions, and affect various disciplines, ranks, institution types, genders, and ethnicity in different ways, some consistent themes emerge when investigating what faculty would like to change about RPT. For instance, over the last few decades, RPT processes have generally increased the value placed on research, at the expense of teaching and service, which often results in an incongruity between how faculty actually spend their time vs. what is considered in their evaluation. Another issue relates to publication practices: most agree RPT requirements should encourage peer-reviewed works of high quality, but in practice, the value of publications is often assessed using shortcuts such as the prestige of the publication venue, rather than on the quality and rigor of peer review of each individual item. Open access and online publishing have made these issues even murkier due to misconceptions about peer review practices and concerns about predatory online publishers, which leaves traditional publishing formats the most desired despite their restricted circulation. And, efforts to replace journal-level measures such as the impact factor with more precise article-level metrics (e.g., citation counts and altmetrics) have been slow to integrate with the RPT process. Questions remain as to whether, or how, RPT practices should be changed to better reflect faculty work patterns and reduce pressure to publish in only the most prestigious traditional formats. To determine the most useful way to change RPT, we need to assess further the needs and perceptions of faculty and administrators, and gain a better understanding of the level of influence of written RPT guidelines and policy in an often vague process that is meant to allow for flexibility in assessing individuals.

Twitter bot surveys: A discrete choice experiment to increase response rates

This paper presents a new methodology---the Twitter bot survey---that bridges the gap between social media research and web surveys. The methodology uses the Twitter APIs to identify a target population and then uses the API to deliver a question in the form of a regular Tweet. We hypothesized that this method would yield high response rates because users are posed a question within the social media platform and are not asked, as is the case with most web surveys, to follow a link away to a third party. To evaluate the response rate and identify the most effective mechanism for increasing it, we conducted a discrete choice experiment that evaluated three factors: question type, the use of an egoistic appeal, and the presence of contextual information. We found that, similar to traditional web surveys, multiple choice questions, egoistic appeals, and contextual information all contributed to higher response rates. Question variants that combined all three yielded a 40.0% response rate, thereby outperforming most other web surveys and demonstrating the promise of this new methodology. The approach can be extended to any other social media platforms where users typically interact with one another. The approach also offers the opportunity to bring together the advantages of social media research using APIs with the richness of information that can be collected from surveys.

Open Access in Latin America: a Paragon for the Rest of the World

SciELO is a remarkable decentralized publishing platform harboring over 1,200 peer-reviewed journals from fifteen countries located in four continents South America. Central-North America, Europe and Africa. Redalyc, based in Mexico, is another extraordinary system hosting almost 1,000 journals from fourteen Latin American countries plus Spain and Portugal. Governments around the world spend billions of dollars on infrastructure to support research excellence; platforms such as SciELO and Redalyc are extensions of this much larger investments in research. They reflect an enlightened understanding in Latin America that the wide dissemination of and access to research results is as important as the research itself. The rest of the world would do well to take note.