Najko Jahn

A study of institutional spending on open access publication fees in Germany.

Publication fees as a revenue source for open access publishing hold a prominent place on the agendas of researchers, policy makers, and academic publishers. This study contributes to the evolving empirical basis for funding these charges and examines how much German universities and research organisations spent on open access publication fees. Using self-reported cost data from the Open APC initiative, the analysis focused on the amount that was being spent on publication fees, and compared these expenditure with data from related Austrian (FWF) and UK (Wellcome Trust, Jisc) initiatives, in terms of both size and the proportion of articles being published in fully and hybrid open access journals. We also investigated how thoroughly self-reported articles were indexed in Crossref, a DOI minting agency for scholarly literature, and analysed how the institutional spending was distributed across publishers and journal titles. According to self-reported data from 30 German universities and research organisations between 2005 and 2015, expenditures on open access publication fees increased over the years in Germany and amounted to € 9,627,537 for 7,417 open access journal articles. The average payment was € 1,298, and the median was € 1,231. A total of 94% of the total article volume included in the study was supported in accordance with the price cap of € 2,000, a limit imposed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) as part of its funding activities for open access funding at German universities. Expenditures varied considerably at the institutional level. There were also differences in how much the institutions spent per journal and publisher. These differences reflect, at least in part, the varying pricing schemes in place including discounted publication fees. With an indexing coverage of 99%, Crossref thoroughly indexed the open access journals articles included in the study. A comparison with the related openly available cost data from Austria and the UK revealed that German universities and research organisations primarily funded articles in fully open access journals. By contrast, articles in hybrid journal accounted for the largest share of spending according to the Austrian and UK data. Fees paid for hybrid journals were on average more expensive than those paid for fully open access journals.

PlosOpenR --Exploring FP7 funded PLOS publications

This case study explores alternative science metrics on grant-supported research publications. The study is based on plosOpenR, a software package for the statistical computing environment R. plosOpenR facilitates access to the application programming interfaces API provided by Open Access publisher Public Library of Science PLOS and OpenAIRE --Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe.We report 1,166 PLOS articles that acknowledge grant support from 624 different research projects funded by the European Unions 7th Framework Programme FP7. plosOpenR allows the exploration of PLOS Article-Level Metrics PLOS ALM, including citations, usage and social media events as well as collaboration patterns on these articles. Findings reveal the potential of reusing data, that are made openly and automatically available by publishers, funders and the repository community.

Forschungsinformationssysteme in Hochschulen und Forschungseinrichtungen. Positionspapier

Forschungsberichterstattung ist mittlerweile Alltag auf allen Ebenen des Wissenschaftsbetriebs:Forschende erfullen regelmasig Berichtspflichten gegenuber externen Forderorganisationen und Geldgebern. Leitungen benotigen im Wettbewerb um Ausstattung und Kopfe eine Ubersicht uber die Vielzahl an Forschungsinformationen, um gute Entscheidungen treffen zu konnen. Die offentliche Rechenschaftslegung uber Forschung, insbesondere uber die Finanzierung, hat ebenfalls an Bedeutung gewonnen. Gleichzeitig haben Hochschulen und Forschungseinrichtungen immer noch uberraschend grose Probleme bei der Bereitstellung fachbezogener Informationen. Die Ursachen sind in den Institutionen meist ahnlich – eine verteile Datenhaltung ohne Schnittstellen, Verwaltungssysteme, die Forschungskontexte nicht abbilden, sowie die begrenzte Nutzbarkeit vorhandener Systeme fur die Durchfuhrung differenzierter Auswertungen. Mehrfacherfassungen sind an der Tagesordnung. Institutionsubergreifend bestehen weitere Hindernisse fur ein effizientes Informationsmanagement: Fach- und Forderdatenbanken werden isoliert betrieben, es fehlt an Schnittstellen und Austauschformaten und bei der Entwicklung von Systemen werden Standardisierungsmoglichkeiten zu wenig genutzt. Die Entwicklung finanzierbarer und funktionaler Forschungs-informationssysteme und vor allem der Austausch vorhandener Informationen gehort ebenso zur IT-Entwicklung fur die Wissenschaft, wie Campusmanagement oder geeignete Personal-und Finanzsysteme. Es ist schwer vorstellbar, dass Prozesse, die auf manuelle Eingaben und jahrliche Datenabfragen angewiesen sind, in den zahlreichen wissenschaftlichen Einrichtungen dieser Welt auf Dauer erfolgreich fortgefuhrt werden konnen. Ebenso wenig ist wahrscheinlich, dass die Berichtsanforderungen abnehmen. Das Positionspapier zeigt auf strategischer Ebene auf, welche konkreten Schritte zur Entwicklung eines nachhaltigen Informationsmanagements in der Forschungsberichterstattung gegangen werden mussen. Eine Verstandigung auf gemeinsame Standards ist die Grundvoraussetzung dafur, dass der nicht unbetrachtliche Aufwand fur den Betrieb der Systeme gesenkt werden kann und mobilen Forschenden ermoglicht wird, ihr Portfolio in verschiedene Anwendungen zu ubertragen und auch in andere Forschungseinrichtungen mitzunehmen. Die Arbeitsgruppe hat daruber hinaus konkrete handlungspraktische Hinweise fur Systemauswahl, Einfuhrung und Betrieb, Projektmanagement und Gestaltung der Systeme erarbeitet. Diese richten sich an Institutionen, die selbst ein Forschungsinformationssystem einfuhren oder entwickeln wollen.

Anthropological motivated usability evaluation: An exploration of IREON – international relations and area studies gateway

Purpose – The objective of this paper is to evaluate the usability of the recently developed IREON – International Relations and Area Studies Gateway – with the aid of an anthropological motivated research design. Within such an approach, the work environment and subject experiences of the test subjects become a crucial part of the observation.Design/methodology/approach – The objectives are achieved by contextualisation of the digital library under examination. Furthermore, previous evaluation models of digital libraries are discussed from an anthropological point of view. As a result, a multi‐method approach that is context‐relative and self‐reflexive is applied to assess the usability of IREON.Findings – The structural and cultural complexity of people involved in the development, operation and usage of IREON justifies a multi‐method approach. Whereas information specialists and web designers tend to focus on different kind of problems, there is a high degree of common discoverability between political...