1.How can I incentivise, support and acknowledge open science practices among authors and reviewers?
Publishers have a crucial role in incentivising, supporting and acknowledging Open Science (OS) practices among authors and reviewers. They can do so in at least three important ways:
a) They can adapt their policies and submission workflows in a way that allows or even requires certain OS practices. For instance, they can accept submissions previously available as preprints, they can require data availability statements and data sharing whenever it is possible, they can leave copyright with the authors and publish content under open licences to enable reuse, they can ask for open reviews, they can be explicit in accepting submissions presenting the negative research results and so forth.
b) They can adapt their publishing platforms and technical infrastructures in a way that is compatible with OS. For instance, they can disseminate all the metadata, including the references, under the CC0, they can enable the process of open peer review, and they need to enable linking the research data when they are available
c) They can provide some acknowledging mechanisms to enable crediting OS practices among authors and reviewers. Such mechanisms could be: citing the research data and other research outputs besides publications, providing structured information about authors’ roles and contributions, using persistent identifiers for persons, outputs, institutions and funders, providing interoperable information about reviewers so they can be credited for their work.
2. Where can I find information and guidelines on the OS practices presented?
DIAMAS guidelines that describe the relevant OS practices are:
3. How can I link published content to supplementary materials deposited into an external infrastructure?
The supplementary materials deposited in external platforms or infrastructures should always be linked via persistent identifiers (PIDs) and accompanied by textual citation or acknowledgement. The PIDs that are most often used for objects such as supplementary materials are DOIs, handles or URN-NBNs
1. What are my research integrity obligations as a member of the academic/research community?
As a member of the academic community, research integrity obligations include:
2. Does my institution/founder/publisher have a policy on research integrity, research misconduct and/or responsible research?
Institutions, funders, and publishers typically have policies that cover:
3. Do funding sources influence editorial decisions?
Funding sources should not influence editorial decisions. Editorial independence is a critical aspect of research integrity. However, it is essential to disclose funding sources and any potential conflicts of interest to maintain transparency and trust.
4. How can I manage conflicts of interest?
To manage conflicts of interest:
5. When and how should I make a report of possible research misconduct?
Possible research misconduct should be reported when:
These references provide a framework for understanding and maintaining research integrity within the academic community:
Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing https://publicationethics.org/node/19881
Open Access Journals Toolkit: https://www.oajournals-toolkit.org/
1. What are the basic functionalities that a publishing infrastructure should have [do publishing infrastructures support copyediting and layout workflows]?
An online publishing infrastructure should make it possible to:
The publishing platform should be able to display the metadata describing publications and their subunits in line with widely adopted metadata schemas (e.g. Dublin Core, DataCite, Crossref, JATS XML, ONIX, MARC (for books), etc.), via standard protocols for metadata exchange (Open Access Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting – OAI-PMH,REST API, HTTPS, etc.). It should also support massive metadata export (as CSV files, ONIX XML feeds or in any other established format) and provide metadata records to libraries (e.g.MARC).
An online publishing infrastructure should support the communication between the editorial team and authors, reviewers, copyeditors and the production team, as well as all publishing workflows:
Submission (e.g. via a submission dashboard)
Review
Copyediting
The platform should support user management (registration, assigning roles, etc.).
The editorial team should also be able to maintain an archive of submissions, correspondence and decisions on the platform.
2. How can I assign persistent identifiers to published content?
Assigning persistent identifiers (PIDs) to published content is crucial for ensuring the long-term accessibility and citation of scholarly works. Although there are multiple PID systems (e.g. , ARK) for published outputs, Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) seem to be the most widely used for scholarly articles and book chapters. It is also highly recommended to publishers to use PIDs for authors and contributors (e.g. ORCID), as well as PIDs for organisations (e.g. ROR). In order to be able to assign DOIs, a publisher needs to register with a registration agency, e.g. CrossRef or DataCite. This involves an annual membership fee. Each member is assigned a PID prefix that is unique. After that, the publisher needs to submit metadata for each publication to the registration agency to get a unique DOI. The metadata typically include:
A DOI is a combination of the prefix with a unique suffix for each publication (e.g. 10.1234/journalname.articleID. All PIDs should be embedded in the content, i.e. displayed as interactive links on the publication’s landing page and in the full text. If there are changes to the publication details, the publisher should update metadata deposited with the registration agency.
3. What are the common metadata formats used for exporting publication metadata?
The most commonly used metadata format for exporting publication metadata include XML, JSON, HTML and CSV. It is highly recommendable to enable metadata export to several formats. The choice of supported formats will depend on the protocols used to expose metadata and the requirements of the target aggregating services and search engines.
4. What are the standard protocols for retrieving metadata from publishing infrastructures?
The most commonly used metadata exchange protocols include Open Access Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting – OAI-PMH, REST API and HTTPS. It is highly recommendable to enable multiple protocols for metadata exchange.
5. What are the main open source publishing infrastructures?
A number of free and open-source (FOSS) solutions are available, such as Open Journal Systems, Janeway, Kotahi, PubSweet for journals, and Open Monograph Press, PubPub, Manifold, Fulcrum, Scalar, etc. for books.
The mentioned solutions offer out-of-the-box functionalities that can fairly easily be enriched with free add-ons. They are designed and maintained by non-profit organisations and communities who seek to provide sufficient documentation and support knowledge exchange through forum discussions.
6. What are the best practices for documenting and preserving content and metadata over time?
There are several ways to ensure metadata and content preservation over time:
7. What are the main services that support content preservation?
Notable examples of digital preservation services include:
There are several initiatives that aim to support content preservation, especially for open access publishers:
1. What can I do to increase the visibility of my publications?
Traditional marketing activities by the publisher, promotional activities in multiple languages, newsletters, blogs, direct emails, mailing lists, content alerts, notifications, and RSS/Atom feeds are all useful mechanisms for raising awareness of published content.
Visibility can also be maximised in search engines and aggregators by using search engine optimisation techniques, such as by providing structured metadata and XML sitemaps, by implementing metadata exchange protocols, or by enabling APIs.
Discovery services, aggregator databases, abstracting and indexing databases, and citation indexes can also help with content visibility, particularly when these are specific services relevant for the target audiences. It is also helpful to make the published content available in open repositories and sharing services in order to increase its visibility.
2. What can help published content have a greater impact?
Impact statements or simple (multi)language summaries can bring the content of scholarly publications closer to the general audience when added alongside published content, and it can be helpful to provide translations of publications that are potentially interesting for non-academic audiences. Active use and regular updates of social media or social networking can also help with outreach to academia and society to communicate with a much broader audience.
Post-publication reviews or online comments can further boost interest in content by a wider audience. Organising events like book promotions, journal promotions, the launching of a new journal issue, or working with the media (such as by issuing press releases) can help reach broader sectors of society.
3. What metrics should I be aware of?
A comprehensive array of indicators can be employed as article/chapter-level metrics, tracking events such as visits, views, downloads, citations usage across countries, or social media mentions. Measurements are made for a singular research output rather than across a whole journal, for example. Analytics software and methods can be used to generate and collect metrics.
1. What do equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging (EDIB) mean in scholarly publishing?
In the context of scholarly publishing, EDIB is about reducing different kinds of bias at various points in the publishing process and in various sectors of the publishing community. Creating equity means removing systemic barriers and biases to give equal opportunities to everyone. Ensuring diversity means making sure that people of different genders, abilities, ethnicities, linguistic and cultural backgrounds, geographic locations, institutions and career stages are represented in the various sectors of the scholarly community. Being inclusive means giving all individuals the chance to be seen, heard and considered. Finally, creating a sense of belonging means treating everyone as a full member of the community and helping them to thrive and contribute.
2. What types of bias can occur in scholarly publishing?
Various types of bias have the potential to emerge in the context of scholarly publishing. This means that some groups in the community may be underrepresented while others are overrepresented – a situation that may change from one discipline to the next (e.g. women may be underrepresented in engineering, whereas men may be underrepresented in nursing). For instance, bias could take forms such as:
The situation may be further exacerbated because the effects of various types of disadvantage can be intersectional and cumulative. For example, an individual scholar who identifies as a woman, who has a visual impairment, who publishes in a language other than English, and who is affiliated with a less prestigious institution could potentially be marginalised in multiple ways.
3. What are some of the consequences of bias in scholarly publishing?
Bias in scholarly publishing can have negative impacts on individuals, on research, and on society. For example, at an individual level, a publisher's decision to publish in a single language means that scholars who speak other languages will need to invest more time and effort to engage with or contribute to the scholarly literature. Such scholars may end up publishing less, and may therefore not be cited as often and may not receive certain recognitions (e.g. appointments to editorial boards). Research as a whole may also suffer when there is a lack of diversity. For instance, if a certain geographic region or culture is over represented on the editorial board of an international journal, this group may influence the types of topics or methods that are considered worthy of publication, or they may engage in other types of gatekeeping in accordance with their particular set of values, which may not be globally representative. In turn, society broadly speaking may be negatively impacted if certain types of research are underrepresented (e.g. research on women’s health issues, or research on biodiversity in certain regions).
4. Who is responsible for ensuring EDIB in scholarly publishing?
EDIB is a shared responsibility. A wide variety of actors in the scholarly publishing ecosystem must work together to improve and maintain EDIB, including authors, peer reviewers, editors, editorial board members, librarians, and publishers. Nevertheless, publishers are particularly well-placed to drive EDIB-related improvements since they are able to set goals and design policies that can bring about meaningful change.
5. What types of actions can be taken to improve EDIB in scholarly publishing?
Examples of actions that can be taken include raising awareness or offering training or guidance about unconscious bias; adopting inclusive language; publishing plain language summaries; developing and sharing diversity statements, action plans, and policies for EDIB (e.g. requesting citation diversity statements from authors or implementing a policy of double-anonymized peer review); setting goals for and assessing and monitoring progress in EDIB (e.g. diversity goals for authors, peer reviewers, editorial board members); implementing inclusive and accessible websites, content and metadata; and promoting multilingualism in scholarly publishing (e.g. by publishing abstracts or full-texts in more than one language).
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