Month: September 2021

Gaps between open research policies and practices, and how to fill them

Many institutions and funders have policies that mandate or encourage researchers to share their research data, code and software. In 2020, PLOS conducted a survey of institutions and funding agencies to learn if and how they are evaluating compliance with their policies. They recently published a preprint of their findings, A survey of funders’ and institutions’ needs for understanding researchers’ open research practices, and an anonymized survey dataset. Monitoring compliance with open access policies on peer-reviewed publications can be challenging, but determining compliance with policies on open sharing of data, code and software is even more so. The survey was designed to learn if funders and institutions are evaluating data and code sharing, and if so, why and how. Of the 122 completed responses, half have tried to determine compliance and 78% plan to do so in the future. Funders and institutions want to understand current open researcher practices to shape policies and/or to determine compliance with existing policies.

The survey also asked about importance and satisfaction with 17 factors associated with open researcher practices, such as: is data available in a reusable form, why data have not been made available, data management plan was followed, data or code have been reused for research, etc. Respondents indicated that they are not getting information about researchers’ sharing practices in a satisfactory way. Based on previous researcher, the authors recognized alignment between researcher and organizational interests in finding reusable datasets. They inferred simple solutions that journals and publishers might adopt to address some of researcher, institution and funder needs:

  • Mandatory Data Availability Statements (DAS) in all relevant publications.
  • Prohibiting generic “data available upon request” statements
  • Enabling and encouraging use of data repositories
  • Providing visible links to research data on publications
  • Making information available on data and code sharing practices in publications available to institutions and funding agencies
  • Extending policies that require transparency in sharing of research data, to sharing of code.

The survey findings and recommendations can help institutions, funders and researchers move from policies and best practices to widespread adoption of open research sharing practices. Ultimately, all will benefit from greater use and impact of the research.

Guiding principles of open science

Two international organizations have recently issued principled recommendations on open science. In May 2021 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) put out its draft Recommendation on Open Science which it expects to be adopted in November 2021. After a preamble that references past related works, the report then states its aims and objectives, provides a definition of open science and open scientific knowledge, outlines core values and guiding principles, details areas of action and concludes with advice on monitoring. UNESCO’s definition of open science is important because it is inclusive of all disciplines and knowledge systems:

…open science is defined as an inclusive construct that combines various movements and practices aiming to make multilingual scientific knowledge openly available, accessible and reusable for everyone, to increase scientific collaborations and sharing of information for the benefits of science and society, and to open the processes of scientific knowledge creation, evaluation and communication to societal actors beyond the traditional scientific community. It comprises all scientific disciplines and aspects of scholarly practices, including basic and applied sciences, natural and social sciences and the humanities, and it builds on the following key pillars: open scientific knowledge, open science infrastructures, science communication, open engagement of societal actors and open dialogue with other knowledge systems.

p. 4 (6)

The recommendation recognizes scientific publications, open research data, open educational resources, open source software and code, and open hardware as “open scientific knowledge.” Stated core values include quality and integrity, collective benefit, equity and fairness, and diversity and inclusiveness.

The International Science Council (ISC), a non-governmental organization that brings together 40 international and 140 national and regional scientific organizations, issued a comprehensive report in February 2020, “Opening the Record of Science: Making Scholarly Publishing Work For Science In The Digital Era” from which they’ve recently pulled and promoted Seven Principles of Scientific Publishing. The whole report chronicles for the scientific community dysfunctional scholarly publishing markets that are all too familiar to academic librarians. The 7 principles present common goals for a global public good to which the scientific community aspires:

  1. There should be universal open access to the record of science, both for authors and readers, with no barriers to participation, in particular those based on ability to pay, institutional privilege, language or geography.
  2. Scientific publications should carry open licences that permit reuse and text and data mining.
  3. Rigorous and ongoing peer review must continue to play a key role in creating and maintaining the public record of science.
  4. The data and observations on which a published truth claim is based should be concurrently accessible to scrutiny and supported by necessary metadata.
  5. The record of science should be maintained in such a way as to ensure open access by future generations.
  6. Publication traditions of different disciplines should be respected, while at the same time recognizing the importance of inter-relating their contributions in the shared enterprise of knowledge.
  7. Publication systems should be designed so as to continually adapt to new opportunities for beneficial change rather than embedding inflexible systems that inhibit change.

The UNESCO and ISC reports offer important benchmarks to guide the realization of knowledge creation that benefits local, national and global communities.

Musings on transformative agreements

Back in April in the wake of University of California’s open access agreement with Elsevier, Ashley Jester, self-described political scientist/data scientist/librarian at Stanford University, wrote a piece expressing concern about the affect of transformative agreements on open access as a public good. In “Discomfort with Gold OA“, Jester describes open access scholarship as a public good that is available to everyone, without restricting anyone else’s access. It benefits the world.

Transformative agreements (TAs) shift payment for access by the reader (or the reader’s library) to the author (or the author’s institution) for publication. The reader can use scholarship freely, but the scholar cannot publish without cost. However, a scholarly communication ecosystem that provides true public goods imposes barriers for neither reader nor author/researcher. Transformative agreements are intended to be transitional, but each contract further solidifies a system that privileges those scholars who are members of institutions, or “clubs” that are party to these agreements. Restrictions, and diminished diversity and equity, are placed on the production of knowledge. Dave S. Ghamandi, in “‘Transformative Agreements’ & Library Publishing: a short examination,” further elaborates on how TAs reinforce an existing publishing oligopoly for the mutual benefit of the university’s prestige. The means of production are maintained, and they are not for the public good.

Jester lays out alternatives to funding scholarship through transformative agreements, namely governments and non-profits. The costs of scholarly communication are born by agencies whose missions are driven by collective benefit over that of selected individual(s). Universities and academic libraries should be alert to the risks of replacing one approach that restricts reader access with another that diminishes scholar participation.

Antiracism toolkit for organizations from C4DISC

In August 2021 the Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communication (C4DISC) released a comprehensive and practical guide to help publishers and other scholarly communication organizations engage in the process of becoming anti-racist. The Antiracism Toolkit for Organizations introduces the problem of white supremacy and why counteracting it is an ethical as well as a business imperative. Diversity expresses representation, while antiracism addresses systems and practices that give preference and moral weight to whiteness. The “path to becoming an antiracist organization” details specific actions organizations can take to make an equitable workplace. These embedded efforts, such as:

  • antiracist recruitment and hiring practices,
  • paid internships,
  • staff equity training,
  • budgeting for DEI,
  • employee progression and retention

are well-connected to organizational leadership but they are distributed throughout the organization.

The toolkit details how measurement and metrics can be used to support the process of becoming an antiracist organization. It also focuses on how to create positive environments for Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) to avoid burnout and nurture their participation in the organization. Code switching, authenticity, intersectionality and disability are addressed here. Examining organizational culture is key to focusing on the needs of BIPOC individuals and de-centering the feelings of white people.

The toolkit provides policies, case studies and stories from within scholarly communication organizations and a generous list of resources. For libraries who have publishing services, this toolkit can serve as a bible. For libraries that collaborate with and employ publishers and other scholarly communication service providers, the toolkit provides benchmarks with which to measure alignment with antiracist values and practices.

cOAlition S on open access for academic books

cOAlition S recently issued a statement with 5 recommendations to achieve open access publication of academic monographs, book chapters, edited editions and other long-form works. Originally known for its plan to convert journal publications to open access, cOAlition S principles issued in 2018 recognized the importance of research dissemination through books, especially for disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.

Advocacy and support for OA books is growing. Some of the agencies within cOAlition S’ European research funders have issued book policies, and the statement recognizes important existing OA book infrastructure components, such as the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and the OA Books Network. The recommendations are that:

  1. all books should be published openly,
  2. authors/institutions should retain intellectual property rights/copyright,
  3. Creative Commons licenses should be applied,
  4. embargoes, if required, should be as short as possible and no longer than 12 months, and
  5. cOAlition S funders should financially support the publication of open access books with dedicated arrangements.

These recommendations will be followed by implementation guidelines which will account for the varying needs of book publishers.