News
Mixed reactions to Wiley German deal
Concerns have been raised over a new publishing deal between Wiley and a German consortium of 700 research institutes, libraries and universities.
The deal, which is being
described as the first country-wide agreement in a leading research nation, was announced at the APE conference in Berlin in January, but details have only recently been made public. The deal is described as ‘publish and read’, a system seen by some as a move towards open access. As reported in Research
Information, Plan S – announced towards the end of last year – requires that, from 2020, scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant open access journals or platforms. The Wiley deal received
mixed reactions when it was announced – but that was before the costs to authors were announced. The German consortium – Project Deal – will pay Wiley €2,750 per paper published in the company’s hybrid journals. It has been estimated that 9,500 such papers will be published each year, netting Wiley more than €26 million per annum. Commentators have pointed out that the deal protects German researchers from ‘double-dipping’ – they will no longer have to subscribe to Wiley’s journals as well as paying to publish in them – but there have also been complaints that researchers in the Netherlands are paying a significantly lower fee (€1,600) to publish with Wiley. Jon Tennant, founder of Open Science MOOC, tweeted: ‘I find it impossible to see this as a success in any way. Public funds are being directly converted into private profits. This is absurd. The per-article cost is more than buying a brand new MacBook pro. For publishing a paper. Zero goes to authors, zero to reviewers.’
48 Research Information April/May 2018
Report highlights misused metrics and recommends alternatives
The Institute for Scientific Information has launched Global Research Reports – a series of publications aimed at those who deal with research in academia, corporations, publishers and governments to inform, to stimulate debate and to demonstrate the rich information potential of research data. The first report, Profiles not Metrics,
draws attention to information that is lost when data about researchers and their institutions are squeezed into simplified metrics or a league table. It states that research is not one-dimensional: the process is complex and no two projects are identical. Yet, to the dismay of many, the global research community is surrounded by analyses that claim to measure relative performance among people, publications and organisations, disregarding the counter arguments offered by informed analysts. Profiles not Metrics examines four
familiar types of analysis that can obscure real research performance when misused, and offers four alternative visualisations that unpack the richer information that lies beneath each headline indicator: Researchers: a beam-plot not an h-index. The h-index is a widely quoted but poorly understood way of characterising a researcher’s publication and citation profile, while the beam plot can be used for a fair and meaningful evaluation; Journals: the whole journal citation record (JCR), not just the journal impact factor (JIF). The JIF has been irresponsibly applied to wider management research while the new JCR offers revised journal profiles with
a richer data context; Institutes: an impact profile, not an isolated average citation impact. Category normalised citation impacts have no statistical power and can be deceptive, while impact profiles show the real spread of citations; and Universities: a research footprint, not a university ranking. A global university ranking may be fun but suppresses more information than most analyses, and hides the diversity and complexity of activity of any one campus, while a research footprint provides a more informative approach, as it can unpack performance by discipline or data type.
Jonathan Adams, director at the Institute
for Scientific Information, explained: ‘In re-establishing ISI, we committed to supporting the needs of the global community of researchers, research managers, policymakers and publishers with high quality and timely information to inform and support best practice analysis and interpretation of research trends and performance. In this, our first ISI report [this century] we examine the efficiency and effectiveness of current metric indicators, as we seek to support sound, responsible research management. ‘For every over-simplified or mis-used
metric, there is a better alternative, usually involving proper and responsible data analysis through a graphical display with multiple, complimentary dimensions. By placing data in a wider context, we see new features and understand more and improve our ability to interpret research activity.’
Librarians! Let us know what’s bothering you!
Research Information is searching for librarians and information professionals to share their experiences – good, bad or indifferent – in the pages of its magazine. For some time now
we have run at least one ‘set-piece’ interview for each print issue of the magazine. We’ve been successful in attracting members of the publishing community as ‘victims’, but would now like to extend
our reach to librarians across the world to find out what makes you tick, what makes you angry, and what inspires you. If you are interested in sharing your thoughts,
opinions and best practice with our readership (which is largely made up of librarians and researchers), please get in touch with the editor, Tim Gillett (tim. gillett@europascience. com) and we’ll take it from there. We can have a chat on the phone or we can send you through a list of questions. We are also happy to
hear from commercial organisations who can recommend librarians.
@researchinfo |
www.researchinformation.info
ESB Basic/
Shutterstock.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
