There is a growing number of open source platforms for scientific publishing such as Mendeley, Academia.edu and Research Gate entering the market. Researchers and scientists are now bypassing the traditional channels of editors and peer reviewed processes. The power is to the researcher, scientist and writer what he or she publishes or not.
But how do you guarantee the quality of what is published. And is there a ranking system for these platform as you have for scientific journals such as https://www.scimagojr.com. And if there is not one, how would you rank the open source platforms available for scientific publishing?
Besides open source publishing there is also open acces publishing. There is the assumption that together they have the power to change the landscape of science: publishing and the use (consumption).
What do countries, universities and traditional publishing companies do to facilitate the changing environment concerning the open source and access development of publishing?
I hope to contribute to this discussion partially as I do not grab some questions of the discussion.
Yes, one of the methods to bypass the formal or the traditional way of publishing (i.e. submit to a journal, editorial review, external peer-review, etc.) is the well-known pre-prints, one can find from services like arXiv, or bioRxiv. This is a popular method followed by researchers of some subject domains than others. However, the peer-review process in publishing is important to maintain/improve the accuracy and quality of an article. Therefore, it is a question that bypassing this step can lead to produce a quality article or not.
My personal view is we cannot compare the impact of open access journal and fee-based journals due to a number of reasons. For example, one can expect higher dissemination (say no. of downloads for example) of open access journals than fee-based journals and perhaps this nature could cause to report different citation patterns in these two types of publications. However, so far we do not have a system to compare these two publishing methods, while making corrections to these kinds of incomparable parameters. Yes, I think, so far we do not have a method to rank the open access publications, though directories like DOAJ can initiate a system for this.
Hi Manjula Wijewickrema which of the questions you do not grasp? Maybe I can try to explain them better or use another formulation.
About peer-review, if you bypass the traditional way of publishing and as you emphasize peer-review remains crucial, how do you organize it? In the traditional way of publishing it is the editor or the journal or the publishing house that look for reputable peers. With open source, you as researcher/author can decide to ignore the suggestions of the peers and go ahead as you wish. This can be a strength but also a weakness. But I sense a problem here.
Except from Research Gate, which other open source publishing platform do you know and how would you compare them to Research Gate?
Rudi - I would personally not class ResearchGate and Academia.Edu as open access. They are academic social media sites that provide a 'repository' service for those that wish to upload documents. It is not the place or nature of these sites to review the voluntary content. That is the place of SCImago, Clarivate etc to rank against 'quality' criteria i.e. IF and citation rates.
Hi Dean Whitehead , thanks. Research Gate and Academia.edu are 'open source publishing' platforms, social media site to upload documents as you write, instead of 'open access'. In the discussion here I want to take a shot at both -open access publishing and open source publishing. And I'll reformulate the question. Thanks.
Dear Rudi, the thing I do not understand is why do you identify ResearchGate as an open source publishing platform. May be I am wrong, but as Dean replied, so far I understood ResearchGate as a social networking site which enables for researchers to submit articles, initiate discussions, ask questions, provide answers, and find collaborators. Once you say 'open source publishing platforms', which I can recall are: Ghost, Ambra, Libero, etc. These open source platforms are used by publishers or individual journals to provide online publication services for authors. However, you might have a reason for using this terminology for ReserchGate as well.
Next, for me, it is difficult to think of a methodology which can replace the peer-review process and publishing while ignoring the major comments of reviewers. Indeed, if someone needs to ignore peer-review, it can be selected non peer-review journals, but I am sure that you are not talking about this. All in all, none of my ideas imply that reviewers' comments are always make sense, because the author is the ideal person to describe his or her own work and who knows the strong and weak points better than any other. However, reviewers can spot what has been missed in the article and make suggestions to improve the article further. So, I believe that it always better to get the assistance of a third eye.
Finally, Mendeley.com can also be identified as a scholarly network more or less similar to RG and Academia.edu.
Dear Manjula Wijewickrema , as also Dean Whitehead remarked RG (Research Gate) is a social networking platform for research, but because it has as one on its function ‘self-publishing’ (uploading) of papers, I have called it ‘open source publishing’. For me ‘open source publishing’ is different from ‘open access publishing’. ‘Open access’ for me means that they are free of charge and can be used and reused. Or is there no 'open source publishing?
But maybe ‘open source’ hints at certain condition and using it as I do in this context, creates confusion. Maybe ‘publishing’ also implies more than the self-publishing or uploading function that RG facilitates.
Preprint servers like bioRxiv, https://www.biorxiv.organd arXiv (see list https://researchpreprints.com/preprintlist) do not have the functions of e.g Research Gate (RG) for social communication, they are more limited. But some could be developed further with added functions till maybe you can’t call it preprint server anymore.
Because what I have noticed, is that over time more and more functions are being gradually added to platforms and that transforms them or blurs the lines.
I would like to know out whether ‘open source publishing’ is considered different from ‘open access publishing’.
The main question is of course: what their importance for science are. Which development can we expect in the near future? And there is a whole terminology around 'open source' and 'open access' publishing, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access
Rudi - Okay, Now I understood why do you recognize it as 'Open source'. Some of your arguments make sense to me, but I still do not agree with you for referring RG or Academia.edu as open source publishing platforms (I believe that 'Open source' has a certain meaning and RG has no characteristics to include in this category).
However, as you mentioned, nature of publishing could be changed gradually. Thus, peer-review process could also be changed in the near future. We already have variety of peer-review methods like 'open', 'third-party', 'collaborative', etc. Perhaps, the future would decide whether it is appropriate (or not) to interfere the peer-review process (by the author). Therefore, we don't have to wonder of a peer-review method called 'self-review' is appeared in the future. That is the beauty of this publishing culture.
Dear Manjula Wijewickrema , thanks for your answer. In the world of librarians, where you are a part of, how important is Scopus, see https://www.scopus.com. It claims to be '...the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature: scientific journals, books and conference proceedings'. And which other comparable databases to Scopus are there. Which one is the most important?
Dear Manjula Wijewickrema , you have stated that 'open source' has a certain meaning and RG doesn't have those characteristics. Which characteristics are they?
I would check the quality of publication in the original source rather that accepting it directly from RG.
Dear Rudi, I would like to understand the importance of Abstracting and Indexing databases (A&I) in two different ways - as a librarian and as an author. However, instead of talking about individual A&I databases, I prefer to discuss about them in common. As librarians, we identify their importance as they provide various bibliographic services to users, mostly for authors to locate literature. In addition, services like analysis of author records, providing data for citation analysis are also imperative for smooth progress of research. I have already posted an answer in a previous discussion about possible comparisons of available, leading A&I databases. You can find this answer under the following link:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Which_database_do_you_think_cover_the_largest_number_of_scholar_journals
Dear Mustafa A Adhab , do publications on RG differ from the original version?
Are
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.nl
Web of Science: https://login.webofknowledge.com/error/Error?Error=IPError&PathInfo=%2F&RouterURL=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.webofknowledge.com%2F&Domain=.webofknowledge.com&Src=IP&Alias=WOK5
Scopus: https://www.scopus.com
Dimensions: https://app.dimensions.ai/discover/publication
the databases with the largest numbers of scholarly journals?
Can anybody check whether this is the authoritative source for open access information:
https://guides.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/c.php?g=399417&p=3262493
or is https://doaj.org/about better?
Dear Rudi, As I have noticed in literature, mere inclusion of a title even in a reputed abstracting or indexing database service will not 100% guaranteed the genuinity of the journal. This is common for DOAJ as well as Elsevier's products. It is true that the rigorous evalution criteria followed by these services lead to keep away predatory titles from indexing, yet rare mistakes can be taken place at any time. However, the resources located in both the links you mentioned can be used to maximize avoiding of predatory publications.
@ Dear Manjula, so there is no 100% guarantee that all the journals in the open access databases are genuine. Is it because of the quantity of available open access publications?
Are the journals on Scimago: https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php genuine?
SCImago considers journals to index from the journal titles already indexed in Scopus. Therefore, more or less, both databases are same in case of titles.
Rudi Darson , sometimes the author publishes the non-final version of the article due to terms and conditions of the journal.
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