At the closing of his excellent interview series “The State of Open Access”, Richard Poynder answers a series of questions himself. The resulting interview is an thorough and nuanced overview of the current state of OA. Continue reading “Must read: “The State of Open Access “”
Category: News
Give your opinion about EU copyright reform
This week is Copyright week, the perfect occasion to draw your attention to a consultation on Copyright the EC is conducting.
Continue reading “Give your opinion about EU copyright reform”
Reactions on ‘Who’s afraid of peer review?’
The original article by John Bohannon ‘Who’s afraid of peer review?’ has received a lot of criticism, mainly because of its own flawed scientific methods and lack of peer review. Despite this, the controversion has yet again made clear that there is a problem with so-called predatory Open Access publishers and it’s also obvious that prompt but nuanced reactions from the major players in OA publishing to ‘stings’ like this are a necessity.
Given the eagerness with which the article was cited by popular press the perception problems that come with Open Access publishing might be a threat to the whole movement, despite the fact that a majority of OA publishers don’t even ask for Article Processing Charges, and some Open Access Journals have the highest publication standards in their fields!
An overview of the reactions (list might be updated over the next few days):
- Science Mag sting of OA journals: is it about Open Access or about peer review?
- Reaction from SPARC
- Gunther Eysenbach (Journal of Medical Internet Research)
- Michael Eisen (Berkeley)
- Reaction from DOAJ
- Reaction from OASPA
- Excellent overview of the reactions can be found on SV-POW and on The Big Think
IR ORBi has passed the benchmark of 50,000 references with full text
In July 2012, ORBi, the institutional repository of the University of Liège, has passed the benchmark of 50,000 references with full text, which represents close to 61% of the deposits!
A great success which rewards the audacious gamble launched 5 years ago by the University of Liege, supported by a strong institutional mandate. It is also a fine victory for the accessibility of research documentation, as close to 50% of these references are in open access. Continue reading “IR ORBi has passed the benchmark of 50,000 references with full text”
Study on Open Access in French-speaking Belgium
The BICfB consortium has studied the development of institutional repositories in the Belgian French-speaking universities and the active involvement of our teachers and researchers (as editors in chief, members of an editorial board, peer-reviewers, etc.) in the life of academic and scientific journals on Open Access, or at the least freely available on the web. According to that study, ORBi, the IR of the University of Liège, counts for 2/3 of the Open Access publications of the Belgian French-speaking universities.
The study can be dowloaded at http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/bitstream/2268/124876/1/Open_Access_en_Belgique_francophone.pdf.