The French National Fund for Open Science (FNSO) has decided to support three international open science infrastructures as part of SCOSS, the Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services initiative. The three supported infrastructures (OpenCitations, Public Knowledge Project and Directory of Open Access Books) were first evaluated by a jury composed by SCOSS, and also afterwards by the French Committee for Open Science, according to its key selection criteria set out in 2019. The results of this analysis were positive and prompted a dialogue with the projects on some minor points for improvement.

This study examines the role of learned societies as publishers in Finland based on bibliographic information from two Finnish databases. Finnish learned societies play an integral part in national scholarly publishing. They play an especially important role in journal publishing, as commercial publishers produce only 2.6% of Finnish journals and book series, and only 1.4% of the journal articles from scholars working in Finnish universities.

Robert Harington, as an Associate Executive Director of Publishing at the American Mathematical Society, attempts to disentangle the issues and paints a picture of how scholarly societies are an indelible part of the research and support system for academics across many disciplines.  In this way, they resemble private, non-profit academic institutions as a vital part of the academic landscape, which similarly receive public monies in support of their role.

For several years now, digital journal offerings have been developing via publisher or aggregator platforms. These forms of editorial organisation offer researchers unified access points and resource groupings, allowing a wider dissemination of knowledge and a better valorisation of scientific publications. The French government has thus chosen to support these platforms, and consequently, French scientific journals. In this context, the Ministry of Higher Education and Research has commissioned a quantitative, qualitative and prospective study on the economy and editorial organization of the platforms and aggregators of French scientific journals. The study, carried out during the first half of 2019, analyses the economics of nine French scientific journal platforms and aggregators on the one hand, and the competitive potential and complementarities of eight foreign platforms and aggregators on the other: Cambridge University Press, EBSCO, Érudit, JSTOR, Open Library of Humanities, Project MUSE, ProQuest and SciELO. [Article in French]

The Journal of European Periodical Studies released a special issue originating from the seventh annual conference of the European Society for Periodical Research (ESPRit) held in Paris in June 2018, and whose topic was: Periodicals In-Between: Periodicals in the Ecology of Print and Visual Cultures. During this conference, the complex roles played by periodicals in a rich array of cultural and scientific settings from numerous points of view were discussed : history of literature, art history, press and media, visual studies, etc. A variety of serial publications were considered: magazines, journals, annuals, book series, newspapers, even a radio broadcast. This special issue proposes a few selected contributions developed into research articles. By presenting them and recalling the conference’s main arguments and themes, the introduction offers an overview of investigations, and highlights some of the hypotheses significant for periodical studies today.

At the end of its mission (2017 – 2019), the Scientific Publishing Steering Committee reports on its actions, the studies carried out under its responsibility, their results, and issues recommendations to support French scientific publishing.

Download the report.

Article and report in French.

Sarita Albagli inquires about the possible meanings of an “inclusive globalization” from four main argumentative sets: (a) the emerging climate regime and its corresponding regime of knowledge and information; (b) the recognition of other epistemologies and narratives, as well as the contributions both from the peripheries and “from below”; (c) the issues raised by the open Science movements; (d) the thesis of a common Science or a Science of the common.

Presentations from the 2nd AEUP conference (Re-)Shaping University Presses and Institutional Publishing, are now available on Zenodo. An outcome of the conference was the Declaration from the 2nd AEUP conference.

The Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) released a major Consensus Report on a commissioned study of Research Publishing in South Africa in 2006, with detailed data analysis and a 360-degree view of the topic, including the impact of new technologies on the dissemination of research results and the world-wide open access movement. The Academy has decided to publish a second report on scholarly publishing in SA, to include, notably, a review of the work of the SPP in the research publishing system over the past 12 years, and a set of headline recommendations for the future. This new analysis is close from the original conclusion, that only open access publishing of local journals will ensure the wide dissemination of their important content.

In the concept that there is a mainstream science and, by opposition, a “peripheral” science, the publications in journals indexed by Web of Science and the type of indicators used to measure the world’s scientific and technological production (STP), have undoubtedly played a fundamental role, since they have become the main axis of institutional and individual evaluation also in the periphery. Hence the urgent need to create new tools to measure STP in the periphery, which may break the vicious circle that commodifies evaluative cultures. Circulation indicators have been proposed as a possible response to this challenge, since they take into account the diversity of production styles and the multiscale nature of university interactions. In this work, progress made in this area is presented. On the one hand, in relation to the Latin American circuit of scientific journals, which has not yet been able to offer regional indicators of the published STP, so that it may have relevance in the evaluation processes. On the other hand, in relation to the styles of knowledge production in universities, in order to be able to examine the circulation of STP on a local scale.

[Article in Spanish]