The International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI) 2019 Annual Conference will take place in Shanghai on 23-26 September. Themed ‘Open Science and Open Innovation’, the conference is part of a bigger event co-organised with the Shanghai Competitive Intelligence Forum (SCIF) and the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC) and generously hosted by Shanghai Library/Institute of Scientific & Technical Information of Shanghai (ISTIS).  The conference will also present  high-level ITOC (Information Trends and Opportunities Committee) and TACC (Technical Activities Coordinating Committee) workshops on 26th September 2019.

Registration is open.

The preliminary programme is online.

Despite growing awareness of predatory publishing and research on its market characteristics, the defining attributes of fraudulent journals remain controversial. This study aims to develop a better understanding of quality criteria for scholarly journals by analysing journals and publishers indexed in blacklists of predatory journals and whitelists of legitimate journals and the lists’ inclusion criteria. As a result, there is an overlap between journals and publishers included in blacklists and whitelists. Blacklists and whitelists differ in their criteria for quality and the weight given to different dimensions of quality.

A new model for developing a university press has been designed to be applicable to a range of business models, including subscription, open access and hybrid. The guiding principles, publishing stages and strategic points all constitute the building blocks necessary to implement and maintain a sustainable university press. The model highlights the overall importance of working in partnership and building relationships as key to developing and maintaining a successful press.

The Transpose database, which launched on 13 June 2019, assembles thousands of science journals’ editorial policies to boost transparency and accessibility. The database was compiled by a mostly US-based group of researchers working towards reforming publishing. The database includes details about peer review, preprints and editorial policies that are often difficult or impossible to find on journal websites.

Cost is the No. 1 reason why colleges end their “big deals” with publishers, but not everyone thinks the agreements are really that expensive. Kent Anderson, CEO of publishing and data analytics company RedLink, has argued that the subscription model is actually “pretty efficient” for institutions. According to Roger Schonfeld, director of the libraries, scholarly communication and museums program at Ithaka S+R, the rise in open-access publishing has decreased the value of subscription deals as more content is available for free. To conclude, he thinks that the big deal as a bundled subscription model is definitely under threat.

In order to help journals take full advantage of the DOAJ’s indexing services, Scholastica Open Access Publishing has made it possible for those using Scholastica’s Open Access Publishing software to have their articles automatically deposited into the DOAJ. SOAP software handles all article formatting for journals.

Free access to scientific content is often limited due to the fragile technical infrastructure around it: Content is stored in a variety of versions at various locations and without any uniform search functionalities. The Open Access initiative Knowledge Unlatched has addressed this growing problem and is launching the Open Research Library together with several international partners. Its goal is to unite all Open Access (OA) book content. To this end, the Open Research Library is working with publishers and libraries worldwide and is open to all providers and users of quality-assured research content.

Metadata 2020 was established in 2017 with the mission to facilitate the collaboration of all involved in scholarly communications to consistently improve metadata and enhance discoverability. Metadata 2020 has set out four principles underlying good quality metadata: Compatibility, Completeness, Credibility and Curation. Comments are welcome. A forthcoming set of Best Practices will illustrate use cases and provide some concrete action items to support the Practices.

It is often anecdotally remarked that early career and PhD researchers have to publish their research more frequently and earlier in their careers than previous generations of academics, if they aim to secure a permanent academic job. In this post, Rob Warren lays out empirical evidence from the field of Sociology showing that this is indeed the case and highlights two market trends driving this process.

On March 26, the European Parliament adopted the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, after several years of development and negotiations marked by intense lobbying from all sides. With a final agreement little more than a formality, this new legislation is poised to impact the research community and change the environment around open science. Several meaningful improvements and the persistent concerns are stated from the research community perspective. The Directive needs to be implemented into the national law of each Member State within two years. Member States have an opportunity to develop national legislation that will be adapted to their particular circumstances.