Update July 15: a 10-minute YouTube video overview of this work by Dr. Rahman & I can be viewed here.
Abstract:
The context of this paper is an analysis of three emerging models for developing a global knowledge commons. The concept of a ‘global knowledge commons’ builds on the vision of the original Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002) for the potential of combining academic tradition and the internet to remove various access barriers to the scholarly literature, thus laying the foundation for an unprecedented public good, uniting humanity in a common quest for knowledge. The global knowledge commons is a universal sharing of the knowledge of humankind, free for all to access (recognizing reasons for limiting sharing in some circumstances such as to protect individual privacy), and free for everyone qualified to contribute to. The three models are Plan S / cOAlition S, an EU-led initiative to transition all of scholarly publishing to an open access model on a short timeline; the Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS), a recent initiative that builds on Ostrom’s study of the commons; and PubMedCentral (PMC) International, building on the preservation and access to the medical research literature provided by the U.S. National Institutes of Health to support other national repositories of funded research and exchange of materials between regions. The research will involve analysis of official policy and background briefing documents on the three initiatives and relevant historical projects, such as the Research Council U.K.’s block grants for article processing charges, the EU-led OA2020 initiative, Europe PMC and the short-lived PMC-Canada. Theoretical analysis will draw on Ostrom’s work on the commons, theories of development, under-development, epistemic / knowledge inequity and the concepts of Chan and colleagues (2011) on the importance of moving beyond north-to-south access to knowledge (charity model) to include south-to-south and south-to-north (equity model). This model analysis contributes to build a comparative view of transcontinental efforts for a global knowledge commons building with shared values of open access, sharing and collaboration, in contrast to the growing trend of commodification of scholarly knowledge evident in both traditional subscriptions / purchase-based scholarly publishing and in commercial open access publishing. We anticipate that our findings will indicate that a digital world of inclusiveness and reciprocity is possible, but cannot be taken for granted, and policy support is crucial. Global communication and information policy have much to contribute towards the development of a sustainable global knowledge commons.
Cite as: Morrison, H. & Rahman, R. (2020). Knowledge and equity: analysis of three models. International Association of Communication and Media Researchers (IAMCR) annual conference, July 2020.
307 SpringerOpen titles for which we have data on journals that were fully open at some point from 2010 to the present were studied, with a primary focus on pricing and status changes from 2019 – 2020 and a secondary focus on longitudinal status changes. Of the 307 titles, 226 are active, fully open access and are still published by SpringerOpen, 40 have ceased publication, 19 were transferred to another publisher, and 18 journals that were formerly open access are now hybrid. 6 of these journals transitioned from free to hybrid in the past year. An additional 2 journals were not found. An additional 2 journals were not found. Of the 226 active journals published by SpringerOpen, 51% charge APCs. The average APC is 1,233 EUR, an increase of 3% over the 2019 average. 46.5% of the 101 journals for which we have 2019 and 2020 data did not change in price; 13.9% decreased in price; and 39.6% increased in price. The extent of change in price was substantial, ranging from a 50% price drop to a 94% price increase.
Open access commercial publishing pioneer BMC is now wholly owned by a private company with a portfolio including lines of business that derive revenue from journal subscriptions, book sales, and textbook sales and rentals
Two former BMC fully OA journals, listed in DOAJ from 2014 – 2018 as having CC-BY licenses, are now hybrid and listed on the Springer website and have disappeared from the BMC website
67% of BMC journals with APCs in 2019 and 2020 increased in price and 11% decreased in price.
Journals with price increases had a higher average APC in 2019, i.e. more expensive journals appear to be more likely to increase in price
Abstract
Founded in 2000, BioMedCentral (BMC) was one of the first commercial (OA) publishers and a pioneer of the article processing charges (APC) business model. BMC was acquired by Springer in 2008. In 2015, Springer was acquired by the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group in 2015 and became part of SpringerNature. In other words, BMC began as an OA publisher and is now one of the imprints or business lines of a company whose other lines of business include sales of journal subscriptions and scholarly books and textbook sales and rentals. Of the 328 journals actively published by BMC in 2020, 91% charge APCs. The average APC was 2,271 USD, an increase of 3% over 2019. An overall small increase in average APC masks substantial changes at the individual journal level. As first noted by Wheatley (2016), BMC price changes from one year to the next are a mix of increases, decreases, and retention of the same price. In 2020, 67% of the 287 journals for which we have pricing in USD for both 2019 and 2020 increased in price; 11% decreased in price, and 22% did not change price. It appears that it is the more expensive journals that are more likely to increase in price. The average 2019 price of the journals that increased in 2020 was 2,307 USD, 18% higher than the 2019 average of 1,948 USD for journals that decreased in price. 173 journals increased in price by 4% or more, well above the inflation rate. 39 journals increased in price by 10% or more; 13 journals increased in price by 20% or more. Also in 2020, there are 11 new journals, 11 journals ceased publication, 5 titles were transferred to other publishers, 2 journals changed from no publication fee to having an APC, and 3 journals dropped their APCs. Two journals formerly published fully OA by BMC are no longer listed on the BMC website, but are now listed as hybrid on the Springer website. This is a small portion of the total but is worth noting as the opposite direction of the transformative (from subscriptions to OA) officially embraced by SpringerNature.
Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), initiated in 1999 by Tsinghua University and Tsinghua Tongfang Co., Ltd., is both the largest institutional repository in China and a near-monopoly provider of for-pay academic databases with a higher profit margin than Elsevier or Wiley, among other services. With promotion and support from the government, CNKI keeps developing its track towards open access [1]. CNKI offers free access to millions of documents ranging from dissertations and academic articles to popular and party journals. The COAA, Chinese Open Access Aggregator, launched in 2019, makes available more than 10,000 open access journals, although foreign scholars may find it difficult to benefit from this due to the language. CNKI has played an important role in making works on COVID-19 freely available, as well as in expanding access to subscribers at home during lock-down.
Details
CNKI stands for Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, it was initiated by Tsinghua University and Tsinghua Tongfang Co., Ltd. and was founded in June 1999. According to Tongfang ’s annual report, the company officially opened the world ’s largest Chinese knowledge portal ‘CNKI (cnki.net) database’ in 2004, informally known as ‘Zhiwang’. CNKI is currently China’s largest integrator of academic electronic resources, including more than 95% of officially published Chinese academic resources.
At the end of 2017, CNKI had more than 20,000 institutional users, more than 20 million individual registered users, full-text downloads amounted to 2 billion pages per year and more than 150,000 online users. The market share of CNKI in Chinese undergraduate colleges is 100%. [2]
As most students know, the best way to access databases outside school is VPN. However, in some inconvenient situations like during the COVID-19 lockdown time in China, you cannot use VPN in some places. Some major Chinese database vendors provided recent limited-time free services. According to the Central China Normal University Library announcement, during the COVID-19 epidemic period (the service period is tentatively from February 1 to March 3, 2020), CNKI provides 4 free services including CNKI database literature acquisition, research learning, and collaborative scientific research services (CNKI OKMS platform). (English translation by the author) At the same time, the school’s students are offered a new online entrance to access CNKI database.[3]
For Chinese readers, CNKI developed a special database online platform to release and promote the latest COVID-19 related study results. You can notice the platform name in red font on the homepage. The platform includes 2,256 journals in total, including 23 non-Chinese journals.[4]
At the same time, CNKI announced that there is free access given by the CNKI OKMS platform, helping uninterrupted research team communication during the special times. The “OKMS Huizhi” is an Office Software for Collaborative Research.
Ms. Dai also stresses that the “OKMS Huizhi” platform was launched in May 2019, and it is now free because of the COVID-19 epidemic situation so that everyone can research from home. Before June 1, the “OKMS Huizhi” platform will be open for free. (English translation by the author) [5]
Besides the limited free access due to the COVID-19 pandemic period, CNKI started to open a variety of continuous services, for example, full-text open access to some Chinese published literature.
The target of this service is the whole country of China, which started in November 2015. The types of documents served include academic journals, conference papers, doctoral dissertations, master’s theses, and newspapers.
The free service scope of 2020 is all documents published by CNKI in 2011 and before, including 40.89 million articles published in 11,402 journals from 1911 to 2011, accounting for about 59.8% of all documents. These include academic journals; culture, art, and other popular journals; party construction, political newspapers, and other party and government journals; higher education, vocational education, and other educational journals; economic information journals. From 2000-2011 CNKI published 188,000 doctoral dissertations, 1.51 million ancillary papers, 4.17 million conference papers, accounting for 45.6%, 38.1%, and 67.4% respectively, as well as, 18.15 million articles from more than 400 newspapers from 2001 to 2019, totaling 64,908 million articles. (English translation by the author) [6]
For Chinese authors, there is a free service that started in September 2019, aiming at the authors who have Chinese publications collected in CNKI database. On this online free author service platform, authors can download own published documents for free, manage academic achievements, obtain academic evaluation reports, track academic frontier developments, and achieve online journal submission.[7] For English readers, CNKI keeps updating its oversea website. At the time this blog post is written, the open-access (OA) online-first publishing of COVID-19 platform is officially online to serve [http://new.oversea.cnki.net/index/] which includes 2,288 China journals and 25 foreign journals.
What is more, CNKI Open Access Aggregator (COAA) is introduced to foreign scholars. CNKI Open Access Aggregator, COAA in short, was launched in 2019 and currently has more than 10,000 open access journals covering all fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and humanities.
According to the COAA platform introduction on their webpage, it will continue to expand the coverage of open resources from now on, increase open access books, papers, conference papers, etc., to provide users with a large number of open access resources. The journal covers 100 countries and regions on five continents, covering 100 disciplines and covering 70 languages. (English translation by the author) [8] Unfortunately, the homepage and all the instructions are in Chinese. The language barrier could be a difficulty for non-Chinese scholars.
Besides all the effort CNKI has made to develop open-access (OA), there are many challenges it is facing. One survey of Chinese readers conducted by Wen revealed the fact that 94.5 percent of the respondents were ignorant of the existence of OA journals.[9] As we mentioned before, the market share of CNKI in Chinese undergraduate colleges is 100% which keeps CNKI the Chinese world of academic publishing in a monopolistic stranglehold. According to Wang Yiwei’s article on July 24, 2019, CNKI has posted an average annual profit margin of nearly 60%in the past decade which almost doubled the figure of Wiley [10].
At the end of 2018, the Taiyuan University of Technology, a university located in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, China, put a notice regarding the suspension of access to “CNKI” in 2019 on their school website[11] and the next day the school library published that the budget for the usage contract with CNKI was 588,000 yuan (about $85,500). [12]
The cancellation due to high fees happens around the world. For example, SUNY (State University of New York System) subscribed to approximately 250 titles in Elsevier instead of the whole database in 2020 and this approach will save SUNY institutions $7 million annually. [13]
CNKI, which has been developed with the strong support of the government, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and other departments, could assume more social responsibilities through open-access (OA) instead of taking advantage of its leading enterprises to gain more economic benefits. As the quick development of online services is being promoted by the national government during the COVID-19 pandemic period, it is believed that open-access (OA) is to become the future of academic library exchanges in China.
References:
[1] Zhong, Jing, and Shuyong Jiang. 2016. “Institutional Repositories in Chinese Open Access Development: Status, Progress, and Challenges.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 42 (6): 739–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2016.06.015.
[9] Wen (2008) citation: as cited in Hu (2012).Hu, Dehau. 2012. “The Availability of Open Access Journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences in China.” Journal of Information Science 38 (1): 64–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551511428919.
During the lockdown of the entire country, China is bravely fighting against COVID-19. Many database vendors, publishers, and Internet companies announced to offer free access to academic resources to help students and researchers get the resources they need from home. Most of the publishers offered free access to everyone for a limited time and to decide whether to extend the period or not depend on the COVID-19 situation while some publishers announced open access from the announcement date indefinitely. At the same time, they are using technology to provide a convenient communication platform for researchers and provide an effective channel for up-to-date publication of results and new ideas of COVID-19 for the public.
Here we use the open-access platform ‘Sciencepaper Online’ [http://www.paper.edu.cn/] as a case study. The review and release period of papers online related to COVID-19 has been significantly reduced to 3 working days and all documents have been open for free in full text indefinitely from the start of February. Meanwhile, it works with other publishers and opens a separate area for Novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP), providing preprinted copies of relevant research results for free submission, publishing, browsing, downloading.
Detail
The outbreak of pandemic caused by COVID-19 has already affected people’s daily life worldwide. On January 27th, 2020, the Chinese Ministry of Education decided to delay the start of the spring semester in 2020. Due to the lockdown, all the universities and schools in China have closed. However, all the classes and teaching still need to continue at home. Classes from primary schools to Universities are all changed to online teaching. Limited resources and communication channels put great pressure on students, teachers, and researchers. According to the guidance and organization of the Ministry of education, lots of databases, publishers, and internet firms were offering free access to their website or launching a mobile application to giving academic resources for a limited time. However, open access has been going on in China for a long time. As a leading provider of open access in China, Sciencepaper Online is playing an important academic intermediary in this incident.
Brief introduction
According to the Sciencepaper online website, Sciencepaper Online is an academic institutional repository established in 2003 initiated by the Ministry of Education and hosted by the Science and Technology Development Center of the Ministry of Education. This platform is dedicated to providing scientific researchers with rapid paper publication and free access services. It is the first online academic open-access (OA) journals platform in China and the leading international peer-reviewed platform for online preprinted papers. (English translation by the author)
Since its publication in August 2006, Sciencepaper Online opened its Weibo account to give more up-to-date information about the platform for more people in 2011. Weibo is a popular social media platform in China similar to Twitter. According to the ASKCI Consulting company report, Weibo has more than 330 million users by the end of 2018. In 2016, Sciencepaper Online launched a mobile application to help scholars have more flexible access to open access resources the platform offers. On March 27th, 2019, Sciencepaper Online formally signed ‘Expression of Interest in the Large-scale Implementation of Open Access to Scholarly Journals’ The signing of OA 2020 initiative is not only an affirmation of the open-access concept but also a mark that China Sciencepaper Online will contribute to the open-access of global academic scholarly journals.
According to the Sciencepaper online webpage—introduction, the four main purposes of Sciencepaper Online are elaborating Academic Views, Exchanging Innovative Ideas, Protecting Intellectual Properties, and Fast Sharing Science Papers. After several years of development, it became a one-stop scientific research service platform with papers, journals, scholars, and communities as the four core sections, and rapid positioning of resources through disciplines, institutions, full-text search, and other methods. The submitted papers are reviewed and released on the site after 7 business days (start from the date of the last submission) if the paper is within the scope of Sciencepaper Online’s subject categories, in-line with the national laws/regulations and meeting our formatting requirements. No Service Fee Is Charged for releasing on this site. Today the website hosts 39 specialized fields according to the Classification and code of disciplines. According to standards press of China, Classification and code of disciplines specify the principles, basis, and coding methods of subject classification. The classification objects of this standard are disciplines, which are different from professions and industries. It also specifies that this standard cannot replace various viewpoints in literature, information, book classification, and academics. (English translation by the author) [http://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=4C13F521FD6ECB6E5EC026FCD779986E]
Contribution
In the view of the difficulty in publishing papers in general, the communication among scholars of different languages is narrow, Sciencepaper Online creates a fast, convenient communication platform to promote the latest study results and communication between scholars without delay. After the outbreak of COVID-19 in China, the Sciencepaper Online platform promises to significantly shorten the review and publication time from 7 business days to 3 days for papers related to the COVID-19 epidemic for basic medicine, clinical medicine, biology, pharmacy, Chinese medicine, and traditional Chinese medicine, preventive medicine, hygiene, and other disciplines. Sciencepaper Online releases relevant research and shares the research results as quickly as possible. Together with other publishers, a special website releases to the public providing relevant study results about COVID-19 [http://cajn.cnki.net/gzbd/brief/Default.aspx]. The site offers three versions which are simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, and English. Considered some people may have no access to computers during the self-quarantine time, it launched the mobile application simultaneously. Meanwhile, as the first preprinted scientific paper and open access website in China, the platform has over 100,000 preprinted papers and a total of 1.2 million-plus scientific papers in the library. All documents are open for free in full text indefinitely from the start of February 2020.
It is a good strategy to open full-text access during the urgent worldwide pandemic time. However, open access (OA) as a long-time movement needs more detailed consideration. Although the site has both the Chinese and the English versions, the English version contains around 5,900 English papers (5,992 papers) which are quite small compared to the 1.2 million-plus scientific papers in the Chinese version. Another challenge is that much of China’s scientific output is still locked behind paywalls.
” The Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) funds about 70% of Chinese research articles published in international journals, but China has to buy these back with full and high prices,”
Zhang said at the Open Access 2020 conference (Harnack House, Berlin, 3–4 December 2018). It would take a lot of effort to deal with the copyright issues both nationally and internationally.
Conclusion
During the COVID-19 epidemic, more and more scientific research workers joined the epidemic prevention and control actions, with a rigorous academic attitude to study prevention and control strategies and measures, hoping to use the “Sciencepapers Online” platform for fast and free publication. Making the latest research results publicly available and sharing them with relevant people who are concerned about the epidemic nationwide and even worldwide. Through the efforts of each of us and each department, we will accelerate the study of effective methods to contain the epidemic, improve the knowledge level of virus awareness, reduce panic among the people and contribute meager to epidemic prevention and control.
OA2020. “Expression of interest in the large-scale implementation of open access to scholarly journals.” https://oa2020.org/mission/. Accessed 16 Apr. 2020.
Cite as: Shi, A. (2020). [China and open access: Sciencepaper Online]. Sustaining the Knowledge Commons. [https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2020/04/23/china-and-open-access-sciencepaper-online/].
De nos jours, les sites web constituent des supports importants pour la diffusion d’information. Les entreprises s’attèlent à donner une visibilité à leurs produits. Les plateformes sont les lieux où les compagnies proposent une variété de produits. L’industrie de l’information en Afrique dans leur conversion au numérique utilise des plateformes pour proposer des services. C’est l’exemple de Sabinet qui est une plateforme hybride qui publie des revues africaines en ligne depuis 2001 (Sabinet, 2019). Elle commercialise trois Produits:
Service bibliothécaire: Catalogage – l’interconnexion – gestion des bibliothèques, etc.
Service d’information: 500 revues en ligne – 150 000 articles spécialisées de recherche complétée, de thèses & de Mémoires – Articles de médias et textes législatifs, etc.
Service de numérisation: Du scannage à la gestion des données.
La collection est composée de 10 suivantes disciplines: Business and Finance, Education, Labour, Law, Medicine and Health, Science – Technology and Agriculture, Religion, Social Sciences and Humanities et Juta’s Law Journals (Sabinet, (c), 2019).
Notre objectif dans ce travail est de présenter le fonctionnement de Sabinet en suivant les quatre principaux éléments de critères d’évaluations pour les ressources électroniques sur le Web de The Charleston Advisor (2019) (Contenu, Tarif, Options du contrat / caractéristiques, Possibilité de recherche) (The Charleston Advisor, 2019).
Nous allons découvrir le contenu de Sabinet en présentant dans un premier temps, le service bibliothécaire, le service d’information et le service de numérisation. Dans un deuxième temps, nous indiquons les dispositions contractuelles notamment, les dispositions relatives aux prêts entre bibliothèques, redistribution des informations, ou autres questions particulières qui accompagnent les différents services que Sabinet offre à ses clients. Notamment l’interface utilisateur et le moteur de recherche ainsi que quelles conditions d’accès aux produits.
1 – Présentation de Sabinet
Sabinet est une entreprise de l’industrie de l’information en Afrique du Sud. Sa mission est de faciliter l’accès à l’information et de faire en sorte que les bibliothèques en Afrique. La compagnie fonctionne par actionnariat (Institutions 49%, Personnel 37%, Fiducie 9%, Particuliers 5%). Le conseil d’administration est composé de 10 membres et une équipe de gestion de 8 membres. 213 éditeurs issus de 12 pays publient 500 revues (350 000 articles). De ses 500 revues, 164 sont en accès libre, 336 revues sont accédées par souscription (Sabinet, (b), 2019).
L’un des services que propose Sabinet à ses clients est la gestion des bibliothèques. Ce qui lui permet le catalogage et l’interconnexion.
Services aux bibliothèques
Sabinet fournit une variété de services à tous les types de bibliothèques. Elle offre le catalogage et l’acquisition de l’information pour les bibliothèques pour simplifier et soutenir leur processus de développement de leurs collections. Sabinet propose des services aux bibliothèques incluant l’interconnexion et les systèmes de gestion des bibliothèques. Elle procure des plateformes de collaboration de ressources entre les bibliothèques. Un service de partage de ressources basé sur le Web pour les bibliothèques de l’Afrique australe, «the ReQuest interlending service» facilite l’accès aux ressources hébergées par les bibliothèques, en permettant l’emprunt et le prêt entre les institutions. Le prêt inter-bibliothèque «WorldShare» d’OCLC relie les utilisateurs aux collections de milliers de bibliothèques via le plus grand réseau de prêts inter-bibliothèques au monde. Sabinet est un site de partage de documents d’échange d’articles. Elle fournit un emplacement unique et sécurisé où les bibliothèques de prêt du monde entier peuvent placer les documents. Hormis le service aux bibliothèques, Sabinet gère également un service d’information dans lequel les éditeurs peuvent publier leurs revues.
Services d’information
Sabinet offre des revues en ligne provenant ou se rapportant à l’Afrique. Ce service est l’une des collections les plus complètes et consultables en ligne en texte intégral. Elle contient du contenu juridique sud-africain, ainsi qu’un service d’archivage des médias (SA Media). SA Media est un service de recherche de nouvelles et de coupures de presse qui couvre rétrospectivement les principales publications en Afrique du Sud, de 1978 à nos jours. La collection de presses SA Media comprend plus de 4,5 millions d’articles. Avec une moyenne de 2 500 nouveaux articles ajoutés chaque semaine, SA Media est un outil de recherche qui donne accès aux publications traditionnelles locales (Sabinet, (f) 2019).
Collection
Nombre
Disciplines
OA
N
S
T
Total
1
Social Sciences and Humanities
37
122
0
0
159
2
Science Technology & Agriculture
28
78
0
0
106
3
Medicine and Health
16
70
0
0
86
4
Business and Finance
14
75
0
0
89
5
African Journal Archive
127
54
0
0
181
6
Law
17
38
0
0
55
7
Labour
6
14
0
0
20
8
Religion
5
26
0
0
31
9
Education
3
13
0
0
16
10
Juta’s Law Journals
0
16
0
0
16
Total
253
506
0
0
759
La collection de Sabinet est composée de 10 disciplines. Les champs de African Journal Archive (181) et de (Social Sciences and Humanities (159)) arrivent en tête du nombre des catégories de sujet et sont toutes évalués par les pairs (peer reviews). Sabinet s’adresse spécifiquement aux chercheurs et aux bibliothèques. Cette compagnie soutient les écoles secondaires et primaires à travers des dons de livres spécialisés. Dans ce contexte, Sabinet propose de numériser les documents papier des différentes institutions ou compagnies pour leur donner une visibilité en ligne.
Numérisation
Sabinet offre un service de numérisation personnalisé pour les besoins des bibliothèques. L’équipe chargée de la numérisation dispose d’un équipement de pointe qui leur permet de créer des répliques électroniques parfaites du matériel d’origine. Environ 13 000 pages A4 détachées ainsi que 1 200 pages liées peuvent être numérisées quotidiennement (Sabinet, (h) 2019). Sabinet dispose d’un système (CONTENTdm®) qui donne accès aux collections numériques sur le Web, plus rapidement. Il peut gérer tout format – archives d’histoire locale, journaux, livres, cartes, bibliothèques de diapositives ou audio / vidéo. Ce système fournit une solution complète pour les archives historique, les bibliothèques de diapositives, les articles «nés-numériques», les journaux, les livres, les lettres, les cartes, les thèses et les dissertations électroniques et les fichiers audio / vidéo. Il permet l’interopérabilité. Autrement dit, il est compatible avec les systèmes existants, locaux, régionaux, nationaux et internationaux. Il est compatible aux normes ISO, notamment : Unicode, Z39.50, Dublin Core®, XML, JPEG2000, etc. (Sabinet, (i) 2019).
Ces services ont pour objectif de fournir et de garantir les meilleures conditions de travail pour les usagers. Les dispositions techniques de navigation et d’accès à la documentation sont proposées à tous les souscripteurs qui souhaitent travailler avec Sabinet.
2 – Dispositions contractuelles
La plateforme Sabinet est hybride, certains articles sont payants. L’accès aux documents payants est soit par abonnement soit directement (open accès). Pour gérer le flux de clients, une souscription avec un «username» et un mot de passe sont exigés. Il y a un panier dans lequel tout souscripteur peut collectionner les articles qu’il souhaite acheter (Sabinet (e), 2019). Le système de fonctionnement de Sabinet est entièrement basé sur des logiciels et des technologies Open Source. Par exemple, Counter fournit le code de pratique qui permet aux éditeurs et aux fournisseurs de signaler l’utilisation de leurs ressources électroniques de manière cohérente. Cela permet aux bibliothèques de comparer les données reçues de différents éditeurs et de fournisseurs. Counter maintient les registres de conformité qui répertorient les éditeurs et les fournisseurs qui ont passé une vérification indépendante de leurs statistiques d’utilisation.
EZproxy est un autre outil qui est installé sur un serveur. Il sert d’intermédiaire entre l’usager et le fournisseur de ressources numériques. L’adresse du serveur sur lequel est installé EZproxy est déclarée auprès des fournisseurs de contenus qui autorisent alors l’accès à tout utilisateur arrivant depuis ce serveur. L’authentification est confiée à l’établissement responsable d’EZproxy, via un annuaire LDAP. EZproxy fonctionne en modifiant dynamiquement les URL dans les pages Web fournies par le fournisseur. Il configure l’accès pour que l’interaction et l’engagement des utilisateurs avec la bibliothèque soient les mêmes, où qu’ils se trouvent et quand ils choisissent de travailler.
Le processus d’installation est sécurisé pour les utilisateurs, il n’est pas nécessaire pour les utilisateurs de modifier les paramètres de leur navigateur ou de reconfigurer leur PC. L’utilisateur se connecte au contenu sans de multiples barrières. Le mot de passe est supprimé. EZproxy peut être configuré avec les principaux services d’authentification – LDAP, SIP et Shibboleth, de sorte que l’utilisateur n’ait pas à se souvenir de plusieurs mots de passe.
Les services de ce site sont compatibles avec les produits du «link resolvers/OpenURL» et des principaux systèmes de bibliothèque, y compris ceux de Serials Solutions, ExLibris, EBSCO et OCLC. Le «link resolvers/OpenURL» permet aux systèmes de bibliothèque de se lier au niveau de l’article du journal (ou aux titres de livres) en utilisant une syntaxe OpenURL. L’utilisation de cette méthode est avantageuse, en particulier lors de la liaison avec un contenu récemment publié puisqu’il ne nécessite pas que l’article soit préalablement téléchargé (Sabinet, (g) 2019).
Cette initiative internationalement acceptée facilite l’enregistrement et la déclaration des statistiques d’utilisation en ligne de manière cohérente et crédible. Le service devient plus simple pour les clients afin de comprendre et d’analyser comment les livres électroniques et d’autres matériaux électroniques sont utilisés. Lorsque les rapports d’utilisation ont les mêmes types de données et sont formatés de la même manière, ils peuvent être comparés les uns aux autres et peuvent être automatiquement récupérés dans les systèmes locaux (NISO, 2019).
Outre ces dispositions techniques, Sabinet propose aux utilisateurs un moteur de recherche performant qui facilite la navigation.
L’interface utilisateur et le moteur de recherche
Le site web de Sabinet demande une inscription pour naviguer sans restrictions. Au niveau de la principale page qui est intitulée «Sabinet : Faciliting Access to Information», six (6) menus permettent de se connecter et de visiter le site. L’onglet «Home» raccourcit l’accès à cinq (5) menus. Par exemple, «About» présente entre autres la mission, l’équipe dirigeante, etc. «Products and Services» énumère le programme de ses trois services en l’occurrence : Library Solutions, Information Services and Digitization. Ensuite, le «Support» définit les différentes informations les politiques d’accès, d’authentification et des pratiques de prêts entre les autres bibliothèques. «New and Events» fournit les informations sur les activités et communications du site. Quant à «Corporate Social Investment», il décrit le projet de Sabinet.
En plus de ces menus sur la page, trois services (African Studies Collection, Online journal, News Services) sont proposés. African Studies Collection est une collection d’un large éventail de revues spécialisées, de médias et de contenus législatifs émanant du continent africain. Online journal propose des revues en ligne en provenance ou à destination de l’Afrique. Sabinet propose un nouveau service (News Services) personnalisé de recherche d’informations en ligne et de coupures de presse pour répondre aux divers besoins.
Ce nouveau service comprend:
La nouvelle base de données de African News Agency (ANA). Elle comprend : des rapports en texte intégral de novembre 2015 à ce jour sur l’actualité sud-africaine et africaine. Elle donne accès aux articles de presse importants de l’ancienne SAPA (ANA est le nouveau nom de SAPA). Ces articles sont issus de cinq disciplines clés: la politique, l’économie, les entreprises et les marchés, le sport ainsi que l’actualité générale (qui comprend le mode de vie, les célébrités, les tribunaux et la criminalité). Les nouvelles des agences suivantes sont diffusées via l’Agence de presse africaine: ANA, ANA-Xinhau, ANA-dpa international et ANA-Associated Press.
Pour obtenir des informations sur les éditeurs, la collection, les publications, etc., il faut se rendre à la page intitulée «Sabinet African Journals» avec 7 menus :
le menu «A-Z Publications» donne la liste des revues ou bien montre comment soumettre un article;
le menu «Collections» donne la liste des collections principales;
le menu «Open Access» indique les revues Open Access; de la politique d’accès, etc.
le menu «Publishers» dresse la liste des éditeurs;
le menu «For Librarians» présente les politiques d’accession aux informations pour les bibliothécaires;
l’onglet «Help» revient sur les conditions de souscription et du guide des utilisateurs;
enfin, le menu «Shopping Cat» permet de réserver les articles que l’on souhaite avoir.
En plus de ces menus sur la page, un autre onglet situé au-dessus de la bande à menus donne accès à «Advanced Search». Elle permet de filtrer les recherches par collection, par date, etc. (Sabinet, (d), 2019). Les utilisateurs de la bibliothèque peuvent récupérer des articles ou des chapitres de livres via un prêt entre bibliothèques. Cette possibilité d’accès est possible grâce à un dispositif technique diversifié, mais aussi, à un modèle d’affaires que propose Sabinet.
Tarification
Le modèle d’affaires de Sabinet est basé sur trois possibilités d’accès à la collection. Il y a premièrement, des abonnés et deuxièmement des non-abonnés. Les abonnés ont accès à l’intégralité des revues et les non-abonnés payent pour accéder à des contenus. Troisièmement, on trouve les revues à accès libre. Les revues en accès libres sont divisées en trois modes d’accès : le «Gold Open Access» est dépourvu de toutes restrictions. Le «Green Open Access» est un accès semi-libre. Les éditeurs facturent des frais d’abonnement pour les récents numéros pendant une période donnée. Ensuite, l’accès devient gratuit.
Le troisième mode d’accès libre est «Article level Open Access». Ici, certains articles sont libres d’accès et d’autres sont payants. Pour soumettre un article à Sabinet, l’organisation demande à tout souscripteur de contacter directement un éditeur via leur site pour effectuer l’envoi. Il est accessible par ordinateur PC ou Machintosh. L’essentiel de sa clientèle est composé de bibliothèques locales et internationales, ainsi que des organismes publics et privés (Sabinet, (e) 2019). Les revenus de Sabinet proviennent aussi des frais de souscription ou des abonnements des bibliothèques.
Modèle d’affaires
OFFRES
TYPES
NOMBRE DE REVUES
S
Titles Subscribed To
0
OA
Open Access Content
164
T
Free Trial Content
0
N
Titles Not Subscribed To
360
CONCLUSION
Sabinet a pour mission de promouvoir l’accès à l’information des recherches en Afrique. Dans ce sens, la plateforme remplit parfaitement ses objectifs. Elle diffuse 500 revues dont plus 164 en accès libre, 336 par souscription avec des frais pour le téléchargement. La grande partie des revues est issue de l’Afrique du Sud avec 184 sur 213 éditeurs. Sabinet offre une variété de services avec d’importantes possibilités d’accès. Cependant, l’accès renferme des imperfections qui ne facilitent pas l’utilisation des services. Une des particularités est que les menus de l’interface ne donnent pas accès facilement aux revues. La fonctionnalité «Home» propose cinq menus dans lesquels il faut aller chercher pour trouver la liste des revues, des éditeurs, etc. De plus, l’on ne peut pas obtenir ces revues par pays sur une facette. Sabinet est une compagnie qui offre également d’autres services payants comme la numérisation, le catalogage, des documents des bibliothèques, etc. Cependant, les frais de publication ou autres frais de service ne sont pas affichés.
Les produits compétitifs de Sabinet sont leurs trois services phares, notamment : la numérisation, le service d’information et le service aux bibliothèques. Ces produits permettent de soutenir leurs différents projets de bienfaisance aux établissements scolaires, à la création de l’emploi et à la diffusion des produits de recherches de l’Afrique (Sabinet, (f), 2019).
Fifty percent of the open access (OA) journals listed in DOAJ in 2019 are published in Europe, and the United Kingdom is the biggest publisher of OA journals in DOAJ. It is important to note that we do not know the extent to which OA journals are fully represented in DOAJ; we understand that there is a parallel service called Chinese Open Access Journals. There are a few surprises in the 10 largest countries in DOAJ. Latin America and the U.S. are well represented as usual, while Indonesia is now the second largest country in DOAJ, and Poland, Iran, and Turkey, are among the top 10. This may reflect the work of the DOAJ ambassadors program.
The analysis of geographical data on Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) shows that the European countries are leading the way in publication of Open Access journals by publishing 6133 journals in 2019, while Oceania and Africa published the least amount of OA journals in the same period.
The United Kingdom is the biggest publisher of open access journals by publishing 1471 journals in 2019. Indonesia and Iran are among the top 10 publishers of OA journals in 2019 that implies a growing interest in open access in these two countries.
Our team of researches collected the publication fee data for the open access journals in 2019 to see how the pricing to publish OA journals differs in different parts of the world. The results shows that while 71% of OA journals published in North American countries do not charge article processing charge (APC), but the average APC for the rest of the journals in North America is 1473 USD which is more expensive than any other part of the world. Asia with the average APC of 190 USD is the least expensive continent to publish OA journals.
Crawford (2019) published the results of his research on world open access journals in 2018 but he categorized the regions in a different way.
The following table shows the share of world OA journals in 2019 by each continent. It should be noted that the true number of OA journals in the world are higher, but here we are only analyzing the journals which geographical data on DOAJ was available.
The following table shows the percentage of journals which charge APC comparing those which do not charge APC in each continent. Because the information regarding APC was not available for some journals, the sum of APC and NO APC columns in the table for some rows is not equal to 100 percent.
Of the journals that charge APC, the average APC amount for each region is shown in the following table. The high standard deviation implies high variability in the range of prices.
According to the DOAJ data, there are 24 countries that have published more than 100 OA journals in 2019.
The summary of top 24 countries in publishing open access journals is shown below.
The method and documentation of the current research by Morrison et al. (2019) and the complete dataset is listed in the references section.
Morrison, Heather, et al. 2019, “OA APC longitudinal study dataset 2019”,https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/0DIPGE, Scholars Portal Dataverse, V1
Crawford, W. (2019). Gold Open Access 2013-2018: Articles in Journals (GOA4), Livermore, CA:2019. Retrieved Oct. 31, 2019 from https://waltcrawford.name/goa4.pdf
The analysis of Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) shows that open access journals were published in 85 different languages in 2019. English is the language used by more than 9,500 journals, while Spanish language comes second with more than 2,400 journals, followed by Portuguese (1,731), Indonesia (1,135) and French (897). We analyzed the tendency to charge and average APC by first language listed. The only language with a majority of journals charging APCs was Chinese (54%), followed by Persian (33%) and English (31%). Average APC ranged from 43 USD (Indonesian) to 1,096 USD (English). The second highest APC was Catalan at 331 USD, illustrating a correlation between language and APC, with English language journals at the high end of the range.
The most popular languages to publish open access articles in 2019 are listed in the following table.
We analyzed the article processing charge (APC) for the ‘first language’ that OA journals publish articles in, and the results for the top languages are shown below.
The original currency to charge article processing charge (APC) for more than 50 percent of world open access (OA) journals in 2019 recorded in our study is USD (for documentation of our procedures see Morrison et al (2019), while GBP and EUR are in the second and third place. 5 currencies (USD, GBP, EUR, CHF – Swiss Franc, INR – Indian Rupee) account for over 90% of the journals.
The following table and chart depict the original currency for OA journals in 2019.
When looking at the average APC in each original currency, it could be seen that the journals that their original currency is GBP charge the highest amount of APC. The top 10 most expensive APCs in original currency are listed below (all amount are converted to the USD).
This post features 4 comparisons between publishers and sub-publishers of fully open access journals that are included in our longitudinal APC study. Traditional publisher Wolters Kluwer owns two sub-publishers (or imprints). Wolters Kluwer Medknow journals tend not to charge APCs, and have low prices when they do charge. Wolters Kluwer Lippincott journals tend to charge, and prices are high. Indonesian-based Universitas Negeri Semerang is now one of the world’s largest OA journal publishers by the number of journals and appears to be new to online publishing using open-source software. Very few of their journals have APCs. The traditional Oxford University Press tends to have APCs, and their APCs are more than twice as high as a new UK-based not-for-profit OA journal publisher, Ubiquity Press. MDPI and Hindawi are very similar, both are fairly new, APC based commercial OA journal publishers; but Hindawi’s average APC is 44% higher than MDPIs. To understand the economics of OA journal publishing, it is necessary to take into account the strategies of particular publishers and even sub-publishers.
Research Question: are publishers and sub-publishers of fully open access journals pursuing observably different strategies with respect to publication fees (charging / non-charging, pricing strategies).
Method: 4 pairs of publishers or sub-publishers (imprints) were selected for comparison using the data from OA Main 2019, based on what appear to be differences in approach by publishers that are otherwise similar: Wolters Kluwer’s Medknow (India-based, OA in origin) & Lippincott (U.S. based, traditional subscriptions in origin); university-based publishers Universitas Negeri Semarang (Indonesia) & University of Oxford (U.K.); University of Oxford & Ubiquity (both U.K. based, traditional subscriptions v. OA origin) and MDPI & Hindawi (both commercial, OA in origin based on the APC model). Status of fully OA journals published by each publisher was compared, focusing on the tendency to charge (or not) and the amount of APC for charging journals.
Detail
1.Wolters Kluwer Medknow & Lippincott
Wolters Kluwer is one of the world’s oldest commercial scholarly publishers, having been established in 1836 in the Netherlands, where the company’s global headquarters is still located (Wolters Kluwer,2019a).
After acquiring Medknow in 2011, Wolters Kluwer focuses on develop strategic partnerships and leverage global brand and strengthen go-to-market (Wolters Kluwer,2019a). However, in Wolter Kluwer 2019 half-year financial report says: “Recurring revenues accounted for 80% of total revenues and grew 5% organically (HY 2018: 5%). Recurring revenues include subscriptions and other renewing revenue streams”. In the report, they also publish their major revenue (85.5%) comes from digital and service subscription and open access APC does not show as a certain type of revenues below (Wolters Kluwer,2019b).
Medknow & Lippincott are different sub-publishers (imprints) belonging to Wolters Kluwer.
In 2019, Wolters Kluwers Medknow publishes 527 journals among which 99 journals (18.8%) have an APC, over half of journals do not charge a publication fee (66.6%). It is also important to notice that a few journals are redirecting to risky URL which is concerning as there are chances, it has been stolen by some other company (Avasthi, N & Morrison, H, 2019). Among the 99 journals with an APC that were studied, the highest APC is 1,500 USD and the minimal price is 9 USD. The average APC is 200 USD per article and, the most common publication fee (mode) is 150 USD per article.
2019 APC Wolters Kluwers Medknow website
For Wolters Kluwers Lippincott’s fully OA journals, over two-thirds of its journals (71.9%) have a publication fee. Among the 23 journals, the average APC is 1,756 USD per article, the range of APC (article proceeding cost) starts from 1,000 USD to 2,250 USD, and most common APC (mode) is 1,500 USD per article. Compare to Medknow, Lippincott has a much higher average APC. Lippincott’s average publication fee is almost 9 times the average of Medknow which is 200 USD. A lower standard deviation of Medknow indicates that the publication fees tend to be close to the mean (200 USD) of the set, while a high standard deviation of Lippincott indicates that the publication fees are spread out over a wider range.
2019 APC Wolters Kluwers Lippincott website
2. Universitas Negeri Semarang & University of Oxford
Oxford University Press is one of the oldest scholarly publishers officially established in 1668. From the late 1800s, Oxford University Press began to expand significantly and makes most of its revenue from subscription and book sales.
Universitas Negeri Semarang , it appears to be fairly new to online publishing; in DOAJ the first year of online publication is 2009 or later for all the journals (column IO). Most of the journals appear to be published in Indonesian and/or English. The platform used is OJS – open source journal publishing software developed by the Public Knowledge Project. In other words, we have contrasted a very old, traditional, UK-based publisher with a new approach. (Note the size of OA journal publishing by UNS – see Appendix A.)
Universitas Negeri Semarang, based in Indonesia, is among the largest fully open access publishers with 96 journals. According to DOAJ webpage, Indonesia becomes the second largest country of publisher by number of journals ( see Appendix B.) and Indonesian rupiah becomes the 6th among all the original currencies for OA journals which accounts for 1.86%. The University of Oxford is a very well-known traditional scholarly publisher. These two university publishers have different approaches to APC. After comparing these two publishers we found Universitas Negeri Semarang has no publication fee for 88.5% of its journals while the University of Oxford has a fee for 80.3% of its fully open access journals.
3. University of Oxford and Ubiquity
As mentioned before, Oxford University Press is one of the oldest scholarly publishers which has a rich history which can be traced back to the earliest days of printing.
Ubiquity Press as an open access publisher of peer-reviewed academic journals and books was founded by researchers at University College London (UCL) in 2012. As a highly cost-efficient press, it provides access to the platform to give universities and societies the infrastructure and services they need to run their own presses through the Ubiquity Partner Network and allow societies to earn income from open access.
The average price of Ubiquity journals that only charge in GBP is 469 GBP (596 USD) and the most common price among those journals (mode) is 300 GBP (381 USD). The average price of Oxford University Press journals that only charge in GBP is 4543 GBP (5769 USD) and the most common price among those journals (mode) is 1250 GBP (1587 USD). The chart below shows the differences between Ubiquity and Oxford University Press on the APC that charged in GBP.
The overall average APC of Ubiquity journals that have a fee is 577 USD while the overall average APC of the University of Oxford is 1,549 USD. The average APC difference between these two publishers is 972 USD.
2019 APC Ubiquity publisher website
4.MDPI and Hindawi
Hindawi is one of the world’s largest publishers of peer-reviewed, fully Open Access journals. Built on an ethos of openness, it works with the global academic community to promote open scholarly research to the world. Based in institutions around the globe, it focuses on serving authors while preserving robust publishing standards and editorial integrity.
MDPI has supported academic communities since 1996 as a non-profit institute for the promotion and preservation of the diversity of chemical compounds. Based in Basel, Switzerland, MDPI has the mission to foster open scientific exchange in all forms, across all disciplines. Mr. Dietrich Rordorf joined MDPI as Dr. Shu-Kun Lin’s assistant in August 2005. As an experiment, a modified version of the online submission and editorial system based on the Open Journals System (http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/) was launched by Dietrich for IJMS. Nowadays, MDPI has become the 7th largest publisher in number of articles published in 2018, and the largest publisher of open access articles in DOAJ in 2018.
MDPI and Hindawi charge fees for all the journals they published in 2019. However, their publication fees are different as the charts show below. Even though the highest APC are quite close for both publisher (2,049 USD for MDPI and 2,300 USD for Hindawi), the average APC for MDPI is 822 USD and 1,186 USD for Hindawi. We can also see the difference through mode. The most common price of Hindawi is 950 USD per article (Shi, A., 2019) while the most most common APC for MDPI journals is 350 CHF (359 USD) in 2019.
Publishers in DOAJ in descending order of number of journals
As of Nov. 19, 2019, Universitas Negeri Semarang is the 12th largest publisher by number of journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Elsevier (339) BMC (328) Sciendo (326) Hindawi Limited (238) SpringerOpen (202) Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications (194) MDPI AG (191) SAGE Publishing (165) Taylor & Francis Group (163) Wiley (109) Dove Medical Press (103) Universitas Negeri Semarang (90)
Appendix B
Country of publisher in DOAJ in descending order of number of journals
As of Nov. 21, 2019, Indonesia becomes the second largest country of publisher by number of journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
United Kingdom (1,609) Indonesia (1,565) Brazil (1,445) Spain (755) United States (741) Poland (619) Iran, Islamic Republic of (511) Turkey (404) Italy (387) Russian Federation (367)
Sustaining the Knowledge Commons / Soutenir les savoirs communs 