The community blog for all things Open Research.

Chris Hartgerink

Lena Karvovskaya

Esther Plomp

Dorien Huijser

Open community resources are increasingly used to promote open research practices, and are themselves an open practice. They are a powerful way to create shared ownership of a resource and provide agency to add or change them. However, they also present new struggles around embedding them in institutional practice, which we experienced in our own work.

Cultivating Openness: From Community Resources to Institutional Acceptance

Adam Buttrick

In the rapidly evolving landscape of research, the importance of high-quality metadata and persistent identifiers (PIDs) cannot be overstated. PIDs and metadata are the connective tissue that binds together diverse research outputs, enabling discovery, accessibility, and reuse. Despite their critical role, the current model for metadata creation and enrichment is fraught with inefficiencies.

Advancing Metadata Quality: An Open Call to Collaborate

Joanna Ball

Lars Bjørnshauge is the visionary founder of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). His transformation of a simple idea into a globally trusted directory revolutionized the accessibility and credibility of open access publishing. Under his leadership, DOAJ became a critical resource, supporting the dissemination of scholarly work worldwide and setting high standards for transparency in publishing.

Open Publishing Fest Lifetime Achievement Award: Interview with Lars Bjørnshauge

Amalia Raquel Pérez-Nebra

Coming from the Global South, I have frequently experienced the cucaracha (cockroach) syndrome, where I feel like what I do is not interesting. This is the phrase that I give to the feeling of my research and perspective being routinely undervalued and underappreciated due to my local context and language abilities.

Experiences of scholarly marginalization

Explore limitations, concerns, and proposed solutions in this thought-provoking piece based on a global survey. Join the discussion with Enago Academy on sustainable and equitable access to knowledge.

Uttkarsha Bhosale

Riya Thomas

Gayatri Phadke

Anupama Kapadia

The open access (OA) movement has undoubtedly revolutionized the accessibility of scholarly research, aiming to make knowledge freely available to all. While many countries have embraced OA publishing with supportive policies, a persistent obstacle remains—article processing charges (APCs). These charges/fees have led to a debate within the academic community, questioning whether they align with the best interests of open science.

A Fairer Future for Open Science: Choosing community over commercialization with equitable article processing charges

Adam Hyde

University of California Office of the President

John Chodacki

Paul Shannon

Although advances in artificial intelligence (AI)

 1

have been unfolding for over decades, the progress in the last six months has come faster than anyone expected. The public release of ChatGPT in November 2022, in particular, has opened up new possibilities and heightened awareness of AI's potential role in various aspects of our work and life.

An Initial Scholarly AI Taxonomy

Iratxe Puebla

Researchers spend a lot of time doing peer review, and by a lot we are talking about over 100 million hours per year (estimate for 2020 by Aczel et al.). It is a complex and time consuming process that is often presented as a pillar to science dissemination, because of its function to scrutinize research papers to check whether they contain any flaws, oversights, or they meet certain criteria for novelty or advance, before the article appears in

Let's make our reviews open, starting now

Ginny Hendricks

Christine Ferguson

Front Matter

Martin Fenner

Today we are announcing

 Upstream

. And if you’re reading this, you’re already a part of it! Upstream is a community blogging platform designed for Open enthusiasts to discuss… you guessed it: all things Open. It’s a space for the whole community to voice opinions, discuss open approaches to scholarly communication, and showcase research.

Welcome to Upstream: the new space for scholarly community discussion on all things open

Mohammad Hosseini

Violeta Ilik

Nicole Vasilevsky

Kristi Holmes

The FORCE11 attribution working group held a workshop during the 2021 FORCE conference to explore some ethical aspects of using Contributor Roles (CRs). This workshop provided an overview of various CRs and their practical values in terms of providing a better recognition of the wide range of scholarly contributions.

Deep dive into ethics of Contributor Roles: report of a FORCE11 workshop

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Daniel S. Katz

FAIR Principles for Research Software (FAIR4RS Principles)

Introducing the FAIR Principles for research software

Do you think the FAIR principles for Research Software are working? The FAIR Principles for Research Software were published in March 2022 and described in a paper in October 2022.

FAIR principle for Research Software (FAIR4RS) 2-year review

US federal policies are transforming research accessibility. Learn how the Holdren and Nelson memos are shaping open access and the NSF's implementation.

Lorena A Barba

Access to cutting-edge research can spark innovation, drive progress, and shape our future. But what to do if the discoveries and scholarly work funded by our tax dollars are locked behind paywalls, accessible only to a privileged few? The U.S. government has been grappling with this question, and recent policy shifts aim to improve access to federally funded research.

Overview: US Policy on Open Access and Open Data

Rob van Nieuwpoort

In November of 2022, the Research Software Alliance (ReSA) and the Netherlands eScience Center organized a two-day international workshop titled “The Future of Research Software.” In the workshop, funding organizations joined forces to explore how they could effectively contribute to making research software sustainable. The workshop had many participants from all continents and was a huge success.

Defining the roles of research software

The Journal of Open Source Software: Using Open Source Practices to Build Community and Sustainability

Presentation - Making FAIR Fair to the Researchers (Force11 Conference - Force2024)

Making Biomedical Research Software FAIR: Actionable Step-by-step Guidelines with a User-support Tool

I recently attended the FORCE2024 conference at UCLA. I'm a member of the board of directors of FORCE11, the parent organization for the conference, and the co-located FORCE11 Scholarly Communications Institute (FSCI), which I was not able to attend this year but have taught at in the past.

Research Software, Citation, and FAIR at FORCE2024

Lauren Collister

Melissa Cantrell

Language co-option in the open space

The status quo bias and the uptake of open access

From “Patchy Endorsements” to Intentional Advocacy: Deconstructing Bias in the Language of Open Access

This post expands further on the assertion recently made by Danny Kingsley in her post on “Language co-option in the open space” that “words matter” when trying to have meaningful conversations about open access. Not only do words matter for creating common agreement, but words can also actively create biases, inform decision-making, and even thwart the visions of open publishing and infrastructure advocates most want to champion.

The language of advocacy and risk

Open data has been a topic widely discussed among researchers and research-supporting organizations over the last decade. Much progress has been made in data sharing, and we now have more datasets openly available than ever before.

Advancing data sharing and reuse: Barriers, solutions, and recommendations from a data workshop

PIDs in scholarly communications and research infrastructure have garnered government attention lately. By aligning with frameworks such as FAIR and POSI and incorporating insights from global initiatives, we present some desirable characteristics of PID infrastructures to guide them.

Todd Carpenter

Considerations in the context of open scholarship and open infrastructure

Persistent identifiers (PIDs) in scholarly communications and research infrastructure have garnered growing attention over the last several years, especially from governments who are recognizing the vital role PIDs play in creating a more efficient and trustworthy research ecosystem.

Desirable Characteristics of Persistent Identifiers

In order to deliver on the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), all sectors must urgently intensify fair and equitable transformations to sustainability. Scientific publishing must reform if it is to play its part.

Moumita Koley

Megha Sud

The


 International Science Council


 is a non-government organization that brings together 45 international scientific Unions and Associations, over 140 national and regional scientific organizations, including Academies and Research Councils, 60 international Federations and Societies, and Young Academies and Associations.


 The ISC is charting a path toward the mission to advance human development within sustainable

The Imperative of Reforming Scientific Publishing

Metadata Game Changers

Ted Habermann

Jamaica Jones

Howard Ratner

Tara Packer

Introduction  A recent blog post described a new partnership between Metadata Game Changers and CHORUS aimed at understanding how CHORUS data can help federal agencies, other funders, and other users access and use information from the global research infrastructure to measure this infrastructure and understand connections between research objects.

INFORMATE: Where Are the Data?

Dylan Roskams-Edris

I help Canadian neuroscience research institutes create and adopt an institute-level approach to open science. Inevitably, I end up talking to researchers, administrators, academic commercialization offices, and businesses about open science, intellectual property (IP), and technology transfer.

Opening New Paths to Technology Transfer: Open Science, Intellectual Property, and Technology Transfer

Andrea Chiarelli

The exponential surge in research data, coupled with the advent of cutting-edge computational tools, is ushering in an era of unprecedented opportunities for research performing organisations. However, with many still in the process of adopting basic research data management practices and support mechanisms, the current state of play is concerning.

Navigating data-intensive innovation: The transition from research data management to research data governance

Stephan Druskat

Jose Benito Gonzalez Lopez

Lars Holm Nielsen

Stefano Iacus

Adam Shepherd

Danie Kinkade

Gustavo Durand

Research data and software rely heavily on the technical and social infrastructure to disseminate, cultivate, and coordinate projects, priorities, and activities. The groups that have stepped forward to support these activities are often segmented by aspects of their identity - facets like discipline, for-profit versus academic orientation, and others.

Interoperable infrastructure for software and data publishing

Bruce Caron guides us through their  open browser tabs. What are some of the must-reads at the moment?

Bruce Caron

Like the rest of you, I’ve been deluged with opinions and advice about recent advances in AI. So, I hopped into the AI mosh-pit. Last fall, I grabbed an account on DALL-E and spun up intricate artwork in my spare time. I jumped on Chat GPT 3.5 when it arrived, and this week, on GPT-4.   I have an open tab that takes me to my account with Openai.

Bruce Caron is Keeping Tabs on AI

Saikiran Chandha

Sucheth R

Tirthankar Ghosal

Since its release towards the end of 2022, ChatGPT has been dominating the majority of AI-related conversations on social media. One could almost say it has made AI more mainstream and accessible than ever. AI is quickly revolutionizing the modern-day research landscape. According to a CSIRO report, nearly 98% of scientific fields use AI in some way.

Setting the Scene: How Artificial Intelligence is reshaping how we consume and deliver research

How comprehensive are bibliographic databases when it comes to preprints? Ludo Waltman and Nees Jan van Eck provide six recommendations for improvement.

Leiden University

Ludo Waltman

Nees Jan van Eck

Scholarly publishing is going through an exciting transition. Researchers are increasingly publishing their work on preprint servers before submitting it to journals. Some researchers have even decided not to submit to journals at all. On top of this, new forms of peer review are emerging, organized around preprints and operating independently from traditional journal peer review.

The preprint revolution - Implications for bibliographic databases

Gimena del Rio

Gimena del Rio Riande is Associate Researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas y Crítica Textual (IIBICRIT-CONICET, Argentina) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8997-5415). Her main academic interests deal with digital humanities, digital scholarly edition and publishing, and Open Research Practices in the Humanities.

Gimena del Rio Riande is Keeping Tabs on Open Research

Carolina Tanigushi

DataCite

Gabi Mejias

Infrastructure: what’s at stake   Infrastructure often is perceived as a “given”, as something that was always there, as “natural”. In the digital age, infrastructure seems more “natural” than ever (it's hard to imagine there was a time without internet connectivity in our mobile phones or even a time when phone lines were a luxury item) and the social and economic dimension of infrastructure tend to be invisibilized and are left out of

Scholarly Infrastructure: a Latin American perspective

Digital object identifiers (DOIs) and relevant metadata have been used for 20 years to help preserve the scholarly record by maintaining stable links to scholarly publications and other important scholarly resources, combined with long-term archiving by publishers and libraries. Lots and tools and services have been built around this infrastructure to make it easier for scholars to consume and contribute to this scholarly record.

The Rogue Scholar: An Archive for Scholarly blogs

Bianca Kramer

Jeroen Sondervan

Jeroen Bosman

Researchers, librarians, policy makers, and practitioners often complain about the scholarly publishing system, but the system also offers exciting opportunities to contribute to innovations in the way academic findings are disseminated and evaluated.

Preprints and open preprint review: a workshop on innovations in scholarly publishing

Ashley Farley

Since 2015 I’ve been steeped in the world of open access, academic publishing, and funder policies. This is a blip of time compared to many other experts and advocates in this space. I’ve often sardonically joked that if I had received a dollar for every time I’ve heard that open access will become the norm once the United States changes its policy I could retire early.

Hot memo summer: How OSTP’s recommendations will lead to a large-scale transformation of the research ecosystem

Fiona Hutton

In October, the journal eLife announced that it will change how it handles peer review starting January 2023: To better understand what this change means for authors and reviewers, Upstream editor Martin Fenner asked Fiona Hutton, eLife's Head of Publishing, a few questions.

eLife Reviewed Preprints: Interview with Fiona Hutton

Monica Gonzalez-Marquez

Anouschka Foltz

Jeffrey K. Bye

Ali Fulsher

Take a look at the picture below. What do you see? Think for a moment and write down your observations or say them out loud. Did you see tracks in the snow and the shadow of trees in the background? Maybe you were more specific, noting there are different kinds of tracks going in different directions, and at least two trees casting shadows.

Science Reading: Cognitive narrative helps us understand science better

Curtin University

Cameron Neylon

Data Processing and production: Jamie Diprose


 Cross-posted from the COKI blog.

There is a lot of lip service paid to the idea of diversity in scholarly publishing and often diversity of language is used as an example.

Language Diversity in Scholarly Publishing

Aaron Tay

Several weeks ago, Cameron Neylon kicked off a good idea to list a few articles he was keen to read and tell us why.


 Based on 'open tabs' in their browser, approximately every month one person will share their reading wishlists so we can curate some of the 'must-read' posts of the moment.


 Each author concludes by tagging the next;

Aaron Tay is Keeping Tabs on Open Research

Inspired by a conversation on Twitter, Upstream is publishing a new blog series. Each month (ish) one person will post their reading wishlists based on the browser tabs they have open. We'll learn the articles they're most keen to read - and why. Somewhat of a reading 'guilt list', each author will conclude by tagging another person to share theirs, helping to curate the must-read content of the moment in our space.

Cameron Neylon is Keeping Tabs on Open Research

Gisela Govaart

Simon M. Hofmannn

The climate crisis is affecting us all, and it seems like there is a role for open research to play.

The sustainability argument for open science? In conversation with the authors.

Cathleen Berger

In 2021 the UNESCO agreed on their Recommendation on Open Science, a consensus document of 193 countries highlighting values such as equity in open research, alongside principles of sustainability. Improving sustainability is critical from a social, economic, and ecological perspective given the global climate crisis.

The Environmental Impact of Research Infrastructures: Publishers, Open Science, and the Climate Crisis

In the Open Scientist Handbook, I argue that open science supports anti-rivalrous science collaborations where most metrics are of little, or of negative value. I would like to share some of these arguments here.

An open science argument against closed metrics

Alexis-Michel Mugabushaka

Worldwide, governments have started to ease or end the Covid-19 restrictions, signaling the beginning of the end of a pandemic which, according to the WHO, infected over 400 million people and caused 5.8 million deaths, not to speak of the devastating disruptions it caused to public and economic life.

Funding Covid-19 research: Insights from an open data infrastructure

Scholarly publishing at times seems to want to hold on to some outdated processes. At the top of my list is the dreaded RFP (Request for Proposals) process. In the scholarly comms world, consultants send these out on behalf of publishers that are seeking solutions or services. My career involves designing and building publishing technology and so I have been on the receiving end of many RFPs for developing new platforms.

Can we do away with RFPs?

Jennifer Gibson

This post is the third in a four-part series by Jennifer Gibson. The first post, on the shape and impact of research communication is available here. Reactions from readers are very welcome. Please use the commenting function. Before I dive into this part of the discussion, I’d like to credit Damian Pattinson and Stuart King at eLife, with whom I worked to develop the three first tenets below in 2020 and 2021, as eLife's core values.

A modern take on research communication, Part III: Tenets of a modern system

Ginny Barbour

If anyone thought that 2022 was going to be a time of peace and harmony in open access, some of the last salvos of 2021 will surely have put that to rest.

Words matter

Recognizing the need for dialogue on best practices around ethical challenges in data publication, the FORCE11 Research Data Publication Ethics Working Group started in early 2021 as a multi-stakeholder community effort involving representatives of data repositories, journals, researchers, institutional research integrity officers and libraries.

Announcing new resources from the FORCE11-COPE Research Data Publishing Ethics Working Group: flowcharts!

Danny Kingsley

Coming down from the recent FORCE11 Scholarly Communication Institute (FSCI) and FORCE2024 conference at UCLA has allowed reflection on some of the recurring themes from the two events. One of these was the issue of language appropriation in the open scholarship space. In the process of attempting to write some of these issues up, it became clear that this requires something of a wander down history lane.

Christopher Steven Marcum

Drinking from the firehose of scientific publishing

The strain on scientific publishing

Should We Publish Fewer Papers?

Publish or perish: Origin and perceived benefits

Publish or Perish

Accept Me, Accept Me Not: What Do Journal Acceptance Rates Really Mean? [ICSR Perspectives]

Acceptance rates of scholarly peer-reviewed journals: A literature survey

Too many journals, in too many forms?

We need to value research quality more than quantity

A generalized view of self-citation: Direct, co-author, collaborative, and coercive induced self-citation

Specialized Science

The peer review process

And, not or: Quality, quantity in scientific publishing

Digital Transformation of Academic Publishing: A Call for the Decentralization and Democratization of Academic Journals

Over-optimization of academic publishing metrics: observing Goodhart’s Law in action

The Peer Review Process: Past, Present, and Future

Prestigious Science Journals Struggle to Reach Even Average Reliability

Deep impact: unintended consequences of journal rank

Predatory Journals: What They Are and How to Avoid Them

The prevalence and impact of special issues in communications journals 2015–2019

Guidance for Authors, Peer Reviewers, and Editors on Use of AI, Language Models, and Chatbots

The Second Digital Transformation of Scholarly Publishing: Strategic Context and Shared Infrastructure

Academia is undergoing a rapid transformation characterized by exponential growth of scholarly outputs. This phenomenon, often termed the "firehose problem," presents significant challenges for researchers, publishers, funders, policymakers, and institutions alike.