Social Sciences Directory Limited

Dan Scott Quality, affordable open access journals October 2013

Contents
Issues in publishing Issues for academics Social Sciences Directory concept Successes to date Institutional memberships JISC Collections consortium offer Next steps Summary

Scholarly publishing issues

A flawed industry model in need of change Restricted access to publicly-funded research Paywalls Copyright DRM Spiralling costs for library resources and monopolistic practices Publication times of months and years Reliant on ever-increasing amounts of public funding Situation brought to a head by the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 Widespread budget shrinkage Hastened new thinking & mandates from governments and funders

Issues for academics

Funding such as the Research Excellence Framework conflates research quality with journals used to publish findings Propagates need/desire to publish in high impact journals BUT No of scientists and research output globally is growing exponentially so the likelihood of getting publication will decline There are not like-for-like OA journals with high impact factors in all subjects, so need to consider alternatives Hybrid model adding to already unsustainable costs Insistence on importance of journal titles is at odds with user behaviour Future funding mandates likely to move away from impact metrics

Issues for academics

We run a publication fund for our scholars to cover their article fees in Gold Open Access journals It turns out that more and more scholars use PLoS ONE as a means to get out of that journal roulette. We asked them why they put their articles from important research projects into PLoS ONE. Roughly half of them stated that they had tried at one other journal and then got under time pressure to publish, almost all remaining ones stated that they couldn't waste time in the submission process of higher ranking journals. And at least one stated that he knew the article was good and therefore simply wanted it as fast and reliable as possible in front of his peers to read it, sacrificing potential reputation gain for speed
Margo Bargheer, Gottingen University

Issues for academics

No serious scientist that I know of decides to read an article just because it's published in a prestigious journal, or, perhaps even more to the point, decides not to read it just because it's published in a lesser journal. He or she tries to find must-read articles via searches, consulting colleagues, following references, often without realising or taking note of the journal in which they are published
Jan Velterop

Social Sciences Directory concept

Keep whats good
Editorial independence Quality control double blind peer review Article structures abstract, methodology, content, conclusion, references Indexing and archiving Online-only content with unlimited pagination Multi-disciplinary and international content to cross-fertilise ideas Peer-reviewed articles augmented by valuable additional material Affordability - low cost APCs and Institutional Memberships Cost recovery made at the point of submission rather than re-couped
Faster to publish Less wasted material

Improvements

Social Sciences Directory concept

Keep whats good
Editorial independence Quality control double blind peer review Article structures abstract, methodology, content, conclusion, references Indexing and archiving Online-only content with unlimited pagination Multi-disciplinary and international content to cross-fertilise ideas Peer-reviewed articles augmented by valuable additional material Affordability - low cost APCs and Institutional Memberships Cost recovery made at the point of submission rather than re-couped
Faster to publish Less wasted material

Improvements

Successes to date
Built publishing platforms and launched 2 journals
Social Sciences Directory Humanities Directory

Recruited two editorial boards Contributions to the OA debate articles, blogposts, conference speaking, social media > a thought leader Published seven issues (c40 papers) across both Social Sciences Directory and Humanities Directory First article fees, institutional memberships and consortium agreements Built good awareness in UK & increasingly worldwide

Successes to date
Built publishing platforms and launched 2 journals
Social Sciences Directory Humanities Directory

Recruited two editorial boards Contributions to the OA debate articles, blogposts, conference speaking, social media > a thought leader Published seven issues (c40 papers) across both Social Sciences Directory and Humanities Directory First article fees, institutional memberships and consortium agreements Built good awareness in UK & increasingly worldwide

Successes to date
Built publishing platforms and launched 2 journals
Social Sciences Directory Humanities Directory

Recruited two editorial boards Contributions to the OA debate articles, blogposts, conference speaking, social media > a thought leader Published seven issues (c40 papers) across both Social Sciences Directory and Humanities Directory First article fees, institutional memberships and consortium agreements Built good awareness in UK & increasingly worldwide

The editorial team and review processes

Editors and editorial boards have undergone selection processes 275 self-registered Reviewers with reviewing interests Anonymously match a submitted article with a qualified reviewer Abide by the reviewers and editors decision

Institutional memberships
University of Nottingham
Social sciences faculty liaison team approved support for an institutional membership Allows unlimited number of submissions to be made for a 12 month period Promotional material created to support agreement and drive submissions Tony Simmonds, Faculty Team Leader Social Sciences at the University of Nottingham, commented: Nottingham has long been a proponent of open access publishing, with an established research fund to pay open access charges. We believe this is a promising and bold venture, and one that deserves backing

Institutional memberships
University of Huddersfield

Graham Stone, Information Resources Manager at the University of Huddersfield: "Huddersfield is a supporter of open access initiatives and we have chosen Social Sciences Directory because it offers new opportunities for scholarly publishing. We also have the practical consideration that this will provide us with a reduced time-to-publication, which will help us disseminate our research outputs more quickly and to a wider audience"

Institutional memberships
University College London

Dr Paul Ayris, Director of UCL Library Services: I am delighted that UCL has joined with Social Sciences Directory and Humanities Directory. 2013 is the year of Open Access and UCL is fully committed to opening as many Open Access avenues as possible to our researchers. Open Access is good for research, good for the University and good for Society at large

Consortium agreement
SCURL/SHEDL agreement for Scottish universities
SHEDL purchased an agreed number of pre-paid APCs Internally allocated to Scottish HEIs, based on research output Aim to allow testing and then full institutional memberships Dr Richard Parsons, Director of SHEDL: The change in the UK funding mandate that came in to effect in April 2013 gives us the need and opportunity to explore new publishing opportunities for Scottish research output. SHEDL has chosen to support Social Sciences Directory because we believe that it offers an opportunity to move to a new publishing solution which maintains quality standards whilst offering a more cost-effective model

JISC Collections
Agreement signed in August 2013 Using JISC HE banding for UK universities
JISC COLLECTIONS OPT-IN PROPOSAL Institutional Membership GBP 1 Journal 2 Journals Band 1 1,900 3,400 Band 2 1,850 3,311 Band 3 1,800 3,222 Band 4 1,750 3,132 Band 5 1,700 3,043 Band 6 1,650 2,954 Band 7 1,600 2,864 Band 8 1,550 2,775 Band 9 1,500 2,685 Band 10 1,450 2,596

Recent House of Commons testimony stated that the average APC in the UK will be 1,500-2,000

Library and consortia roles

Institutional Memberships and JISC & SHEDL consortia agreement are highly significant Demonstrates that the library and consortia side can play a critical role in decision-making about publishing choice Global email campaign to HE consortia with proposals Strong expressions of interest Flexible
Price bands Pricing that reflects GDP (special offers for INASP countries)

Faculty roles
Register as Authors and Reviewers Editorial Board members Submissions for review & publication Help to re-model publishing that is faster and fairer

Summary
Reform is required and has been mandated Providing a progressive, affordable and flexible solutions Benefit researchers and students worldwide Thank you dan.scott@socialsciencesdirectory.com