Open Access International Week 2018 | National and International Policies
In 2018, the International Open Access Week took place from October 22 to 28, as part of an international initiative that aims to disseminate Open Access to knowledge, promoted by SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). This year, the Week covered the topic "Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge”.
Just as in previous years, the CDI-Library of FMUL partnered with this initiative by divulging scientific resources and information in open access that was deemed relevant to the entire FMUL/IMM community.
Information on National and International Policies concerning Open Access:
FCT Open Access Policy
Decree No. 285/2015 - Official Journal of the Portuguese Republic, 1st series - No. 180 - 15 September 2015
Open access to publications and data in Horizon 2020
Evolution of Open Access Policies (ROADMAP)
Infographics:
How to follow FCT rules on Open Access | FCT - Science and Technology Foundation
Open Access to scientific publications | Horizon 2020
What is Open Science? Outlining a concept
Open science enables knowledge sharing among the scientific community, society and companies, thus allowing to improve science's reputation and increase its social and economic impact. More than just the provision of data and publications in open access, Open Science is the opening up of the scientific process as a whole, strengthening the concept of scientific social responsibility. The implementation of Open Access practices also sponsors several innovation opportunities. It promotes the development of new products, services, businesses and companies.
What are the pillars of Open Science?
- Open Access
- Open Data
- Research | Open Innovation
- Science's Open Networks
- Citizen Science
What are the benefits of Open Science?
- It makes research more efficient
- It increases knowledge on the process of scientific work
- It promotes academic precision and increases the quality of research
- It speeds up the process of developing new research topics
- It promotes the engagement of society and culture / scientific literacy
- It increases the social and economic impact of science.
- It values intellectual property
- It promotes scientific return for institutions
Find out more about Open Sciences, here.
Scientific Resources in Open Access - directories, portals, publishers and others:
- arXiv
- BioMed Central
- Bookboon
- DART-Europe E-theses Portal
- DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books)
- DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
- EUROPEANA
- EUROSTAT / European Comission
- Highwire (Stanford University)
- HighWire Press
- Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE)
- JHSPH Open Courseware
- Journals For Free
- NDLDT (Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations)
- OAIster
- OATD (Open Access Theses and Dissertations)
- OECD Working Papers
- Open Access Button
- Open Data Button
- Open Science Directory
- OpenAIRE (Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe)
- OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories)
- OpenThesis
- Paperity - Open Science Aggregated
- PeerJ
- PLOS (Public Library of Science)
- PubMed Central
- RCAAP (Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal)
- Redalyc
- RePEc
- ROAD (Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources)
- SciELO Scientific Electronic Library Online
- ScienceOpen
- SHERPA/RoMEO – Políticas de auto arquivo de editoras e revistas científicas
- SpringerOpen
- Taylor&Francis Open
- UNESDOC
- Unpaywall
- Wiley Open Access
- World Development Indicators / World Bank
- WorldWideScience.org
Predatory Journals
The concept of "Predatory Journals or Predatory Publisher", appeared in 2010 with Jeffrey Beall and was used to describe publishers with little moral that published/ appealed to the publication without peer review, or with very questionable revision. Connected to Open Access publication, though not solely linked to it, it holds non-recommendable practices as its principle.
- Publisher sends out spam invitations appealing to publication
- Abnormally low publication prices
- Editorial Board - inexistent or indicates the person as the publisher for several journals
- The name of the publication does not reflect its origin; the publisher does not reveal his location; he has no phone contact
- Name and scope of the publication is too broad (to attract more content);
- Not indexed in the Web of Science or Scopus
- Misleading information on "Impact Factor"
Impact of Predatory Publications
- Even if the work is solid, it is likely to be discredited in the academic community if published in a predatory publication
- Peer review with no quality / low quality or precision
- Long-term reputation is sacrificed to achieve short-term benefits
- Waste of funding - potential penalty by the funding agency
- Academic reputation/ career progression compromised
Where to publish? Distinguish good from bad
- Be alert and learn to identify predatory publications
- Verify works/authors/affiliation in recently published issues
- Search the Journal of Citation Reports (JCR) and the Scimago Journal & Country Ranking (SJR) to find indexed publications in your area:
- Other platforms to search for reliable publications:
- DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals
- ROAD - Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources
- Cofactor – Journal Selector
To publish in Open Access
- Before making your publication decision, check the open access policies of your funding institution.
- You should proceed to self-archiving your scientific production in your Institution's Repository – Repositório.UL
- Be aware of legal terms for deposit in each of the institutions in order to simplify the choice of journal.
- Check the self-archiving policies (deposit) of the publisher in the platform Sherpa/RoMEO
Three steps to choosing a trustworthy publication
https://thinkchecksubmit.org/
http://thinkchecksubmit.org/translations/portuguese/
Final Note:
- Publications that are not indexed to WoS or Scopus are not necessarily predatory.
- While a publication might not have been contemplated in these indexes, it might be indexed in Medline or in other reliable indexes, even if these don't have the same leverage as WoS ou Scopus as tools for bibliometric assessment of scientific production.
- Open Access is not the same as Predatory Publication, or synonym for lack of scientific precision, as there are publishers on OA whose scientific credibility and precision are indisputable, such as Hindawi, Pios or BMC.
Reading Sugestions:
NDR press release: More than 5,000 German scientists have published papers in pseudo-scientific journals (July 2018)
Cobey et al: What is a predatory journal? A scoping review, F1000Research (2018)
Shamseer et al: Potential predatory and legitimate biomedical journals: can you tell the difference? A cross-sectional comparison, BMC Medicine (2017)
Moher et al: Stop this waste of people, anima
