– The spectres of predatory publishing and mediocre research. The Farewell Visiting Fellow Lecture, 22 October 2018. University library, University of Southern Denmark

1. Gustaf Nelhans, visiting fellow
University of Southern Denmark
Farewell lecture
Odense
22 October, 2018

2. Overview
1. Open access in context.
2. Experiences from expert group at the National library
1. Study on evaluation on applications for assistant professorship
3. ‘Predatory publishing’
1. Study the proportion of alleged questionable publishing in the Nordic
countries

3. Open access in context
• Since the mid-1990s, the subscription costs for
scientific journals have risen by over 200% (= 6 x
inflationary increase)
• Publishers make profits of up to 40%
• Increased interest in pushing for open-access
publishing at the university, national and international
level
• Some difficulties, researchers seems to be less willing to
change publication practices than the clients / financiers
thought.
• Other incitaments for publishing, e.g. bibliometrics, esp. JIF

4. Forms of open access
• Gold OA: flipped model: ”Author pays”:
• Hybrid: Subscription journal, single article
• Green: open archive, ”parallell publication”
• Diamond/Platinum: free to publish AND read
• Bronze: ”articles made free-to-read on the publisher
website, without an explicit Open license” (Piwowar et al,
2018: https://peerj.com/preprints/3119)
•Predatory!

5. Amount and share of OA
Figure 2: Number of articles (A) and proportion of articles (B) with OA copies,
estimated based on a random sample of 100,000 articles with Crossref DOIs.
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.4375/fig-2
Piwowar, H., Priem, J., Lariviere, V., Alperin, J. P., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., . . . Haustein, S. (2018). The
state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles. PeerJ, 6, e4375.

6. Citation advantage?
Figure 5: Average relative citations of different access types of a random sample of
WoS articles and reviews with a DOI published between 2009 and 2015.
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.4375/fig-5
Piwowar, H., Priem, J., Lariviere, V., Alperin, J. P., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., . . . Haustein, S. (2018). The
state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles. PeerJ, 6, e4375.

7. Open access at the local level
All research published by
Chalmers' researchers must
be made available in an open
archive, normally within six
months of publication
although no later than 12
months. This means that
researchers at Chalmers must
submit a full-text copy of all
their publications in
electronic form
to research.chalmers.se.
”Researchers at Chalmers are
recommended to publish in
journals that are freely
available, so-called Open
Access journals”
(Chalmers OA policy 2018 [2010])

8. Open access at the local level –SDU
Open Science Policy in 2018
- Data management plans
- Open research data
- Open access to academic
publications
From 17 % in 2015 to 42 % in
2016, mainly through Pure
repository and a OA fund
Linked to responsible conduct
”SDU acknowledges the importance
of ensuring that publications ... are
published Open Access”
”Open Science Policy at SDU”
Newsletter, Katrine Findsen,
22.05.2018

9. National level - Sweden
• The government's target image is that all scientific publications
resulting from publicly funded research should be immediately
available immediately after they are published. Likewise,
research data underlying scientific publications should be made
available at the same time as the associated publication.
• Provisions:
• Gradually
• Responsible way
• Publications: now
• Results and data: within a ten year period.
• Collective responsibility for all actors
(Prop. 2016/17:50)
Denmark? Proposes Green OA

10. Swedish Research Council (VR)
• ”In reports submitted to the Swedish Research Council on
research it is funding, as of 2015 the Council will only
accept articles published with open access.”
• 2017: ”CC-BY-licence, which enables the re-use and new use
of the materials that the research findings were based on,
as well as so-called text and data mining.”
• Publication in monographs and book chapters exempted
• Open data is next...
https://www.vr.se/inenglish/researchfunding/applyforgrants/conditionsforapplicationsandgr
ants/openaccess.4.44482f6612355bb5ee780003075.html

11. Internationally
• European Open Science Agenda, May 2016
• Remove obstacles and create incitaments for open
access
• OA-mandate in Horizon 2020: embargo period of ̊
6-12 månader
• InvesGgaGng possibiliGes for remuneraGon for
APC:s (Ar+cle-Processing Charges)
• ”offset agreements”

12. cOAlition S
“After 1 January 2020 scientific
publications on the results from
research funded by public grants
provided by national and
European research councils and
funding bodies, must be
published in compliant Open
Access Journals or on compliant
Open Access Platforms.”
https://www.scienceeurope.org/coalition-s/
Austria Austrian Science Fund FWF
Finland Academy of Finland AKA
France French National Research Agency ANR
Ireland Science Foundation Ireland SFI
Italy National Institute for Nuclear Physics INFN
Luxembourg National Research Fund FNR
Netherlands Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research NWO
Norway Research Council of Norway RCN
Poland National Science Centre Poland NCN
Slovenia Slovenian Research Agency ARRS
Sweden
Swedish Research Council for Health, Working
Life and Welfare
FORTE
Sweden
Swedish Research Council for Sustainable
Development
FORMAS
UK UK Research and Innovation UKRI
EU
European Commission, including the European
Research Council

13. New publisher trend: The X-factor!

14. 2017 Nat’l lib. Coordinating role
In 2017 the National Library, directive from the
Swedish Government to act as a national
coordinating body in the work towards a transition
to open access to scholarly publications.
Five working groups:
1. The current merit and resource allocation
system versus incentives for open access
2. Funding for a transition from a subscription-
based to an open access publishing system
3. Open access to scholarly monographs
4. Financial and technical support for converting
peer-reviewed and scholarly journals from toll
access to open access
5. Monitoring of compliance with open access
policies and mandates

15. ”Docent study”
• Evaluation reports for applications for promotion
(n=112)
• Main result: No document mentions Open access
• Differences between research areas in terms of
what is evaluated as merit
• Evaluators use more elaborative measures than are
found in the directives

16. Results
Subject area
(No. docs)
Citering1 H-Index Impact factor Norska listan2
HUM (26) 0 0 0 1 (1)
MED (14) 1 (1) 0 3 (3) 0
NAT (20) 6 (13) 6 (6) 2 (2) 0
SAM (21) 8 (13) 3 (3) 3 (3) 3 (3)
Guidelines (11) 1 (1) 0 0 0
1. ”Sitering”, ”citering”, ”citation”, ”cited”.
2. ”Norska listan”, ”enligt NSD”.
Documents count (total occurrencies)

17. ’Predatory’ publishing
• Only relevant for ’Author pays’ model (Gold OA)
• Dishonest publ...
• Illegitimate journals
• Vanity press
• Fake journals
• ”Rip off”
• Snake oil...

18. Interna'onal Journal of Intelligent
Informa'on Systems
(ISSN Print: 2328-7675, Online: 2328-7683)
Current Issue: Vol.6, No.4, 2017
Dear Gustaf Nelhans,
Greetings from the editorial office
of International Journal of Intelligent
Information Systems(ISSN: 2328-7675), an
Open Access journalwhich publishes original
research papers.
We get to know your paper titled Citation
impact in clinical guidelines from 21st Nordic
Workshop on Bibliometrics and research
policy----NWB 2016, and your topic is so much
impressive.
We hope to publish this interesting paper in
our journal. Would you like to share your
papers with other scholars in this field? If you
have any interest, please feel free to email us
your paper manuscript in the attachment at
any of your convenience.
Meanwhile, to enhance the academic
communication between scholars, we are
seeking professionals to join our Editorial
Board or reviewer team. If you are interested,
you are encouraged to send your Resume to
us.
Subject Coverage
Database management
technologies
Extreme modelling
Heterogeneous
databases
Extreme programming
Distributed databases
Information retrieval
systems
Mobile databases
Intelligent information
systems
Temporal databases
Information
engineering
Journal Indexing
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, CNKI SCHOLAR,
EZB, WorldCat, CrossRef, Polish Scholarly
Bibliography, Access to Research for
Development and Innovation, Directory of
Research Journals Indexing, ResearchBib,
Academickeys, Zeitschriftendatenbank,
JournalSeek, Universal Impact Factor, MIAR,
etc.
We are looking forward to a fruitful
cooperation with you.
Best Regards,
Editorial Office of International Journal of
Intelligent Information Systems
APC: $770!

20. ’International Journal of Intelligent Information Systems’

21. APC:s in bitcoin
https://ephjournal.com/index.php/as

22. ”submit your print-ready manuscript
in pdf-format with a check for $770”

23. Cabell’s criteria
Severe
V03 Hijacked journal (defined as a
fraudulent website created to
look like a legitimate
academic journal for the
purpose of offering
academics the opportunity to
rapidly publish their research
for a fee).
V11 Editors do not actually exist
or are deceased.
V15 Falsely claims indexing in
well-known databases
(especially SCOPUS, DOAJ,
JCR, and Cabells).
V37 The journal or publisher uses
a virtual office or other proxy
business as its physical
address.
V71 The journal publishes papers
presented at conferences
without additional peer
review.
Less severe
V05 The journal or publisher
claims to be a non-profit
when it is actually a for-profit
company.
V06 The publisher hides or
obscures relationships with
for-profit partner companies.
V32 Gender bias in the editorial
board.
V48 The journal purposefully
publishes controversial
articles in the interest of
boosting citation count.
V56 No policies for digital
preservation.
V66 The journal copyproofs and
locks PDFs.
Grey zone
V02 The same article appears in more than
one journal.
V20 The journal states there is an APC or
other fee but does not give
information on the amount.
V22 The author must pay APC or
publication fee before submitting the
article (specifically calls the fee a
publication fee, not a submission fee).
V25 The name of the journal references a
country or demographic that does not
relate to the content or origin of the
journal.
V34 Inadequate peer review (i.e., a single
reader reviews submissions, peer
reviewers read papers outside their
field of study, etc.).
V40 Poor grammar and/or spelling.
V43 The publisher displays prominent
statements that promise rapid
publication and/or unusually quick
peer review (less than 4 weeks).

24. Study result slides have been
removed due to pre-publication
status

25. Singapore statement on Research Integrity (2010)
• Honesty in all aspects of research
• Accountability in the conduct of research
• Professional courtesy and fairness in working with others
• Good stewardship of research on behalf of others
From: Dorch, B. (2015). Open, transparent and honest – the way we practice research. Nordic
Perspectives on Open Science, 1, 25–30. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.7557/11.3618

26. Boils down to research ethics

27. Thank you!
gustaf.nelhans@hb.se