Publishing in Predatory Open Access Journals: A Case of Iran

Scholarly publishing scams and predatory journals are emerging threats to academic integrity. During the last few years, the number of bogus journals has dramatically increased, defraud authors by promising fast review and prompt publishing. The current research investigates the contribution of Iranian researchers in predatory open-access journals in 2014. In this research, a total of 21,817 articles published by 265 journals from Beall’s list of predatory standalone journals were investigated. Although Beall’s weblog was taken offline on January 15, 2017, data was collected between January and March 2016 when his weblog was accessible. Results of the study revealed that Iranian researchers have contributed to 1449 papers from 265 journals, ranked this country as having the second largest contributor after India. Surprisingly, institutions with the highest share of publication in predatory journals are among the most reputable and well-known universities of the country. Un-vetted papers published in predatory journals can hurt individuals’ reputation and be a base for future low-quality research in Iran and other world countries. To avoid being victimized by questionable journals, researchers should be more familiar with scholarly publishing literacy skills to recognize and avoid publishing scams.     

Librarians as Research Partners: Their Contribution to the Scholarly Endeavour Beyond Library and Information Science

Academic libraries are increasingly called upon to demonstrate their value to their home institutions. Research collaboration with faculty resulting in the co-authorship of scholarly output is one possible way to demonstrate the alignment of the library with the institutional mission. Involvement in research also improves librarians' skills in offering research support services. This study explores the contribution of librarians to scholarly journals in fields other than Library and Information Science (LIS) as well as their collaboration practices with researchers in those fields. Results show an increasing number of papers published by library-affiliated authors in non-LIS journals between 2006 and 2015. The papers fall broadly into four areas: articles on topics related to LIS published in non-LIS journals; higher education and information literacy; systematic reviews and meta-analysis; and research collaboration in the faculty's areas of expertise. The study is limited by the difficulty in properly retrieving the scholarly output of librarians from bibliographic databases and the difficulty in ascertaining their contributions to published articles.     

2007年SCIE收录江西作者论文统计分析

以SCI网络版（SCIE）为数据源,从文献类型和语种、学科分布、来源期刊、作者合作分析、论文作者等方面定量统计和分析了2007年SCIE收录江西作者发表的论文。结果表明,与前几年相比,2007年SCIE收录江西作者发表的论文无论在数量上还是在质量上都有较大的提高,但同其它省份相比还存在很大差距。因此,为提高江西学术水平与国际影响力,在重视SCIE收录论文数量的同时,更应重视论文的内在质量。     

基于SCI数据库的机构科研能力分析——以南昌航空大学为例

通过汤森路透web of science中的SCIE数据库对南昌航空大学参与发表的SCI论文进行检索,从发表年代、国际合作情况、国内合作情况、基金资助情况、研究领域、学术影响力等六个方面进行分析与研究,揭示出南昌航空大学的整体学术水平和研究能力。     

Engaging in research: challenges and opportunities for health library and information professionals

This year's virtual issue (the 6th in the series) has been published to coincide with the European Association for Health Information and Libraries’ (EAHIL) 2015 workshop (10–12 June, Edinburgh): Research‐Minded: Understanding, Supporting, Conducting Research. This event is being run in collaboration with the International Conference of Animal Health Information Specialists and the International Clinical Librarian Conference. Although research has always been a central part of any librarian's role, until recently health librarians and library users and funding bodies assumed that librarians were ‘midwives’ – there to assist students, clinicians, academics and managers set up and carry out their research. The notion of the librarian as a professional with a research agenda, who understands research methods, submits research grants, and publishes, is a relatively new perspective. If librarians are to take an evidence‐based approach to their profession they need to acquire research skills. This is the rationale for the 2015 EAHIL workshop. To support the workshop, this virtual issue contains six original articles published in Health Information and Libraries Journal over the last 2 years that demonstrate the range of research activities carried out by health librarians, as well as a review article and articles from each of the three feature columns. All articles included in this virtual issue are available free online.     

我国SCIE收录期刊学科分布及建议

通过研究中国SCIE期刊学科分布,为中国英文期刊的学科布局提供依据,以提高我国英文期刊水平、吸引优质稿源回流.利用WoS和JCR,获取我国SCIE期刊的刊名、学科领域、影响因子等指标,对比分析出我国没有SCIE期刊的空白学科领域,并研究相关领域的论文产出情况.结果显示:我国SCIE收录期刊学科分布不均,具有Ql区期刊的学科有12个,期刊数大于或等于5刊次的学科有13个,尚有71个学科没有SCIE期刊;有些空白领域已有大量SCIE论文发表,有实力创办高水平英文期刊.     

High‐impact papers from China,Japan, India,and Korea

This paper compares ‘high‐impact’ papers from China, Japan, India and Korea in 2012, together with papers from these countries in Cell, Nature, and Science (CNS) from 2010 to 2012. China leads on ‘highly cited’ and ‘hot’ papers in 2012, while Japan has the highest number in CNS (653), followed by China (471), Korea (131) and India (83). Although China published more high‐impact papers in 2012, papers published in CNS were at a relatively low level, which appears to show that while some of the research in China is at a relatively high level, this is not entirely reflected in the number of papers in these ‘elite’ journals.     

Access to Research: the experience of implementing a pilot in public libraries

The Access to Research project is a collaboration between scholarly publishers and librarians to provide free licensed access to research journals via terminals in public libraries. The project is an element of the ‘balanced package’ proposed by the Finch Working Group on how to expand access to published research in the UK, which reported its recommendations to the UK government in June 2012. We describe the setting up of the project and the findings from a three‐month technical pilot prior to the launch of a two‐year national pilot in February 2014. The project has already attracted support from the major scholarly publishers, with about 8,400 journal titles now available. The access platform has been shown to be usable by public librarians and library patrons. We are now addressing the challenge of understanding how the public will make use of the system and exploring how best to provide training and education for librarians and users.     

Is open access affordable? Why current models do not work and why we need internet‐era transformation of scholarly communications

Progress to open access (OA) has stalled, with perhaps 20% of new papers ‘born‐free’, and half of all versions of record pay‐walled; why? In this paper, I review the last 12 months: librarians showing muscle in negotiations, publishers’ Read and Publish deals, and funders determined to force change with initiatives like Plan S. I conclude that these efforts will not work. For example, flipping to supply‐side business models, such as article processing charges, simply flips the pay‐wall to a ‘play‐wall’ to the disadvantage of authors without financial support. I argue that the focus on OA makes us miss the bigger problem: today’s scholarly communications is unaffordable with today’s budgets. OA is not the problem, the publishing process is the problem. To solve it, I propose using the principles of digital transformation to reinvent publishing as a two‐step process where articles are published first as preprints, and then, journal editors invite authors to submit only papers that ‘succeed’ to peer review. This would reduce costs significantly, opening a sustainable pathway for scholarly publishing and OA. The catalyst for this change is for the reputation economy to accept preprints as it does articles in minor journals today.     

基于SCIE的我国肝胆外科学术影响力分析

基于SCIE来源期刊刊载的我国及国外肝胆外科学者2000—2009年发表的科学论文,使用Excel和RefViz文本分析软件对入选论文的相关指标数据进行计量分析,在世界范围和全国范围内进行横向比较。结果表明,就国际影响力而言,我国肝胆外科科学论文质量及影响力排在美、欧国家和日本、韩国之后。就学科研究重点和热点而言,我国与国外基本同步,但有自己的研究特色。筛选出我国肝胆外科核心机构16个、学科骨干28人。尽管我国肝胆外科2000—2009年科学论文产出绝对量居世界前茅,但其科学论文质量和影响力有待提高。     

信息计量方法在我国高校学科评估中的应用——以郑州大学为例

通过美国科学情报研究所（ISI）建立的科技文献数据库Web of Science中的SCI—Expanded数据为依据,对2005—2014年郑州大学发表并被SCIE收录及引用的2937篇论文,从论文数量、学科分类、文献类型、来源出版物、合作机构、通讯作者及论文资助情况等10个方面进行了统计与分析,通过定量数据从侧面反映了郑州大学近几年的科研和学科发展,以期为学校的学科建设和科研绩效评估提供数据参考和支持。     

Does the author’s collaboration mode lead to papers’ different citation impacts? An empirical analysis based on propensity score matching

This study explores the impact of different collaboration modes on the cited frequency of publications. Though several studies have obtained some research results, most of them exploit association or regression-based methods, which may not lead to causal conclusions. To overcome the above challenges, we use the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method to analyze and compare the citation frequencies resulting from four groups of collaboration models: international versus domestic, international multilateral versus international bilateral, domestic inter-organizational versus domestic intra-organizational, and domestic multi-author versus domestic single-author. More specifically, we conduct this analysis by exploring the publications with three computer science subfields from the Web of Science (WoS) database. The experimental results show that international collaboration, especially international multilateral collaboration, has a significant role in increasing the frequency of citations to scientific publications, showing that internationalization and collaboration are critical factors in the growth of the impact of the papers. Among national co-publications, collaborative publications within national organizations receive a higher citation impact. Multi-author collaborations significantly increase citation frequency compared to single-author publications. Our heterogeneity analysis across the different subfields of the computer science domain finds that the treatment effects for the three subfields differ modestly and mostly significant from the whole sample. Moreover, besides the implications for developing research policy and scientist collaboration, our study can capture the causal effect between author collaboration patterns and citation frequency to reveal their causal effects.     

Iranian Scholarly Journals 2.0: An Updated Annotated Bibliography

This is an update of the authors’ annotated bibliography of Iranian peer-reviewed scholarly journals that was published in 2010 in the Serials Librarian. The total number of scholarly journals published in Iran increased from 503 to 1,176 journals in 2017. The forty top journals ranked by impact factor from eight different disciplines are presented in this article. The entry for each journal includes the following information: title, subject, date founded, frequency, editor, language, publisher, address, phone number, FAX number, web address, International Standard Serial Number, indexing/abstracting sources, impact factor, ministry, and an abstract/annotation.     

Effect of cooperation between Chinese scientific journals and international publishers on journals’ impact factor

Growing cooperation between Chinese journals and international publishers invites an investigation of the effect of this cooperation, based on an analysis of journal IF changes. Data from 23 Chinese academic journals were chosen from about 50 English-language academic journals indexed by SCI or SCIE and with a long history of cooperation. The data do not suggest that cooperation has improved the journals’ IF thus far. It appears that cooperation is generally limited to international distribution, and this has a weak influence on the quality of the journal and its IF, even though the papers can be accessed by worldwide users through publishers’ international distribution networks. Cooperation with international publishers is one step, but actively working on the quality of the journals is a more important step.     

An integrated paradigm shift to deal with ‘predatory publishing’

The issue of ‘predatory publishing’, and indeed unscholarly publishing practices, affects all academics and librarians around the globe. However, there are some flaws in arguments and analyses made in several papers published on this topic, in particular those that have relied heavily on the blacklists that were established by Jeffrey Beall. While Beall advanced the discussion on ‘predatory publishing’, relying entirely on his blacklists to assess a journal for publishing a paper is problematic. This is because several of the criteria underlying those blacklists were insufficiently specific, excessively broad, arbitrary with no scientific validation, or incorrect identifiers of predatory behavior. The validity of those criteria has been deconstructed in more detail in this paper. From a total of 55 criteria in Beall's last/latest 2015 set of criteria, we suggest maintaining nine, eliminating 24, and correcting the remaining 22. While recognizing that this exercise involves a measure of subjectivity, it needs to advance in order to arrive – in a future exercise – at a more sensitive set of criteria. Fortified criteria alone, or the use of blacklists and whitelists, cannot combat ‘predatory publishing’, and an overhaul of rewards-based academic publishing is needed, supported by a set of reliable criteria-based guidance system.     

Access to the publications of the international labour office

Abstract

Using a scientometric approach, this study examines scholarly publications by library and information science (LIS) researchers affiliated with Iranian institutions that were published in non-Iranian journals and indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) database, together with publications in Iranian LIS journals from 1980 through 2016. The results show that Iranian authors published 538 LIS documents indexed in WoS and another 7,837 in national journals. The research article was the predominant document type at both the national and international levels. The total number of international publications in LIS by all countries was 313,449; Iran ranked 34th among the countries for publications in LIS.     

中国信息科学和图书馆学国际学术影响力研究

从发文量、引文、国际化合作三个方面,以WebofScience（SCIE、SSCI、A＆HCI）为数据源,研究了2003—2012年中国（大陆、港、澳、台）信息科学和图书馆学的科研绩效。结果显示中国发文量目前已位居世界第二,篇均被引频次和被引用率高于该学科的全球水平,中国主导率高于中国社会科学平均水平,但H指数低于全球水平,国际合作率也不高。     

基于SJR数据库的巴西、印度、韩国、中国科技论文比较分析

以SJR为数据来源,比较分析了1996-2008年巴西、印度、中国、韩国4个国家发表科技论文数量、可引用文献量、文献被引量、自引量、篇均被引量、去除自引后的篇均被引量、H指数、文献引用率、国际合作量等9个指标。中国发表论文数最多,2003年后每年增加约3万篇。巴西、韩国文献引用率、篇均引用量高,且自引率低;印度居中等水平;中国文献引用率、篇均引用率低且自引率高;国际合作度巴西最高、中国最低。可见中国的科技论文质量与其他3个国家相比,还有一定的差距。     

Further divided gender gaps in research productivity and collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from coronavirus-related literature

Based on publication data on coronavirus-related fields, this study applies a difference in differences approach to explore the evolution of gender inequalities before and during the COVID-19 pandemic by comparing the differences in the numbers and shares of authorships, leadership in publications, gender composition of collaboration, and scientific impacts. We find that, during the pandemic: (1) females’ leadership in publications as the first author was negatively affected; (2) although both females and males published more papers relative to the pre-pandemic period, the gender gaps in the share of authorships have been strengthened due to the larger increase in males’ authorships; (3) the share of publications by mixed-gender collaboration declined; (4) papers by teams in which females play a key role were less cited in the pre-pandemic period, and this citation disadvantage was exacerbated during the pandemic; and (5) gender inequalities regarding authorships and collaboration were enhanced in the initial stage of COVID-19, widened with the increasing severity of COVID-19, and returned to the pre-pandemic level in September 2020. This study shows that females’ lower participation in teams as major contributors and less collaboration with their male colleagues also reflect their underrepresentation in science in the pandemic period. This investigation significantly deepens our understanding of how the pandemic influenced academia, based on which science policies and gender policy changes are proposed to mitigate the gender gaps.