Ten myths around open scholarly publishing
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Science and Medical Education, Science Policy
- Keywords
- Open Science, Peer Review, Copyright, Scholarly Communication, Open Access, Web of Science, Scopus, Preprints, Impact Factors, Predatory Publishers
- Copyright
- © 2019 Tennant et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2019. Ten myths around open scholarly publishing. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27580v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27580v1
Abstract
The changing world of scholarly communication and the emergence of ‘Open Science’ or ‘Open Research’ has brought to light a number of controversial and hotly-debated topics. Yet, evidence-based rational debate is regularly drowned out by misinformed or exaggerated rhetoric, which does not benefit the evolving system of scholarly communication. The aim of this article is to provide a baseline evidence framework for ten of the most contested topics, in order to help frame and move forward discussions, practices and policies. We address preprints and scooping, the practice of copyright transfer, the function of peer review, and the legitimacy of ‘global’ databases. The presented facts and data will be a powerful tool against misinformation across wider academic research, policy and practice, and may be used to inform changes within the rapidly evolving scholarly publishing system.
Author Comment
Submitted to the special issue of the journal Publications, entitled "New Frontiers for Openness in Scholarly Publishing" https://www.mdpi.com/journal/publications/special_issues/openpub
