Ten myths around open scholarly publishing

Jonathan P Tennant; Harry Crane; Tom Crick; Jacinto Davila; Asura Enkhbayar; Johanna Havemann; Bianca Kramer; Ryan Martin; Paola Masuzzo; Andy Nobes; Curt Rice; Bárbara S Rivera-López; Tony Ross-Hellauer; Susanne Sattler; Paul Thacker; Marc Vanholsbeeck

doi:10.7287/peerj.preprints.27580v1

Ten myths around open scholarly publishing

Jonathan P Tennant ¹, Harry Crane², Tom Crick³, Jacinto Davila⁴, Asura Enkhbayar⁵, Johanna Havemann⁶, Bianca Kramer⁷, Ryan Martin⁸, Paola Masuzzo⁹, Andy Nobes¹⁰, Curt Rice¹¹, Bárbara S Rivera-López¹², Tony Ross-Hellauer¹³, Susanne Sattler¹⁴, Paul Thacker¹⁵, Marc Vanholsbeeck¹⁶

1 IGDORE, Leicester, United Kingdom

2 Department of Statistics and Biostatistics, Rutgers University, Piscataway, United States of America

3 School of Education, Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom

4 CESIMO, Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, Venezuela

5 Scholarly Communications Lab, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada

6 IGDORE, Berlin, Germany

7 Utrecht University Library, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands

8 Department of Statistics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, United States of America

9 IGDORE, Ghent, Belgium

10 International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications, Oxford, United Kingdom

11 Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

12 Asesora Producción Científica, Santiago, Chile

13 Institute for Interactive Systems and Data Science, Graz University of Technology and Know-Center GmbH, Graz, Austria

14 National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

15 NA, Madrid, Spain

16 Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.27580v1

Published: 2019-03-11
Accepted: 2019-03-11

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

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: Tennant JP, Crane H, Crick T, Davila J, Enkhbayar A, Havemann J, Kramer B, Martin R, Masuzzo P, Nobes A, Rice C, Rivera-López BS, Ross-Hellauer T, Sattler S, Thacker P, Vanholsbeeck M. 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