Join us in crowdsourcing journal policies May 31st: Which journals practice open peer review and allow pre-prints

TRANSPOSE: Mapping the landscape on open peer review and pre-prints

Open Access and Open Scholarship have revolutionized the way academic research is evaluated and published, while the introduction of new technologies and media in scientific workflows has changed the “how” and to “whom” research is communicated, and how stakeholders interact with the research community. The OpenUP project is studying key aspects and challenges of the currently transforming research landscape to provide a cohesive framework for the review-disseminate-assess phases of the research lifecycle that is fit to support and promote Open Research and Open Science.

Journal policies shape Open Scholarship practices and safeguard against legal and ethical risks in publishing. Journal policies are an under-investigated element of Open Scholarship, however. This is unfortunate, since Open Scholarship requires publication policies that are aligned with its aims in order to reduce the transaction costs – and thereby career risks – for researchers that want to practice transparent, inclusive, and collaborative research. Such transaction costs are exacerbated by obscure or only implicitly stated journal policies; a lack of central resources to monitors such policies; and a lack of data-sharing from publishers regarding their publication processes. In the move towards Open Scholarship, researchers are expected to open up their research to transparency and scrutiny; the same should be expected of academic publishing.

Hence, OpenUP is proud, as part of our work to foster innovation in peer review and dissemination of research, to partner with a number of leading actors in this space to help drive TRANSPOSE, a new grassroots initiative to crowdsource a list of journal policies for (1) open peer review policies, (2) co-reviewer policies, and (3) pre-printing policies. TRANSPOSE will research these issues to: (a) make clearer to researchers the conditions of engaging in the academic publishing system through greater transparency on policies; (b) quantify the degree to which practices are currently supported to provide an evidential basis for future changes at the policy-level, and; (c) work to increase sharing of data about publisher-internal processes which bear on the quality and process of publication procedures.

Why TRANSPOSE?

While there are fantastic databases that indicate whether archiving a preprint is allowed (Sherpa/RoMEO) and whether journals are partnered with Publons, to our knowledge, there is no database of information on topics such as: the openness of peer review (whether the content of peer reviews and the identities of reviewers are published, or whether reviews can be transferred to other journals), recognition for peer review (whether postdoc co-reviewers are acknowledged), detailed policies on preprinting (for example, what version is ok to post, whether preprints can be cited, and what licenses and media coverage of preprints are permitted). Without this kind of information, it’s difficult to monitor or advocate for changes that would make scholarly publishing more open and fair. It’s also difficult for authors to easily compare different journals to make choices that support their needs and interests in open communication.

For more on TRANSPOSE, see here.

How to get involved!

On Thursday May 31st at 17:00 CEST, there will be a one-hour online event, to provide a brief overview of the project and run through a tutorial for contributing (It’s very easy, is all done in your browser, and does not require any coding knowledge).

Participants can work on contributions together and give feedback on how to move the project forward.

To join the Meeting: https://bluejeans.com/196575935

To join via phone:

1) Dial:  +1.408.740.7256 (United States) – see all numbers – http://bluejeans.com/numbers

2) Enter Conference ID : 196575935

Info below, and more on this initiative, from ASAPBio here.