Knowledge Exchange Newsletter December 2019
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Knowledge Exchange news
Welcome to the third and final Knowledge Exchange (KE) newsletter of 2019!
We’ve had our busiest year ever, publishing outputs from five areas of work and have two further reports in the pipeline for publication in early 2020! We’ve seen a huge increase in interest around our work and are looking forward to exploring new topics around Open Access and Open Scholarship in the next year and beyond.
Open Scholarship and the need for Collective Action
Following publication of ‘Insights into the Economy of Open Scholarship: A collection of Interviews’, which highlighted practical experiences relating to the economy of Open Scholarship, we have now published the results from our in-depth exploration of conceptual issues in the book 'Open Scholarship and the Need for Collective Action’.
The book builds on a five day ‘Book Sprint’, using the Book Sprints method and is inspired by KE's Open Scholarship Framework that models Open Scholarship as a combination of levels (micro-, meso- and macro-level actors), arenas (political, economic, social, technical) and research phases (discovery, planning, project phase, dissemination).
Eleven authors provide an overview of perspectives, analyses, and insights to better understand the complexity of the economic aspects of Open Scholarship. Using various models and theories, also bringing in historical and social aspects, authors explain the current challenges and conclude that to achieve the full potential of Open Scholarship, collective action by all stakeholders will be required.
Monitoring agreements with Open Access elements
We have continued our work around monitoring Open Access (OA) and have published the article ‘Monitoring agreements with Open Access elements: why article level metadata is important’ in the UKSG Insights journal – Insights.
The article outlines the research we have undertaken on agreements with OA elements (e.g., agreements with Article Processing Charge (APC)discounts, offsetting agreements, read and publish agreements) set between consortia from KE countries and major publishers between 2016 and early 2019. Following recommendations from ESAC as well as our own previous work around Monitoring OA, we assessed agreements with OA elements to investigate what article-level metadata consortia request from publishers and what metadata publishers deliver to consortia.
The findings from this research can be used as a benchmark to monitor how major publishers were performing in KE countries until early 2019 and prior to when Plan S comes into effect in 2021.
You can read the full article here and find out more about our work on Monitoring Open Access here.
Accelerating scholarly communication - The transformative role of preprints
Knowledge Exchange, in collaboration with Research Consulting, investigated the preprint phenomenon in order to explore the current place of preprints in the scholarly communication process. After publishing our initial report ‘The evolving preprint landscape' in 2018 and a slide deck 'Practices, drivers and impediments in the use of preprints' in spring 2019, we are now able to share our final report 'Accelerating scholarly communication - The transformative role of preprints'.
Our key results include the benefits and challenges for researchers in using preprints as well as the establishment of trust without peer review including the role of twitter. Moreover, the report reflects on the responsibilities for preprint posting in the future and the role of scholarly communities and commercial publishers.
In addition to our latest report you can find our detailed analysis in the preprint 'Preprints and Scholarly Communication: Adoption, Practices, Drivers and Barriers' by Research Consulting on F1000.
Coming soon!
Workshop report: KE FORCE2019 pre conference workshop on Open Scholarship and Collective Action
Over seventy delegates from all over the world attended the Knowledge Exchange organised FORCE2019 pre-conference workshop ‘The Open Scholarship Framework and Collective Action’, which took place in Edinburgh, Scotland on 15th October 2019. The validity of the OS Framework and Collective Action aspects of ambitions in Plan S and FAIR data efforts were explored and discussed. We will publish a report that reflects on the insightful and inspiring feedback we received in early 2020.
The Knowledge Exchange Openness Profile
As part of our work on Open Scholarship, we are working to raise awareness of the lack of recognition in current evaluation practice and work towards a possible solution; through development of an 'Openness Profile' to identify and support recognition of academic and non-academic contributions to Open Scholarship (OS).
We are currently finalising an 'interim report' that will define the concepts and outline our work on this topic so far. The report is due for publication in early 2020.
Other news
Strategic Priority Themes: Knowledge Exchange in 2019-2021
The Knowledge Exchange initiative is a unique collaboration between six partners that value Open Scholarship and have an important – albeit different for each partner – role in realising, supporting or funding digital infrastructures and services for research and higher education. Once every three years partners reconsider the renewal of the Collaboration Agreement. This moment is used to re-calibrate the strategic priorities for the coming years.
For the 2019 - 2021 Collaboration Agreement, we will continue to work within the focus areas of Open Access and Open Scholarship. While these two areas are closely inter-connected, they will be treated as separate strands of activity. In addition, four themes have been identified that Knowledge Exchange will work on within these focus areas and with the economic, technological and social aspects of the KE Openness Framework in mind.
Find out more about Knowledge Exchange's Strategic Priorities
KE Open Scholarship Expert Group
We’re happy to announce that we are working to establish a KE Open Scholarship expert group! The group will work in a similar way to the Open Access Expert group, but with a focus on Open Scholarship to exchange on developments, identify areas of interest for KE work, and initiate and monitor KE activities.
More information around the OS Expert Group will be included in our first newsletter of 2020.
Wishing you a happy new year
On behalf of the Knowledge Exchange team,
Bas Cordewener, Knowledge Exchange Coordinator
The purpose of Knowledge Exchange is to exchange knowledge, build expert networks and cooperate between partners, with special a focus on Open Access and Open Scholarship. KE has an open eye for emerging opportunities to enhance and support an open higher education and research infrastructure.
Feedback or comments on this newsletter? You can contact us at office@knowledge-exchange.info or visit our website
