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"In the past decade, a number of initiatives have been taken to provide new sources of information on scholarly book publishing. Thomson Reuters (now Clarivate Analytics) has supplemented the Web of Science with a Book Citation Index (BCI), while Elsevier has extended Scopus to include books from a selection of scholarly publishers. More complete metadata on scholarly book publishing can be derived at the national level from non-commercial databases such as Current Research Information System in Norway and the VIRTA (Higher Education Achievement Register, Finland) publication information service, including the Finnish Publication Forum (JUFO) lists (Finland). The Spanish Scholarly Publishers Indicators provides survey-based information on the prestige, specialization profiles from metadata, and manuscript selection processes of national and international publishers that are particularly relevant for the social sciences and humanities (SSH). In the present work, the five information sources mentioned above are compared in a quantitative analysis identifying overlaps and uniqueness as well as differences in the degrees and profiles of coverage. In a second-stage analysis, the geographical origin of the university presses (UPs) is given a particular focus. We find that selection criteria strongly differ, ranging from a set of a priori criteria combined with expert-panel review in the case of commercial databases to in principle comprehensive coverage within a definition in the Nordic countries and an open survey methodology combined with metadata from the book industry database and questionnaires to publishers in Spain. Larger sets of distinct book publishers are found in the non-commercial databases, and greater geographical diversity is observable among the UPs in these information systems. While a more locally oriented set of publishers which are relevant to researchers in the SSH is present in non-commercial databases, the commercial databases seem to focus on high

"The effective implementation of OpenScience calls for a scientific communication ecosystem capable of enabling the "Open Science publishing principles" of transparency and reproducibility. Such ecosystem should provide tools, policies, and trust needed by scientists for sharing/interlinking (for "discovery" and "transparent evaluation") and re-using (for "reproducibility") all research products produced during the scientific process, e.g. literature, research data, methods, software, workflows, protocols, etc. OpenAIRE fosters OpenScience by advocating its publishing principles across Europe and research communities and by offering technical services in support of OA monitoring, research impact monitoring, and Open Science publishing. Its aim is to provide Research Infrastructures (RIs) with the services required to bridge the research life-cycle they support - where scientists produce research products - with the scholarly communication infrastructure - where scientists publish research products - in such a way science is reusable, reproducible, and transparently assessable. OpenAIRE is fostering the establishment of reliable, trusted, and long lasting RIs by compensating the lack of OS publishing solutions and providing the support required by RIs to upgrade existing solutions to meet OpenScience publishing needs (e.g. technical guidelines, best practices, OA mandates). To this aim, OpenAIRE is working closely with existing RIs to extend its service portfolio by introducing two services implementing the concept of "Open Science as a Service" (OSaaS): The Research Community Dashboard. Thanks to its functionality, scientists of RIs can find tools for publishing all their research products, such as literature, datasets, software, research packages, etc. (provide metadata, get DOIs, and ensure preservation of files), interlink such products manually or by exploiting advanced mining techniques, and integrate their services to automatically publish

"The open access model for publishing monographs by the members of the Spanish Universities Publishers Association (UNE) is analyzed. The study focused on production data from 2015-2017, as well as the positioning and arguments of the editors in relation to the open access movement, publication, related policies, and financing modalities. Data was collected by a questionnaire (with a response rate of 58% of the publishers associated with UNE) and includes in-depth interviews with seven of them. The results show that 75% of UNE members publish titles in open access, most consider open access a good way to increase the dissemination of monographs, and that there are no differences in content quality with non-open access works. Publishers do not see that publishing in open access is compatible with the commercial exploitation of printed copies. Publishers consider the most effective financing channels to be institutional payment (i.e., the university), followed by publisher's self-financing, and payment by the author."

"While there are new and enabling conditions for university presses to increase production and to widen distribution, the question remains: How can African university presses make the most of these opportunities? Most likely, the answer lies in deploying the technological changes in production, distribution and marketing made possible by digitisation and network effects of the internet.  At the same time, propelled by a growing perception in academia of 'robber capitalism' on the part of publishers as they protect their oligopoly in the face of dissolving spatial barriers and diminishing value add, we are witnessing a contrary trend: the emergence of the knowledge commons. However, this emergence takes place in an institutional context long dominated by an editorial logic and, in more recent times, by the logic of the market.  A holistic way of approaching the question of how African university presses can reposition themselves in support of the broader shift of some African universities towards a greater focus on research, is to consider shifts in the dominant institutional logic in the academic publishing industry. Based on a baseline survey of university presses in Africa, in-depth case studies of selected university presses, and an analysis of the publishing choices made by African academics, this research project examined the opportunities and constraints faced by university presses in Africa.  It provides an overview of the African university press landscape and shows that there is a small, active group of university presses. University presses in Africa are not yet making use of technological advances to reconfigure their production, distribution and marketing processes, nor are they experimenting with new publishing models such as open access. While case studies of selected university presses surfaced unsurprising challenges (such as scarce resources and limited capacity), they also show that university presses in Africa are constrained by institut

"A new economic model for analysis of scholarly publishing-journal publishing in particular-is proposed that draws on club theory. The standard approach builds on market failure in the private production (by research scholars) of a public good (new scholarly knowledge). In that model publishing is communication, as the dissemination of information. But a club model views publishing differently: namely as group formation, where members form groups in order to confer externalities on each other, subject to congestion. A journal is a self-constituted group, endeavouring to create new knowledge. In this sense 'a journal is a club'. The knowledge club model of a journal seeks to balance the positive externalities due to a shared resource (readers, citations, referees) against negative externalities due to crowding (decreased prospect of publishing in that journal). A new economic model of a journal as a 'knowledge club' is elaborated. We suggest some consequences for the management of journals and financial models that might be developed to support them. "

"In April 2016, Heidelberg University's newly founded open access publisher heiUP launched the first volume of the new book series Heidelberg Studies in Transculturality. This article reports on the challenges, accomplishments, and setbacks that informed the entire editorial production process, not only of the first volume but also of the series and the publishing enterprise overall. The authors offer insights on crucial issues that any new open access publishing endeavour at an institution might face, namely acquiring manuscripts, designing and building workflows, and collaborating with partners to build an outlet for hosting the finished product. This article also illustrates how the goal of providing a new digital reading experience through an innovative HTML format, in addition to print-on-demand and PDF versions of each manuscript, affected the progress of the entire project. Finally, we report on what it took to deliver results."

Open access for monographs and book chapters is a relatively new area of publishing, and there are many ways of approaching it. This document provides some guidance for publishers to consider when developing policies and processes for open access books.The guide was written by the Wellcome Trust, which extended its open access policy to include monographs and book chapters in October 2013. Section 4 of this guide sets out Trust policy, but otherwise the recommendations made here are intended as helpful suggestions for best practice rather than requirements.We recognise that implementation around publishing monographs and book chapters open access is in flux, and we invite publishers to email Cecy Marden at c.marden@wellcome.ac.uk with any suggestions for further guidance that would be useful to include in this document.

"Citizen science (CS) terms the active participation of the general public in scientific research activities. With increasing amounts of information generated by citizen scientists, best practices to go beyond science communication and publish these findings to the scientific community are needed. This letter is a synopsis of authors' personal experiences when publishing results from citizen science projects in peer-reviewed journals, as presented at the Austrian Citizen Science Conference 2018. Here, we address authors' selection criteria for publishing CS data in open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journals as well as barriers encountered during the publishing process. We also outline factors that influence the probability of publication using CS data, including 1) funding to cover publication costs; 2) quality, quantity and scientific novelty of CS data; 3) recommendations to acknowledge contributions of citizen scientists in scientific, peer-reviewed publications; 4) citizen scientists' preference of the hands-on experience over the product (publication) and 5) bias among scientists for certain data sources and the scientific jargon. These experiences show that addressing these barriers could greatly increase the rate of CS data included in scientific publications."

"The unique authority of scholarly publishing arises from the rigorous evaluation and assessment works must go through before they are published-known as the peer review process. Peer Review Transparency is an initiative of scholarly publishers, academic librarians, technology innovators, and thought leaders in scholarly communication, with support from the Open Society Foundations, to create agreed definitions of how peer review is conducted, and to disclose clearly and efficiently to readers the kind of review a published work has undergone. "

"One of Europe's biggest science spenders could soon branch out into publishing. The European Commission, which spends more than €10 billion annually on research, may follow two other big league funders, the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and set up a "publishing platform" for the scientists it funds, in an attempt to accelerate the transition to open-access publishing in Europe. "

"The UK-SCL is an open access policy mechanism which ensures researchers can retain re-use rights in their own work, they retain copyright and they retain the freedom to publish in the journal of their choice (assigning copyright to the publisher if necessary) Re-use rights retention enables early public communication of research findings and use in research and teaching, including online courses. Increased visibility of research outputs greatly improves opportunities for increased impact and citations. A single deposit action under the model policy ensures eligibility for REF2021 and compliance with most funder deposit criteria. Researchers retain copyright and remain free to assign it to the publisher"

"On the 22nd August 2017 - some nine months after the platform was first launched - Wellcome Open Research published its 100th article. To mark this milestone, we provide an overview of the type of research that has been published since launch including how it has been used; give an analysis of the datasets underlying these publications; and provide information about the speed of publication and volume of peer review activity. We conclude by looking at how the number of publications on this platform compared with other journals used by Wellcome-funded researchers."

"Key points Sci-Hub has made nearly all articles freely available using a black open access model, leaving green and gold models in its dust. Why, after 20 years of effort, have green and gold open access not achieved more? Do we need 'tae think again'? If human nature is to postpone change for as long as possible, are green and gold open access fundamentally flawed? Open and closed publishing models depend on bundle pricing paid by one stakeholder, the others getting a free ride. Is unbundling a fairer model? If publishers changed course and unbundled their product, would this open a legal, fairer route to 100% open access and see off the pirates?"

"Frustrated with the slow transition toward open access (OA) in scientific publishing, 11 national funding organizations in Europe turned up the pressure today. As of 2020, the group, which jointly spends about €7.6 billion on research annually, will require every paper it funds to be freely available from the moment of publication. In a statement, the group said it will no longer allow the 6- or 12-month delays that many subscription journals now require before a paper is made OA, and it won't allow publication in so-called hybrid journals, which charge subscriptions but also make individual papers OA for an extra fee.  "

"Simply adding an 'open access' option to the existing prestige-based journal system at ever increasing costs is not the fundamental change publishing needs, says Bianca Kramer and Jeroen Bosman "

"Fulcrum is a publishing platform currently under development that helps publishers present the full richness of their authors' research outputs in a durable, discoverable, and flexible form"

"Journal.fi is a new journal management and publishing service provided by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies. The site features 40 Finnish scholarly journals, with more to come. Journal.fi is designed to meet the needs of authors, readers, publishers and funders in the age of Open Access journals. The service is using the Open Journal Systems 3.0 software."

"Today, the I4OC (Initiative for Open Citations) announced new supporting publishers joining to release reference data for more than 16 million articles. This is a major step forward as publishers such as Emerald, the American Physical Society, SciELO and De Gruyter team up with Springer/Nature, Wiley, Sage and many more to unlock the powerful information encoded in citation networks."

"Author's note: With my colleague Karen Barch and the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, I have been working on a project to determine how many books university presses publish, and in particular, how many of these could be termed original monographs in the humanities. The full report is available below as a PDF and also on Scribd. The text of this blog post is a slightly edited version of the report's Introduction. For the quantitative aspect of the study, I refer you to the full report.]"

"DARIAH Summer School 11th June 2015 Villa Vigoni Jean-Christophe Peyssard "