[GOAL] Three new articles on the future of scholarly communication

[Jon Tennant]

Dear all,

I've been a bit busy. To start off the week, I've shared three new 
articles/preprints/perspectives on various elements of scholarly 
communication/publishing.

The first is about creating a value-proposition for Open Science: 
https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/k9qhv/ 
<https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/k9qhv/>

Abstract: Open Science has become commonly understood in terms of its 
practices. Open Access, Open Data, and Open Source software are all 
becoming commonplace in academia. However, unlike the Free and Open 
Source Software movement, Open Science seems to have become largely 
divorced from its pluralistic philosophical and ethical foundations, 
which seem to have reignited from the humanities at the turn of the 
Millennium. To close this gap, I propose a new value-based proposition 
for Open Science, that is akin to the “four fundamental freedoms” of 
Richard Stallman that catalysed the Free Software movement. In doing so, 
I hope to provide a more common, unified, and human understanding to 
notions of openness in science.

The second is about the exploitation of free academic labour during peer 
review: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/6quxg 
<https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/6quxg>

Abstract: Commercial publishing houses continue to make unbounded 
profits while exploiting the free labour of researchers through peer 
review. If publishers are to be compensated financially for the value 
that they add within a capitalist system, then all others who add value 
should be similarly, including reviewers. I propose that peer review 
should be included as a professional service by research institutes in 
their contracts with commercial publishers. This would help to recognise 
the value of peer review, and begin to shape it into a functional form 
of quality control.

The third is about creating a new type of funder mandate to accelerate 
the shift towards openness: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/9kjwp/ 
<https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/9kjwp/>

It is time for a new type of mandate. Plan S has catalysed all sorts of 
action, and confusion, in the world of scholarly publishing. But it 
lacks teeth. Instead of encouraging libraries and research institutes to 
continue to prop up a dysfunctional and out-dated system with taxpayer 
money, research funders should mandate institutes to create a fully 
open, modern, technical scholarly infrastructure. This would help to 
overcome so much of the inertia behind the adoption of open research 
practices, while simultaneously resolving outstanding issues with 
reliability, affordability, and functionality in scholarly communication.

Each of them are currently undergoing review at a journal. In the 
meantime, please do what you do best, and critique away! As they are all 
on SocArXiv, anyone can add inline comments using the inbuilt 
Hypothes.is annotation tool, should they wish. Thank you in advance for 
any feedback.

Have a great start to your week,

Jon
-- 
Latest publications:

  * *BOOK: The Open Science [R]evolution
    <http://bit.ly/opensciencerevolution>*
  * A tale of two 'opens': intersections between Free and Open Source
    Software and Open Scholarship <https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/2kxq8>
  * The limitations to our understanding of peer review
    <https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/jq623/>
  * Standardising Peer Review in Paleontology journals
    <https://paleorxiv.org/qzycs/>
  * Ten simple rules for researchers collaborating on Massively Open
    Online Papers (MOOPs) <https://osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv/et8ak>
  * Comments on "Factors affecting global flow of scientific knowledge
    in environmental sciences" by Sonne et al. (2020)
    <https://zenodo.org/record/3594635>
  * Open Access: what we can learn from articles published in
    geochemistry journals in 2018 and 2019
    <https://zenodo.org/record/3659528>

*Personal website <http://fossilsandshit.com/> - Home of the Green Tea 
and Velociraptors blog.*
*ORCID:* 0000-0001-7794-0218 <http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7794-0218>
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