Per Pippin Aspaas’s scientific contributions

In 2017, the University of Lorraine cancelled its subscription to Springer and in 2023, it cancelled its deal with Wiley. The money saved has been channeled into an Open Science Fund which supports open research infrastructures, training and support programmes for open research, and diamond open access publishing. With additional financing from regional research institutes and the national ministry, its annual budget currently amounts to approximately 500,000 Euros. A broad representative committee has been set up to decide on the use of the fund. The support for diamond open access journals – whose editors are affiliated with Université de Lorraine or whose scope is especially important for the Lorraine region – typically entails support in the range of 2000 Euros per year. With this money, editors of small and medium-sized scholar-led journals can hire copy-editing assistance, arrange editorial board meetings and workshop, et cetera. As Vice-President for Open Science at the University, Nicolas Fressengeas stresses the importance of involving the right stakeholders within and around the university to make the best possible use of the Open Science Fund. He is also concerned with research assessment reforms aiming to assure that the extra work required to follow open research practices is properly rewarded. As Head of Research Support at the University Library, Jean-François Lutz argues that the consequences for researchers and students as a result of the cancellation of the Springer and Wiley deals were less acutely felt than one might have expected. The responsibility of supporting open science may be a new challenge to most librarians, but it does make the library relevant and useful for a broad group of researchers, many of whom would not have been in contact with the library if it wasn’t for the Open Science Fund and the services and projects associated with it. The episode was recorded shortly after Norway cancelled its deal with Wiley and will likely serve as inspiration for many institutions that wish to channel money saved on big deals into support for Open Science.

The Tromsø Repository of Language and Linguistics (TROLLing) published its first dataset on June 13, 2014. Since then, the repository has grown to 173 datasets, each of which is available in open access and equipped with metadata explaining its contents. Two of the most frequent users of the archive, professor of Russian linguistics Laura A. Janda and postdoc of English linguistics Lukas Sönning share their experiences and ideas for the future. A key message is how using a curated data repository has helped raising the quality of their own research by making it more transparent and reusable for others. Materials referred to in the episode include: a humorous YouTube clip (2014) featuring Laura A. Janda and others; a Leiden dissertation (later published as a book) by Jaap Kamphuis; a workshop at the ISLE 5 conference (2018) organised by Lukas Sönning and Valentin Werner; a paper at the ICAME 45 conference (2024) by Lukas Sönning, Jason Grafmiller and Raquel P. Romasanta. First published online: June 12, 2024.

A discussion with Marco Tullney, initiator of the bottom-up initiative KOALA (Konsortiale Open Access Lösungen Aufbauen, i.e. Establishing Consortial Open Access Solutions). Building upon an established role in the organisation of library consortia that negotiate deals with commercial publishers, Tullney and his colleagues have succeeded to acquire small sums from more than a hundred partner libraries to fund journals and books series. Each funding period lasts for three years, with the consortia covering all legitimate costs of running a publication outlet. So far, ten small to medium sized journals have received funding, as well as two smaller book series. Based on his experience from the German-speaking area, Tullney shares several pieces of advice on how to set up similar funding mechanisms in other regions. He also raises the fundamental question about how to make sure that Diamond OA can grow from its current status as a nieche phenomenon in a limited spectrum of disciplines to becoming a sustainable and attractive model for scholars across all fields. First published online: May 3, 2024.

Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) is a non-profit initiative specialising in undertaking research on infrastructure tailor-made for open science and in discussing their findings with stakeholders to increase the investment in, and adoption of, open infrastructure. With a team of eight based in Europe, the USA and Africa, IOI also supports the adoption of open infrastructure through research-based funding pilots such as the IOI Fund. Its most recent tool is a collaboratively developed, openly available database designed to help institutions identify and evaluate open infrastructure solutions. This database, the Infra Finder, at the time of its launch contains structured information on 57 infrastructure providers that can be compared in a side-by-side view. First published online: April 23, 2024.

NOTE: Download from this platform not possible at the moment due to a technical problem. Meanwhile, please visit to https://soundcloud.com/opensciencetalk to stream the episode. This episode of Open Science Talk deals with Diamond Open Access publishing services provided by instutitions. The EU-funded project DIAMAS (Developing Institutional Open Acces Publisihing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication) has recently published a 240-page landscape report on «Institutional Publishing in the E[uropean] R[esearch] A[rea]; results from the DIAMAS survey». Work Package leader Jan Erik Frantsvåg discusses the main findings of the report together with Sona Arasteh, co-author of a synopsis of the same report, comprising 30 richly illustrated pages. In the discussion, the landscape report and its synopsis is contextualized alongside an earlier study on the global landscape of Diamond Open Access Publishing; on-going projects such as DIAMAS’ sister projects CRAFT-OA and PALOMERA; and plans for capacity building for Diamond Open Access Publishing on global, regional and national levels. Digital recording, unfortunately with problematic sound quality. First published online: Feb 13, 2024.

A discussion on SPARC Europe's report Opening Knowledge: Retaining Rights and Open Licensing in Europe (made public via Zenodo, 28 June 2023). Three of the authors of the report share their thoughts on why the landscape differs so much between countries. Questions include why so many institutions in the United Kingdom and Norway stand out as early adopters, whereas other countries have yet to start implementing Rights Retention Policies, be it a national or institutional level. Various outreach and dissemination activities are on-going, and there appears to be promising developments in several European countries that might radically change the landscape for open licensing and self-archiving across Europe, thereby speeding up the transformation towards full open access to the scholarly record. The recording was made in conjunction with the 18th Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing in Tromsø, November 2023. First published online: January 23, 2024.

This is a podcast version of the closing panel discussion at The 18th Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing (Tromsø, Norway, 8–10 November 2023). The main theme of the conference was scholarly communication in its myriad of forms. The push for a reform of research assessment argues for precisely the need to recognize and reward a wider set of research activities and competencies, not least in order to ensure that science – and scientics – remain in close contact with society. The demands for change will surely impact how and where research is disseminated and communicated. A key question then is how to evaluate research activities and outputs beyond academic publications. The panelists reflected on questions such as: how do we measure the impact of citizen science, or document quality in innovative research practices and scholarly outputs? And how to ensure consensus on assessment methods for a wider and more inclusive range of research activities within a diverse academic landscape? The panel consisted of champions of research assessment reform (Yensi Flores Bueso, University of Washington / University College Cork; Kirstie Whitaker, The Alan Turing Institute) and university leaders (Hervé Dole, vice-president for arts, culture and society at Université Paris-Saclay; Jan-Gunnar Winther, pro-rector for research and development, UiT). Questions were prepared by Tanja Larssen (open science adviser, UiT) in collaboration with Per Pippin Aspaas (head of library research and publishing support, UiT), who chaired the panel on the day. First published as a podcast: December 19, 2023. A video recording of the same session – with metadata providing more detailed information on each panelist – can be found at https://doi.org/10.7557/5.7276.

Felix Schönbrodt, Professor of Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich, tells about an initiative that he coordinates within the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie (German Psychological Society). Motivated by the Reproducibility Crisis and a rising frustration with the publishers of high-ranking journals, Schönbrodt has co-authored three position papers on the theme of responsible research assessment. The suggestion is to develop a two-stage evaluation system for hiring, the first of which will use responsible metrics with emphasis on open data, pre-registration and several aspects of reproducibility, whereas the second stage will focus on a qualitative (content-oriented) evaluation of selected candidates. The propositions of Schönbrodt’s group have so far led to published feedback from more than 40 different scholars. Besides his nation-wide work within the German Psychological Society, Schönbrodt is the managing director of LMU’s Open Science Centre, where scholars from different disciplines convene for workshops on various aspects of Open Science. Under the nickname «nicebread» (Schön = nice, Brodt = bread), he also runs a personal blog and a project webpage on GitHub. Interview recorded in Munich, October 2023. First published online: November 29, 2023.

Janine Bijsterbosch, member of the editorial team of Imaging Neuroscience, informs about their recent break with publishing giant Elsevier. Collectively, the entire team of editors of Neuroimage left Elsevier to form a new journal, Imaging Neuroscience, at MIT Press. While Neuroimage already was an open access journal, it charged 3,450 dollars in Article Processing Charge (APC). At MIT Press, Imaging Neuroscience will charge 1,600 dollars in APC, with waivers for authors from low- and middle-income countries. Bijsterbosch explains why the editors collectively resigned from Neuroimage and what they hope to achieve with the move to a less costly model. At the time when the editors left Neuroimage, they published around 1,000 peer reviewed articles per year, with an Impact Factor of 7.4. With the non-profit Imaging Neuroscience, they hope to bring authors and peer reviewers with them in their effort to build the (new) leading publishing outlet for researchers in the field. The reception has been quite positive and large amounts of manuscripts are already being submitted to the new journal. Besides the economics and ethics of sustainability, Bijsterbosch is concerned with other aspects of open and transparent science, such as Open Code and Open Data. She sees Imaging Neuroscience as a player in this field as well, with Author’s Instructions including statements about the sharing of code and data whenever possible.

An online conversation with two representatives of Brill, a publishing house that is particularly strong in the Humanities and Social Sciences. A 340-year-old publishing house, Brill still primarily sells books and journals in a traditional manner, i.e. as hardcopies and online fulltexts behind a paywall. Currently, Brill has a total output of around 1,400 academic books per year. Just over 10% of these titles are published in Open Access thanks to authors (or their institutions) paying a Book Processing Charge (BPC). Among its 300+ peer-reviewed journals, approx. 10% are published according to the Diamond Open Access model, meaning that some sort of sponsorship allows Brill to offer its services with no author- or reader-facing charges. In the discussion, Open Research Officer Stephanie Veldman explains the economic mechanisms and strategic thinking behind Brill’s work in the field of open access. Publishing director for History, Social Sciences and Biology Arjan van Dijk highlights the author’s and editor’s perspectives, using the successful Journal of Jesuit Studies (launched in 2013) as a concrete example. Both Veldman and van Dijk see it as an important part of their mission to increase the proportion of books and journals that are published in open access. First published online: June 7, 2023.