Conference Agenda (All times are shown in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) unless otherwise noted)

Science, technology and medicine (STM) journals play a pivotal role in advancing the open access (OA) movement by offering various OA services. Despite their significance, few studies have explored the factors that influence adopting OA practices and the underlying mechanisms from an editorial standpoint. In this study, we investigate the attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions of 17 editors from China’s STM journals through semi-structured interviews. Our preliminary findings suggest that motivations, behavioral intentions to engage in OA practices, individual journal characteristics, social reference norms and institutional policy contexts would influence OA practices in STM journals, thus structuring a theoretical framework. We believe that such an understanding of influencing forces and viewpoints of STM journals can provide valuable insights for stakeholders seeking to bridge gaps and strengthen the open science ecosystem.

This short paper presents an analysis of the distribution of downloads in medical literature, with the aim of understanding the specific conditions unique to the medical research field that necessitate the use of black open access sources such as Sci-Hub. The dataset used in this analysis was obtained by scraping the official Sci-Hub domains during the summer of 2022, and it provides valuable insights into user behavior and interaction with the website. The results demonstrate that a significant portion of the downloads from Sci-Hub during the period were related to medical journals, indicating the acute needs and time-sensitive nature of medical research. The data further highlights that a majority of the downloaded papers were related to medicine or medical subjects, underscoring the importance of easy and immediate access to the latest research and literature. The study emphasizes the pressing need for universal access to essential health-care information and the importance of continued efforts to democratize access to medical literature. The use of black open access sources like Sci-Hub serves as a reminder of the urgency to find alternative solutions that ensure medical professionals have the necessary resources to provide the best possible care for their patients

Despite increasing advocacy for open access (OA), the uptake of OA in some disciplines has remained low. Existing studies have linked the low uptake in OA publishing in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) to disciplinary norm, limited funding to pay for article processing charges (APCs), and researchers’ preferences. However, there is a growing concern about inequity in OA scholarly communication as it has remained inaccessible and unaffordable to many researchers. This study therefore investigated inequity in OA publishing in Canada. Using semi-structured interviews, qualitative data was collected from 20 professors from the HSS disciplines of research-intensive universities in Canada. Data was analyzed with NVivo software following the reflexive thematic analysis approach. Findings revealed three main causes of inequity in OA publishing among the participants. These are the cost of APCs, unequal privileges, and gender disparities. Hence, there is a need for concerted efforts by funding agencies, stakeholders, higher education institutions, and researchers to promote equity in OA scholarly communication. Some recommendations for improving equity in OA publishing are provided in this paper.

This study investigates the impact of open review on citation counts of academic articles. By collecting articles published in the material science area of Nature Communications from 2014 to 2018, we exploit the adoption of voluntary open review in 2016 to examine how article citation counts are associated with open review using propensity score matching and regression analysis. OLS regression results show that open review comes at the expense of fewer citations received by articles. Specifically, open-reviewed articles received 44% fewer citations than their non-open-reviewed counterparts. An additional mediation analysis reveals that this decrease in citations may be partially attributed to the lengthening of the review cycle of articles that were open reviewed–open-reviewed articles experienced 16% longer review cycles; every 16% extension of the review cycle led to 5.8% fewer citations. Results remained qualitatively similar when we restricted the citation windows to three years since publication. Contrary to previous findings concerning the positive effects on articles’ citation impact, our preliminary results call for additional efforts in identifying the costs and benefits associated with open review.

Ownership of digital information products in the digital age presents an intricate issue. While research has shown that individuals experience a sense of ownership over their digital possessions, the scope of digital ownership rights in comparison to physical entities remains unclear. Amongst various digital products, e-books stand out due to their ubiquity. This paper presents the results of an empirical research study that used an online survey to examine e-book consumers’ perspectives on digital ownership and digital rights. The study revealed that while most participants value and desire ownership rights, certain conventional ownership rights, such as reselling, gifting, and lending, are deemed less significant and can be relinquished by consumers due to cost-related factors. Furthermore, contrary to prevailing assumptions, the study found no discernible generational gap concerning people’s perceptions of digital ownership rights. These findings hold implications for researchers, policymakers, and public-interest groups seeking to advocate for the public’s digital rights.