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The extent that authors retain control over their published research is dependent on what rights they sign over to their publisher prior to publication. As part of efforts to promote the immediate open publication of research a number of research funders have endorsed the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS), by which authors can declare their author-accepted manuscript to be open access. In this post Stephen Eglen, explores the rights retention strategy and discusses the potential impact it might have on scholarly communication more broadly. … The post How will the Rights Retention Strategy affect scholarly publishing? [Originally published in the LSE Impact blog in September/2021] first appeared on SciELO in Perspective.

One of the consequences of this pandemic is the increase of submission of scientific articles that has raised concerns about their quality. Along with this come authorship issues, such as convenience authorship, which should also appear on the editors' radar because of the potential deleterious consequences that could affect the new generation of scientists. … The post Comments on convenience authorship [Originally published as the editorial in Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências vol. 93 no. 3] first appeared on SciELO in Perspective.

Preprints have been established as an initial step in research communication after 50 years of its conception at the US NIH and the beginning of operation of the arXiv server. It is an enrichment of the classic scholarly communication model in which unpublished manuscripts are submitted to journals for peer review. Journals have, among others, the critical role of validating research. Preprints are made available before this validation step as a means of accelerating the communication of research results and improving manuscripts before sending them to a journal for validation. The use of preprints is identified as one of open science practices. … The post Preprints optimize research communication [Originally published as the editorial in Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas vol. 20 no. 4] first appeared on SciELO in Perspective.

On June 8, 2021, ABEC Brasil promoted, with the support of the SciELO Program, the webinar “Sex and gender equity in research and publication”. Taught by Dr. Shirin Heidari, founder of the European Association of Scientific Editors (EASE) Gender Policy Committee, lead author of the SAGER (Sex and Gender Equity in Research) guidelines and founding President of GENDRO, the webinar discussed, among other issues, why sex and gender matter in research and reporting, and what editors, reviewers and authors can do to improve gender-sensitive reporting. … The post Sex and gender equity in research and publication first appeared on SciELO in Perspective.

In May 2021, OPERAS and OASPA hosted a series of three European workshops on business models for open access books targeted specifically at small and medium-sized academic book publishers.. As part of the OPERAS-P project work package 6 (Innovation) OPERAS was looking into innovative, non-BPC business models. The feedback gathered in the course of these three workshops informed a report The Future of scholarly communications, published at the end of June 2021. "The discussion showed that while the Holy Grail of OA book publishing does not exist, what does exist however, is a strong will to experiment with various approaches, spearheaded by small and medium sized academic book publishers." … The post The Holy Grail does not exist: OPERAS-P and OASPA’s workshops for publishers on innovative business models for books [Originally published in the OAPEN blog in July/2020] first appeared on SciELO in Perspective.

Review articles, besides helping to keep researchers updated on specific topics, play an important role in the curation of academic works and can influence emerging research topics through citation patterns. … The post The role of review articles goes beyond synthesizing current knowledge about a research topic first appeared on SciELO in Perspective.

The journal Educação em Revista advances its alignment with Open Science by adopting the "publish, then review" model of publishing by only accepting to evaluate manuscripts already moderated and made available in SciELO Preprints. In an interview to the blog SciELO in Perspective, the journal’s editors talked about the innovation. … The post The journal Educação em Revista is reviewing only preprints in the “publish, then review” model first appeared on SciELO in Perspective.

Open Access (OA) agreements between consortia, libraries and smaller independent publishers are increasingly being used around the world, reflected by the growing number of published OA articles. A recent report from the Association of Learned & Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), of which SciELO is a member, shows the progress being made in other regions of the world. On the other hand, Latin America, a pioneer in OA journals, does not suffer from these limitations, but for small publishers in many countries there is still a long way to go. … The post Accelerating Plan S: open access agreements with smaller publishers first appeared on SciELO in Perspective.

The traditional double-blind assessment model of scientific articles has been challenged in the last two decades by the so-called "preprint servers". However, there are still many concerns in the Social Sciences about what preprints are and what changes they bring to the traditional framework of scientific assessment and publication. In this mini class, we seek to answer these questions from the experience of the journal DADOS. … The post What are preprints? [Originally published in DADOS’ blog in May/2021] first appeared on SciELO in Perspective.

In contrast to a worldwide trend, in 2018 Brazilian elections the largest share of voters for the far right was registered among better-off citizens, not those left behind by economic modernization. This study also shows that, at odds with the conventional perspective expectations, the better educate did not reject authoritarian values or championed for diversity at the ballot boxes. … The post Profile of Bolsonaro voters reveals Brazilian variant of far-right populism disease first appeared on SciELO in Perspective.