Spotlight on: GigaByte

This year, the judges have selected a shortlist of seven for the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing.  Each finalist will be invited to showcase their innovation to industry peers on 14 September on the opening day of the ALPSP 2022 Conference in Manchester. The winners will be announced at the Awards Dinner on Thursday 15 September.

In this series, we learn more about each of the finalists. 

Tell us about your organization

GigaScience Press is an Open Access Publisher, based in Hong Kong, that publishes journal articles and accompanying datasets and software. It is a division of BGI Research, a non-profit research institute that is part of the genomics organisation BGI-Group.

What is the project/product that you submitted for the Awards?

GigaByte is a new journal and data publishing platform that rapidly and cost-effectively shares research in a manner that makes the scientific process more inclusive and accessible to the broader community. GigaByte uses an exclusively XML-based publishing system that automates the production process and makes it effortless to change views, languages and embed interactive content. The journal breaks down many of the remaining access barriers in research, which helps to address the UNESCO Open Science Recommendations.

Tell us a little about how it works and the team behind it                        

GigaByte was developed by the GigaScience Press team with the goal of speeding up the publishing process, reducing cost, and changing the way scientific research could be more broadly accessed and used within the publishing process. GigaScience Press partnered with River Valley Technologies to build a new end-to-end XML-first publishing platform that would make these goals a reality. The journal editorial team are employed by BGI and are primarily based in Hong Kong and mainland China, alongside a team of professional data scientists and curators in the UK who work with authors to assist them in curating their data and preparing dynamic content. The combination of the GigaScience Press, with their extensive knowledge of scientific publishing and areas needing change, and River Valley Technologies, with their novel technological publishing solutions, enabled the production of a new platform that changes the current slow and limited scientific publishing methods, and created not only a unique new journal, but also a partnership that works synergistically to develop new and better ways to provide, present, and use research.

In what ways do you think it demonstrates innovation?                

The outputs from GigaByte’s novel publishing workflow transforms the research article from a stagnant narrative describing what the researchers have done, to something that can be utilised by a much wider audience, including formerly inaccessible elements that underlie the narrative. The journal dramatically increases  interactivity of content through embedded data visualization tools (for NMR spectra, 3D models, genomic maps and more), browsable maps, and video summaries, all of which, beyond usability, improves trust in the scientific findings. More, the journal crucially improves accessibility to authors and readers around the world by enabling the articles to be shared in a bilingual format (with examples published in Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese, alongside the English language version-of-record), and linking them to regional preprint servers such as AfricaXiv and SciELO Preprints. The journal is also  beginning the process of tackling the cost-barrier of Open-Access, due to its primarily automated production process, where, upon acceptance, the publishing platform converts manuscripts to online- and PDF-ready articles within hours with minimal human intervention. This dramatically reduces both production time and cost, providing an equitable solution to publishing open science.                                         

What are your plans for the future?

Leveraging the cost savings of this platform, we’ve published a series of papers crediting the outputs of a public college student project on an agricultural pathogen that has decimated their communities, and a series of articles sponsored by the WHO, that shares extremely important public health datasets from across the world. Working directly with the funders and consortia who handle these important public interest projects is a more cost-effective and equitable way to disseminate their research outputs openly. Having completed this type of journal-to-consortia and funder process for scientific publication, we are in the stages of formalising this process and engaging with organizations to expand these efforts further. Beyond creating article series, GigaScience Press is in the development stage for launching new journals using this approach and publishing platform, and for offering a cost-effective and interactive solution for other journals that want to use our expertise to improve their own publication workflows in a similarly Open Science friendly manner. 

About the author

Scott Edmunds is the Hong Kong based Chief Editor for GigaByte Journal. With over 15 years experience in Open Access and Open Data publishing he is co-founder of CivicSight (formerly Open Data Hong Kong) and CitizenScience.Asia, and is Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Dryad Digital Repository.

Relevant web links

gigabytejournal.com  

https://www.linkedin.com/company/gigascience/

https://www.facebook.com/GigaByteJournal

https://youtu.be/TVdKLtRGSYs

Spotlight on Opening the Future, CEU Press / COPIM

 – Shortlisted for the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2021

This year, the judges have selected a shortlist of six for the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing. Each finalist will be invited to showcase their innovation to industry peers at the ALPSP Awards session on Wednesday 15 September at the opening of the ALPSP Virtual Conference & Awards 2021. The winners will be announced on the final day of the Conference on Friday 17 September. 

In this series, we learn more about each of the finalists. 

Tell us about your organization

COPIM is an international partnership of researchers, universities, librarians, publishers and infrastructure providers working on bringing about a new OA publishing ecosystem. Their remit is to build a revenue infrastructure, and examine production workflows and metadata, experimental publishing and archiving. The project is working with colleagues across the sector to document existing, and open up new, ways of funding open access monographs.

CEU Press was established in 1993 to reflect the intellectual strengths and values of its parent institution, the Central European University, and is a leading publisher in the history of the region, communism and transitions to democracy. It is widely recognised as the foremost English-language university press dedicated to research on Central and Eastern Europe and the former communist countries. With a new Executive Chair on board in 2020 and a new Director in 2021, CEU Press enthusiastically took up the challenge to work with COPIM to help shape and pilot a new funding model, aiming to convert the Press to a fully open access monograph frontlist publisher over three years.

What is the project/product that you submitted for the Awards? 

‘Opening the Future’ - a new funding model for publishing open access monographs through a consortial library membership scheme.

Tell us a little about how it works and the team behind it

The model was developed by COPIM, a £3 million project funded by UKRI and the Arcadia Fund, supporting Community-led Open Publication Infrastructure for Monographs. A project team, directed by Martin Eve, Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck (University of London) is working with the CEU Press to pilot migrating the whole of its monograph output to open access. Professor Eve is a co-founder of the Open Library of the Humanities, a publishing platform funded by an international consortium of libraries. CEU Press’ lead on the project is Dr Frances Pinter, former CEO of Manchester University Press, the founding Publisher of Bloomsbury Academic and founder of Knowledge Unlatched - an open access funding initiative. 

In essence, the Opening the Future model works like this: library members pay a small annual fee to get unlimited multi-user eBook access to packages of the well-regarded Press backlist; and the membership revenue is then used by the Press to produce new open access (OA) monographs. There are no hidden catches, there is no bait and switch, and no double-dipping: library membership fees will pay for only those books that do not already have funding. If a proposal for a book comes to the Press with partial OA funding already in place, the Press will use Opening the Future membership fees to share the production costs and publish the book OA. Publishing the OA titles is a rolling process: as soon as the Press has the funds to produce a title they can publish the next one in line, and so on.

The aim of this approach is to continue to yield a sustainable source of revenue for a press while achieving the desired commitment to making more titles OA. Given the current global library environment and existing budget pressures that have now been exacerbated by Covid-19, a consortial model of funding promises a cost-effective solution for OA that means no single institution bears a disproportionate burden.

In what ways do you think it demonstrates innovation?

It has been said there is nothing new under the sun. Yet, as we exploit our new digital world we find new ways of doing old things. Sometimes this requires a totally new business model. Other times marrying something old with something new is just as innovative, and requires a whole new mindset to make it successful. That is what our Opening the Future initiative is all about. The old subscription model is married to a membership scheme creating a community, enabling publishers and librarians to work together to achieve open access and reduce collective library spend on monographs. 

This model brings together a Subscribe to Open (S2O) model (currently being tested by a number of journals) with the concept of membership to a cause devoted to building a knowledge commons and populating it with open access monographs. Leveraging the backlist to pay for the publishing costs of the frontlist is novel to book publishing. It is also unusual in that it is predicated on dynamic scaling and makes books available as soon as enough money is raised. It is not an all or nothing model as in many other OA initiatives; there is no need to wait for hundreds of members to open up books. Frontlist titles are made open one by one with each additional ten members. Within just a few months of launch at the end of January 2021, the first few books are already fully funded. 

Unlike the S2O model for journals (which we support), the risk of this model is lower for the publisher. That is because the publisher can continue publishing the books closed if membership targets are not met. The model does not preclude OA funding from other sources, and indeed encourages publishers to take up funding from research funders and institutions where available. But it recognises that in HSS subjects such funding cannot cover all the costs of maintaining the diversity of publishing programmes and services sought after by authors themselves. The knowledge infrastructure and scholarly communications landscape of HSS are very different to STEM subjects. So, Opening the Future is significant because it is a new way for small and medium sized university and specialist scholarly presses to survive and thrive. 

No other model can be funded from either the acquisitions budget or an OA budget, giving libraries much more flexibility on where they find the funding for this initiative.

No other model caters to both libraries that have most of the backlist books already – in which case the frontlist is available at a far lower rate than otherwise would be the case – and to libraries that do not have the books and for whom the backlist is an easy and very inexpensive way to make these otherwise pricy books available to their users.

What are your plans for the future?

In January 2021 COPIM released the code written for the Opening the Future website, which collects and processes library signups. The software is freely available for any publisher to adapt and use themselves - it is a generic signup system for open access projects that have consortial membership models. This code will be one component of a practical ‘toolkit’ that COPIM will produce on how presses might transition to sustainably publishing OA monographs. Other elements of the toolkit will include a report reviewing revenue models in OA publishing, financial modelling spreadsheets, communication and advocacy materials, and more.

The programme is already growing. In June 2021 COPIM was delighted to welcome a second pilot publisher to the Opening the Future initiative: Liverpool University Press, the UK’s third oldest university press, with a distinguished history of publishing exceptional research since 1899, including the work of Nobel prize winners. LUP will offer libraries subscription/membership access to a choice of two modern language backlist series.

Plans for further expanding use of the model and creating an OA Book Hub serving many similar presses are already underway, and COPIM is working with industry partners Project MUSE, LYRASIS, Jisc and OAPEN to explore how the programme might scale up. We are also participating in policy discussions and working groups with the ultimate aim being to facilitate a viable route for small and medium sized academic presses with leverageable backlists to flip their frontlists to open. 

If enough libraries and publishers participate, with clusters forming around disciplines, then both the research and teaching requirements globally can be well served by monographs which otherwise would not be available to any but those in the wealthiest institutions. There will be sufficient funds flowing into this sector to support a diverse and healthy monograph programme. Libraries will be redirecting their acquisitions budgets more efficiently and effectively to making monographs open and thereby fostering the health of disciplines through the support of essential knowledge infrastructures.

For further information, please visit:

https://ceup.openingthefuture.net/

https://copim.pubpub.org/

https://www.copim.ac.uk/

https://ceupress.com/

Visit the ALPSP Annual Conference 2021 website for more details and to book your place.

The ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2021 are sponsored by HighWire.

About the authors

Martin Paul Eve is Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck, University of London. A co-founder of the Open Library of the Humanities he has been a member of the HEFCE Open Access Monographs Expert Reference Panel, the Universities UK OA Monographs Working Group, and several other expert panels on HE and open access.

Frances Pinter is Executive Chair of CEU Press. She was CEO of Manchester University Press, the founding Publisher of Bloomsbury Academic and founder of Knowledge Unlatched.

Spotlight on JPPS - shortlisted for the 2018 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing

On 13 September, at the ALPSP Conference, we will be announcing the winners of the 2018 ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing, sponsored by MPS Limited.  In this series of posts leading up to the Awards ceremony, we meet our six finalists and get to know a bit more about them.


In this post, we speak to Sioux Cumming of INASP, and Susan Murray of African Journals Online (AJOL) about Journal Publishing Practices and Standards (JPPS).

Tell us a bit about your companies

INASP is an international development organisation with over 25 years’ experience of working with a global network of partners in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Research and knowledge have a crucial role to play in addressing global challenges. Many of these challenges affect the Global South most acutely, but we believe that these challenges will not be addressed without Southern research and knowledge.

To realise this potential, we strengthen research and knowledge systems by addressing issues of power and supporting individuals and institutions to produce, share and use research. Broadly speaking, we have six areas of work: academic publishing; evidence for policy; gender & equity; higher education & learning; information access; and research communication.

African Journals Online (AJOL) was the first JOL platform and has been managed by a South African non-profit organisation of the same name since 2005. AJOL provides a highly visible online library of African-published, peer-reviewed scholarly journals, allowing global access to the research output of the continent. AJOL also works with journal partners throughout Africa to facilitate their capacity building in publishing best practices, and provides various technical services that many journals might not be able to afford or implement on their own. 

What is the project/product that you submitted for the Awards?

Journal Publishing Practices and Standards (JPPS) was established – and is managed - by AJOL and INASP to provide detailed assessment criteria for the quality of publishing practices of Global South journals.  

Northern journals dominate global research, leading to an underrepresentation of knowledge from the South. Championing Southern journals is essential for redressing imbalance in the dissemination of global research.

JPPS levels give readers assurance that the journals meet an internationally recognised set of criteria. The detailed feedback from the JPPS assessment helps editors identify ways to improve their publishing practices and standards.  

The initiative and its first awards have been widely welcomed by Southern journal editors and have already prompted significant improvements. 

Tell us more about how it works and the team behind it

The JPPS assessment process evaluates these journals based on 108 internationally accepted criteria. The result is one of six badges that are displayed on the official JPPS site and on the JOL platforms. These badges give guidance and reassurance to researchers as they are choosing which journals to read, cite and publish in.

But JPPS goes further than this: the other output of the assessment process is a detailed, customised report for each journal editor highlighting the areas of journal publishing that could be improved. This feedback is supported by the Handbook for Journal Editors, which gives practical guidance on things like how to run editorial processes, communicate with authors, and improve a peer review system. 

Why do you think it demonstrates publishing innovation?

JPPS has several important, unique features. Firstly and crucially, JPPS isn’t just a metric; it’s also a framework to help improve quality. The aim of JPPS is to increase equity in global publishing and to help this by recognising and supporting legitimate journals. The detailed reports from JPPS are intended to not only highlight what is missing but also to help journals to improve.

It was developed in consultation with journal editors in Africa and it recognises the contexts that these editors operate in, and provides support and guidance appropriate to the contexts. However, although the focus is on the Global South, the standards expected in JPPS are global ones; journals awarded JPPS stars will have publishing standards and processes similar to other journals around the world.

What are your plans for the future?

On the technical side, we are working towards an online form (and database) to streamline the assessment process. This would be a tool that new journals could use in applying to join a JOL platform and also that journals already on the platforms could use in their applications for reassessment. 

Extensions to JPPS might also include going beyond the JOLs platforms in partnership with other journal platforms. In addition, we hope to roll out a full online course in journal quality following feedback and refinement from a recent pilot. 

AJOL and INASP have been grateful for funding and encouragement from Sida and DFID over many years to support the development of the JOLs platforms and, more recently, the JPPS initiative. We are pleased to have continued support from Sida for this work over the next year but are also keen to discuss other funding opportunities to extend this work. 


Sioux Cumming (left in photo) has worked on and managed INASP’s Journals Online project since 2003 and has helped establish and maintain eight JOLs platforms. She has also been instrumental in bringing international standards and initiatives such as DOIs, eISSNs, the anti-plagiarism software CrossCheck, article-level metrics and Kudos to the journals. In collaboration with African Journals Online, she helped to develop and is implementing the Journal Publishing Practices and Standards (JPPS) framework to help journals improve their publishing quality.


Susan Murray (right in photo) is Executive Director of African Journals OnLine (AJOL). AJOL is a South African based non-profit organization working toward increased visibility and quality of African-published research journals. AJOL hosts the world’s largest online collection of peer-reviewed, African-published scholarly journals and is a sponsoring member of CrossRef. Ms Murray is also a member of the Advisory Committee of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and a member of the Advisory Board for the Public Knowledge Project’s current study on Open Access Publishing Cooperatives. She has an abiding interest in the role that access to research outputs can play in economic development in low income and emerging economies, as well as the practicalities of attaining this.

Website: www.journalquality.info

Twitter: @INASPinfo @AJOLinfo

The ALPSP Annual Conference and Awards 2018 will be held at the Beaumont Estate, Old Windsor, UK from 12-14 September. #alpsp18