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.

The last day of 2019 marked the official start of a major change on the planet, which “... turned the world upside down. Everything has been impacted…" When it comes to science in the COVID-19 pandemic, research involving humans has been in the spotlight, with greater exposure of its relevance and of the ethical challenges posed at the science and society interface, which has been heavily impacted by the pandemic. … The post A perspective on ethical and regulatory aspects of research involving humans in the COVID-19 pandemic first appeared on SciELO in Perspective.

Recently, Journal Citation Reports (JCR) incorporated early reports documents into indexing, therefore, the impact factors are being modified. This new methodology will have an effect of reordering journal rankings, with important implications in their academic evaluation. Questions and criticisms have arisen. … The post Early Reports and the new policy of the Web of Science Journal Impact Factor first appeared on SciELO in Perspective.

The second NISO Plus Conference was held virtually on February 22-25. This year’s theme was “Global conversations – global connections” with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), accessibility, and the changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic being transversal topics throughout the conference. This post recaps (mainly) the discussions around these topics and how they relate to our community’s current challenges. … The post It takes a global village or a recap of NISO Plus 2021 first appeared on SciELO in Perspective.

Covid-19 had devastating effects that go beyond economics and also affected the periodicals published in Brazil. An editorial of the Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências has called attention that no journal published in the country will receive any support from the funding agencies in 2021 and calls for relevant stakeholders to discuss solutions to avoid the collapse of the publication system that is approaching if no measures are taken. … The post Grim perspectives for Brazilian periodicals [Originally published as the editorial in Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências vol. 93 no. 1] first appeared on SciELO in Perspective.