Engaging with Open Access Locally and Internationally: A holistic and longitudinal study of the United Arab Emirates academic publishing landscape
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876/2023 MOHAMED BOUFARSS Engaging with Open Access Locally and Internationally Tampere University Dissertations 876 Engaging with Open Access Locally and Internationally A holistic and longitudinal study of the United Arab Emirates academic publishing landscape MOHAMED BOUFARSS TUNI_Boufarss_Mohamed_kansi.indd 1TUNI_Boufarss_Mohamed_kansi.indd 1 4.10.2023 9:52:374.10.2023 9:52:37
Tampere University Dissertations 876 MOHAMED BOUFARSS Engaging with Open Access Locally and Internationally A holistic and longitudinal study of the United Arab Emirates academic publishing landscape ACADEMIC DISSERTATION To be presented, with the permission of the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences of Tampere University, for public discussion in the auditorium D11 of the Main building, Kalevantie 4, Tampere, on 15 December 2023, at 12 o’clock.
ACADEMIC DISSERTATION Tampere University, Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences Finland Responsible supervisor and Custos Professor J. Tuomas Harviainen Tampere University Finland Supervisor Associate Professor Mikael Laakso Hanken School of Economics Finland Pre-examiners Dr. Nicolás Robinson-García University of Granada Spain Dr. Thed van Leeuwen Leiden University Netherlands Opponent Professor Gunnar Sivertsen Nordic Institute for Studies of Innovation, Research and Education Norway The originality of this thesis has been checked using the Turnitin OriginalityCheck service. Copyright ©2023 author Cover design: Roihu Inc. ISBN 978-952-03-3085-9 (print) ISBN 978-952-03-3086-6 (pdf) ISSN 2489-9860 (print) ISSN 2490-0028 (pdf) http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-3086-6 Carbon dioxide emissions from printing Tampere University dissertations have been compensated. PunaMusta Oy – Yliopistopaino Joensuu 2023 Dedication I dedicate this dissertation to my wife and children. They have provided tremendous support and inspiration throughout this process.
Dedication I dedicate this dissertation to my wife and children. They have provided tremendous support and inspiration throughout this process.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Ever since I finished my master’s in library and information science back in 2010, I had been dismissing the idea of pursuing a doctoral degree mostly driven by the belief that a masters is the terminal degree for those in my career line. At the end of 2018, it took only a little push from an ex-colleague to revive the curious researcher in me. This task would have never been completed without the support of colleagues, friends, and family. First, my greatest thanks and gratitude go out to my supervisors, J. Tuomas Harviainen and Mikael Laakso who have made this journey a rewarding and most importantly an enjoyable one. In addition to the best supervisory support, Tuomas has incessantly mentored me on building better research networks, exploring collaboration opportunities and branching into other areas of scholarship. Mikael has spared no effort in acknowledging the value in my work and providing uplifting encouragement and much needed guidance. To both, I say thank you for taking the pain out of the doctoral research process. I would like to thank the pre-examiners, Professor Thed van Leeuwen and Professor Nicolas Robinson-Garcia for taking the time to review this dissertation. Their well-informed comments and invaluable inputs have contributed to the improvement of this dissertation. Their expertise is highly valued, and their feedback will be cherished beyond this degree. I have received all kinds of moral, psychological and advice throughout this journey from different colleagues at work. I owe special thanks to Dr. Imran Islam who was going through a similar process but was always ready with advice. I offer my gratitude to Marwa Al Aqroubi, who has been very encouraging and accommodating during my supervisory visits to Finland. Lastly, my sincere thanks go to my family members. First, my wife, who has put up with my busy schedule and frequent travels, sacrificing valuable family time and taking care of the kids. Second, my primary motivators – my children Douaa, Rayane and Aya, without whom I would have probably settled for less.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Ever since I finished my master’s in library and information science back in 2010, I had been dismissing the idea of pursuing a doctoral degree mostly driven by the belief that a masters is the terminal degree for those in my career line. At the end of 2018, it took only a little push from an ex-colleague to revive the curious researcher in me. This task would have never been completed without the support of colleagues, friends, and family. First, my greatest thanks and gratitude go out to my supervisors, J. Tuomas Harviainen and Mikael Laakso who have made this journey a rewarding and most importantly an enjoyable one. In addition to the best supervisory support, Tuomas has incessantly mentored me on building better research networks, exploring collaboration opportunities and branching into other areas of scholarship. Mikael has spared no effort in acknowledging the value in my work and providing uplifting encouragement and much needed guidance. To both, I say thank you for taking the pain out of the doctoral research process. I would like to thank the pre-examiners, Professor Thed van Leeuwen and Professor Nicolas Robinson-Garcia for taking the time to review this dissertation. Their well-informed comments and invaluable inputs have contributed to the improvement of this dissertation. Their expertise is highly valued, and their feedback will be cherished beyond this degree. I have received all kinds of moral, psychological and advice throughout this journey from different colleagues at work. I owe special thanks to Dr. Imran Islam who was going through a similar process but was always ready with advice. I offer my gratitude to Marwa Al Aqroubi, who has been very encouraging and accommodating during my supervisory visits to Finland. Lastly, my sincere thanks go to my family members. First, my wife, who has put up with my busy schedule and frequent travels, sacrificing valuable family time and taking care of the kids. Second, my primary motivators – my children Douaa, Rayane and Aya, without whom I would have probably settled for less.
ABSTRACT Scholarly communication has witnessed many transformative changes throughout history. These changes ere accelerated by the advent of the Internet that enabled complex communication networks between its different stakeholders. These networks are kindled by the noble principle of exchanging research findings. Within this context, no change has been as disruptive as open access (OA). Whether through self-archiving (green) or directly from the publishers (gold), OA’s aim is to free the exchange of research findings from paywalls. Many initiatives in support of OA flourished and scientometric studies started measuring its uptake and impact. However, OA research still faces many challenges. The aim of this thesis was to analyze the UAE research landscape for empirical data on the national state of OA. The UAE makes for a good study case because of its economic, demographic and research characteristics. The UAE is a very young country that is, nonetheless, being classified among high income countries. Its researcher population is characterised by high transiency, an attribute that may negatively affect research output and OA prioritization. The findings show that UAE lacks incentives to adopt OA, OA related mandates and policies, OA infrastructure, and OA funding. However, the UAE is on par with the rest of the world in terms of number of OA journals; practitioners’ awareness and support of OA practices; and OA articles output. This study also supports the evident correlation between international coauthorship levels and OA uptake. This is in stark contrast to policy lacunae and no evident prioritization of OA. This thesis also highlights how existing bibliographic sources of data can draw a distorted picture of the state of OA especially in countries such as the UAE since these sources are largely biased. This is in addition to gaps in OA-related metadata. Even with integrative methods, OA-related research is largely restrained. The UAE could benefit greatly from a nationwide science policy that would not only promote research output but also make it more visible and accessible through OA supportive measures. OA uptake numbers would improve and consolidate the position of the UAE as a forward looking country and a crossroad of global talents.
ABSTRACT Scholarly communication has witnessed many transformative changes throughout history. These changes ere accelerated by the advent of the Internet that enabled complex communication networks between its different stakeholders. These networks are kindled by the noble principle of exchanging research findings. Within this context, no change has been as disruptive as open access (OA). Whether through self-archiving (green) or directly from the publishers (gold), OA’s aim is to free the exchange of research findings from paywalls. Many initiatives in support of OA flourished and scientometric studies started measuring its uptake and impact. However, OA research still faces many challenges. The aim of this thesis was to analyze the UAE research landscape for empirical data on the national state of OA. The UAE makes for a good study case because of its economic, demographic and research characteristics. The UAE is a very young country that is, nonetheless, being classified among high income countries. Its researcher population is characterised by high transiency, an attribute that may negatively affect research output and OA prioritization. The findings show that UAE lacks incentives to adopt OA, OA related mandates and policies, OA infrastructure, and OA funding. However, the UAE is on par with the rest of the world in terms of number of OA journals; practitioners’ awareness and support of OA practices; and OA articles output. This study also supports the evident correlation between international coauthorship levels and OA uptake. This is in stark contrast to policy lacunae and no evident prioritization of OA. This thesis also highlights how existing bibliographic sources of data can draw a distorted picture of the state of OA especially in countries such as the UAE since these sources are largely biased. This is in addition to gaps in OA-related metadata. Even with integrative methods, OA-related research is largely restrained. The UAE could benefit greatly from a nationwide science policy that would not only promote research output but also make it more visible and accessible through OA supportive measures. OA uptake numbers would improve and consolidate the position of the UAE as a forward looking country and a crossroad of global talents.
List of Figures Figure 1. UAE R&D expenditure as a percentage of the GDP Figure 2. Thesis underlying research paradigm List of Tables Table 1. Research questions, methods and data mapping Table 2. Taubert, et al. (2019) Open access shades Table 3. Mapping of individual publications against the thesis RQs and objectives with a summary of implications ORIGINAL PUBLICATIONS Article I Boufarss, M. (2020). Charting the Open Access scholarly journals landscape in the UAE. Scientometrics, 122, 1707–1725. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03349-0 Article II Boufarss, M., Laakso, M. (2020). Open Sesame? Open access priorities, incentives, and policies among higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates. Scientometrics, 124, 1553–1577. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03529-y Article III Boufarss, M., & Harviainen, J. T. (2021). Librarians as gateopeners in open access publishing: A case study in the United Arab Emirates. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 47(5), 102425. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2021.102425 Article IV Boufarss, M., Laakso, M. (2023). Open access and international co-authorship: a longitudinal study of the United Arab Emirates research output. Quantitative Science Studies, 4(2), 372–393. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00256
List of Figures Figure 1. UAE R&D expenditure as a percentage of the GDP Figure 2. Thesis underlying research paradigm List of Tables Table 1. Research questions, methods and data mapping Table 2. Taubert, et al. (2019) Open access shades Table 3. Mapping of individual publications against the thesis RQs and objectives with a summary of implications ORIGINAL PUBLICATIONS Article I Boufarss, M. (2020). Charting the Open Access scholarly journals landscape in the UAE. Scientometrics, 122, 1707–1725. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03349-0 Article II Boufarss, M., Laakso, M. (2020). Open Sesame? Open access priorities, incentives, and policies among higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates. Scientometrics, 124, 1553–1577. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03529-y Article III Boufarss, M., & Harviainen, J. T. (2021). Librarians as gateopeners in open access publishing: A case study in the United Arab Emirates. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 47(5), 102425. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2021.102425 Article IV Boufarss, M., Laakso, M. (2023). Open access and international co-authorship: a longitudinal study of the United Arab Emirates research output. Quantitative Science Studies, 4(2), 372–393. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00256
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS Article I I was solely responsible for planning and executing the study, writing the article, and acting as the corresponding author. Article II I was responsible for planning and executing the study. Both authors equally participated in designing the instrument. I collected the data, analysed it and wrote the results and the discussion. The second author supervised the process by reviewing the conceptualization and editing the manuscript. I acted as the corresponding author. Article III I was responsible for planning and executing the study. This involved working on conceptualization, methodology, data collection, visualization, writingdata analysis, writing-original draft, writing-reviewing, and editing. The role of the second author involved supervision, writing - data analysis, writingreviewing and editing and research contextualization. I acted as the corresponding author. Article IV I was responsible for planning and executing the study. This involved working on conceptualization, methodology, data collection, visualization, writingdata analysis, writing-original draft, writing-reviewing, and editing. The role of the second author involved supervision, reviewing the conceptualization, correlation analysis, and editing of the manuscript. I acted as the corresponding author. 1 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of the Problem Human knowledge is cumulative, and it is only through sharing findings that researchers could build on previous research to solve emerging issues and create new knowledge. However, the predominant models of publishing and sharing information have been shackling this idealistic scenario. The publisher-imposed paywalls to knowledge alienate those who cannot afford to pay for access. This phenomenon became especially evident with the advent of the Internet and the increase in born-digital or digitized resources starting at the 90s of the last century. Consequently, a new movement calling for providing unrestricted access to research emerged. This was dubbed “Open Access” (OA). Sharing information is a tradition rooted in scientific research exchange with for example researchers in some disciplines using mailing lists to disseminate their research among peers in the 1980s (Laakso et al. 2011; Ginsparg 2009). However, OA as we know it today was largely facilitated by the advent of and wide-spread use of the Internet coupled with researchers’ dissatisfaction with the unreasonable cost of access and the emergence of the author pays model. For example, the Internet has made the creation of preprint platforms such as arXiv.org possible as early as 1991. Similarly, the open letter to scientific publishers signed by 30,000 scholars in 2001 resulted in the creation of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) (Mukherjee 2010). Likewise, over 8,800 researchers revolted against Reed Elsevier in what was dubbed “Academic Spring”, when they decided to boycott reviewing or publishing in its journals (Epstein 2012). Academic Spring goes hand in hand with what is referred to as the “Serials Crisis”. This new crisis is the result of a skewed balance between subscription prices and library budgets with for-profit publishers straining library budgets through large
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS Article I I was solely responsible for planning and executing the study, writing the article, and acting as the corresponding author. Article II I was responsible for planning and executing the study. Both authors equally participated in designing the instrument. I collected the data, analysed it and wrote the results and the discussion. The second author supervised the process by reviewing the conceptualization and editing the manuscript. I acted as the corresponding author. Article III I was responsible for planning and executing the study. This involved working on conceptualization, methodology, data collection, visualization, writingdata analysis, writing-original draft, writing-reviewing, and editing. The role of the second author involved supervision, writing - data analysis, writingreviewing and editing and research contextualization. I acted as the corresponding author. Article IV I was responsible for planning and executing the study. This involved working on conceptualization, methodology, data collection, visualization, writingdata analysis, writing-original draft, writing-reviewing, and editing. The role of the second author involved supervision, reviewing the conceptualization, correlation analysis, and editing of the manuscript. I acted as the corresponding author. 1 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of the Problem Human knowledge is cumulative, and it is only through sharing findings that researchers could build on previous research to solve emerging issues and create new knowledge. However, the predominant models of publishing and sharing information have been shackling this idealistic scenario. The publisher-imposed paywalls to knowledge alienate those who cannot afford to pay for access. This phenomenon became especially evident with the advent of the Internet and the increase in born-digital or digitized resources starting at the 90s of the last century. Consequently, a new movement calling for providing unrestricted access to research emerged. This was dubbed “Open Access” (OA). Sharing information is a tradition rooted in scientific research exchange with for example researchers in some disciplines using mailing lists to disseminate their research among peers in the 1980s (Laakso et al. 2011; Ginsparg 2009). However, OA as we know it today was largely facilitated by the advent of and wide-spread use of the Internet coupled with researchers’ dissatisfaction with the unreasonable cost of access and the emergence of the author pays model. For example, the Internet has made the creation of preprint platforms such as arXiv.org possible as early as 1991. Similarly, the open letter to scientific publishers signed by 30,000 scholars in 2001 resulted in the creation of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) (Mukherjee 2010). Likewise, over 8,800 researchers revolted against Reed Elsevier in what was dubbed “Academic Spring”, when they decided to boycott reviewing or publishing in its journals (Epstein 2012). Academic Spring goes hand in hand with what is referred to as the “Serials Crisis”. This new crisis is the result of a skewed balance between subscription prices and library budgets with for-profit publishers straining library budgets through large
2 profits (West et al. 2014). For example, Bosch and Henderson (2013) reported a 6% annual increase in subscription prices. Nearly a decade later, with an estimated annual increase of 4%, Bosch, Albee and Romaine (2022, para. 1) state that “Two years into the pandemic, only flat budgets and price increases seem predictable.” The exorbitant charges were a catalyst for stakeholders such as researchers and libraries to revolt against subscription-based access models. This in turn spurred support for the open access movement and some associated practices like read and publish or author-pays models. However, a major issue associated with costs namely the extortionate profit margins of some major publishers estimated at 39% in 2013 and which surpassed those of big companies such as Amazon whose profit margin was a mere 4.33% in 2018 (Hungaski 2019) remain unresolved as they still apply in the new transformative agreements or author pays models. Adding to the intricacy of the OA concept are the various shades and somehow ambiguous definitions of OA models (Taubert et al. (2019). Starting with a dichotomy of Green and Gold, OA now counts a wide spectrum of colours. Each shade introduces new nuances in the definition of OA. The result is an ambiguous ecosystem that is becoming increasingly harder to decipher for most scholarly communication stakeholders. It similarly poses new challenges for bibliometric analysis of research output. In direct relation with the OA models are the different schools that emerged in support of one or the other. One can notice that some OA pioneers like Steven Harnad prioritize self-archiving (Green) as the best route to achieve higher levels of OA (Harnad, 2010). On the other hand, Europe seems to be endorsing the gold OA model attested by the different transformative agreements and growing support of APCs. As per the latest ESAC’s (2023) Transformative Agreement Registry data, the number of North American signed transformative agreements is a mere 10% of those signed by European institutions. Approaches in other parts of the world may strike a balance or swing towards one of the two models. Noteworthy in this context is the South American model which seems to focus more on local OA journals and repositories (Babini, 2020). Countries like the UAE, often falling off the OA studies radar, are still to chart their own path. A myriad of approaches, methods and data collection instruments have been adopted in studying the OA phenomenon. This is obviously dominated by bibliometric analysis, a primarily quantitative research method that scrutinises publication and citation patterns. Bibliometrics are often used to measure OA uptake and impact. Other very popular methods include surveys, case studies and altmetrics. Content analysis is used to a lesser extent. However, these methods are 3 seldom used alone. Given the complexity of this phenomenon, triangulation and integrative research methods are often opted for. The debate around OA has matured over the last few decades from a basic request to remove paywalls to a genuine and in-depth discussion of feasible solutions that are fair to all stakeholders. However, the phenomenon is shyly debated, addressed, or studied in the larger Middle East region and more specifically in the UAE. Initial observation reveals that the UAE presents a few distinctive characteristics in the context of OA landscape making it an interesting case for further investigation. Especially worthy of mention is the absence of a pro-OA science policy and the transiency of the researcher population. In this dissertation, I explore how the UAE is jumping on the bandwagon of OA. In an endeavor to draw a 360-degree view of the phenomenon, I approach the topic from four perspectives: local journal publishing landscape, research institutions approach, librarians’ role, and research collaboration effect on OA uptake. The following research questions guide the research: RQ1: How integrated is OA within the publishing sector in the UAE? RQ2: How integrated is OA within libraries, HEIs and research centres in the UAE? RQ3: Why the share of OA in the UAE is high despite low institutional support? RQ4: What are the dynamics at play in the UAE research and OA landscape? Answering these questions will shed light on the state of OA in the UAE and provide a diagnosis of the pain areas in the long journey to achieving the highest rate of OA to research in the country. The four research articles included in this dissertation will each contribute answers to these overarching research questions. Table 1 outlines the research questions of individual articles and links the contribution of each article to the dissertation research questions.
2 profits (West et al. 2014). For example, Bosch and Henderson (2013) reported a 6% annual increase in subscription prices. Nearly a decade later, with an estimated annual increase of 4%, Bosch, Albee and Romaine (2022, para. 1) state that “Two years into the pandemic, only flat budgets and price increases seem predictable.” The exorbitant charges were a catalyst for stakeholders such as researchers and libraries to revolt against subscription-based access models. This in turn spurred support for the open access movement and some associated practices like read and publish or author-pays models. However, a major issue associated with costs namely the extortionate profit margins of some major publishers estimated at 39% in 2013 and which surpassed those of big companies such as Amazon whose profit margin was a mere 4.33% in 2018 (Hungaski 2019) remain unresolved as they still apply in the new transformative agreements or author pays models. Adding to the intricacy of the OA concept are the various shades and somehow ambiguous definitions of OA models (Taubert et al. (2019). Starting with a dichotomy of Green and Gold, OA now counts a wide spectrum of colours. Each shade introduces new nuances in the definition of OA. The result is an ambiguous ecosystem that is becoming increasingly harder to decipher for most scholarly communication stakeholders. It similarly poses new challenges for bibliometric analysis of research output. In direct relation with the OA models are the different schools that emerged in support of one or the other. One can notice that some OA pioneers like Steven Harnad prioritize self-archiving (Green) as the best route to achieve higher levels of OA (Harnad, 2010). On the other hand, Europe seems to be endorsing the gold OA model attested by the different transformative agreements and growing support of APCs. As per the latest ESAC’s (2023) Transformative Agreement Registry data, the number of North American signed transformative agreements is a mere 10% of those signed by European institutions. Approaches in other parts of the world may strike a balance or swing towards one of the two models. Noteworthy in this context is the South American model which seems to focus more on local OA journals and repositories (Babini, 2020). Countries like the UAE, often falling off the OA studies radar, are still to chart their own path. A myriad of approaches, methods and data collection instruments have been adopted in studying the OA phenomenon. This is obviously dominated by bibliometric analysis, a primarily quantitative research method that scrutinises publication and citation patterns. Bibliometrics are often used to measure OA uptake and impact. Other very popular methods include surveys, case studies and altmetrics. Content analysis is used to a lesser extent. However, these methods are 3 seldom used alone. Given the complexity of this phenomenon, triangulation and integrative research methods are often opted for. The debate around OA has matured over the last few decades from a basic request to remove paywalls to a genuine and in-depth discussion of feasible solutions that are fair to all stakeholders. However, the phenomenon is shyly debated, addressed, or studied in the larger Middle East region and more specifically in the UAE. Initial observation reveals that the UAE presents a few distinctive characteristics in the context of OA landscape making it an interesting case for further investigation. Especially worthy of mention is the absence of a pro-OA science policy and the transiency of the researcher population. In this dissertation, I explore how the UAE is jumping on the bandwagon of OA. In an endeavor to draw a 360-degree view of the phenomenon, I approach the topic from four perspectives: local journal publishing landscape, research institutions approach, librarians’ role, and research collaboration effect on OA uptake. The following research questions guide the research: RQ1: How integrated is OA within the publishing sector in the UAE? RQ2: How integrated is OA within libraries, HEIs and research centres in the UAE? RQ3: Why the share of OA in the UAE is high despite low institutional support? RQ4: What are the dynamics at play in the UAE research and OA landscape? Answering these questions will shed light on the state of OA in the UAE and provide a diagnosis of the pain areas in the long journey to achieving the highest rate of OA to research in the country. The four research articles included in this dissertation will each contribute answers to these overarching research questions. Table 1 outlines the research questions of individual articles and links the contribution of each article to the dissertation research questions.
4 Table 1. Research questions, methods and data mapping Publication P1 P2 P3 P4 Title Charting the Open Access scholarly journals landscape in the UAE Open Sesame? Open access priorities, incentives, and policies among higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates Librarians as gate-openers in open access publishing: A case study in the United Arab Emirates Boufarss, M., Laakso, M. (2022). Open access and international coauthorship: a longitudinal study of the United Arab Emirates research output Thesis RQs How integrated is OA within the publishing sector in the UAE? How integrated is OA within libraries, HEIs and research centres in the UAE? Why the share of OA in the UAE is high despite low institutional support? How integrated is OA within libraries, HEIs and research centres in the UAE? What are the dynamics at play in the UAE research and OA landscape? How integrated is OA within the publishing sector in the UAE? Why the share of OA in the UAE is high despite low institutional support? What are the dynamics at play in the UAE research and OA landscape RQs How many academic journals are published in the UAE? In what languages are these journals published? What is the share of OA journals in the UAE? What are the subject areas of these journals? What is the level of current awareness, support, policies, and practices related to scholarly journal publishing among UAE HEIs, particularly in relation to OA publishing? What are HEIs in the UAE doing in relation to OA, including what are existing OA policies and funding options available to authors to publish OA? How do HEIs in the UAE assess publications and publication activity of researchers in the context of promotion and performance appraisals of faculty? What is the level of OA awareness among librarians in the UAE? What is the role of UAE librarians in the training of researchers and patrons on OA policies and mechanisms and on accessing OA resources? How has OA helped reinvent the role of librarians as gate-openers and a driving force behind the eventual success or downfall of the OA movement? What are UAE librarians doing to facilitate users and researchers' uptake of OA? How has UAE Librarians high awareness and perception of OA contributed to the shift in their role? How has the share of journal articles available OA developed over time? a. What are the disciplinary differences in OA shares? b. Does the journal host country have a connection to OA availability? c. What are the shares of different OA mechanisms? d. What are the most popular repositories for self-archiving? 2. How has international co-authorship developed over time? a. How is co-authorship distributed globally? b. Does the number of co-authors have a connection to OA availability? c. Does the geographic region of co-authors have a connection to OA availability? 5 1.2 Thesis Structure The remainder of this article-based thesis is structured as follows: Chapter 2: Scientific Research Environment in the UAE This chapter places the thesis in its research environment context. It highlights the distinctive characteristics of the research landscape in the UAE and made an attempt to elucidate the science policy of the country. Outlining these elements is deemed necessary to place the research in its proper milieu and prime the uninformed reader. Chapter 3: Scholarly communication Chapter three provides a coverage of key literature on scholarly communication including its underlying principles and historical origins. It especially focused on journals and articles as key tools of scholarly communication. A review of languages of publication within the scholarly publishing context is provided. As this study is anchored in scientometrics, the last section of this chapter touched on the evolution and few characteristics of scientometrics. Chapter 4: Open Access Chapter four is devoted to covering aspects of OA as the core concept of the thesis. First, an overarching discussion of a few key OA initiatives, shades of OA, OA funding models, and libraries and OA is presented. Second, controversial issues often associated with OA namely predatory publishing and academic social networks (ASNs) are tackled. Finally, a few challenges researchers face in studying OA such as limitations in bibliographic indexes and the volatility of the OA as a publishing model are addressed. Chapter 5: Study Methodology In chapter five, an overview of research philosophy is presented. This thesis’s research paradigm is then linked to the research philosophy. The second part laid out the study design where a synopsis of the research designs used in each study is given. A brief note on ethics is then provided before we review the data collection processes, sources and tools.
4 Table 1. Research questions, methods and data mapping Publication P1 P2 P3 P4 Title Charting the Open Access scholarly journals landscape in the UAE Open Sesame? Open access priorities, incentives, and policies among higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates Librarians as gate-openers in open access publishing: A case study in the United Arab Emirates Boufarss, M., Laakso, M. (2022). Open access and international coauthorship: a longitudinal study of the United Arab Emirates research output Thesis RQs How integrated is OA within the publishing sector in the UAE? How integrated is OA within libraries, HEIs and research centres in the UAE? Why the share of OA in the UAE is high despite low institutional support? How integrated is OA within libraries, HEIs and research centres in the UAE? What are the dynamics at play in the UAE research and OA landscape? How integrated is OA within the publishing sector in the UAE? Why the share of OA in the UAE is high despite low institutional support? What are the dynamics at play in the UAE research and OA landscape RQs How many academic journals are published in the UAE? In what languages are these journals published? What is the share of OA journals in the UAE? What are the subject areas of these journals? What is the level of current awareness, support, policies, and practices related to scholarly journal publishing among UAE HEIs, particularly in relation to OA publishing? What are HEIs in the UAE doing in relation to OA, including what are existing OA policies and funding options available to authors to publish OA? How do HEIs in the UAE assess publications and publication activity of researchers in the context of promotion and performance appraisals of faculty? What is the level of OA awareness among librarians in the UAE? What is the role of UAE librarians in the training of researchers and patrons on OA policies and mechanisms and on accessing OA resources? How has OA helped reinvent the role of librarians as gate-openers and a driving force behind the eventual success or downfall of the OA movement? What are UAE librarians doing to facilitate users and researchers' uptake of OA? How has UAE Librarians high awareness and perception of OA contributed to the shift in their role? How has the share of journal articles available OA developed over time? a. What are the disciplinary differences in OA shares? b. Does the journal host country have a connection to OA availability? c. What are the shares of different OA mechanisms? d. What are the most popular repositories for self-archiving? 2. How has international co-authorship developed over time? a. How is co-authorship distributed globally? b. Does the number of co-authors have a connection to OA availability? c. Does the geographic region of co-authors have a connection to OA availability? 5 1.2 Thesis Structure The remainder of this article-based thesis is structured as follows: Chapter 2: Scientific Research Environment in the UAE This chapter places the thesis in its research environment context. It highlights the distinctive characteristics of the research landscape in the UAE and made an attempt to elucidate the science policy of the country. Outlining these elements is deemed necessary to place the research in its proper milieu and prime the uninformed reader. Chapter 3: Scholarly communication Chapter three provides a coverage of key literature on scholarly communication including its underlying principles and historical origins. It especially focused on journals and articles as key tools of scholarly communication. A review of languages of publication within the scholarly publishing context is provided. As this study is anchored in scientometrics, the last section of this chapter touched on the evolution and few characteristics of scientometrics. Chapter 4: Open Access Chapter four is devoted to covering aspects of OA as the core concept of the thesis. First, an overarching discussion of a few key OA initiatives, shades of OA, OA funding models, and libraries and OA is presented. Second, controversial issues often associated with OA namely predatory publishing and academic social networks (ASNs) are tackled. Finally, a few challenges researchers face in studying OA such as limitations in bibliographic indexes and the volatility of the OA as a publishing model are addressed. Chapter 5: Study Methodology In chapter five, an overview of research philosophy is presented. This thesis’s research paradigm is then linked to the research philosophy. The second part laid out the study design where a synopsis of the research designs used in each study is given. A brief note on ethics is then provided before we review the data collection processes, sources and tools.
6 Chapter 6: Integrated Discussion All previous chapters and articles listed at the end of this thesis culminate into this chapter which acts as the backbone of this thesis. It provides a summary of the findings of each of the four articles and an overarching contextualised discussion of these findings. This is followed by a section that discusses the implications of the findings for practice and future research. Limitations of this study are then presented and acknowledged. The final part wraps up the thesis with concluding remarks. 7 2 SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT IN THE UAE The UAE research environment presents a few distinctive characteristics that make it worthy of consideration in the study of OA. First, the UAE’s high GDP places it among developed countries, while it is a very young country that was established only in 1971. Yet, in this short time span, it managed to create an ecosystem of universities and research facilities that have a commendable research output that is comparable to other international institutions with long research traditions. Second, the UAE exhibits major shortcomings in open access policies, mandates, repository infrastructure, overarching science policy, and incentives to publish OA. Nonetheless, its OA output rate is akin to most western countries with such provisions. Third, the UAE has a volatile workforce as the majority of the population and scientists are on temporary residence visas. This defies one of the principles of scientific research namely stability as stated by Ryan (2017) and may as a result affect research output with a domino effect on OA. Finally, as a new nation, the UAE has been channeling the efforts and resources of its HEIs to train talented employees rather than focus on research. For these reasons, the UAE presents a distinctive research environment worth investigating. 2.1 Research Landscape In the 50 years of its existence, the UAE boasts a variety of nearly 50 higher education institutions (HEIs) that offer masters and doctoral programs (Boufarss and Laakso 2020). This is in addition to stand-alone specialized research centres and think tanks such as the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research, Mohammed Bin Rashid Medical Research Institute, Trends, and Future for Advanced Research and Studies. Most of these HEIs were created to cater for and remain mostly focused on teaching. These institutions have doubled their gross enrolment ratio between 2007 and 2016 (Kamal 2018) making the UAE HEIs among the top fastest growing in the region (Alpen Capital 2018). Even though this would mean the teaching load of
6 Chapter 6: Integrated Discussion All previous chapters and articles listed at the end of this thesis culminate into this chapter which acts as the backbone of this thesis. It provides a summary of the findings of each of the four articles and an overarching contextualised discussion of these findings. This is followed by a section that discusses the implications of the findings for practice and future research. Limitations of this study are then presented and acknowledged. The final part wraps up the thesis with concluding remarks. 7 2 SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT IN THE UAE The UAE research environment presents a few distinctive characteristics that make it worthy of consideration in the study of OA. First, the UAE’s high GDP places it among developed countries, while it is a very young country that was established only in 1971. Yet, in this short time span, it managed to create an ecosystem of universities and research facilities that have a commendable research output that is comparable to other international institutions with long research traditions. Second, the UAE exhibits major shortcomings in open access policies, mandates, repository infrastructure, overarching science policy, and incentives to publish OA. Nonetheless, its OA output rate is akin to most western countries with such provisions. Third, the UAE has a volatile workforce as the majority of the population and scientists are on temporary residence visas. This defies one of the principles of scientific research namely stability as stated by Ryan (2017) and may as a result affect research output with a domino effect on OA. Finally, as a new nation, the UAE has been channeling the efforts and resources of its HEIs to train talented employees rather than focus on research. For these reasons, the UAE presents a distinctive research environment worth investigating. 2.1 Research Landscape In the 50 years of its existence, the UAE boasts a variety of nearly 50 higher education institutions (HEIs) that offer masters and doctoral programs (Boufarss and Laakso 2020). This is in addition to stand-alone specialized research centres and think tanks such as the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research, Mohammed Bin Rashid Medical Research Institute, Trends, and Future for Advanced Research and Studies. Most of these HEIs were created to cater for and remain mostly focused on teaching. These institutions have doubled their gross enrolment ratio between 2007 and 2016 (Kamal 2018) making the UAE HEIs among the top fastest growing in the region (Alpen Capital 2018). Even though this would mean the teaching load of
14 3.1 Scholarly journals and articles First, the main priority for OA in both science policy and academic research has been, and still is, scholarly journal publications. In fact, revenues from journals represent 39% of the publishing market value against 11% for books (STM, 2021). Even though the OA movement spread to other scholarly outputs such as books, theses, and research data, “the primary, and original, target for Open Access was the journal literature” (Swan, 2012, p. 19), and peer-reviewed journal articles remain the key focus of most major OA initiatives. This could be attributed to the scholarly peerreviewed article being dominant in both scholarly output and in research evaluation in most research disciplines (Williams, 2019). Learned Societies Book publishing dominated scholarly communication years before the first journals appeared. However, there have been many indicators that the monograph as a traditional conveyor of scholarship was losing ground at the detriment of scientific journals. Perrault (1995) reported a 27.76 percent decline in the rate of acquisitions of new monographs from 1985 to 1989 among ARL libraries. On the contrary, Johnson et al. (2018) reported an annual increase of 5 to 6 percent in research articles. In fact, the Royal Society in London had to give up book publishing to focus on regular publication of its Philosophical Transactions as early as 1687 (Fredriksson, 2001). The earliest scientific journals such as the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London and the Journal des Sçavans, both published in 1665, emanated from the extensive letters exchanged by philosophers, scientists, and scholars (Fredriksson, 2001). Even though other forms of periodical publications existed, those were chiefly considered the first scientific journals (Birn, 1965). This belief is dominant but not shared by everyone. Fyfe et al. (2022) question these journals' claim of being the original of the present scholarly journal since they lacked key elements such as peer-review. Debates aside, the Royal Society ushered in an era where societies dominated journal publishing with the Académie Royale in France and later the American Philosophical Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. This tradition saw major developments in the 19th century with the emergence of academies and societies that published journals in most European cities and later outside the continent (Fredriksson, 2001). This era was characterized by low cost of publishing, members receiving copies against their subscription, and a barter of issues of publications between societies. 15 Commercial Publishers It is very difficult to pinpoint the exact time in history when the major shift happened from learned societies' dominance to the commercial publishers’ supremacy. However, Elsevier was established in 1881 in Rotterdam before moving to Amsterdam in 1887. Its first journal, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA), was published in 1947 (Fredriksson, 2001). The boom in scientific publishing post Second World War coupled with the success of journal publishing as commercial publishers realized they didn’t need societies to create them, prompted many to create new journals. This was also kindled by the rising demand for timely information by libraries and scientists. It is, however, the advent of computers and the Internet that accelerated the creation of new journals as well as takeover of a good number of journals previously held by societies. The mechanics of journal publishing as we see them today such as editorial board, peer-review, correspondence, typesetting, and proof were inherited from the “societies as publishers” era. Today, researchers continue being the backbone of the journal publishing process by acting as producers of content, editors, reviewers and readers. This resulted in some equating their work to slave labor especially with the exorbitant profits made by publishers and many of them relinquishing the copyright ownership of their articles (McGuigan, 2004). According to Fyfe et al. (2022) financial and reputation gain is not new but was associated with the first journal, Philosophical Transactions, as they claim it was relatively expensive and probably “had a profit margin built into its price”. They further revealed that its first editor, Oldenberg, was being paid a per page fee for each delivered copy by the printers. Fyfe et al. (2017) argue that it was especially around the 1950s that the commercial publishing model became dominant to the extent that “mission driven publishers” such as learned societies and HEIs started eyeing profit by the 1990s. The reality was gloomy as institutions who pay the salaries of those authors and reviewers end up paying again to access the articles through subscriptions in what was poignantly dubbed as “double dipping”. This was even dubbed “triple-pay as funders pay for research, scientists’ salaries, and for access (Buranyi, 2017). Additionally, the increasingly disproportionate profit margins of the commercial publishers coupled with the increase in the number of journals set against the dropping budgets of libraries gave birth to the “serials crisis”. Serials Crisis The Serials Crisis is a loose term that refers to the phenomenon of gradually increasing unsustainable costs of serial access against the stagnant or even falling
14 3.1 Scholarly journals and articles First, the main priority for OA in both science policy and academic research has been, and still is, scholarly journal publications. In fact, revenues from journals represent 39% of the publishing market value against 11% for books (STM, 2021). Even though the OA movement spread to other scholarly outputs such as books, theses, and research data, “the primary, and original, target for Open Access was the journal literature” (Swan, 2012, p. 19), and peer-reviewed journal articles remain the key focus of most major OA initiatives. This could be attributed to the scholarly peerreviewed article being dominant in both scholarly output and in research evaluation in most research disciplines (Williams, 2019). Learned Societies Book publishing dominated scholarly communication years before the first journals appeared. However, there have been many indicators that the monograph as a traditional conveyor of scholarship was losing ground at the detriment of scientific journals. Perrault (1995) reported a 27.76 percent decline in the rate of acquisitions of new monographs from 1985 to 1989 among ARL libraries. On the contrary, Johnson et al. (2018) reported an annual increase of 5 to 6 percent in research articles. In fact, the Royal Society in London had to give up book publishing to focus on regular publication of its Philosophical Transactions as early as 1687 (Fredriksson, 2001). The earliest scientific journals such as the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London and the Journal des Sçavans, both published in 1665, emanated from the extensive letters exchanged by philosophers, scientists, and scholars (Fredriksson, 2001). Even though other forms of periodical publications existed, those were chiefly considered the first scientific journals (Birn, 1965). This belief is dominant but not shared by everyone. Fyfe et al. (2022) question these journals' claim of being the original of the present scholarly journal since they lacked key elements such as peer-review. Debates aside, the Royal Society ushered in an era where societies dominated journal publishing with the Académie Royale in France and later the American Philosophical Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. This tradition saw major developments in the 19th century with the emergence of academies and societies that published journals in most European cities and later outside the continent (Fredriksson, 2001). This era was characterized by low cost of publishing, members receiving copies against their subscription, and a barter of issues of publications between societies. 15 Commercial Publishers It is very difficult to pinpoint the exact time in history when the major shift happened from learned societies' dominance to the commercial publishers’ supremacy. However, Elsevier was established in 1881 in Rotterdam before moving to Amsterdam in 1887. Its first journal, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA), was published in 1947 (Fredriksson, 2001). The boom in scientific publishing post Second World War coupled with the success of journal publishing as commercial publishers realized they didn’t need societies to create them, prompted many to create new journals. This was also kindled by the rising demand for timely information by libraries and scientists. It is, however, the advent of computers and the Internet that accelerated the creation of new journals as well as takeover of a good number of journals previously held by societies. The mechanics of journal publishing as we see them today such as editorial board, peer-review, correspondence, typesetting, and proof were inherited from the “societies as publishers” era. Today, researchers continue being the backbone of the journal publishing process by acting as producers of content, editors, reviewers and readers. This resulted in some equating their work to slave labor especially with the exorbitant profits made by publishers and many of them relinquishing the copyright ownership of their articles (McGuigan, 2004). According to Fyfe et al. (2022) financial and reputation gain is not new but was associated with the first journal, Philosophical Transactions, as they claim it was relatively expensive and probably “had a profit margin built into its price”. They further revealed that its first editor, Oldenberg, was being paid a per page fee for each delivered copy by the printers. Fyfe et al. (2017) argue that it was especially around the 1950s that the commercial publishing model became dominant to the extent that “mission driven publishers” such as learned societies and HEIs started eyeing profit by the 1990s. The reality was gloomy as institutions who pay the salaries of those authors and reviewers end up paying again to access the articles through subscriptions in what was poignantly dubbed as “double dipping”. This was even dubbed “triple-pay as funders pay for research, scientists’ salaries, and for access (Buranyi, 2017). Additionally, the increasingly disproportionate profit margins of the commercial publishers coupled with the increase in the number of journals set against the dropping budgets of libraries gave birth to the “serials crisis”. Serials Crisis The Serials Crisis is a loose term that refers to the phenomenon of gradually increasing unsustainable costs of serial access against the stagnant or even falling
16 library budgets (McGuigan, 2004). There were hints to such a crisis as early as the 20s of the previous century by Gross and Gross (1927). Even though this “scholarly communication system failure” emanates from the trilogy of great numbers of publications, increasing cost and issues of ownership, it is the inflation that is the key issue (Cronk, 2020, p. 79). She went on to explain that at the annual inflation rate of 5.5% for serials and 2.5% for library budgets, the cost of serial access doubles every 13 years while library budgets would take around 29 years to double. This led many libraries to cut their serials subscriptions (7%) while paying more (124%) between 1986 and 1996 (Thomes and Clay, 1998). Cancellations of subscriptions lead to lower numbers of subscriptions which in turn force publishers to raise costs resulting in a vicious cycle (Okerson, 1996). Big deals A byproduct or an outcome of the serials crisis was the publishers’ offering bundles of journals for subscription. This new approach to journal subscriptions which many libraries adopted turns out to be a new crisis with many pitfalls even though it enabled libraries to provide access to more titles than with individual title subscriptions. According to Calson and Pope (2009) some of the major issues of the big deals include the inability of librarians to predict pricing; expensive journals represent a very small fraction of the bundles; bundles are cluttered with a large number of unneeded titles; and cancellations are much complicated due to complex licensing terms that may sometimes even prevent libraries from future access to individual titles. Profit Margins As old as 1636, Descartes rejected the financial terms of Elzevier brothers when trying to publish his book Discours de la Méthode (Fredriksson, 2001). This could be interpreted as the first sign of the off-balance in profits and income from scholarly publishing. Hundreds of years later, this continues to be a dilemma. Challenged by researchers with a question of “what do the publishers do?” if the research, peer review, journal editing, research consumption and preservation in libraries is done by the research community, Richard Smith, the editor of BMJ lost words (Smith, 2018). Profit margins of these publishers’ amount to 30-40% surpassing any other business (Smith, 2018). This results in an academic publishing market valued at $28 billion in 2019 with forecasts of $29.5 billion in 2024 (STM, 2021). This state of excessive profits is shifting to the new OA publishing business model and thus remains a preoccupation of the scholarly community. 17 3.2 Languages of publication Of significant importance to both the United Arab Emirates, a Middle Eastern Arab country, and to the OA movement, a publishing model whose success depends on universal adoption, is the debate on the increasing dominance of English as a language of publication and marginalization of local and regional languages. Elements of this argument include internationalisation versus localization, publication venue prestige versus local journals, and local priorities and social impact versus larger readership base. The predominance of scholarly publishing by English as the current lingua franca of science comes at the detriment of other languages such as French, German, Latin and Arabic. Some researchers estimate the percentage of English language journals to be around 80% (Van Weijan, 2012) or even 90% (Banks, 2018). However, local languages still have and should continue having a pivotal role in scholarly publishing especially with issues of local nature and for higher societal impact. Multilingualism in scholarly communication also achieves what Balula and Leão (2021) refer to as bibliodiversity. In the UAE the shift of most education programs to English as a language of instruction as well as the increasing push for faculty to publish in Scopus indexed journals means a systematic move to English as the language of publication. A problematic hurdle to the study of interrelation between language of publication and OA rates is the absence of a universal unbiased source of data that provides metrics on both English and Arabic publications from the UAE. 3.3 Evolution and aspects of scientometrics The advent of the Internet and the parallel swell in the number of publications, authors and citations coupled with the desire of institutions and decision makers to assess outcomes called for the creation of metrics in an attempt to make sense of this intricate landscape. Enabled by data analysis possibilities facilitated by advances in computers, metrics such as bibliometrics, scientometrics, webometrics and informetrics emerged. Fyfe et al. (2017) state that publication records were first used for employment evaluation purposes by Prussian universities as old as the late 18th century. Bibliometrics are based on the use of statistical analysis within bibliographic databases to measure aspects related to publications, authors and citations. It was thus widely used in library and information science. Scientometrics falls under the same category of measures. In fact, according to Zhao and Zhao (2014, p. 905) it is “a translation of the Russian term “naukometriya” (measurement of science) coined
16 library budgets (McGuigan, 2004). There were hints to such a crisis as early as the 20s of the previous century by Gross and Gross (1927). Even though this “scholarly communication system failure” emanates from the trilogy of great numbers of publications, increasing cost and issues of ownership, it is the inflation that is the key issue (Cronk, 2020, p. 79). She went on to explain that at the annual inflation rate of 5.5% for serials and 2.5% for library budgets, the cost of serial access doubles every 13 years while library budgets would take around 29 years to double. This led many libraries to cut their serials subscriptions (7%) while paying more (124%) between 1986 and 1996 (Thomes and Clay, 1998). Cancellations of subscriptions lead to lower numbers of subscriptions which in turn force publishers to raise costs resulting in a vicious cycle (Okerson, 1996). Big deals A byproduct or an outcome of the serials crisis was the publishers’ offering bundles of journals for subscription. This new approach to journal subscriptions which many libraries adopted turns out to be a new crisis with many pitfalls even though it enabled libraries to provide access to more titles than with individual title subscriptions. According to Calson and Pope (2009) some of the major issues of the big deals include the inability of librarians to predict pricing; expensive journals represent a very small fraction of the bundles; bundles are cluttered with a large number of unneeded titles; and cancellations are much complicated due to complex licensing terms that may sometimes even prevent libraries from future access to individual titles. Profit Margins As old as 1636, Descartes rejected the financial terms of Elzevier brothers when trying to publish his book Discours de la Méthode (Fredriksson, 2001). This could be interpreted as the first sign of the off-balance in profits and income from scholarly publishing. Hundreds of years later, this continues to be a dilemma. Challenged by researchers with a question of “what do the publishers do?” if the research, peer review, journal editing, research consumption and preservation in libraries is done by the research community, Richard Smith, the editor of BMJ lost words (Smith, 2018). Profit margins of these publishers’ amount to 30-40% surpassing any other business (Smith, 2018). This results in an academic publishing market valued at $28 billion in 2019 with forecasts of $29.5 billion in 2024 (STM, 2021). This state of excessive profits is shifting to the new OA publishing business model and thus remains a preoccupation of the scholarly community. 17 3.2 Languages of publication Of significant importance to both the United Arab Emirates, a Middle Eastern Arab country, and to the OA movement, a publishing model whose success depends on universal adoption, is the debate on the increasing dominance of English as a language of publication and marginalization of local and regional languages. Elements of this argument include internationalisation versus localization, publication venue prestige versus local journals, and local priorities and social impact versus larger readership base. The predominance of scholarly publishing by English as the current lingua franca of science comes at the detriment of other languages such as French, German, Latin and Arabic. Some researchers estimate the percentage of English language journals to be around 80% (Van Weijan, 2012) or even 90% (Banks, 2018). However, local languages still have and should continue having a pivotal role in scholarly publishing especially with issues of local nature and for higher societal impact. Multilingualism in scholarly communication also achieves what Balula and Leão (2021) refer to as bibliodiversity. In the UAE the shift of most education programs to English as a language of instruction as well as the increasing push for faculty to publish in Scopus indexed journals means a systematic move to English as the language of publication. A problematic hurdle to the study of interrelation between language of publication and OA rates is the absence of a universal unbiased source of data that provides metrics on both English and Arabic publications from the UAE. 3.3 Evolution and aspects of scientometrics The advent of the Internet and the parallel swell in the number of publications, authors and citations coupled with the desire of institutions and decision makers to assess outcomes called for the creation of metrics in an attempt to make sense of this intricate landscape. Enabled by data analysis possibilities facilitated by advances in computers, metrics such as bibliometrics, scientometrics, webometrics and informetrics emerged. Fyfe et al. (2017) state that publication records were first used for employment evaluation purposes by Prussian universities as old as the late 18th century. Bibliometrics are based on the use of statistical analysis within bibliographic databases to measure aspects related to publications, authors and citations. It was thus widely used in library and information science. Scientometrics falls under the same category of measures. In fact, according to Zhao and Zhao (2014, p. 905) it is “a translation of the Russian term “naukometriya” (measurement of science) coined
18 by Nalimov and Mulchenko (1969)”. Zhao and Zhao (2014, p. 911) state further that scientometrics’ chronological development can be divided into three stages. The fetal stage starts from inception to the early 20th century. The establishment period from the early 20th century to the 1960s. Finally, the development period which came after the 70s of the last century. On the characteristics of each of these stages, they conclude: …through comprehensive and comparative review of the main research areas of each stage, we can draw the following conclusions: (1) citation analysis has been a core research area during every stage; (2) research interest has shifted from theoretical research to applied aspect; (3) visualization methods and scientific mapping have attracted more and more attention and will become a main research area of scientometrics. (p. 911) Goodhart’s law is based on the principle that “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”. It is the same measure that resulted in people breeding mice and cobras in response to an Indian government offer of a reward for each killed or captured animal. Similarly, the focus of promotion and tenure systems on publications and the ensuing “publish or perish” phenomenon among researchers resulted in over dependence on different impact measures. These measures have developed over time to the extent that they became difficult to understand (Suelzer and Jackson, 2022). They include publication venue-based metrics such as the Journal impact factor (JIF), author-focused ones such as the hindex and i-10 index, or article measures such as ICite. The stress on metrics especially for tenure and promotion results in a scramble by authors to publish. Two negative outcomes of this rush to publish under pressure include negligence of local journals in favour of international high exposure titles and falling prey to predatory publishers that try to capitalise on this pressure. Author impact metrics Author impact measures are the metrics that measure an author’s scholarly output with a focus of a combination of both productivity and impact. They are, however, frequently criticized for being skewed by self-citation, not accounting for individual author contribution and efforts (Suelzer and Jackson, 2022) and disadvantaged young researchers (Gasparyan et al. 2018). 19 Suelzer and Jackson (2022) list some popular author impact metrics including Hindex, G-index, i-10-index, and iCite. However, Gasparyan et al. (2018) added to these other metrics including the e-index, a metric focusing on highly cited articles and helps “distinguish highly productive authors with identical h-index scores”. Journal Impact measures The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) , initially designed to help the librarians’ select journals for subscription, is now a widely used metric to evaluate authors (Koelblinger et al. 2019). This abuse and controversial usage of the JIF as a proxy to a researchers’ quality has been extensively criticized (Garfield, 2006; Van Noorden, 2010). Journal impact measures have also expanded and increased in complexity with Suelzer and Jackson (2022) listing eleven different measures. Article-Level Metrics (ALMs) In his SPARC primer, Tananbaum (2013) provides a good account of ALMS below. Admitting that no metric is flawless, he believes that they may constitute a better alternative to traditional journal metrics that dictate the impact of an author is by association linked to that of their publishing venue. They encompass a cocktail of data associated with the individual article and level of socialisation. These Sources of data include: − Usage: number of times an article has been viewed, accessed, or downloaded. − Captures: Number of times an article has been bookmarked, shared in platforms such as Mendeley or recommended in any scholarly platform. − Mentions: number of times an article is discussed, blogged, written about, listed in Wikipedia, and received comments beyond the immediate academic audience. − Social Media: number of times an article is like, shared or tweeted on social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. − Citations: number of times an article is cited giving an indication on its impact in scientific literature. The advantage of this measure is it encompasses altmetrics, a new form of measures that are complementary to conventional citation metrics as they capture the impact and reach of research as measured by online interactions.
18 by Nalimov and Mulchenko (1969)”. Zhao and Zhao (2014, p. 911) state further that scientometrics’ chronological development can be divided into three stages. The fetal stage starts from inception to the early 20th century. The establishment period from the early 20th century to the 1960s. Finally, the development period which came after the 70s of the last century. On the characteristics of each of these stages, they conclude: …through comprehensive and comparative review of the main research areas of each stage, we can draw the following conclusions: (1) citation analysis has been a core research area during every stage; (2) research interest has shifted from theoretical research to applied aspect; (3) visualization methods and scientific mapping have attracted more and more attention and will become a main research area of scientometrics. (p. 911) Goodhart’s law is based on the principle that “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”. It is the same measure that resulted in people breeding mice and cobras in response to an Indian government offer of a reward for each killed or captured animal. Similarly, the focus of promotion and tenure systems on publications and the ensuing “publish or perish” phenomenon among researchers resulted in over dependence on different impact measures. These measures have developed over time to the extent that they became difficult to understand (Suelzer and Jackson, 2022). They include publication venue-based metrics such as the Journal impact factor (JIF), author-focused ones such as the hindex and i-10 index, or article measures such as ICite. The stress on metrics especially for tenure and promotion results in a scramble by authors to publish. Two negative outcomes of this rush to publish under pressure include negligence of local journals in favour of international high exposure titles and falling prey to predatory publishers that try to capitalise on this pressure. Author impact metrics Author impact measures are the metrics that measure an author’s scholarly output with a focus of a combination of both productivity and impact. They are, however, frequently criticized for being skewed by self-citation, not accounting for individual author contribution and efforts (Suelzer and Jackson, 2022) and disadvantaged young researchers (Gasparyan et al. 2018). 19 Suelzer and Jackson (2022) list some popular author impact metrics including Hindex, G-index, i-10-index, and iCite. However, Gasparyan et al. (2018) added to these other metrics including the e-index, a metric focusing on highly cited articles and helps “distinguish highly productive authors with identical h-index scores”. Journal Impact measures The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) , initially designed to help the librarians’ select journals for subscription, is now a widely used metric to evaluate authors (Koelblinger et al. 2019). This abuse and controversial usage of the JIF as a proxy to a researchers’ quality has been extensively criticized (Garfield, 2006; Van Noorden, 2010). Journal impact measures have also expanded and increased in complexity with Suelzer and Jackson (2022) listing eleven different measures. Article-Level Metrics (ALMs) In his SPARC primer, Tananbaum (2013) provides a good account of ALMS below. Admitting that no metric is flawless, he believes that they may constitute a better alternative to traditional journal metrics that dictate the impact of an author is by association linked to that of their publishing venue. They encompass a cocktail of data associated with the individual article and level of socialisation. These Sources of data include: − Usage: number of times an article has been viewed, accessed, or downloaded. − Captures: Number of times an article has been bookmarked, shared in platforms such as Mendeley or recommended in any scholarly platform. − Mentions: number of times an article is discussed, blogged, written about, listed in Wikipedia, and received comments beyond the immediate academic audience. − Social Media: number of times an article is like, shared or tweeted on social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. − Citations: number of times an article is cited giving an indication on its impact in scientific literature. The advantage of this measure is it encompasses altmetrics, a new form of measures that are complementary to conventional citation metrics as they capture the impact and reach of research as measured by online interactions.
20 OA and impact metrics Gasparyan et al. (2018, p. 10) state that “Visibility of research may increase attention of readers and attract constructive post-publication criticism along with relevant citations.” This statement could be linked to the citation advantage often associated with OA. Wang et al. (2015) confirm not only the OA citation advantage but also the views, social media attention and download advantage of OA versus paywalled articles. This conclusion of the existence of OA advantage corroborates findings of Greyson et al. (2009), Gargouri et al. (2010), and Harnad and Brody (2004). This advantage is often used by librarians to lobby for adoption of OA among researchers and likely a motivator of many funders. 3.4 Summary A discussion of OA could not be possible without touching on some key aspects of scholarly communication. The most common manifestations of scholarly communication are journals and research articles which are in turn the core units in the OA publishing model and scientometric studies. Allegedly started in 1665 with Philosophical Transactions and Journal des Sçavans, the journal still dominates knowledge sharing mechanisms and is now at the heart of OA discussion and measurement. The shift of journal publishing from learned societies to commercial publishers at the end of the 19th century ushered in an era of rapid growth in the number of journals and a plethora of issues. The big number of titles coupled with exorbitant profit margins started a domino effect that brought about the serials crisis and then the big deals. With English becoming the lingua franca of science and most commercial publishers being based in Western Europe, challenges to local scholarship and publications in other languages started surfacing. Today, a big part of scientific research from outside of the center (Western Europe and North America) and in non-English languages remain marginalised. Because of this, drawing a complete picture of the OA landscape remains partial. The use of journals and articles as proxy of research quality and researchers merit resulted in the development of a number of metrics that grew in scope and 21 complexity with time. Of importance to the study of OA is the journal, article and author focused metrics because of the citation advantage associated with OA.
20 OA and impact metrics Gasparyan et al. (2018, p. 10) state that “Visibility of research may increase attention of readers and attract constructive post-publication criticism along with relevant citations.” This statement could be linked to the citation advantage often associated with OA. Wang et al. (2015) confirm not only the OA citation advantage but also the views, social media attention and download advantage of OA versus paywalled articles. This conclusion of the existence of OA advantage corroborates findings of Greyson et al. (2009), Gargouri et al. (2010), and Harnad and Brody (2004). This advantage is often used by librarians to lobby for adoption of OA among researchers and likely a motivator of many funders. 3.4 Summary A discussion of OA could not be possible without touching on some key aspects of scholarly communication. The most common manifestations of scholarly communication are journals and research articles which are in turn the core units in the OA publishing model and scientometric studies. Allegedly started in 1665 with Philosophical Transactions and Journal des Sçavans, the journal still dominates knowledge sharing mechanisms and is now at the heart of OA discussion and measurement. The shift of journal publishing from learned societies to commercial publishers at the end of the 19th century ushered in an era of rapid growth in the number of journals and a plethora of issues. The big number of titles coupled with exorbitant profit margins started a domino effect that brought about the serials crisis and then the big deals. With English becoming the lingua franca of science and most commercial publishers being based in Western Europe, challenges to local scholarship and publications in other languages started surfacing. Today, a big part of scientific research from outside of the center (Western Europe and North America) and in non-English languages remain marginalised. Because of this, drawing a complete picture of the OA landscape remains partial. The use of journals and articles as proxy of research quality and researchers merit resulted in the development of a number of metrics that grew in scope and 21 complexity with time. Of importance to the study of OA is the journal, article and author focused metrics because of the citation advantage associated with OA.
22 4 OPEN ACCESS 4.1 The Long Road to Full OA It is impossible to pin down an exact date for the advent of OA. It is rather a snowball progress that gained momentum through direct major OA initiatives but also aided by external factors such as the serials crisis, platforms such as ARXIV, and infrastructure developments such as E-prints. The previous chapter has slightly covered the historical origins of OA within the context of the general scholarly communication developments. In this chapter, we provide a brief account of initiatives that have marked the OA movement, definition of OA shades, OA funding models, challenges associated with OA and libraries’ role in OA. 4.1.1 Major Open Access Initiatives OA is a movement of a global magnitude, albeit one that has been sporadically endorsed or implemented from one country to another. However, there have been a number of initiatives that have had a greater impact by transcending national impact and effect. Listed below are a few that I think had the most impact. arXiv E-print archive or what came to be known later as arXiv launched in 1991 at Aspen Center for Physics by Paul Ginsparg is a major turning point for research articles sharing and later for OA. It ushered in an era of digital exchange in an ecosystem until then dominated by print and email exchange making it possible to disseminate higher volumes of articles conveniently beyond the walls of a single institution and boundaries of disciplines. SciELO Scielo (Scientific Electronic Library Online) is more than a bibliographic database. It was developed by the Latin American and Caribbean Center for Collaborative Health Sciences Information (Bireme/PAHO/WHO) with the main objective of cater for the scholarly communication needs of researchers in developing countries especially in 23 Latin America. It later expanded into the Caribbean and even Spain and Portugal. SciELO is significant for the OA movement since it incorporates an OA journals publishing model in addition to being a bibliographic database and digital library. Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) BOAI could be considered the first international initiative to call for and promote OA to scientific research. Launched in 2002, this initiative which brought together stakeholders from different disciplines and countries attempted to provide a practical definition of OA and a set of recommendations for the wide-spread adoption of OA practices. Its self-archiving and OA journals recommended approach remain the guiding principles of most initiatives today. Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an international nonprofit organization that has made it its mission to enable the sharing of knowledge through six copyright licenses. CC plays a key role in achieving the open access movement objectives of free access within a copyright framework since they provide authors with a machine-readable system to communicate the permissions they want associated with their work. Plan S Plan S is one of the most influential OA initiative in recent years. Launched in 2018 and endorsed by the international consortium of research funding and performing organisations (cOAlition S), it mandates that all scholarly publications derived from research funded by public grants must be made available OA starting from 2021. OA2020 OA2020 is a global initiative with a more radical approach to OA transformation as it aims to foster and support flipping of current paywalled journals to OA with unrestricted access, use and re-use. Its ultimate objective is to “make open access the default in scholarly communications”. The initiative received widespread international institutional support. Unfortunately, no institution from the UAE is listed as a signatory of the OA2020 Expression of Interest. 4.1.2 Shades of Open Access The complexity of the OA ecosystem is illustrated by Taubert et al. (2019) who listed about thirteen shades of OA (Table 4). The occasional emergence of new shades and
22 4 OPEN ACCESS 4.1 The Long Road to Full OA It is impossible to pin down an exact date for the advent of OA. It is rather a snowball progress that gained momentum through direct major OA initiatives but also aided by external factors such as the serials crisis, platforms such as ARXIV, and infrastructure developments such as E-prints. The previous chapter has slightly covered the historical origins of OA within the context of the general scholarly communication developments. In this chapter, we provide a brief account of initiatives that have marked the OA movement, definition of OA shades, OA funding models, challenges associated with OA and libraries’ role in OA. 4.1.1 Major Open Access Initiatives OA is a movement of a global magnitude, albeit one that has been sporadically endorsed or implemented from one country to another. However, there have been a number of initiatives that have had a greater impact by transcending national impact and effect. Listed below are a few that I think had the most impact. arXiv E-print archive or what came to be known later as arXiv launched in 1991 at Aspen Center for Physics by Paul Ginsparg is a major turning point for research articles sharing and later for OA. It ushered in an era of digital exchange in an ecosystem until then dominated by print and email exchange making it possible to disseminate higher volumes of articles conveniently beyond the walls of a single institution and boundaries of disciplines. SciELO Scielo (Scientific Electronic Library Online) is more than a bibliographic database. It was developed by the Latin American and Caribbean Center for Collaborative Health Sciences Information (Bireme/PAHO/WHO) with the main objective of cater for the scholarly communication needs of researchers in developing countries especially in 23 Latin America. It later expanded into the Caribbean and even Spain and Portugal. SciELO is significant for the OA movement since it incorporates an OA journals publishing model in addition to being a bibliographic database and digital library. Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) BOAI could be considered the first international initiative to call for and promote OA to scientific research. Launched in 2002, this initiative which brought together stakeholders from different disciplines and countries attempted to provide a practical definition of OA and a set of recommendations for the wide-spread adoption of OA practices. Its self-archiving and OA journals recommended approach remain the guiding principles of most initiatives today. Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an international nonprofit organization that has made it its mission to enable the sharing of knowledge through six copyright licenses. CC plays a key role in achieving the open access movement objectives of free access within a copyright framework since they provide authors with a machine-readable system to communicate the permissions they want associated with their work. Plan S Plan S is one of the most influential OA initiative in recent years. Launched in 2018 and endorsed by the international consortium of research funding and performing organisations (cOAlition S), it mandates that all scholarly publications derived from research funded by public grants must be made available OA starting from 2021. OA2020 OA2020 is a global initiative with a more radical approach to OA transformation as it aims to foster and support flipping of current paywalled journals to OA with unrestricted access, use and re-use. Its ultimate objective is to “make open access the default in scholarly communications”. The initiative received widespread international institutional support. Unfortunately, no institution from the UAE is listed as a signatory of the OA2020 Expression of Interest. 4.1.2 Shades of Open Access The complexity of the OA ecosystem is illustrated by Taubert et al. (2019) who listed about thirteen shades of OA (Table 4). The occasional emergence of new shades and
30 personal websites. Indeed, being out of the control of funders and academic institutions and in the absence of internal mechanisms to filter Black OA practices, these platforms are harming the reputation of OA and create noise around legitimate self-archived articles by providing a breeding ground for what Bodo (2016) dubbed as the low-level individual piracy. Noteworthy is the lack of research on tangible solutions to the preference of ASNs over IRs by researchers. Such research could cover mechanisms for penalization of black OA just like predatory journal publishing, how to improve IR platforms to provide similar user experiences as ASNs, and how to increase IR resources visibility, dissemination, and discoverability. There is also a need for more in-depth qualitative research on ASNs rather than the currently prevalent selfreported data and surveys research. 4.2.3 Equity in OA Equity was and remains one of the core principles that guided the advent and prosperity of the OA movement. However, OA is far from being an equitable field because of a plethora of reasons either innate in the system itself or came to be as the movement gained momentum. OA equity is essential not only because OA has to align with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but also because pandemics such as COVID-19 heightened the importance of equitable access to essential research. The European Federation of Academics of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) 2021 statement on equity in open access lists “barrier to participation” and biases based on “disciplines, career stages and geography” as major hurdles to equity. With often exorbitant APCs being charged by journals that embrace gold OA, we have witnessed a shift from “a barrier to access to barrier to participation” (ALLEA, 2021). In fact, the commercial publishers push to replace subscriptions with APCs through “read and publish” deals have marginalized a large portion of authors especially from the Global South and from small institutions who can’t afford those costs. Addressing this barrier ensures equity for authors and not only for readers. The second major set of inequitable practices were inherited from the scholarly publishing system namely biases related to languages, disciplines, career levels, and geographical regions. English has become almost a de facto language of science pushing scientific outputs in other languages to the backburner. Similarly, there is a 31 focus on research from large institutions that can afford to address research issues privileged by the high impact journals at the detriment of local issues and from early career researchers and those from the Global South. Conscious of the importance of creating a sustainable OA publishing system, an increasing number of key OA players including ALLEA, the International Science Council, SPARC, Open Research Funders Group (ORFG) among many others have taken a stance or implemented actions in support of equity and social justice in OA. SPARC had made equity a guiding principle for the themes of its International Open Access Week from 2018 to 2021. 4.3 OA Research Challenges The path to solid and reliable OA research is fraught with challenges emanating from sources of data, the changing nature of the OA landscape, and shifts from paywalled to open and between versions within OA. 4.3.1 Shortcomings of bibliographic indexes One of the major challenges facing OA research is the often cited limitations associated with bibliographic indexes used in scientometric studies. Laakso (2019, para. 1) states that “readily-available data on the state of open access is still limited.” He went on to argue that this shackles science policy. This is especially true in light of the absence of standardized metrics, better data, and risk of commercial interests informing science policy. A significant shortcoming of most of the bibliographic databases used for OA analysis such as Scopus, WoS and even DOAJ is skewness towards Western and English-language scholarship, certain disciplines and marginalization of the Global South research output and other non-English languages (Mongeon and Adèle Paul-Hus 2016; Khanna, Ball, Alperin et al 2023; Björk 2019; Laakso 2019). The second significant limitation of existing bibliographic indexes is divergence in coverage. There is no central one inclusive resource of journals and articles. Integrative data methods have to be used to aggregate necessary data for analysis. Our study on scholarly journals in the UAE had to use over ten sources with surprisingly limited overlap. Martín-Martín et al. (2021) list limited coverage as one of the two key shortcomings of the leading databases Scopus and WoS. Types of coverage span “subject coverage, retrospective coverage, geographical coverage,
30 personal websites. Indeed, being out of the control of funders and academic institutions and in the absence of internal mechanisms to filter Black OA practices, these platforms are harming the reputation of OA and create noise around legitimate self-archived articles by providing a breeding ground for what Bodo (2016) dubbed as the low-level individual piracy. Noteworthy is the lack of research on tangible solutions to the preference of ASNs over IRs by researchers. Such research could cover mechanisms for penalization of black OA just like predatory journal publishing, how to improve IR platforms to provide similar user experiences as ASNs, and how to increase IR resources visibility, dissemination, and discoverability. There is also a need for more in-depth qualitative research on ASNs rather than the currently prevalent selfreported data and surveys research. 4.2.3 Equity in OA Equity was and remains one of the core principles that guided the advent and prosperity of the OA movement. However, OA is far from being an equitable field because of a plethora of reasons either innate in the system itself or came to be as the movement gained momentum. OA equity is essential not only because OA has to align with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but also because pandemics such as COVID-19 heightened the importance of equitable access to essential research. The European Federation of Academics of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) 2021 statement on equity in open access lists “barrier to participation” and biases based on “disciplines, career stages and geography” as major hurdles to equity. With often exorbitant APCs being charged by journals that embrace gold OA, we have witnessed a shift from “a barrier to access to barrier to participation” (ALLEA, 2021). In fact, the commercial publishers push to replace subscriptions with APCs through “read and publish” deals have marginalized a large portion of authors especially from the Global South and from small institutions who can’t afford those costs. Addressing this barrier ensures equity for authors and not only for readers. The second major set of inequitable practices were inherited from the scholarly publishing system namely biases related to languages, disciplines, career levels, and geographical regions. English has become almost a de facto language of science pushing scientific outputs in other languages to the backburner. Similarly, there is a 31 focus on research from large institutions that can afford to address research issues privileged by the high impact journals at the detriment of local issues and from early career researchers and those from the Global South. Conscious of the importance of creating a sustainable OA publishing system, an increasing number of key OA players including ALLEA, the International Science Council, SPARC, Open Research Funders Group (ORFG) among many others have taken a stance or implemented actions in support of equity and social justice in OA. SPARC had made equity a guiding principle for the themes of its International Open Access Week from 2018 to 2021. 4.3 OA Research Challenges The path to solid and reliable OA research is fraught with challenges emanating from sources of data, the changing nature of the OA landscape, and shifts from paywalled to open and between versions within OA. 4.3.1 Shortcomings of bibliographic indexes One of the major challenges facing OA research is the often cited limitations associated with bibliographic indexes used in scientometric studies. Laakso (2019, para. 1) states that “readily-available data on the state of open access is still limited.” He went on to argue that this shackles science policy. This is especially true in light of the absence of standardized metrics, better data, and risk of commercial interests informing science policy. A significant shortcoming of most of the bibliographic databases used for OA analysis such as Scopus, WoS and even DOAJ is skewness towards Western and English-language scholarship, certain disciplines and marginalization of the Global South research output and other non-English languages (Mongeon and Adèle Paul-Hus 2016; Khanna, Ball, Alperin et al 2023; Björk 2019; Laakso 2019). The second significant limitation of existing bibliographic indexes is divergence in coverage. There is no central one inclusive resource of journals and articles. Integrative data methods have to be used to aggregate necessary data for analysis. Our study on scholarly journals in the UAE had to use over ten sources with surprisingly limited overlap. Martín-Martín et al. (2021) list limited coverage as one of the two key shortcomings of the leading databases Scopus and WoS. Types of coverage span “subject coverage, retrospective coverage, geographical coverage,
32 language coverage, journal coverage, etc.” (Gusenbauer, 2022, p. 2684). According to Laakso (2019) coverage is influenced by the databases inclusion criteria which are in turn dictated by their biases in terms of disciplines, countries, and languages. To this coverage issue is to be added the difficulty of extracting data due to the database owners exaggerated protection of their bibliographic data (Gusenbauer 2022). This was seconded by Laakso (2019, para. 3) who highlighted the absence of “open and public infrastructure to track and summarize journal activities”. Furthermore, sufficient coverage may be jeopardised by the limited search functionalities of these services as reported by Martín-Martín et al. (2021). The last noteworthy shortcoming is the limited metadata. Most bibliographic databases are designed and optimized for discovery and other usages such as citation metrics. Bibliometric analysis of metadata could be seen as a marginal usage of these services (Hood and Wilson 2003). Because of such limitations and lack of viable alternatives, researchers have to settle for Unpaywall as the go to source of OA metadata by default, adopt “fitness for use” resource choices or perform ample manual data collection and enrichment to remedy these metadata gaps. One example of such lacking metadata is related to longitudinal status changes of journals (Laakso, 2019). 4.3.2 Volatile OA landscape Journal flipping, articles move from paywalled to open after an embargo, new emerging OA models and color shades, changing policies and national priorities create an OA environment that is highly volatile and challenging for OA research. Laakso (2019) used the “amnesia” metaphor to refer to the difficulty of capturing the retrospective changes in journal status. This failure of existing bibliographic indexes to capture historical changes in journal and article status is due to the constant change from closed to open either through journal flipping or end of embargos. This may also be linked to journal mergers or journals ceasing to exist (Laakso, 2019). Another challenge for the study of OA is occasional emergence of new OA models and or different interpretations resulting in varying definitions of the same OA color shade. This in the researchers opinion affects comparability of data as various search results and datasets use different interpretations and denominations. Taubert et al. (2019) identified at least 13 different OA shades. Within this context, it would be for example impossible to verify the legitimacy of the green status of each and every 33 article posted in ASNs such as Researchgate. This could, to some extent, apply to self-archived articles. Establishing strong and solid metadata sources that would assist in disentangling the complexity of the OA environment and to be able to draw a real picture of the landscape and wisely inform science policy requires coordinated efforts involving all scholarly communication stakeholders. Until this is achieved, research of OA will remain shackled and easily manipulated by the commercial publishers dictated metadata elements. 4.4 Summary OA as a 20th century phenomenon that was mostly ushered in by the advent of the Internet and kindled by the researchers desire to democratize access to research as a public good spans across many disciplines and involves many stakeholders. Thus, it has been extensively studied from different angles. However, given its complexity and the intricacies of the ecosystem within which it operates, plenty of lacunae in research, methods, and data sources have been identified requiring further investigation and scrutiny. Especially noteworthy are the shortcomings in existing bibliographic sources which dictate use of manual data collection and adoption of integrative methods. Similarly, most of these sources are biased towards Englishlanguage content and North American and European scholarship. Furthermore, research on OA in the Arab region in general and the UAE in particular remains very limited. This thesis provides an opportunity to make a contribution to filling some of the identified lacunae especially in relation to the state of OA in a country such as the UAE and to address the insights of some of the different stakeholders.
32 language coverage, journal coverage, etc.” (Gusenbauer, 2022, p. 2684). According to Laakso (2019) coverage is influenced by the databases inclusion criteria which are in turn dictated by their biases in terms of disciplines, countries, and languages. To this coverage issue is to be added the difficulty of extracting data due to the database owners exaggerated protection of their bibliographic data (Gusenbauer 2022). This was seconded by Laakso (2019, para. 3) who highlighted the absence of “open and public infrastructure to track and summarize journal activities”. Furthermore, sufficient coverage may be jeopardised by the limited search functionalities of these services as reported by Martín-Martín et al. (2021). The last noteworthy shortcoming is the limited metadata. Most bibliographic databases are designed and optimized for discovery and other usages such as citation metrics. Bibliometric analysis of metadata could be seen as a marginal usage of these services (Hood and Wilson 2003). Because of such limitations and lack of viable alternatives, researchers have to settle for Unpaywall as the go to source of OA metadata by default, adopt “fitness for use” resource choices or perform ample manual data collection and enrichment to remedy these metadata gaps. One example of such lacking metadata is related to longitudinal status changes of journals (Laakso, 2019). 4.3.2 Volatile OA landscape Journal flipping, articles move from paywalled to open after an embargo, new emerging OA models and color shades, changing policies and national priorities create an OA environment that is highly volatile and challenging for OA research. Laakso (2019) used the “amnesia” metaphor to refer to the difficulty of capturing the retrospective changes in journal status. This failure of existing bibliographic indexes to capture historical changes in journal and article status is due to the constant change from closed to open either through journal flipping or end of embargos. This may also be linked to journal mergers or journals ceasing to exist (Laakso, 2019). Another challenge for the study of OA is occasional emergence of new OA models and or different interpretations resulting in varying definitions of the same OA color shade. This in the researchers opinion affects comparability of data as various search results and datasets use different interpretations and denominations. Taubert et al. (2019) identified at least 13 different OA shades. Within this context, it would be for example impossible to verify the legitimacy of the green status of each and every 33 article posted in ASNs such as Researchgate. This could, to some extent, apply to self-archived articles. Establishing strong and solid metadata sources that would assist in disentangling the complexity of the OA environment and to be able to draw a real picture of the landscape and wisely inform science policy requires coordinated efforts involving all scholarly communication stakeholders. Until this is achieved, research of OA will remain shackled and easily manipulated by the commercial publishers dictated metadata elements. 4.4 Summary OA as a 20th century phenomenon that was mostly ushered in by the advent of the Internet and kindled by the researchers desire to democratize access to research as a public good spans across many disciplines and involves many stakeholders. Thus, it has been extensively studied from different angles. However, given its complexity and the intricacies of the ecosystem within which it operates, plenty of lacunae in research, methods, and data sources have been identified requiring further investigation and scrutiny. Especially noteworthy are the shortcomings in existing bibliographic sources which dictate use of manual data collection and adoption of integrative methods. Similarly, most of these sources are biased towards Englishlanguage content and North American and European scholarship. Furthermore, research on OA in the Arab region in general and the UAE in particular remains very limited. This thesis provides an opportunity to make a contribution to filling some of the identified lacunae especially in relation to the state of OA in a country such as the UAE and to address the insights of some of the different stakeholders.
34 5 STUDY METHODOLOGY The purpose of this thesis is to dissect the scholarly publishing landscape in the United Arab Emirates and to subsequently draw a 360-degree real picture in terms of number and rate of OA journals, the situation of OA among research universities and researchers including policies, priorities and incentives, the role of librarians in the OA publishing, and relationship between OA rates and international coauthorship. To achieve this, the thesis aggregates research from four separate articles with different research design, methods, data collection and analytical approaches. 5.1 Research Philosophy Duignan (2016, entry 527) defines research philosophy as: “The conceptual underpinnings of the researcher’s world-view of the relationship between the observer and that which is to be observed, the nature of knowledge and learning processes, and how it is gained, along with the transformational processes that arise in the act of conducting research.” While most researchers do not make their viewpoint explicit assuming it is implied, an understanding of the underlying research philosophy and concepts is essential. This is because worldview informs the choice of research methods which in turn underpin the conducted research. The complexity of the research paradigms or philosophies is a source of predicament and “tautological confusion” especially for the student researcher (Mkansi and Acheampong, 2012). Because methodology is directly related to research philosophy and its main concepts of ontology and epistemology. Both represent one’s intrpretation of reality and philosophy of knowlege respectively (Byrne, 2017). Mkansi and Acheampong (2012) states that even though there is a quasiagreement on the meaning of epistemology and ontology, there is widespread disagreement among advocates of research philosophies about the “classification and categorisation of these paradigms” with plenty of differences on ontological and epistemological stances. These stances often referred to as research paradigms represent the philosophical framework of research. Coupled with research methodology, they spell out the ontological and epistemological stance from which 35 a researcher conducts their research. The selection of a research paradigm in turn affects the choice of qualitative, quantitative or mixed research methods. There is a wide variety of research paradigms informed by both ontology and epistemology. Patel (2015) provides a mapping of some of the most popular paradigms and how they relate to philosophical stance and choice of methods. For the sake of simplicity, we will focus on positivism as the most relevant to scientometrics and quantitative research. Positivism is often listed as an ontological paradigm and was first coined by Auguste Comtè (1798–1857). Comtè believed that ‘positive science of society’ could be built on the same principles applied in natural sciences (Howell, 2013). Based on the principle that there is a single reality, it becomes possible to measure and know it. This is often using mostly scientific deductive reasoning. Thus, the most common associated research methods are quantitative (Williamson, 2002). Even though scientometric studies can be conducted using diverse research paradigms and methodologies, this thesis relied heavily on quantitative methods and data analysis techniques combining bibliometric analysis and surveys. Mukherji and Albon (2023, p. 64) state that “Positivism tends to underpin quantitative methodological approaches to research”. Both bibliometric analysis and surveys are generally associated with positivism because they are used to collect data that can be statistically analysed for patterns and trends independent of the researchers perceptions and values. Figure 2 below provides the research logic underlying this thesis. Figure 2. Thesis underlying research paradigm
34 5 STUDY METHODOLOGY The purpose of this thesis is to dissect the scholarly publishing landscape in the United Arab Emirates and to subsequently draw a 360-degree real picture in terms of number and rate of OA journals, the situation of OA among research universities and researchers including policies, priorities and incentives, the role of librarians in the OA publishing, and relationship between OA rates and international coauthorship. To achieve this, the thesis aggregates research from four separate articles with different research design, methods, data collection and analytical approaches. 5.1 Research Philosophy Duignan (2016, entry 527) defines research philosophy as: “The conceptual underpinnings of the researcher’s world-view of the relationship between the observer and that which is to be observed, the nature of knowledge and learning processes, and how it is gained, along with the transformational processes that arise in the act of conducting research.” While most researchers do not make their viewpoint explicit assuming it is implied, an understanding of the underlying research philosophy and concepts is essential. This is because worldview informs the choice of research methods which in turn underpin the conducted research. The complexity of the research paradigms or philosophies is a source of predicament and “tautological confusion” especially for the student researcher (Mkansi and Acheampong, 2012). Because methodology is directly related to research philosophy and its main concepts of ontology and epistemology. Both represent one’s intrpretation of reality and philosophy of knowlege respectively (Byrne, 2017). Mkansi and Acheampong (2012) states that even though there is a quasiagreement on the meaning of epistemology and ontology, there is widespread disagreement among advocates of research philosophies about the “classification and categorisation of these paradigms” with plenty of differences on ontological and epistemological stances. These stances often referred to as research paradigms represent the philosophical framework of research. Coupled with research methodology, they spell out the ontological and epistemological stance from which 35 a researcher conducts their research. The selection of a research paradigm in turn affects the choice of qualitative, quantitative or mixed research methods. There is a wide variety of research paradigms informed by both ontology and epistemology. Patel (2015) provides a mapping of some of the most popular paradigms and how they relate to philosophical stance and choice of methods. For the sake of simplicity, we will focus on positivism as the most relevant to scientometrics and quantitative research. Positivism is often listed as an ontological paradigm and was first coined by Auguste Comtè (1798–1857). Comtè believed that ‘positive science of society’ could be built on the same principles applied in natural sciences (Howell, 2013). Based on the principle that there is a single reality, it becomes possible to measure and know it. This is often using mostly scientific deductive reasoning. Thus, the most common associated research methods are quantitative (Williamson, 2002). Even though scientometric studies can be conducted using diverse research paradigms and methodologies, this thesis relied heavily on quantitative methods and data analysis techniques combining bibliometric analysis and surveys. Mukherji and Albon (2023, p. 64) state that “Positivism tends to underpin quantitative methodological approaches to research”. Both bibliometric analysis and surveys are generally associated with positivism because they are used to collect data that can be statistically analysed for patterns and trends independent of the researchers perceptions and values. Figure 2 below provides the research logic underlying this thesis. Figure 2. Thesis underlying research paradigm
36 5.2 The Study Design The perfect research design is one that has a synergy between the research objectives, research questions, and used methods. Denzin & Lincoln (2008, p.33) define a good research design as a framework that "describes a flexible set of guidelines that connect theoretical paradigms first to strategies of inquiry and second to methods for collecting empirical materials." Given the nature of this study and its objective of studying different aspects of OA in the UAE, it called for a mixture of study approaches that draw from areas of bibliometrics, surveys, and scientometrics. Publication one consists of a journal-level analyses and thus bibliometric data on all journals that are scholarly peer-reviewed, active and published in the UAE were collected from a combination of international and local sources such as Ulrichsweb, Scimago journal and country Ranking, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources (ROAD), SherpaRomeo, websites of UAE higher education institutions, The Arabic Citations and Impact Factor (ARCIF), Directory of Free Arab Journals (DFAJ), Arab Impact Factor (AIF), and a general search on the web for any scholarly journals published in the UAE. The compiled list was then cleaned to remove duplicates, ceased publication, and non-electronic editions. Manual data clean-up and enrichment was used to get to the final working list of 534 titles with all necessary metadata fields. The data was analysed to study the aspects covered by the article in detail. To our knowledge, this is the most exhaustive study of online journals in the UAE and the first to have covered these many sources of data. Publication two, on the other hand, focused on institutional approaches and practices to scholarly communication and OA in the UAE. We initially identified that the bulk of research output in the country comes from higher education institutions (HEIs). We, then, analysed data from the Commission for Academic Accreditation list of higher education institutions, Scimago Institutions Rankings, QS World University Rankings, and Web of Science researcher affiliations to determine the institutions to include in the study. The research administration offices of a final list of 40 researchintensive HEIs were sent a quantitative online survey consisting of 42 mostly closeended questions revolving around the following areas: − scholarly publishing, − OA policies, − Article Processing Charges (APCs) and OA funding, 37 − incentivizing research, − researcher promotion and publishing output, − Institutional Repositories (IRs) and self-archiving, − awareness of predatory journals. Publication three looks at the role of librarians as a major player in scholarly communication and OA. As it sets out to argue that the librarians’ role has changed from gatekeepers to gate openers within the scholarly communication cycle, it adopted a 21-question quantitative questionnaire. The survey aimed to collect librarians' views and insights on OA awareness and perception, OA discovery tools, piracy based and academic social networks, OA-related instruction, OA resources integration, and predatory journals. The targeted librarians represent all types and sizes of libraries and were recruited from a local librarians’ information literacy network. 56 unique responses were received. Publication four adopts a purely scientometric approach since it investigated the interplay between OA, co-authorship, and international research collaboration in the UAE context. It uses a dataset of research output from UAE affiliated authors indexed in Scopus from 2009 to 2019. Data was extracted using Scival, then enriched using several tools such as Unpaywall for OA status and OA version related metadata, Crossref Link References for DOIs, and manual data collection in the case of residue articles from the previous process. Finally, we enriched the dataset with the journal country using the ISSN Portal. The author affiliation country field was then dissected and regrouped by continents. Next, we mapped the subject clusters into the five main disciplines of Scopus. 5.3 Ethics We believe that this research is of a nature that does not require complicated ethical approvals and arrangements. Nevertheless, this research is fully compliant with the guidelines of Finnish National Board on Research Integrity “The ethical principles of research with human participants and ethical review in the human sciences in Finland” (TENK, 2019). In line with those guidelines, articles two and three which are using a survey instrument included an informed consent form with option to withdraw from the study at any stage without any obligations or consequences. This form was included at the beginning of every survey.
36 5.2 The Study Design The perfect research design is one that has a synergy between the research objectives, research questions, and used methods. Denzin & Lincoln (2008, p.33) define a good research design as a framework that "describes a flexible set of guidelines that connect theoretical paradigms first to strategies of inquiry and second to methods for collecting empirical materials." Given the nature of this study and its objective of studying different aspects of OA in the UAE, it called for a mixture of study approaches that draw from areas of bibliometrics, surveys, and scientometrics. Publication one consists of a journal-level analyses and thus bibliometric data on all journals that are scholarly peer-reviewed, active and published in the UAE were collected from a combination of international and local sources such as Ulrichsweb, Scimago journal and country Ranking, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources (ROAD), SherpaRomeo, websites of UAE higher education institutions, The Arabic Citations and Impact Factor (ARCIF), Directory of Free Arab Journals (DFAJ), Arab Impact Factor (AIF), and a general search on the web for any scholarly journals published in the UAE. The compiled list was then cleaned to remove duplicates, ceased publication, and non-electronic editions. Manual data clean-up and enrichment was used to get to the final working list of 534 titles with all necessary metadata fields. The data was analysed to study the aspects covered by the article in detail. To our knowledge, this is the most exhaustive study of online journals in the UAE and the first to have covered these many sources of data. Publication two, on the other hand, focused on institutional approaches and practices to scholarly communication and OA in the UAE. We initially identified that the bulk of research output in the country comes from higher education institutions (HEIs). We, then, analysed data from the Commission for Academic Accreditation list of higher education institutions, Scimago Institutions Rankings, QS World University Rankings, and Web of Science researcher affiliations to determine the institutions to include in the study. The research administration offices of a final list of 40 researchintensive HEIs were sent a quantitative online survey consisting of 42 mostly closeended questions revolving around the following areas: − scholarly publishing, − OA policies, − Article Processing Charges (APCs) and OA funding, 37 − incentivizing research, − researcher promotion and publishing output, − Institutional Repositories (IRs) and self-archiving, − awareness of predatory journals. Publication three looks at the role of librarians as a major player in scholarly communication and OA. As it sets out to argue that the librarians’ role has changed from gatekeepers to gate openers within the scholarly communication cycle, it adopted a 21-question quantitative questionnaire. The survey aimed to collect librarians' views and insights on OA awareness and perception, OA discovery tools, piracy based and academic social networks, OA-related instruction, OA resources integration, and predatory journals. The targeted librarians represent all types and sizes of libraries and were recruited from a local librarians’ information literacy network. 56 unique responses were received. Publication four adopts a purely scientometric approach since it investigated the interplay between OA, co-authorship, and international research collaboration in the UAE context. It uses a dataset of research output from UAE affiliated authors indexed in Scopus from 2009 to 2019. Data was extracted using Scival, then enriched using several tools such as Unpaywall for OA status and OA version related metadata, Crossref Link References for DOIs, and manual data collection in the case of residue articles from the previous process. Finally, we enriched the dataset with the journal country using the ISSN Portal. The author affiliation country field was then dissected and regrouped by continents. Next, we mapped the subject clusters into the five main disciplines of Scopus. 5.3 Ethics We believe that this research is of a nature that does not require complicated ethical approvals and arrangements. Nevertheless, this research is fully compliant with the guidelines of Finnish National Board on Research Integrity “The ethical principles of research with human participants and ethical review in the human sciences in Finland” (TENK, 2019). In line with those guidelines, articles two and three which are using a survey instrument included an informed consent form with option to withdraw from the study at any stage without any obligations or consequences. This form was included at the beginning of every survey.
38 5.4 Data Collection This section details the data collection processes. It first presents the description of both manual and automatic processes deployed in the different publications contributing to this thesis. Secondly, it presents a brief description of the different sources of data used. 5.4.1 Processes Data used for this thesis consist mainly of bibliographic, scientometric, and quantitative data. Therefore, different tools and approaches were used to collect these data. This involved usage of both manual and direct retrieval processes. Most of the quantitative data from publication II and three was collected using surveys as an instrument. Publication I relied mostly on bibliographic data collected from different sources. Publication IV used mainly automatic data collection methods supplemented by manual data enrichment to build the final data set. As the UAE is at the margins of the dominant dichotomy of North and South dominant in bibliometrics and scientometrics studies, other sources of data had to be used instead of the two leading and often used bibliographic indexes namely WoS and Scopus. Surveys Two of the studies making up the core publications of this thesis have used surveys to collect data. This was justified by the need to collect data about the inner states of the respondents. Publication II used a survey as it was deemed appropriate to collect insider data on policies, practices, and procedures of UAE HEIs. Given that these data are often not made public, this method was the most appropriate. Similarly, publication III used a survey to collect data on the UAE librarians’ beliefs, perceptions, views, and behaviours vis-à-vis OA. Bibliographic Data Scientometric aspects of this research relied mainly on an integrative methods approach. Multiple bibliographic indexes as well as other tools were used in both publications I and IV. Publication I used eight different local, regional, and international bibliographic sources namely: Scimago Journal and Country Ranking, Ulrichsweb Serials Directory, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Directory of Open Access Scholarly 39 Resources (ROAD), SherpaRomeo, The Arabic Citations and Impact Factor (ARCIF), Directory of Free Arab Journals (DFAJ), and Arab Impact Factor (AIF). This was in addition to manual searches in the UAE HEIs websites and the general web. This was necessary to overcome the shortcomings associated with bias in international indexes towards Western and English-language content. After aggregating data from all the sources, we proceeded to clean up data by removing non-journal records and duplicate titles. Some manual data enrichment was performed to fill gaps in metadata on aspects such as OA status, language, type of publisher, and discipline. Scopus furnished the core data set for publication IV. The process involved two stages: searching and downloading, and manual data enrichment from other sources. Using Scival, a search for all articles with at least one UAE-affiliated author were searched. Filters included a longitudinal range of 2009 to 2019, and article types limited to articles, articles in the press, business articles, and data papers. Manual enrichment of data consisted of journal country using ISSN Portal, DOIs using Crossref Link References, Unpaywall Simple Query Tool for OA metadata, and Scopus for co-author affiliation continent, and All Science Journal Classification Codes (ASJC) for disciplines. Extra manual data collection involved web searches and publisher websites visits to append data missing from the previous process. 5.4.2 Sources of Data Ulrichsweb Ulrichsweb is a well-established commercial widely used global directory of serials including bibliographic and publishers’ information. Even though it is the largest serials directory and lists over 300,000 titles in over 200 languages, it remains biased towards English language publications. Therefore, publication I used it as the main source of UAE journal data in combination with other sources. Scimago journal and country Ranking (SJR) SJR was the second major source of data for publication I. SJR includes key scientometric data on a large list of Scopus indexed scholarly journals. The SJR metrics are characterised by factoring the citing journal prestige in the citations and filtration of journal self-citations. This source contributed 54 unique titles to that study.
38 5.4 Data Collection This section details the data collection processes. It first presents the description of both manual and automatic processes deployed in the different publications contributing to this thesis. Secondly, it presents a brief description of the different sources of data used. 5.4.1 Processes Data used for this thesis consist mainly of bibliographic, scientometric, and quantitative data. Therefore, different tools and approaches were used to collect these data. This involved usage of both manual and direct retrieval processes. Most of the quantitative data from publication II and three was collected using surveys as an instrument. Publication I relied mostly on bibliographic data collected from different sources. Publication IV used mainly automatic data collection methods supplemented by manual data enrichment to build the final data set. As the UAE is at the margins of the dominant dichotomy of North and South dominant in bibliometrics and scientometrics studies, other sources of data had to be used instead of the two leading and often used bibliographic indexes namely WoS and Scopus. Surveys Two of the studies making up the core publications of this thesis have used surveys to collect data. This was justified by the need to collect data about the inner states of the respondents. Publication II used a survey as it was deemed appropriate to collect insider data on policies, practices, and procedures of UAE HEIs. Given that these data are often not made public, this method was the most appropriate. Similarly, publication III used a survey to collect data on the UAE librarians’ beliefs, perceptions, views, and behaviours vis-à-vis OA. Bibliographic Data Scientometric aspects of this research relied mainly on an integrative methods approach. Multiple bibliographic indexes as well as other tools were used in both publications I and IV. Publication I used eight different local, regional, and international bibliographic sources namely: Scimago Journal and Country Ranking, Ulrichsweb Serials Directory, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Directory of Open Access Scholarly 39 Resources (ROAD), SherpaRomeo, The Arabic Citations and Impact Factor (ARCIF), Directory of Free Arab Journals (DFAJ), and Arab Impact Factor (AIF). This was in addition to manual searches in the UAE HEIs websites and the general web. This was necessary to overcome the shortcomings associated with bias in international indexes towards Western and English-language content. After aggregating data from all the sources, we proceeded to clean up data by removing non-journal records and duplicate titles. Some manual data enrichment was performed to fill gaps in metadata on aspects such as OA status, language, type of publisher, and discipline. Scopus furnished the core data set for publication IV. The process involved two stages: searching and downloading, and manual data enrichment from other sources. Using Scival, a search for all articles with at least one UAE-affiliated author were searched. Filters included a longitudinal range of 2009 to 2019, and article types limited to articles, articles in the press, business articles, and data papers. Manual enrichment of data consisted of journal country using ISSN Portal, DOIs using Crossref Link References, Unpaywall Simple Query Tool for OA metadata, and Scopus for co-author affiliation continent, and All Science Journal Classification Codes (ASJC) for disciplines. Extra manual data collection involved web searches and publisher websites visits to append data missing from the previous process. 5.4.2 Sources of Data Ulrichsweb Ulrichsweb is a well-established commercial widely used global directory of serials including bibliographic and publishers’ information. Even though it is the largest serials directory and lists over 300,000 titles in over 200 languages, it remains biased towards English language publications. Therefore, publication I used it as the main source of UAE journal data in combination with other sources. Scimago journal and country Ranking (SJR) SJR was the second major source of data for publication I. SJR includes key scientometric data on a large list of Scopus indexed scholarly journals. The SJR metrics are characterised by factoring the citing journal prestige in the citations and filtration of journal self-citations. This source contributed 54 unique titles to that study.
46 Table 2. Mapping of individual publications against the thesis RQs and objectives with a summary of implications Article Boufarss, M. (2020). Charting the Open Access scholarly journals landscape in the UAE. Scientometrics, 122, 1707– 1725. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192020-033490https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192020-03349-0 Boufarss, M., Laakso, M. (2020). Open Sesame? Open access priorities, incentives, and policies among higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates. Scientometrics, 124, 1553–1577. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-02003529-y Boufarss, M., & Harviainen, J. T. (2021). Librarians as gate - openers in open access publishing: A case study in the United Arab Emirates. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 47(5), 102425. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.acalib.2021.10 2425 Boufarss, M., Laakso, M. (2022). Open access and international coauthorship: a longitudinal study of the United Arab Emirates research output Study objectives The purpose of this study is to chart the scholarly journal landscape in the UAE in order to provide a scientific perspective on research productivity, distribution, and access in the country and lay the foundations for further research in this area. The study aims also to contribute to research endeavoring to paint a global picture of scholarly publishing. This study explores the role of HEIs in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) OA uptake and reflects on the ongoing international initiatives pushing for universal OA to research. This study investigates the level of OA awareness among librarians in the UAE. It also highlights their role in the training of researchers and patrons on OA policies and mechanisms and on accessing OA resources. This study also aims to demonstrate how OA has helped reinvent the role of librarians as gate - openers and a driving force behind the eventual success or downfall of the OA movement. More specifically, we wanted to demonstrate what UAE librarians are doing to facilitate users and researchers' uptake of OA and how their high awareness and perception of OA has contributed to the shift in their role. The objective is to provide a granular analysis of research article output in the country, level of openness, and connection to international co-authorship. We aim to improve the current level of knowledge regarding both the influence of co-authorship on OA status of articles, as well as the level of compromise that relying on readily available OA data implies when investigating phenomena like this. Thesis Objectives The purpose of this thesis is to dissect the scholarly publishing landscape in the United Arab Emirates in order to draw a 360-degree real picture in terms of number and rate of OA journals, the situation of OA among research universities and researchers including policies, priorities and incentives, the role of librarians in the OA publishing, and OA and international co-authorship. 47 Linkage to the thesis objectives This study contributes greatly to the main objectives of the thesis since journals constitute the main pillar of scholarly communication and scientific literature output of a country. To the best knowledge of the author, this is the first study to look at journal publications in the UAE especially from the OA and indexing databases perspective. This study contributes to meeting the objectives of the thesis as it looks at one of the major stakeholders in scholarly communication. An analysis of the state of OA in a country would not be complete without looking at funders, researchers, policies and incentives as enablers of transition to OA. This study contributes to the objective of the thesis since it looks at librarians as stakeholders that infiltrate all stages of the scholarly communication and thus de facto players in the OA process be it during the production of research, dissemination, preservation or awareness. This study contributes greatly to drawing a picture of the state of OA in the UAE as the research article is the main output by which countries' scientific output is measured. It is also the main level of scholarly research collaboration. This study helps also place the UAE in a global context as far as coauthorship and how it correlates to OA uptake. Research Questions How many academic journals are published in the UAE? In what languages are these journals published? What is the share of OA journals in the UAE? What are the subject areas of these journals? What is the level of current awareness, support, policies, and practices related to scholarly journal publishing among UAE HEIs, particularly in relation to OA publishing? What are HEIs in the UAE doing in relation to OA, including what are existing OA policies and funding options available to authors to publish OA? How do HEIs in the UAE assess publications and publication activity of researchers in the context of promotion and performance appraisals of faculty. What is the level of OA awareness among librarians in the UAE? What is the role of UAE librarians in the training of researchers and patrons on OA policies and mechanisms and on accessing OA resources? How has OA helped reinvent the role of librarians as gate-openers and a driving force behind the eventual success or downfall of the OA movement? What are UAE librarians doing to facilitate users and researchers' uptake of OA? How has UAE Librarians high awareness and perception of OA contributed to the shift in their role? How has the share of journal articles available OA developed over time? a. What are the disciplinary differences in OA shares? b. Does the journal host country have a connection to OA availability? c. What are the shares of different OA mechanisms? d. What are the most popular repositories for self-archiving? 2. How has international coauthorship developed over time? a. How is co-authorship distributed globally? b. Does the number of co-authors have a connection to OA availability? c. Does the geographic region of co-authors have a connection to OA availability?
46 Table 2. Mapping of individual publications against the thesis RQs and objectives with a summary of implications Article Boufarss, M. (2020). Charting the Open Access scholarly journals landscape in the UAE. Scientometrics, 122, 1707– 1725. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192020-033490https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192020-03349-0 Boufarss, M., Laakso, M. (2020). Open Sesame? Open access priorities, incentives, and policies among higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates. Scientometrics, 124, 1553–1577. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-02003529-y Boufarss, M., & Harviainen, J. T. (2021). Librarians as gate-openers in open access publishing: A case study in the United Arab Emirates. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 47(5), 102425. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2021.10 2425 Boufarss, M., Laakso, M. (2022). Open access and international coauthorship: a longitudinal study of the United Arab Emirates research output Study objectives The purpose of this study is to chart the scholarly journal landscape in the UAE in order to provide a scientific perspective on research productivity, distribution, and access in the country and lay the foundations for further research in this area. The study aims also to contribute to research endeavoring to paint a global picture of scholarly publishing. This study explores the role of HEIs in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) OA uptake and reflects on the ongoing international initiatives pushing for universal OA to research. This study investigates the level of OA awareness among librarians in the UAE. It also highlights their role in the training of researchers and patrons on OA policies and mechanisms and on accessing OA resources. This study also aims to demonstrate how OA has helped reinvent the role of librarians as gate-openers and a driving force behind the eventual success or downfall of the OA movement. More specifically, we wanted to demonstrate what UAE librarians are doing to facilitate users and researchers' uptake of OA and how their high awareness and perception of OA has contributed to the shift in their role. The objective is to provide a granular analysis of research article output in the country, level of openness, and connection to international co-authorship. We aim to improve the current level of knowledge regarding both the influence of co-authorship on OA status of articles, as well as the level of compromise that relying on readily available OA data implies when investigating phenomena like this. Thesis Objectives The purpose of this thesis is to dissect the scholarly publishing landscape in the United Arab Emirates in order to draw a 360-degree real picture in terms of number and rate of OA journals, the situation of OA among research universities and researchers including policies, priorities and incentives, the role of librarians in the OA publishing, and OA and international co-authorship. 47 Linkage to the thesis objectives This study contributes greatly to the main objectives of the thesis since journals constitute the main pillar of scholarly communication and scientific literature output of a country. To the best knowledge of the author, this is the first study to look at journal publications in the UAE especially from the OA and indexing databases perspective. This study contributes to meeting the objectives of the thesis as it looks at one of the major stakeholders in scholarly communication. An analysis of the state of OA in a country would not be complete without looking at funders, researchers, policies and incentives as enablers of transition to OA. This study contributes to the objective of the thesis since it looks at librarians as stakeholders that infiltrate all stages of the scholarly communication and thus de facto players in the OA process be it during the production of research, dissemination, preservation or awareness. This study contributes greatly to drawing a picture of the state of OA in the UAE as the rese arch article is the main output by which countries' scientific output is measured. It is also the main level of scholarly research collaboration. This study helps also place the UAE in a global context as far as coauthorship and how it correlates to OA uptake. Research Questions How many academic journals are published in the UAE? In what languages are these journals published? What is the share of OA journals in the UAE? What are the subject areas of these journals? What is the level of current awareness, support, policies, and practices related to scholarly journal publishing among UAE HEIs, particularly in relation to OA publishing? What are HEIs in the UAE doing in relation to OA, including what are existing OA policies and funding options available to authors to publish OA? How do HEIs in the UAE assess publications and publication activity of researchers in the context of promotion and performance appraisals of faculty. What is the level of OA awareness among librarians in the UAE? What is the role of UAE librarians in the training of researchers and patrons on OA policies and mechanisms and on accessing OA resources? How has OA helped reinvent the role of librarians as gate-openers and a driving force behind the eventual success or downfall of the OA movement? What are UAE librarians doing to facilitate users and researchers' uptake of OA? How has UAE Librarians high awareness and perception of OA contributed to the shift in their role? How has the share of journal articles available OA developed over time? a. What are the disciplinary differences in OA shares? b. Does the journal host country have a connection to OA availability? c. What are the shares of different OA mechanisms? d. What are the most popular repositories for self-archiving? 2. How has international coauthorship developed over time? a. How is co-authorship distributed globally? b. Does the number of co-authors have a connection to OA availability? c. Does the geographic region of co-authors have a connection to OA availability?
48 Data and research methods The study used data compiled about scholarly journals published in the UAE compiled from international and local sources including Ulrichsweb, DOAJ, DOAR, and Arabic databases such as AlMandumah. The resulting journal list was studied focusing on the share of OA titles, language of publication, discipline, and type of publisher The study is based on an online survey targeted at UAE higher education institutions research management units thus soliciting institutional views on OA policies, priorities and incentives. Only one response was solicited from each institution. The data collection instrument used was a multiinstitutional quantitative online survey. The survey consists of 42, mostly close-ended, questions. This study focused on the librarians perspectives on OA. It adopted a short quantitative questionnaire as the instrument for gathering their views and insights. The survey consists of 21 questions focusing on OA awareness and perception, OA discovery tools, piracy based and academic social networks, OA-related instruction, OA resources integration, and predatory journals. The survey targeted the UAE librarians who are involved in information literacy, user instruction, and research support. This study used bibliometric data on research articles authored by researchers affiliated with UAE institutions over a period of 11 years extracted from Scopus. Data was then enriched through Crossref DOI and Unpaywall queries as well as manually through web searching and ISSN Portal. Data was then cross tabulated and analysed to capture the inter-play between cauthorship and openness with factors such as journal publication country, shades of OA, archived version, and disciplines considered. Implications for research The study contributes to a large global body of research on OA with a zoom in on the local landscape. This will provide grounds for a better understanding of local and regional unique characteristics. Our research raises a number of opportunities for future research of regional dimension similar to the European annual institutional survey on OA. This study is one of the first to highlight the gate opener role of librarians in OA. Future studies may emulate or build on this study and most importantly adopt our data gathering instrument. This study is one of the first to attempt looking at the relationship between inter-continental coauthorship and openness. It will thus raise opportunities for further and future research in this area. Implications for policy This study is one of very few if not the only study that touched slightly on science policy and will surely influence future decisions related to institutional and national policies. Librarians are often involved in research related policies development at the institutional level. This study could influence decisions on OA policies, predatory publishing, APCs, and selfarchiving mandates. This study is likely to have implications for policy by influencing the push for more collaboration and reward systems for research collaboration. It may for example motivate the integration of internationalisation and international research networks in future policy directions. 49 Implications for practice The analysis of data sources reveals very low presence of local journals in DOAJ. One major possible implication of this for practice is to motivate these journals to seek listing in international indexing services including DOAJ. Results should also be of interest to university research managers and libraries as they provide guidance for researchers on venues to publish research. Researchers especially those looking for Arabic language publication venues could find this study useful. By integrating the practitioners and stakeholders points of views, this study connects the theoretical to the practical aspects of OA and raises awareness among those involved in research and decision making. A major practical contribution of the present research is that it provides much needed data on the actual views and insights of the HEIs research management units, their everyday preoccupations, and what they are planning. This data is important given that this is the only study to address this. A second important implication is the need to focus efforts at this level given that it links directly to national science policy and that it could help mitigate the risks associated with transient researchers. By integrating the practitioners and stakeholders points of views, this study connects the theoretical to the practical aspects of OA and raises awareness among those involved in research support services and infrastructure. Librarians will be more aware of their pivotal role in scholarly communication and empower them to support the efforts towards full OA of research. A major implication for practice stems from our reframing of the role of librarians and thus empowering them to support the OA movement. As this study is focused on librarians as practitioners, it may also have implications on librarians training programs that would hopefully integrate OA support and dissemination. Having shown that there is a correlation between increased coauthorship and openness, this study will influence the researchers and research management offices to boost their international collaborations.
48 Data and research methods The study used data compiled about scholarly journals published in the UAE compiled from international and local sources including Ulrichsweb, DOAJ, DOAR, and Arabic databases such as AlMandumah. The resulting journal list was studied focusing on the share of OA titles, language of publication, discipline, and type of publisher The study is based on an online survey targeted at UAE higher education institutions research management units thus soliciting institutional views on OA policies, priorities and incentives. Only one response was solicited from each institution. The data collection instrument used was a multiinstitutional quantitative online survey. The survey consists of 42, mostly close-ended, questions. This study focused on the librarians perspectives on OA. It adopted a short quantitative questionnaire as the instrument for gathering their views and insights. The survey consists of 21 questions focusing on OA awareness and perception, OA discovery tools, piracy based and academic social networks, OA-related instruction, OA resources integration, and predatory journals. The survey targeted the UAE librarians who are involved in information literacy, user instruction, and research support. This study used bibliometric data on research articles authored by researchers affiliated with UAE institutions over a period of 11 years extracted from Scopus. Data was then enriched through Crossref DOI and Unpaywall queries as well as manually through web searching and ISSN Portal. Data was then cross tabulated and analysed to capture the inter-play between cauthorship and openness with factors such as journal publication country, shades of OA, archived version, and disciplines considered. Implications for research The study contributes to a large global body of research on OA with a zoom in on the local landscape. This will provide grounds for a better understanding of local and regional unique characteristics. Our research raises a number of opportunities for future research of regional dimension similar to the European annual institutional survey on OA. This study is one of the first to highlight the gate opener role of librarians in OA. Future studies may emulate or build on this study and most importantly adopt our data gathering instrument. This study is one of the first to attempt looking at the relationship between inter-continental coauthorship and openness. It will thus raise opportunities for further and future research in this area. Implications for policy This study is one of very few if not the only study that touched slightly on science policy and will surely influence future decisions related to institutional and national policies. Librarians are often involved in research related policies development at the institutional level. This study could influence decisions on OA policies, predatory publishing, APCs, and selfarchiving mandates. This study is likely to have implications for policy by influencing the push for more collaboration and reward systems for research collaboration. It may for example motivate the integration of internationalisation and international research networks in future policy directions. 49 Implications for practice The analysis of data sources reveals very low presence of local journals in DOAJ. One major possible implication of this for practice is to motivate these journals to seek listing in international indexing services including DOAJ. Results should also be of interest to university research managers and libraries as they provide guidance for researchers on venues to publish research. Researchers especially those looking for Arabic language publication venues could find this study useful. By integrating the practitioners and stakeholders points of views, this study connects the theoretical to the practical aspects of OA and raises awareness among those involved in research and decision making. A major practical contribution of the present research is that it provides much needed data on the actual views and insights of the HEIs research management units, their everyday preoccupations, and what they are planning. This data is important given that this is the only study to address this. A second important implication is the need to focus efforts at this level given that it lin ks directly to national science policy and that it could help mitigate the risks associated with transient researchers. By integrating the practitioners and stakeholders points of views, this study connects the theoretical to the practical aspects of OA a nd raises awareness among those involved in research support services and infrastructure. Librarians will be more aware of their pivotal role in scholarly communication and empower them to support the efforts towards full OA of research. A major implication for practice stems from our reframing of the role of librarians and thus empowering them to support the OA movement. As this study is focused on librarians as practitioners, it may also have implications on librarians training programs that would hopeful ly integrate OA support and dissemination. Having shown that there is a correlation between increased coauthorship and openness, this study will influence the researchers and research management offices to boost their international collaborations.
50 6.2.1 Publication I Charting the Open Access scholarly journals landscape in the UAE The aim of this study was to chart the OA scholarly journal landscape in the UAE and help provide a scientific perspective on research productivity, distribution, and access in the country. The study aimed also to contribute to research endeavoring to paint a global picture of journal scholarly publishing especially considering skewed international journal indexes and challenges of non-English language publications. To our knowledge, no other study has looked at the UAE journals in detail nor used the wide array of data resources used in this study. It thus lays foundations for further research in this area. Bibliometric methods were used in this study. We used collected data on journals published in the UAE to analyze languages of publication, disciplines, publishers, and the openness rate. Journal data were collected from nine different global as well as local sources in addition to general web searches and visits to publishers’ websites. This exercise resulted in a final list of 534 journal titles of which 377 were published online. Collected metadata includes elements such as ISSN, title, publisher, start year, language, OA status, APC, and discipline. These enabled analysis of share of OA journals, publication language apportionment, type of publishers, and discipline. The results indicated that online journals are dominant (nearly 71%) and that about 64% of these online journals are OA. Noteworthy also is that only 7.5% of these OA journals are listed in DOAJ. Data also revealed an increase in the number of OA journals from the year 2004 onwards. Journal OA status showed that most OA journals (89%) started as OA and the rest either converted from print to OA or were mirrors of print versions. APC analysis revealed that APC-based OA is the dominant among UAE journals (70% of journals) and that most of these APC-charging journals (92%) are owned by commercial publishers. A striking result is that Arabic-language journals represented only 1% of UAE published journals and that journals by non-commercial publishers accounted for a very small fraction of UAE journals. Similarly, there was a dominance of STM disciplines among journals published in the UAE. Comparing these findings against previous studies is a challenge. Most existing OA percentage statistics are based on a single database count such as DOAJ, Scopus 51 or Dimensions while this publication used multiple sources and manual data collection. Most of these studies, thus, tend to ignore the journals that Piwowar et al. (2018) described as “hidden Gold” or OA journals that fail to license content but published all their article as free-to-read. The findings of this publication are very positive for a young country with a fledgling research system like the UAE. Nonetheless, the very low percentage of journals listed in DOAJ calls for further investigation as to what may be the underlaying reasons. The main significance of this study lies in it being a first study to look at the UAE journal landscape in detail and beyond the individual and conventional sources of data such as Scopus or WoS. It also constitutes an important contribution to a large global body of research on OA with a focus on the local landscape and a chance to provide grounds for a better understanding of local and regional unique OA ecosystem characteristics. Furthermore, a major practical contribution of this study is that it provides empirical data on sub-par indexation of UAE journals in international journal indexes including the obvious luck of OA journals in DOAJ. This information is likely to motivate UAE journal editors to seek listing in international indexing services including DOAJ. Results should also be of interest to university research managers and libraries as they provide guidance for researchers on venues to publish research. Researchers especially those looking for local publication venues could find this study useful. 6.2.2 Publication II Open Sesame? Open access priorities, incentives, and policies among higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates. This study was co-authored with Mikael Laakso. The main objective of this study was to explore the role of higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UAE OA uptake and to provide a chance to reflect on the ongoing international initiatives pushing for universal adoption of OA to research. Furthermore, this study contributed to meeting the objectives of the thesis as it looks at one of the major stakeholders in scholarly communication. An analysis of the state of OA in a country would not be complete without looking at funders, researchers, policies, and incentives as enablers of transition to OA.
50 6.2.1 Publication I Charting the Open Access scholarly journals landscape in the UAE The aim of this study was to chart the OA scholarly journal landscape in the UAE and help provide a scientific perspective on research productivity, distribution, and access in the country. The study aimed also to contribute to research endeavoring to paint a global picture of journal scholarly publishing especially considering skewed international journal indexes and challenges of non-English language publications. To our knowledge, no other study has looked at the UAE journals in detail nor used the wide array of data resources used in this study. It thus lays foundations for further research in this area. Bibliometric methods were used in this study. We used collected data on journals published in the UAE to analyze languages of publication, disciplines, publishers, and the openness rate. Journal data were collected from nine different global as well as local sources in addition to general web searches and visits to publishers’ websites. This exercise resulted in a final list of 534 journal titles of which 377 were published online. Collected metadata includes elements such as ISSN, title, publisher, start year, language, OA status, APC, and discipline. These enabled analysis of share of OA journals, publication language apportionment, type of publishers, and discipline. The results indicated that online journals are dominant (nearly 71%) and that about 64% of these online journals are OA. Noteworthy also is that only 7.5% of these OA journals are listed in DOAJ. Data also revealed an increase in the number of OA journals from the year 2004 onwards. Journal OA status showed that most OA journals (89%) started as OA and the rest either converted from print to OA or were mirrors of print versions. APC analysis revealed that APC-based OA is the dominant among UAE journals (70% of journals) and that most of these APC-charging journals (92%) are owned by commercial publishers. A striking result is that Arabic-language journals represented only 1% of UAE published journals and that journals by non-commercial publishers accounted for a very small fraction of UAE journals. Similarly, there was a dominance of STM disciplines among journals published in the UAE. Comparing these findings against previous studies is a challenge. Most existing OA percentage statistics are based on a single database count such as DOAJ, Scopus 51 or Dimensions while this publication used multiple sources and manual data collection. Most of these studies, thus, tend to ignore the journals that Piwowar et al. (2018) described as “hidden Gold” or OA journals that fail to license content but published all their article as free-to-read. The findings of this publication are very positive for a young country with a fledgling research system like the UAE. Nonetheless, the very low percentage of journals listed in DOAJ calls for further investigation as to what may be the underlaying reasons. The main significance of this study lies in it being a first study to look at the UAE journal landscape in detail and beyond the individual and conventional sources of data such as Scopus or WoS. It also constitutes an important contribution to a large global body of research on OA with a focus on the local landscape and a chance to provide grounds for a better understanding of local and regional unique OA ecosystem characteristics. Furthermore, a major practical contribution of this study is that it provides empirical data on sub-par indexation of UAE journals in international journal indexes including the obvious luck of OA journals in DOAJ. This information is likely to motivate UAE journal editors to seek listing in international indexing services including DOAJ. Results should also be of interest to university research managers and libraries as they provide guidance for researchers on venues to publish research. Researchers especially those looking for local publication venues could find this study useful. 6.2.2 Publication II Open Sesame? Open access priorities, incentives, and policies among higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates. This study was co-authored with Mikael Laakso. The main objective of this study was to explore the role of higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UAE OA uptake and to provide a chance to reflect on the ongoing international initiatives pushing for universal adoption of OA to research. Furthermore, this study contributed to meeting the objectives of the thesis as it looks at one of the major stakeholders in scholarly communication. An analysis of the state of OA in a country would not be complete without looking at funders, researchers, policies, and incentives as enablers of transition to OA.
52 To look closely at the level of current awareness, support, policies, research assessment, incentives, and practices related to scholarly journal publishing among UAE HEIs, particularly in relation to OA publishing, The study used an online survey targeted at UAE higher education institutions research management units. It solicited institutional views on aspects related to OA. The data collection instrument used was a multi-institutional quantitative online survey consisting of 42, mostly close-ended, questions. Results of the study suggest a low explicit commitment to OA among UAE HEIs as shown by the low number of institutional OA policies and mandates, limited OA funding opportunities, low number of institutional repositories, apparent lack of eagerness to migrate from current subscription models, and mediocre factoring of OA publications for promotion purposes. These anomalies related to the institutional support for OA is intriguing especially when viewed against actual OA outputs. Publication I reported a high OA journal percentage in the UAE and Publication IV found the UAE authors OA output on par with developed countries. This leads one to spiculate that increasing internationalization of research collaboration and desire to publish in high impact prestigious journals transcends the limitations imposed by lack of local supportive policies. However, higher institutional support and engagement with OA is required for a sustainable national academic publishing landscape. The study is one of the first in the region to look at the institutional approaches, insights, and plans on OA. It, thus, had research implications for this growing global phenomenon that is often discussed through a dual lens of Global North or Global South with countries like the UAE falling between. The study contributed to the debate on the role of HEIs in the transition to OA and in shaping national and regional OA policies. In doing so, it raises several opportunities for future research of regional dimensions similar to the European annual institutional survey on OA and to inform international initiatives about the status of OA in this region. This study is also one of very few if not the only study that touched slightly on UAE science policy and will surely influence future decisions related to institutional and national science and OA policies. By integrating the practitioners and stakeholders’ points of views, this study connects the theoretical to the practical aspects of OA and raises awareness among those involved in research and decision making. A major practical contribution of the present research is that it provides much needed data on the actual views and insights of the HEIs research management units, their everyday preoccupations, and their plans. Another important implication is the need to focus efforts at this level 53 given that it links directly to national science policy and that it could help mitigate the risks associated with transient researchers. 6.2.3 Publication III Librarians as gate-openers in open access publishing: A case study in the United Arab Emirates. This study was co-authored with Tuomas J. Harvainen The aim of this study was to investigate the level of OA awareness among librarians in the UAE. It also aimed to highlight their role in scholarly communication and specifically in training researchers and patrons on OA policies and mechanisms and on how to access OA resources. In doing so, the study intended to demonstrate how OA has helped reinvent the role of librarians as gate-openers and a driving force behind the eventual success or downfall of the OA movement. More specifically, we wanted to demonstrate what UAE librarians are doing to facilitate users’ and researchers' uptake of OA and how their high awareness and perception of OA has contributed to the shift in their role. This study contributed to the general objective of this thesis since it looked at librarians as key stakeholders that infiltrate all stages of the scholarly communication and thus de facto players in the OA process be it during the production of research, its dissemination, its preservation or during promotion of awareness. The key research questions this study aimed to answer are: What is the level of OA awareness among librarians in the UAE?; What is the role of UAE librarians in the training of researchers and patrons on OA policies and mechanisms and on accessing OA resources?; How has OA helped reinvent the role of librarians as gate-openers and a driving force behind the eventual success or downfall of the OA movement?; What are UAE librarians doing to facilitate users and researchers' uptake of OA?; How has UAE Librarians high awareness and perception of OA contributed to the shift in their role? Since the RQs were primarily measuring attitudes, perspectives and perceptions, this study adopted a short quantitative questionnaire as the instrument for gathering the librarians’ views and insights. The survey consisted of 21 questions focusing on OA awareness and perception, OA discovery tools, piracy based and academic social networks, OA-related instruction, OA resources integration, and
52 To look closely at the level of current awareness, support, policies, research assessment, incentives, and practices related to scholarly journal publishing among UAE HEIs, particularly in relation to OA publishing, The study used an online survey targeted at UAE higher education institutions research management units. It solicited institutional views on aspects related to OA. The data collection instrument used was a multi-institutional quantitative online survey consisting of 42, mostly close-ended, questions. Results of the study suggest a low explicit commitment to OA among UAE HEIs as shown by the low number of institutional OA policies and mandates, limited OA funding opportunities, low number of institutional repositories, apparent lack of eagerness to migrate from current subscription models, and mediocre factoring of OA publications for promotion purposes. These anomalies related to the institutional support for OA is intriguing especially when viewed against actual OA outputs. Publication I reported a high OA journal percentage in the UAE and Publication IV found the UAE authors OA output on par with developed countries. This leads one to spiculate that increasing internationalization of research collaboration and desire to publish in high impact prestigious journals transcends the limitations imposed by lack of local supportive policies. However, higher institutional support and engagement with OA is required for a sustainable national academic publishing landscape. The study is one of the first in the region to look at the institutional approaches, insights, and plans on OA. It, thus, had research implications for this growing global phenomenon that is often discussed through a dual lens of Global North or Global South with countries like the UAE falling between. The study contributed to the debate on the role of HEIs in the transition to OA and in shaping national and regional OA policies. In doing so, it raises several opportunities for future research of regional dimensions similar to the European annual institutional survey on OA and to inform international initiatives about the status of OA in this region. This study is also one of very few if not the only study that touched slightly on UAE science policy and will surely influence future decisions related to institutional and national science and OA policies. By integrating the practitioners and stakeholders’ points of views, this study connects the theoretical to the practical aspects of OA and raises awareness among those involved in research and decision making. A major practical contribution of the present research is that it provides much needed data on the actual views and insights of the HEIs research management units, their everyday preoccupations, and their plans. Another important implication is the need to focus efforts at this level 53 given that it links directly to national science policy and that it could help mitigate the risks associated with transient researchers. 6.2.3 Publication III Librarians as gate-openers in open access publishing: A case study in the United Arab Emirates. This study was co-authored with Tuomas J. Harvainen The aim of this study was to investigate the level of OA awareness among librarians in the UAE. It also aimed to highlight their role in scholarly communication and specifically in training researchers and patrons on OA policies and mechanisms and on how to access OA resources. In doing so, the study intended to demonstrate how OA has helped reinvent the role of librarians as gate-openers and a driving force behind the eventual success or downfall of the OA movement. More specifically, we wanted to demonstrate what UAE librarians are doing to facilitate users’ and researchers' uptake of OA and how their high awareness and perception of OA has contributed to the shift in their role. This study contributed to the general objective of this thesis since it looked at librarians as key stakeholders that infiltrate all stages of the scholarly communication and thus de facto players in the OA process be it during the production of research, its dissemination, its preservation or during promotion of awareness. The key research questions this study aimed to answer are: What is the level of OA awareness among librarians in the UAE?; What is the role of UAE librarians in the training of researchers and patrons on OA policies and mechanisms and on accessing OA resources?; How has OA helped reinvent the role of librarians as gate-openers and a driving force behind the eventual success or downfall of the OA movement?; What are UAE librarians doing to facilitate users and researchers' uptake of OA?; How has UAE Librarians high awareness and perception of OA contributed to the shift in their role? Since the RQs were primarily measuring attitudes, perspectives and perceptions, this study adopted a short quantitative questionnaire as the instrument for gathering the librarians’ views and insights. The survey consisted of 21 questions focusing on OA awareness and perception, OA discovery tools, piracy based and academic social networks, OA-related instruction, OA resources integration, and
54 predatory journals. The survey targeted the UAE librarians who are involved in information literacy, user instruction, and research support. Results of the survey reveal that the relationships between different stakeholders in scholarly communication have been disrupted by OA. This shift provided librarians with a golden opportunity to re-invent themselves as gate-openers who not only provide access to OA resources but also build capacity in other OA landscape stakeholders. Results show that UAE librarians are aware of OA publishing routes and of predatory journals; they have adopted different instruction methods to educate users on OA resources and OA publishing routes; and they are using and promoting OA resources side-by-side with the traditional subscription-based products. In light of the reported low institutional support for OA reported in Publication II, librarians fail to translate their awareness, expertise and commitment into actions and programs that influence policy and decision making both within their institutions and nationally. The significance of this study lays in it being one of the first to highlight the gate opener role of librarians in OA. It also provides a rare opportunity for readers of international library journals to be aware of efforts undertaken by their colleagues globally to support the OA movement. Policy level implications of this study lays in librarians being often involved in research related policies development at the institutional level. Therefore, this study could influence decisions on OA policies, predatory publishing, APCs, and self-archiving mandates. Furthermore, by integrating the practitioners and stakeholders’ points of views, this study connects the theoretical to the practical aspects of OA and raises awareness among those involved in research support services and infrastructure. Librarians will be more aware of their pivotal role in scholarly communication and get empowered to support the efforts towards full OA of research. Thus, a major implication for practice stems from our reframing of the role of librarians and as a result empowering them to support the OA movement. As this study is focused on librarians as practitioners, it may also have implications on librarians training programs that would hopefully integrate OA support and dissemination as a key study element. Future studies could easily emulate or build on this study and most importantly adopt our data gathering instrument. 55 6.2.4 Publication IV Open access and international co-authorship: a longitudinal study of the United Arab Emirates research output. This study was co-authored with Mikael Laakso. The aim of this study was to investigate OA rates in the UAE as it relates to other scholarly communication elements such as share of OA types, local and international co-authorship, journal country, disciplinary differences, and self-archiving venues and versions. The study provided an opportunity to shed light on uncharted areas of OA in the UAE and the region as well as mature methodological approaches to incomplete datasets. To successfully measure those variables, a longitudinal and national level dataset of articles with at least one UAE-affiliated author was used. Metadata for research articles published over a period of 11 years was extracted from Scopus. Scopus was deemed fit for purpose as it provides detailed metadata and because there is a quasi-total agreement among UAE HEIs and decision makers that Scopusindexed content is valued and often required for promotion and recognition purposes. Yet, this study involved plenty of data enrichment exercises such as from ISSN Portal, Crossref, Unpaywall, All Science Journal Classification Codes, and manually through publisher websites and web searches. Results of this study provide novel information on how the national and international journal articles’ co-authorship dynamics intertwine. Our results indicate that a higher number of authors and recency of an article are both related to more likelihood of an article being available OA. They also show that the percentage of international research available OA is higher than research with national authors only. Of insignificance in these findings is the rate of OA being connected to the level of inter-continent collaboration. The highest collaboration was recorded with Asia and North America. Yet, the OA rate among articles with coauthors with a European affiliation was the highest. This is probably due to the push among European HEIs and funders to adopt OA and driven by Plan-S and Horizon Europe guidelines. It can be concluded that the UAE is part of the global trend which indicates that co-authored articles are on the rise and that the OA rate is higher among multi-author articles. Results indicate that articles published in multidisciplinary journals achieved a weighty OA rate of 90% followed by health sciences (55%) and life sciences (50%),
54 predatory journals. The survey targeted the UAE librarians who are involved in information literacy, user instruction, and research support. Results of the survey reveal that the relationships between different stakeholders in scholarly communication have been disrupted by OA. This shift provided librarians with a golden opportunity to re-invent themselves as gate-openers who not only provide access to OA resources but also build capacity in other OA landscape stakeholders. Results show that UAE librarians are aware of OA publishing routes and of predatory journals; they have adopted different instruction methods to educate users on OA resources and OA publishing routes; and they are using and promoting OA resources side-by-side with the traditional subscription-based products. In light of the reported low institutional support for OA reported in Publication II, librarians fail to translate their awareness, expertise and commitment into actions and programs that influence policy and decision making both within their institutions and nationally. The significance of this study lays in it being one of the first to highlight the gate opener role of librarians in OA. It also provides a rare opportunity for readers of international library journals to be aware of efforts undertaken by their colleagues globally to support the OA movement. Policy level implications of this study lays in librarians being often involved in research related policies development at the institutional level. Therefore, this study could influence decisions on OA policies, predatory publishing, APCs, and self-archiving mandates. Furthermore, by integrating the practitioners and stakeholders’ points of views, this study connects the theoretical to the practical aspects of OA and raises awareness among those involved in research support services and infrastructure. Librarians will be more aware of their pivotal role in scholarly communication and get empowered to support the efforts towards full OA of research. Thus, a major implication for practice stems from our reframing of the role of librarians and as a result empowering them to support the OA movement. As this study is focused on librarians as practitioners, it may also have implications on librarians training programs that would hopefully integrate OA support and dissemination as a key study element. Future studies could easily emulate or build on this study and most importantly adopt our data gathering instrument. 55 6.2.4 Publication IV Open access and international co-authorship: a longitudinal study of the United Arab Emirates research output. This study was co-authored with Mikael Laakso. The aim of this study was to investigate OA rates in the UAE as it relates to other scholarly communication elements such as share of OA types, local and international co-authorship, journal country, disciplinary differences, and self-archiving venues and versions. The study provided an opportunity to shed light on uncharted areas of OA in the UAE and the region as well as mature methodological approaches to incomplete datasets. To successfully measure those variables, a longitudinal and national level dataset of articles with at least one UAE-affiliated author was used. Metadata for research articles published over a period of 11 years was extracted from Scopus. Scopus was deemed fit for purpose as it provides detailed metadata and because there is a quasi-total agreement among UAE HEIs and decision makers that Scopusindexed content is valued and often required for promotion and recognition purposes. Yet, this study involved plenty of data enrichment exercises such as from ISSN Portal, Crossref, Unpaywall, All Science Journal Classification Codes, and manually through publisher websites and web searches. Results of this study provide novel information on how the national and international journal articles’ co-authorship dynamics intertwine. Our results indicate that a higher number of authors and recency of an article are both related to more likelihood of an article being available OA. They also show that the percentage of international research available OA is higher than research with national authors only. Of insignificance in these findings is the rate of OA being connected to the level of inter-continent collaboration. The highest collaboration was recorded with Asia and North America. Yet, the OA rate among articles with coauthors with a European affiliation was the highest. This is probably due to the push among European HEIs and funders to adopt OA and driven by Plan-S and Horizon Europe guidelines. It can be concluded that the UAE is part of the global trend which indicates that co-authored articles are on the rise and that the OA rate is higher among multi-author articles. Results indicate that articles published in multidisciplinary journals achieved a weighty OA rate of 90% followed by health sciences (55%) and life sciences (50%),
62 bias against research output from countries outside the Western European and North American axis in bibliographic databases, a significant part of research output is neglected and thus a full picture of the state of OA cannot be drawn. A significant contribution of this study is the investigation of the link between intercontinental collaboration and openness. The study provides empirical data in support of more international collaboration and coauthorship as there is an evident correlation between its size and OA uptake. In relation to this, the transient workforce including researchers which is supposed to disrupt research output and thus OA adoption seems to have yielded opposite results as researchers seem to be collaborating more with either other researchers at their home base or in countries where they have worked before. It may also be that researchers from a greater number of countries cross paths as a result of this high mobility. 63 REFERENCES ACRL. (2003). Principles and Strategies for the Reform of Scholarly Communication 1. American Library Association. Retrieved March 10, 2023, from http://www.ala.org/acrl/publications/whitepapers/principlesstrategies Al Marzouqi, H., Alameddine, M., Sharif, A., & Alsheikh-Ali, A. A. (2019). Research productivity in the United Arab Emirates: A 20-year bibliometric analysis. Heliyon, 5(12), e02819–e02819. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e02819 ALLEA. (2021). Equity in open access: ALLEA statement. Retrieved August 31, 2023, from https://allea.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/ALLEA-Statement-Equityin-Open-Access-2021.pdf Alpen Capital. (2018). GCC education industry. Alpen capital report. Retrieved from https://argaamplus.s3. amazonaws.com/9e55ad53-477f-48f0-b2022c2f03d6a03d.pdf. Alperin, J. P. (2022). Article-processing charges weaken open access. Nature (London), 610(7931), 233–233. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03201-w Anderson, R. (2018). Scholarly communication : What everyone needs to know. Oxford University Press. Babini, D. (2020). Toward a global open-access scholarly communications system: A developing region perspective. in Eve, M. A.and Gray, J. (eds.) Reassembling Scholarly Communications Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11885.003.0033 Bailey, C. W. (2007). Open Access and Libraries. Collection Management, 32(3–4), 351– 383. https://doi.org/10.1300/J105v32n03_07 Balula, A., Leão, D. (2021). Multilingualism within Scholarly Communication in SSH. Aliterature review. JLIS.it 12(2):88−98. DOI:10.4403/jlis.it-12672 Banks, D. (2018). Thoughts on publishing the research article over the centuries. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 6(1), 10. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications6010010.
62 bias against research output from countries outside the Western European and North American axis in bibliographic databases, a significant part of research output is neglected and thus a full picture of the state of OA cannot be drawn. A significant contribution of this study is the investigation of the link between intercontinental collaboration and openness. The study provides empirical data in support of more international collaboration and coauthorship as there is an evident correlation between its size and OA uptake. In relation to this, the transient workforce including researchers which is supposed to disrupt research output and thus OA adoption seems to have yielded opposite results as researchers seem to be collaborating more with either other researchers at their home base or in countries where they have worked before. It may also be that researchers from a greater number of countries cross paths as a result of this high mobility. 63 REFERENCES ACRL. (2003). Principles and Strategies for the Reform of Scholarly Communication 1. American Library Association. Retrieved March 10, 2023, from http://www.ala.org/acrl/publications/whitepapers/principlesstrategies Al Marzouqi, H., Alameddine, M., Sharif, A., & Alsheikh-Ali, A. A. (2019). Research productivity in the United Arab Emirates: A 20-year bibliometric analysis. Heliyon, 5(12), e02819–e02819. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e02819 ALLEA. (2021). Equity in open access: ALLEA statement. Retrieved August 31, 2023, from https://allea.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/ALLEA-Statement-Equityin-Open-Access-2021.pdf Alpen Capital. (2018). GCC education industry. Alpen capital report. Retrieved from https://argaamplus.s3. amazonaws.com/9e55ad53-477f-48f0-b2022c2f03d6a03d.pdf. Alperin, J. P. (2022). Article-processing charges weaken open access. Nature (London), 610(7931), 233–233. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03201-w Anderson, R. (2018). Scholarly communication : What everyone needs to know. Oxford University Press. Babini, D. (2020). Toward a global open-access scholarly communications system: A developing region perspective. in Eve, M. A.and Gray, J. (eds.) Reassembling Scholarly Communications Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11885.003.0033 Bailey, C. W. (2007). Open Access and Libraries. Collection Management, 32(3–4), 351– 383. https://doi.org/10.1300/J105v32n03_07 Balula, A., Leão, D. (2021). Multilingualism within Scholarly Communication in SSH. Aliterature review. JLIS.it 12(2):88−98. DOI:10.4403/jlis.it-12672 Banks, D. (2018). Thoughts on publishing the research article over the centuries. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 6(1), 10. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications6010010.
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66 Dowler, L. (1997). Gateways to knowledge: The role of academic libraries in teaching, learning, and research. Cambridge (Massachusetts: MIT Press. Duignan, J. (2016). A Dictionary of Business Research Methods. Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acref/9780191792236.001.0001 Else, H. (2018b). Europe's open-access drive escalates as university stand-offs spread. Nature, 557(7706), 479–480. http://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05191-0 Epstein, K. (2012). "Academic spring" sees widening boycott of elsevier. BMJ : British Medical Journal (Online), 344 doi:https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e1469 ESAC Initiative. (n.d.). Common understanding on APCs. Retrieved January 21, 2023, from https://esac-initiative.org/common-understanding-on-apcs/ ESAC Initiative. (2023). Transformative Agreement Registry. Retrieved March 28, 2023, from https://esac-initiative.org/about/transformative-agreements/agreementregistry/ Eve, M. P. (2015). Co-operating for gold open access without APCs. Insights, 28(1), 73 77. doi:https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.166 Finnish National Board on Research Integrity TENK. (2019). The ethical principles of research with human participants and ethical review in the human sciences in Finland. Finnish National Board on Research Integrity TENK guidelines 3/2019. Retrieved from: https://www.tenk.fi/sites/tenk.fi/files/Ihmistieteiden_eettisen_ennakkoar vioinnin_ohje_2019.pdf. Fletcher-Etherington, A. (2022). Science policy: what, why and how. Ukri.org. Retrieved 22 June 2022, from https://www.ukri.org/blog/science-policy-what-why-andhow/. Fredriksson, E. H. (2001). A Century of Science Publishing: A Collection of Essays. IOS Press. Fyfe, A. and Coate, K. and Curry, S. and Lawson, Stuart and Moxham, N. and Røstvik, C.M. (2017) Untangling academic publishing: A history of the relationship between commercial interests, academic prestige and the circulation of research. Discussion Paper. University of St Andrews. Retrieved March 10, 2023, from https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/19148/1/UntanglingAcPub.pdf Fyfe, A; Moxham, N; McDougall-Waters, J; Røstvik, C; (2022) A History of Scientific Journals: Publishing at the Royal Society 1665-2015. [Book]. UCL Press: London, UK. Retrieved March 10, 2023, from https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10156072/1/A-History-of-ScientificJournals.pdf 67 Garfield E. (2006). The history and meaning of the journal impact factor. JAMA, 295(1), 90–93. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.295.1.90 Gargouri, Y., Hajjem, C., Larivie`re, V., Gingras, Y., Carr, L., Brody, T., et al. (2010). Selfselected or mandated, open access increases citation impact for higher quality research. PLoS ONE, 5(10), e13636. Gasparyan, A. Y., Yessirkepov, M., Duisenova, A., Trukhachev, V. I., Kostyukova, E. I., & Kitas, G. D. (2018). Researcher and Author Impact Metrics: Variety, Value, and Context. Journal of Korean Medical Science, 33(18), e139–e139. https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2018.33.e139 GFH. (2016). GCC education: Sector report. Retrieved from: https://www.gfh.com/wpcontent/uploads/ GFH-Education-Sector-Report.pdf. Ginsparg, P. (2009). The global village pioneers. Learned Publishing, 22(2), 95-100. doi:10.1087/2009203 Greyson, D., Morgan, S., Hanley, G., & Wahyuni, D. (2009). Open access archiving and article citations within health services and policy research. Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association, 30(2), 51–58. Gross, & Gross, E. M. (1927). College Libraries and Chemical Education. Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), 66(1713), 385–389. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.66.1713.385 Gulf News (2017). UAE launches National Strategy for Higher Education 2030. Retrieved from: https:// gulfnews.com/uae/education/uae-launches-nationalstrategy-for-higher-education-2030-1.2097191. Gusenbauer, M. (2022). Search where you will find most: Comparing the disciplinary coverage of 56 bibliographic databases. Scientometrics, 127(5), 2683–2745. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04289-7 Harnad, S. (2010). Gold Open Access Publishing Must Not Be Allowed to Retard the Progress of Green Open Access Self-Archiving. Logos (London, England), 21(3-4), 86–93. https://doi.org/10.1163/095796511X559972 Harnad, S., & Brody, T. (2004). Comparing the impact of open access (OA) vs. non-OA articles in the same journals. D-lib Magazine, 10(6), Retrieved from: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june04/harnad/06harnad.html. Hinchliffe, L. J. (2019, April 23). Transformative Agreements: A Primer. The Scholarly Kitchen. Retrieved from: https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/04/23/transformative-agreements/
68 Hood, W. W. & Wilson,C. S. (2003). Informetric studies using databases: opportunities and challenges. Scientometrics, 58, 587–608. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SCIE.0000006882.47115.c6 Howell, K. E. (2013). Empiricism, positivism and post-positivism. SAGE Publications Ltd, https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473957633 Ibrahim, H., Elhag, S. A., Elnour, S. M., Abdel-Razig, S., Harhara, T., & Nair, S. C. (2022). Medical Resident Awareness of Predatory Journal Practices in an International Medical Education System. Medical Education Online, 27(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/10872981.2022.2139169 Ilva, J. (2018). Looking for commitment: Finnish open access journals, infrastructure and funding. Insights - The UKSG Journal, 31. https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.414 Jisc. (2022a). SHERPA/Juliet. Retrieved from: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/view/funder_visualisations/1.html Jisc. (2022b). OpenDOAR. Retrieved from: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/view/repository_by_country/ Johnson, R., Watkinson, A. & Mabe, M. (2018). The STM Report: an overview of scientific and scholarly publishing—fifth Edition. STM: International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers. Retrieved from: https://www.stmassoc.org/2018_10_04_STM_Report_2018.pdf Johnson, R. B., Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Turner, L. A. (2007). Toward a Definition of Mixed Methods Research. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 1(2), 112–133. https://doi.org/10.1177/1558689806298224 Johnson, S., & Potluri, R. M. (2020). Are the UAE academic libraries ready to support research 2.0? Library Philosophy and Practice, 1-18. Retrieved from: https://libproxy.tuni.fi/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarlyjournals/are-uae-academic-libraries-ready-supportresearch/docview/2446727936/se-2 Kamal, K. (2018). Education in the United Arab Emirates. Retrieved from https://wenr.wes.org/2018/08/ education-in-the-united-arab-emirates. Khanna, S., Ball, J., Alperin, J. P., & Willinsky, J. (2023). Recalibrating the scope of scholarly publishing: A modest step in a vast decolonization process. Quantitative Science Studies, In Press. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00228 Koelblinger, D., Zimmermann, G., Weineck, S. B., & Kiesslich, T. (2019). Size matters! association between journal size and longitudinal variability of the journal impact factor. PLoS One, 14(11) doi:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225360 69 Laakso, M. (2019). Why we need a public infrastructure for data on open access. Elephant in the Lab. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2540472 Laakso, M., Lindman, J., Shen, C., Nyman, L., & Björk, B.-C. (2017). Research output availability on academic social networks: implications for stakeholders in academic publishing. Electronic Markets, 27(2), 125–133. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-016-0242-1 Laakso, M., Welling, P., Bukvova, H., Nyman, L., Björk, Bo-Christer, & Hedlund, T. (2011). The development of open access journal publishing from 1993 to 2009. PLoS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020961. Larivière V, Haustein S, Mongeon P (2015) The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0127502. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502 Lori, N. (2012). Temporary Workers or Permanent Migrants? The Kafala System and Contestations Over Residency in the Arab Gulf States. In Center for Migrations and Citizenships, Note de l’Ifri, 1–35. Paris: Ifri. https://www.ifri.org/en/publications/notes-de-lifri/temporary-workers-orpermanent-migrants-kafala-system-and-contestations Martín-Martín, A., Thelwall, M., Orduna-Malea, E., & López-Cózar, E. D. (2021). Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, Scopus, Dimensions, Web of Science, and OpenCitations’ COCI: A multidisciplinary comparison of coverage via citations. Scientometrics, 126(1): 871–906. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03690-4 Mavodza, J. (2022). Research Data Management: A review of UAE academic library experience. Open Information Science, 6(1), 16–27. https://doi.org/10.1515/opis-2022-0128 McGuigan, G. S. (2004). Publishing Perils in Academe: The Serials Crisis and the Economics of the Academic Journal Publishing Industry. Journal of Business & Finance Librarianship, 10(1), 13–26. https://doi.org/10.1300/J109v10n01_03 Mkansi, M., & Acheampong, E. A. (2012). Research Philosophy Debates and Classifications: Students’ Dilemma. Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods, 10(2), 132–. Mongeon, P., Paul-Hus, A. (2016). The journal coverage of Web of Science and Scopus: a comparative analysis. Scientometrics, 106, 213–228. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1765-5 Mukherjee, B. (2010). Changing scenario of scholarly communication: Journals, ejournals and open access journals. In B. Mukherjee (Ed.), Scholarly communication in library and information services (pp. 1-37) Chandos Publishing. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-1-84334-626-5.50001-X Retrieved
68 Hood, W. W. & Wilson,C. S. (2003). Informetric studies using databases: opportunities and challenges. Scientometrics, 58, 587–608. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SCIE.0000006882.47115.c6 Howell, K. E. (2013). Empiricism, positivism and post-positivism. SAGE Publications Ltd, https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473957633 Ibrahim, H., Elhag, S. A., Elnour, S. M., Abdel-Razig, S., Harhara, T., & Nair, S. C. (2022). Medical Resident Awareness of Predatory Journal Practices in an International Medical Education System. Medical Education Online, 27(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/10872981.2022.2139169 Ilva, J. (2018). Looking for commitment: Finnish open access journals, infrastructure and funding. Insights - The UKSG Journal, 31. https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.414 Jisc. (2022a). SHERPA/Juliet. Retrieved from: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/view/funder_visualisations/1.html Jisc. (2022b). OpenDOAR. Retrieved from: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/view/repository_by_country/ Johnson, R., Watkinson, A. & Mabe, M. (2018). The STM Report: an overview of scientific and scholarly publishing—fifth Edition. STM: International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers. Retrieved from: https://www.stmassoc.org/2018_10_04_STM_Report_2018.pdf Johnson, R. B., Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Turner, L. A. (2007). Toward a Definition of Mixed Methods Research. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 1(2), 112–133. https://doi.org/10.1177/1558689806298224 Johnson, S., & Potluri, R. M. (2020). Are the UAE academic libraries ready to support research 2.0? Library Philosophy and Practice, 1-18. Retrieved from: https://libproxy.tuni.fi/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarlyjournals/are-uae-academic-libraries-ready-supportresearch/docview/2446727936/se-2 Kamal, K. (2018). Education in the United Arab Emirates. Retrieved from https://wenr.wes.org/2018/08/ education-in-the-united-arab-emirates. Khanna, S., Ball, J., Alperin, J. P., & Willinsky, J. (2023). Recalibrating the scope of scholarly publishing: A modest step in a vast decolonization process. Quantitative Science Studies, In Press. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00228 Koelblinger, D., Zimmermann, G., Weineck, S. B., & Kiesslich, T. (2019). Size matters! association between journal size and longitudinal variability of the journal impact factor. PLoS One, 14(11) doi:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225360 69 Laakso, M. (2019). Why we need a public infrastructure for data on open access. Elephant in the Lab. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2540472 Laakso, M., Lindman, J., Shen, C., Nyman, L., & Björk, B.-C. (2017). Research output availability on academic social networks: implications for stakeholders in academic publishing. Electronic Markets, 27(2), 125–133. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-016-0242-1 Laakso, M., Welling, P., Bukvova, H., Nyman, L., Björk, Bo-Christer, & Hedlund, T. (2011). The development of open access journal publishing from 1993 to 2009. PLoS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020961. Larivière V, Haustein S, Mongeon P (2015) The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0127502. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502 Lori, N. (2012). Temporary Workers or Permanent Migrants? The Kafala System and Contestations Over Residency in the Arab Gulf States. In Center for Migrations and Citizenships, Note de l’Ifri, 1–35. Paris: Ifri. https://www.ifri.org/en/publications/notes-de-lifri/temporary-workers-orpermanent-migrants-kafala-system-and-contestations Martín-Martín, A., Thelwall, M., Orduna-Malea, E., & López-Cózar, E. D. (2021). Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, Scopus, Dimensions, Web of Science, and OpenCitations’ COCI: A multidisciplinary comparison of coverage via citations. Scientometrics, 126(1): 871–906. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03690-4 Mavodza, J. (2022). Research Data Management: A review of UAE academic library experience. Open Information Science, 6(1), 16–27. https://doi.org/10.1515/opis-2022-0128 McGuigan, G. S. (2004). Publishing Perils in Academe: The Serials Crisis and the Economics of the Academic Journal Publishing Industry. Journal of Business & Finance Librarianship, 10(1), 13–26. https://doi.org/10.1300/J109v10n01_03 Mkansi, M., & Acheampong, E. A. (2012). Research Philosophy Debates and Classifications: Students’ Dilemma. Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods, 10(2), 132–. Mongeon, P., Paul-Hus, A. (2016). The journal coverage of Web of Science and Scopus: a comparative analysis. Scientometrics, 106, 213–228. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1765-5 Mukherjee, B. (2010). Changing scenario of scholarly communication: Journals, ejournals and open access journals. In B. Mukherjee (Ed.), Scholarly communication in library and information services (pp. 1-37) Chandos Publishing. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-1-84334-626-5.50001-X Retrieved
70 from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978184334626550001 X Mukherji, P., & Albon, D. (2023). Research methods in early childhood : an introductory guide. SAGE. Nielsen, P., & Davison, R. M. (2020). Predatory journals: A sign of an unhealthy publish or perish game? Information Systems Journal (Oxford, England), 30(4), 635–638. https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12289 Okerson, A. (1996). University Libraries and Scholarly Communication. In R.P. Peek & G.B. Newby (Eds.) Scholarly Publishing: The Electronic Frontier. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, p. 190. Patel, S. (2015). The research paradigm – methodology, epistemology and ontology – explained in simple language. https://salmapatel.co.uk/academia/the-researchparadigm-methodology-epistemology-and-ontology-explained-in-simplelanguage/ Perrault, A. H. (1995). The Changing Print Resource Base of Academic Libraries in the United States. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 36(4), 295–308. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40732545 Piwowar, H., Priem, J., Larivière, V., Alperin, J. P., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., Farley, A., West, J., & Haustein, S. (2018). The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles. PeerJ, 6, e4375. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375 ROARMAP. (2020). Browse by country. Retrieved from: https://roarmap.eprints.org/view/country/145.html Ryan, J. (2017). Unleash power of scientific research to stimulate the UAE knowledge economy. The National. Retrieved from https://www.thenational.ae/business/unleash-power-of-scientifc-resea rch-tostimulate-the-uae-knowledge-economy-1.68716 Scott, R. E. (2017). Open Access Implications for Information Literacy Services, In Smith, K. (ed.) Open Access and the Future of Scholarly communication. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Shehata, A. M. K., & Elgllab, M. F. M. (2018). Where Arab social science and humanities scholars choose to publish: Falling in the predatory journals trap. Learned Publishing, 31(3), 222–229. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1167. Shen, C., & Björk, B. C. (2015). Predatory” open access: A longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics. BMC Medicine, 13(1), 230–245. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2. 71 Smith, R. (2018). The business of academic publishing: “a catastrophe.” The Lancet (British Edition), 392(10154), 1186–1187. https://doi.org/10.1016/S01406736(18)32353-5 Solomon, D.J. and Björk, B.-C. (2012), A study of open access journals using article processing charges. J Am Soc Inf Sci Tec, 63: 14851495. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.22673 Stewart, A. (2020). Transformative Agreements and the immediate future of Open Access. Physiology News, Spring 2020, 12–13. https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.118.12 STM. (2021). STM Global Brief 2021 – Economics & Market Size. Retrieved from https://www.stm-assoc.org/wpcontent/uploads/2021_10_19_STM_Global_Brief_2021_Economics_and_Marke t_Size-1.pdf Suelzer, E.M., Jackson, J.L. (2022). Measures of Impact for Journals, Articles, and Authors. J GEN INTERN MED 37, 1593–1597 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-022-07475-8 Swan, A. (2012). Policy guidelines for the development and promotion of open access. UNESCO. Retrieved 19 Oct. 2021 from: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000215863/PDF/215863eng.pdf.multi Tananbaum, G. (2013). Article-Level Metrics: A SPARC Primer. Retrieved 14 Nov. 2022 from: https://sparcopen.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/SPARC-ALMPrimer.pdf Taubert, N, Hobert, A, Fraser, N, et al. (2019) Open access: Towards a non-normative and systematic understanding. Retrieved from: https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.11568 Teixeira da Silva, J. A., & Kimotho, S. G. (2022). Signs of divisiveness, discrimination and stigmatization caused by Jeffrey Beall’s “predatory” open access publishing blacklists and philosophy. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 48(3), 102418– . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2021.102418 Thomes, K., & Clay, K. (1998). University Libraries in transition. ASEE Prism, 7(8), 26–29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24157079 UAE Government Portal. (2022). National Strategy for Higher Education 2030. Retrieved from: https://u.ae/en/about-the-uae/strategies-initiatives-andawards/federal-governments-strategies-and-plans/national-strategy-for-highereducation-2030
70 from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978184334626550001 X Mukherji, P., & Albon, D. (2023). Research methods in early childhood : an introductory guide. SAGE. Nielsen, P., & Davison, R. M. (2020). Predatory journals: A sign of an unhealthy publish or perish game? Information Systems Journal (Oxford, England), 30(4), 635–638. https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12289 Okerson, A. (1996). University Libraries and Scholarly Communication. In R.P. Peek & G.B. Newby (Eds.) Scholarly Publishing: The Electronic Frontier. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, p. 190. Patel, S. (2015). The research paradigm – methodology, epistemology and ontology – explained in simple language. https://salmapatel.co.uk/academia/the-researchparadigm-methodology-epistemology-and-ontology-explained-in-simplelanguage/ Perrault, A. H. (1995). The Changing Print Resource Base of Academic Libraries in the United States. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 36(4), 295–308. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40732545 Piwowar, H., Priem, J., Larivière, V., Alperin, J. P., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., Farley, A., West, J., & Haustein, S. (2018). The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles. PeerJ, 6, e4375. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375 ROARMAP. (2020). Browse by country. Retrieved from: https://roarmap.eprints.org/view/country/145.html Ryan, J. (2017). Unleash power of scientific research to stimulate the UAE knowledge economy. The National. Retrieved from https://www.thenational.ae/business/unleash-power-of-scientifc-resea rch-tostimulate-the-uae-knowledge-economy-1.68716 Scott, R. E. (2017). Open Access Implications for Information Literacy Services, In Smith, K. (ed.) Open Access and the Future of Scholarly communication. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Shehata, A. M. K., & Elgllab, M. F. M. (2018). Where Arab social science and humanities scholars choose to publish: Falling in the predatory journals trap. Learned Publishing, 31(3), 222–229. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1167. Shen, C., & Björk, B. C. (2015). Predatory” open access: A longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics. BMC Medicine, 13(1), 230–245. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2. 71 Smith, R. (2018). The business of academic publishing: “a catastrophe.” The Lancet (British Edition), 392(10154), 1186–1187. https://doi.org/10.1016/S01406736(18)32353-5 Solomon, D.J. and Björk, B.-C. (2012), A study of open access journals using article processing charges. J Am Soc Inf Sci Tec, 63: 14851495. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.22673 Stewart, A. (2020). Transformative Agreements and the immediate future of Open Access. Physiology News, Spring 2020, 12–13. https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.118.12 STM. (2021). STM Global Brief 2021 – Economics & Market Size. Retrieved from https://www.stm-assoc.org/wpcontent/uploads/2021_10_19_STM_Global_Brief_2021_Economics_and_Marke t_Size-1.pdf Suelzer, E.M., Jackson, J.L. (2022). Measures of Impact for Journals, Articles, and Authors. J GEN INTERN MED 37, 1593–1597 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-022-07475-8 Swan, A. (2012). Policy guidelines for the development and promotion of open access. UNESCO. Retrieved 19 Oct. 2021 from: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000215863/PDF/215863eng.pdf.multi Tananbaum, G. (2013). Article-Level Metrics: A SPARC Primer. Retrieved 14 Nov. 2022 from: https://sparcopen.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/SPARC-ALMPrimer.pdf Taubert, N, Hobert, A, Fraser, N, et al. (2019) Open access: Towards a non-normative and systematic understanding. Retrieved from: https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.11568 Teixeira da Silva, J. A., & Kimotho, S. G. (2022). Signs of divisiveness, discrimination and stigmatization caused by Jeffrey Beall’s “predatory” open access publishing blacklists and philosophy. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 48(3), 102418– . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2021.102418 Thomes, K., & Clay, K. (1998). University Libraries in transition. ASEE Prism, 7(8), 26–29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24157079 UAE Government Portal. (2022). National Strategy for Higher Education 2030. Retrieved from: https://u.ae/en/about-the-uae/strategies-initiatives-andawards/federal-governments-strategies-and-plans/national-strategy-for-highereducation-2030
Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey 7. Is this peer-reviewed journal (journals) published by your institution open access?* Yes No Other (please specify) 8. Approximately, what percentage of your staff publications are published in non-English-language journals? 9. Please indicate which of the following strategies to increase research productivity have been adopted in your institution? Please select any that apply. * Recruit faculty members who have extensive research experience Allocate time for faculty to work on internal and external research projects Create research centers in different disciplines Provide research related training and professional development Organize conferences and symposiums Establish a publication support unit Establish a researcher reward program Link promotion with publication records Setup research teams Integrate research components in the curriculum to stimulate students contribution in research activities Encourage institutional, national and international collaboration We do not have any particular strategies to increase research productivity Essential High priority Medium priority Low priority Not a priority International English language journals International Arabic language journals Local English language journals Local Arabic language journals Scopus or Web of Science indexed journals 10. What do you perceive to be the preferred/encouraged publication channels at your institution?* Open Access, Policies, and Mandates Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey This section asks questions about your institution's open access policies. 11. How familiar are you with the term “Open Access” as applied to research? Please choose *only one* of the following: * Never heard of it Heard of it but don’t know what it means Have some idea of what it means Have a clear idea of what it means I am an expert in open access High importance Moderate importance Low importance Not applicable Early-stage researchers Established Researchers Leading Researchers Institutional leadership Librarians 12. How is open access perceived by the following staff members at your institution? 13. If your research administration office perceives any barriers to Open Access at your university, please name up to three. 14. Does your institution have an Institutional policy on open access to research publications?* Yes My institution is in the process of developing an Open Access policy (and expects to have one in place within 12 months) My institution is planning to develop an Open Access policy (but does not expect to have a policy in place within 12 months) My institution is not planning to develop an Open Access policy
Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey 7. Is this peer-reviewed journal (journals) published by your institution open access?* Yes No Other (please specify) 8. Approximately, what percentage of your staff publications are published in non-English-language journals? 9. Please indicate which of the following strategies to increase research productivity have been adopted in your institution? Please select any that apply. * Recruit faculty members who have extensive research experience Allocate time for faculty to work on internal and external research projects Create research centers in different disciplines Provide research related training and professional development Organize conferences and symposiums Establish a publication support unit Establish a researcher reward program Link promotion with publication records Setup research teams Integrate research components in the curriculum to stimulate students contribution in research activities Encourage institutional, national and international collaboration We do not have any particular strategies to increase research productivity Essential High priority Medium priority Low priority Not a priority International English language journals International Arabic language journals Local English language journals Local Arabic language journals Scopus or Web of Science indexed journals 10. What do you perceive to be the preferred/encouraged publication channels at your institution?* Open Access, Policies, and Mandates Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey This section asks questions about your institution's open access policies. 11. How familiar are you with the term “Open Access” as applied to research? Please choose *only one* of the following: * Never heard of it Heard of it but don’t know what it means Have some idea of what it means Have a clear idea of what it means I am an expert in open access High importance Moderate importance Low importance Not applicable Early-stage researchers Established Researchers Leading Researchers Institutional leadership Librarians 12. How is open access perceived by the following staff members at your institution? 13. If your research administration office perceives any barriers to Open Access at your university, please name up to three. 14. Does your institution have an Institutional policy on open access to research publications?* Yes My institution is in the process of developing an Open Access policy (and expects to have one in place within 12 months) My institution is planning to develop an Open Access policy (but does not expect to have a policy in place within 12 months) My institution is not planning to develop an Open Access policy
Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey 15. Please indicate what are the main elements of your open access policy to research publications. (Please select all that apply) Encouragement policy, recommending researchers to deposit publications in an institutional/shared repository Awareness raising, including training for early-stage researchers on open access to research publications Financial support for researchers to publish their papers in open access Mandate: researchers deposit publications in a repository and make full text open-access within a specified time period Mandate: researchers deposit publications in a repository, this requirement being linked to internal performance evaluation Mandate: researchers deposit publications in a repository, this requirement being linked to an external, national review procedure Mandate requiring publication in open access (gold route/gold open access) 16. Please indicate what are the main motives for implementing an open access policy to research publications at your institution? Increasing institutional visibility Higher research impact Greater public engagement Unlocking knowledge to the whole world Long-term cost-effective access to research findings Receiving more funding Other (please specify) 17. Open access (OA) is growing as an alternative to subscription-based access to research. How are subscriptions and open access models perceived in your institution? (select the one that fits best) * We are satisfied with the current subscription-based access model and open access is not a priority for us We are satisfied with the current access model, but endorse open access We are not satisfied with the current subscription-based access model and made open access a priority We are not satisfied with the current subscription-based access model, but open access is not a priority for us Other (please specify) Funding and Article Processing Fees Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey This section includes a few questions about funding open access to research results. 18. Do you have a formal policy for funding OA publishing?* Yes No Under review Other (please specify) 19. What funding sources can your researchers draw on to cover article publishing fees? * Funds specically included in research funding Indirect costs administered at faculty/ department level Indirect costs administered centrally Authors own resources e.g. discretionary funds No mechanism to support author pays Other Don't know
Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey 15. Please indicate what are the main elements of your open access policy to research publications. (Please select all that apply) Encouragement policy, recommending researchers to deposit publications in an institutional/shared repository Awareness raising, including training for early-stage researchers on open access to research publications Financial support for researchers to publish their papers in open access Mandate: researchers deposit publications in a repository and make full text open-access within a specified time period Mandate: researchers deposit publications in a repository, this requirement being linked to internal performance evaluation Mandate: researchers deposit publications in a repository, this requirement being linked to an external, national review procedure Mandate requiring publication in open access (gold route/gold open access) 16. Please indicate what are the main motives for implementing an open access policy to research publications at your institution? Increasing institutional visibility Higher research impact Greater public engagement Unlocking knowledge to the whole world Long-term cost-effective access to research findings Receiving more funding Other (please specify) 17. Open access (OA) is growing as an alternative to subscription-based access to research. How are subscriptions and open access models perceived in your institution? (select the one that fits best) * We are satisfied with the current subscription-based access model and open access is not a priority for us We are satisfied with the current access model, but endorse open access We are not satisfied with the current subscription-based access model and made open access a priority We are not satisfied with the current subscription-based access model, but open access is not a priority for us Other (please specify) Funding and Article Processing Fees Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey This section includes a few questions about funding open access to research results. 18. Do you have a formal policy for funding OA publishing?* Yes No Under review Other (please specify) 19. What funding sources can your researchers draw on to cover article publishing fees? * Funds specically included in research funding Indirect costs administered at faculty/ department level Indirect costs administered centrally Authors own resources e.g. discretionary funds No mechanism to support author pays Other Don't know
Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey 20. Can you share with us your reasons for instituting OA funding? Please check all that apply. Faculty requests Provides incentives for authors to publish open access Supports alternative models of scholarly publishing Part of campus-wide strategy to promote OA Maximises the impact of institution's research Fosters experimentation with new initiatives Supports public access policies Other (please specify) 21. If you have a formal policy for author support in covering OA publishing expenses, what types of publications does it cover? Please check all that apply. * All peer-reviewed open access journals Open access journals from the Directory of Open Access journals OA journals from specific publishers through institutional memberships Subscription journals offering open access options (hybrid) Not applicable Other forms of OA publication (please specify) APC amount in US $ Number of articles 22. If your institution has paid any article processing fees (APCs), how much did the institution approximately spend on APCs in 2018 and on how many articles? 23. If your institution didn’t pay any APCs, please indicate if any of the following factors were reasons? Please select any that apply. We don’t have a budget to support APCs We prefer our researchers to publish in paywalled journals We believe that paywalled journals have a higher impact We perceive OA journals to have lower prestige We perceive OA journals to have poor peer review procedures in place The decision on publishing venue is left to the researchers We are not familiar with open access publishing venues Institutional Repositories (IRs) Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey Questions in this section cover institutional repositories and self-archiving practices. 24. Does your institution have an institutional repository/shared repository?* Yes, my institution has an institutional repository Yes, my institution participates in a shared repository No I don’t know
Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey 20. Can you share with us your reasons for instituting OA funding? Please check all that apply. Faculty requests Provides incentives for authors to publish open access Supports alternative models of scholarly publishing Part of campus-wide strategy to promote OA Maximises the impact of institution's research Fosters experimentation with new initiatives Supports public access policies Other (please specify) 21. If you have a formal policy for author support in covering OA publishing expenses, what types of publications does it cover? Please check all that apply. * All peer-reviewed open access journals Open access journals from the Directory of Open Access journals OA journals from specific publishers through institutional memberships Subscription journals offering open access options (hybrid) Not applicable Other forms of OA publication (please specify) APC amount in US $ Number of articles 22. If your institution has paid any article processing fees (APCs), how much did the institution approximately spend on APCs in 2018 and on how many articles? 23. If your institution didn’t pay any APCs, please indicate if any of the following factors were reasons? Please select any that apply. We don’t have a budget to support APCs We prefer our researchers to publish in paywalled journals We believe that paywalled journals have a higher impact We perceive OA journals to have lower prestige We perceive OA journals to have poor peer review procedures in place The decision on publishing venue is left to the researchers We are not familiar with open access publishing venues Institutional Repositories (IRs) Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey Questions in this section cover institutional repositories and self-archiving practices. 24. Does your institution have an institutional repository/shared repository?* Yes, my institution has an institutional repository Yes, my institution participates in a shared repository No I don’t know
Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey Mandated/ Required Encouraged Tolerated Discouraged Don’t know Not applicable Institutional repository Subject-based repository Author/Project website Academic Social Networks 25. At your institution, are the following ways of self-archiving research outputs generally...* 26. What department(s) or unit(s) at your university are responsible for the development and maintenance of the Institutional Repository? Please choose *all* that apply: My university does not have an Institutional Repository University IT/Campus computing services department University library Maintenance is contracted out to a commercial firm Not sure Other (please specify) 27. Who is responsible for depositing articles in the institutional repository? (Select all that apply) Author at home institution Lead author at any institution Library Provost’s office Department/ college Other Not applicable High importance Moderate importance Low importance Not applicable Maximising the visibility of the research to relevant communities Increasing the number of citations Promoting the work of the researchers Mandatory requirement by funding bodies Providing free access to the broadest possible range of audiences Enabling the re-use of research outputs Facing increasing journal subscription costs 28. How important are the following factors in encouraging your researchers to self-archive research publications in a repository (green route/green open access) High importance Moderate importance Low importance Not applicable High priority given to publishing in conventional journals Uncertainty about scientific publishers’ self-archiving policies Concerns about the quality of open access publications versus traditional research publication channels Limited awareness of open access and its potential benefits Lack of knowledge of how to deposit material in a repository Lack of administrative support to make research outcomes available via open access 29. In your opinion, what are your researchers’ concerns about self-archiving publications in a repository (green route/green open access)
Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey Mandated/ Required Encouraged Tolerated Discouraged Don’t know Not applicable Institutional repository Subject-based repository Author/Project website Academic Social Networks 25. At your institution, are the following ways of self-archiving research outputs generally...* 26. What department(s) or unit(s) at your university are responsible for the development and maintenance of the Institutional Repository? Please choose *all* that apply: My university does not have an Institutional Repository University IT/Campus computing services department University library Maintenance is contracted out to a commercial firm Not sure Other (please specify) 27. Who is responsible for depositing articles in the institutional repository? (Select all that apply) Author at home institution Lead author at any institution Library Provost’s office Department/ college Other Not applicable High importance Moderate importance Low importance Not applicable Maximising the visibility of the research to relevant communities Increasing the number of citations Promoting the work of the researchers Mandatory requirement by funding bodies Providing free access to the broadest possible range of audiences Enabling the re-use of research outputs Facing increasing journal subscription costs 28. How important are the following factors in encouraging your researchers to self-archive research publications in a repository (green route/green open access) High importance Moderate importance Low importance Not applicable High priority given to publishing in conventional journals Uncertainty about scientific publishers’ self-archiving policies Concerns about the quality of open access publications versus traditional research publication channels Limited awareness of open access and its potential benefits Lack of knowledge of how to deposit material in a repository Lack of administrative support to make research outcomes available via open access 29. In your opinion, what are your researchers’ concerns about self-archiving publications in a repository (green route/green open access)
Open Access, Promotions and Tenure Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey This section addresses publishing and open access as a criteria for promotions. 30. Does your institution take publishing records into account for tenure and promotion?* Yes No Occasionally 31. Which of the following metrics are tracked and valued by your institution?* Journal impact factor The H-index Citations to individual articles Altmetrics Other (please specify) 32. When considering applications for promotion/tenure, how are articles and books published open access viewed in your institution? * Positive Neutral Negative Incentives for Publishing Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey In this section, you will be asked a few questions about incentives provided by your institution for researchers to publish in open access journals. 33. What are the incentives offered by your institution for researchers to publish their research results?* Cash bonuses Salary increments based on publishing performance Extra funding for research Priority in promotion Other (please specify) 34. Does your institution provide any incentives to encourage researchers to publish open access?* Yes No I don't know 35. Does your research administration office provide education on Open Access for the university community in any of the following ways? Please choose *all* that apply: * Public lectures, information sessions or seminars Lectures, information sessions, or seminars for specific departments or programs Printed materials (e.g., brochures, posters, leaflets) about Open Access Webpage(s) about Open Access No education on Open Access is provided Other (please specify) 36. Are there any particular journal rankings or lists (such as Web of Science, Scopus, ABDC Journal Quality List, Harzing or ABS Journal Guide) that are perceived as important by your institution and incentivises researchers to publish in?
Open Access, Promotions and Tenure Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey This section addresses publishing and open access as a criteria for promotions. 30. Does your institution take publishing records into account for tenure and promotion?* Yes No Occasionally 31. Which of the following metrics are tracked and valued by your institution?* Journal impact factor The H-index Citations to individual articles Altmetrics Other (please specify) 32. When considering applications for promotion/tenure, how are articles and books published open access viewed in your institution? * Positive Neutral Negative Incentives for Publishing Status of Open Access in the UAE - multi-institutional survey In this section, you will be asked a few questions about incentives provided by your institution for researchers to publish in open access journals. 33. What are the incentives offered by your institution for researchers to publish their research results?* Cash bonuses Salary increments based on publishing performance Extra funding for research Priority in promotion Other (please specify) 34. Does your institution provide any incentives to encourage researchers to publish open access?* Yes No I don't know 35. Does your research administration office provide education on Open Access for the university community in any of the following ways? Please choose *all* that apply: * Public lectures, information sessions or seminars Lectures, information sessions, or seminars for specific departments or programs Printed materials (e.g., brochures, posters, leaflets) about Open Access Webpage(s) about Open Access No education on Open Access is provided Other (please specify) 36. Are there any particular journal rankings or lists (such as Web of Science, Scopus, ABDC Journal Quality List, Harzing or ABS Journal Guide) that are perceived as important by your institution and incentivises researchers to publish in?
Definition of Important Terms Implications of open access for information literacy Institutional Repository (IR) – a digital repository established by a university or other research institution in which members of its community would deposit their digital format scholarly materials such as journal articles, reports, and theses. IRs facilitate wider dissemination of this work and help showcase the institution’s research activities. Article processing charges (APCs) – the fees charged by publishers and paid by authors or their funders to make their work available free online in a fully open access or hybrid journal. Open Access – in its basic form, open access is the practice of disseminating peer-reviewed scholarly research broadly and freely online without restrictions apart from the right to be cited. Open Access Journal – academic or scholarly journals which open access to their articles online at no cost to the end user. Black open access – providing illegal access to pirated pay‐walled articles that are not available open access either directly from the publisher of in repositories. Gold open access – Publishing model based on making publications freely accessible immediately from the moment they are first published in an open access journal. Green open access – Publishing model based on the author self-archiving a copy of an article published in a subscription journal. Self-archiving provides free access to the article through an institutional or subject repository, or on a website often after an embargo imposed by the publisher. Hybrid open access – In this publishing model, authors publish an article in a subscription journal but choose to provide immediate free access to their article by paying a publication fee. Predatory journals – exploitative journals that charge authors to publish their articles open access. They can be identified by a combination of these characteristics: deceptive, lacking transparency, demonstrating poor quality standards, demonstrating unethical research or publication practices, no clear contacts, and dubious publishing fee policies. Scholarly communications – all the methods used by researchers and scholarly content creators to inform their peers of their accomplishments. This may take the form of monographs, articles, conference papers, reports, websites, emails or mailing lists. The scope of scholarly communication extends to peer review and preservation of scholarly output. Implications of open access for information literacy 1. Your library is associated with a:* College or technical institute University Other (please specify) 2. What country is your institution based in? 3. What is the size of the student population at your institution?* Less than 1,000 1,000–2,000 More than 2,000 4. What is your job title? …..* 5. Does your institution have an institutional repository?* Yes No 6. What department(s) or unit(s) at your institution are responsible for the development and maintenance of the Institutional Repository? Please choose *all* that apply: University IT/Campus computing services department University library Maintenance is contracted out to a commercial firm Not sure Other (please specify)
Definition of Important Terms Implications of open access for information literacy Institutional Repository (IR) – a digital repository established by a university or other research institution in which members of its community would deposit their digital format scholarly materials such as journal articles, reports, and theses. IRs facilitate wider dissemination of this work and help showcase the institution’s research activities. Article processing charges (APCs) – the fees charged by publishers and paid by authors or their funders to make their work available free online in a fully open access or hybrid journal. Open Access – in its basic form, open access is the practice of disseminating peer-reviewed scholarly research broadly and freely online without restrictions apart from the right to be cited. Open Access Journal – academic or scholarly journals which open access to their articles online at no cost to the end user. Black open access – providing illegal access to pirated pay‐walled articles that are not available open access either directly from the publisher of in repositories. Gold open access – Publishing model based on making publications freely accessible immediately from the moment they are first published in an open access journal. Green open access – Publishing model based on the author self-archiving a copy of an article published in a subscription journal. Self-archiving provides free access to the article through an institutional or subject repository, or on a website often after an embargo imposed by the publisher. Hybrid open access – In this publishing model, authors publish an article in a subscription journal but choose to provide immediate free access to their article by paying a publication fee. Predatory journals – exploitative journals that charge authors to publish their articles open access. They can be identified by a combination of these characteristics: deceptive, lacking transparency, demonstrating poor quality standards, demonstrating unethical research or publication practices, no clear contacts, and dubious publishing fee policies. Scholarly communications – all the methods used by researchers and scholarly content creators to inform their peers of their accomplishments. This may take the form of monographs, articles, conference papers, reports, websites, emails or mailing lists. The scope of scholarly communication extends to peer review and preservation of scholarly output. Implications of open access for information literacy 1. Your library is associated with a:* College or technical institute University Other (please specify) 2. What country is your institution based in? 3. What is the size of the student population at your institution?* Less than 1,000 1,000–2,000 More than 2,000 4. What is your job title? …..* 5. Does your institution have an institutional repository?* Yes No 6. What department(s) or unit(s) at your institution are responsible for the development and maintenance of the Institutional Repository? Please choose *all* that apply: University IT/Campus computing services department University library Maintenance is contracted out to a commercial firm Not sure Other (please specify)
Implications of open access for information literacy 7. What open access models are you aware of? (please choose all that apply)* Green Gold Black Hybrid None of these 8. Are you aware of alternative tools to access Open Access versions of articles such as Unpaywall, Kopernio, OA Button? * No Heard of them, but never used them Aware of them and I use them frequently 9. In the absence of a subscription-based article, do you primarily suggest for your users to* use open access self-archived version of the article find other similar paywalled articles get it through inter-library loan Other (please specify) 10. While helping users, have you ever used SciHub or academic social networks such as Researchgate or Academia.edu? * Never, Rarely Occasionally Often Implications of open access for information literacy 11. Do you provide instruction on scholarly communication (e.g., open access publishing or open education resources)? * Yes No 12. Which education methods do you use when educating users about OA? Individual education Information on library’s website Seminars or workshops organized by library Publishing handbooks on OA Posts on social networking sites Lectures for students Webinars organized by library Conferences organized by library Not applicable
Implications of open access for information literacy 7. What open access models are you aware of? (please choose all that apply)* Green Gold Black Hybrid None of these 8. Are you aware of alternative tools to access Open Access versions of articles such as Unpaywall, Kopernio, OA Button? * No Heard of them, but never used them Aware of them and I use them frequently 9. In the absence of a subscription-based article, do you primarily suggest for your users to* use open access self-archived version of the article find other similar paywalled articles get it through inter-library loan Other (please specify) 10. While helping users, have you ever used SciHub or academic social networks such as Researchgate or Academia.edu? * Never, Rarely Occasionally Often Implications of open access for information literacy 11. Do you provide instruction on scholarly communication (e.g., open access publishing or open education resources)? * Yes No 12. Which education methods do you use when educating users about OA? Individual education Information on library’s website Seminars or workshops organized by library Publishing handbooks on OA Posts on social networking sites Lectures for students Webinars organized by library Conferences organized by library Not applicable
Implications of open access for information literacy 13. Please rank the following OA skills from most interesting (1) to least interesting (10) for your users? ´ Finding OA information ´ Understanding OA citation advantage ´ Evaluating OA journals ´ Copyright and licensing ´ Strategies to achieve OA ´ Identification of questionable publishers ´ Identification of different versions of papers in OA ´ Self-archiving ´ Definitions of OA ´ Altmetrics 14. In your opinion, how do open access articles compare to paywalled articles?* OA articles are of lower quality OA articles are as good as paywalled articles OA articles are better than paywalled articles 15. Have you integrated open access resources in your instruction material?* Yes, users are made aware of open access resources Yes, researchers are also encouraged to self-archive their articles or choose Gold open access publishing No, we have not integrated OA resources in our instruction material 16. Are you aware of predatory journals?* No. I have never heard of this concept Yes. I am familiar with the concept Yes, and I am aware of mechanisms to recognize them Yes, and our users are instructed on how to detect them 17. In your opinion, what are the challenges brought about by Open Access for information literacy specialists? * Having to learn new information searching tools and methods Difficulty of sifting reputable from predatory journals Convincing users of the quality of OA articles Integration of OA resources in IL instruction Insistence of faculty on paywalled articles and old ILL mechanisms Fear of copyright infringement 18. Does your library perform any of the following activities in support of Open Access publishing? Please choose *all* that apply: * Utilize the Directory of Open Access Resources (DOAJ), BioMedCentral, or PubMedCentral to identify Open Access resources to put in the catalogue or similar finding aid? Visibly identify resources in the catalogue or other discovery tools as Open Access resources? Hold a membership to one or more Open Access organizations (e.g., Public Library of Sciences, Hindawi, BioMed Central, SPARC) Feature information about Open Access on the library’s homepage or from one level below the homepage? Host Open Access journals? None of the above Other (please specify)
Implications of open access for information literacy 13. Please rank the following OA skills from most interesting (1) to least interesting (10) for your users? ´ Finding OA information ´ Understanding OA citation advantage ´ Evaluating OA journals ´ Copyright and licensing ´ Strategies to achieve OA ´ Identification of questionable publishers ´ Identification of different versions of papers in OA ´ Self-archiving ´ Definitions of OA ´ Altmetrics 14. In your opinion, how do open access articles compare to paywalled articles?* OA articles are of lower quality OA articles are as good as paywalled articles OA articles are better than paywalled articles 15. Have you integrated open access resources in your instruction material?* Yes, users are made aware of open access resources Yes, researchers are also encouraged to self-archive their articles or choose Gold open access publishing No, we have not integrated OA resources in our instruction material 16. Are you aware of predatory journals?* No. I have never heard of this concept Yes. I am familiar with the concept Yes, and I am aware of mechanisms to recognize them Yes, and our users are instructed on how to detect them 17. In your opinion, what are the challenges brought about by Open Access for information literacy specialists? * Having to learn new information searching tools and methods Difficulty of sifting reputable from predatory journals Convincing users of the quality of OA articles Integration of OA resources in IL instruction Insistence of faculty on paywalled articles and old ILL mechanisms Fear of copyright infringement 18. Does your library perform any of the following activities in support of Open Access publishing? Please choose *all* that apply: * Utilize the Directory of Open Access Resources (DOAJ), BioMedCentral, or PubMedCentral to identify Open Access resources to put in the catalogue or similar finding aid? Visibly identify resources in the catalogue or other discovery tools as Open Access resources? Hold a membership to one or more Open Access organizations (e.g., Public Library of Sciences, Hindawi, BioMed Central, SPARC) Feature information about Open Access on the library’s homepage or from one level below the homepage? Host Open Access journals? None of the above Other (please specify)
19. In your view, which of the following are part of your library’s mandate? (Please choose *all* that apply)* Educate researchers about Open Access in general Educate researchers about the Open Access policies of the funding bodies to which they may be applying for grants Help researchers with funding to pay Open Access publication fees Help researchers learn how to archive copies of their work so that it is Openly Accessible Make sure researchers have complied with funders’ Open Access policies Use Open Access to promote the research conducted at your University None of these are within our mandate Other (please specify) Name Institution City/Town Email Address Phone Number 20. We may wish to follow up on your responses to learn more about Open Access at your institution. If you are willing to participate, please provide your preferred contact information (phone or email) here 98 PUBLICATION I Charting the Open Access scholarly journals landscape in the UAE Mohamed Boufarss Scientometrics, 122, 1707-1725 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03349-0 Publication reprinted with the permission of the copyright holders.
19. In your view, which of the following are part of your library’s mandate? (Please choose *all* that apply)* Educate researchers about Open Access in general Educate researchers about the Open Access policies of the funding bodies to which they may be applying for grants Help researchers with funding to pay Open Access publication fees Help researchers learn how to archive copies of their work so that it is Openly Accessible Make sure researchers have complied with funders’ Open Access policies Use Open Access to promote the research conducted at your University None of these are within our mandate Other (please specify) Name Institution City/Town Email Address Phone Number 20. We may wish to follow up on your responses to learn more about Open Access at your institution. If you are willing to participate, please provide your preferred contact information (phone or email) here 98 PUBLICATION I Charting the Open Access scholarly journals landscape in the UAE Mohamed Boufarss Scientometrics, 122, 1707-1725 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03349-0 Publication reprinted with the permission of the copyright holders.
Vol.:(0123456789) Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03349-0 1 3 Charting theOpen Access scholarly journals landscape intheUAE MohamedBoufarss1 Received: 17 October 2019 / Published online: 25 January 2020 © The Author(s) 2020 Abstract The purpose of this study is to chart the scholarly journal landscape in the UAE in order to provide a scientific perspective on research productivity, distribution, and access in the country and lay the foundations for further research in this area. The study aims also to contribute to research endeavoring to paint a global picture of scholarly publishing. We carried out a mapping of scholarly journals published in the UAE compiled from international and local sources. The resulting journal list was studied focusing on the share of OA titles, language of publication, discipline, and type of publisher. Our results show that: (1) 534 journals are published in the UAE and that the share of OA is quite noteworthy with about 64% of all online journals; (2) the APC-based OA model is prevalent with around 75% of OA journals levying a publication fee; (3) UAE journals are predominantly in English while the number of Arabic-language journals is marginal; (4) science, technology and medicine prevail as the most prevalent subject areas of the journals; and (5) commercial publishers control most of the publications especially in the medical field. The study lays a foundation for further studies on scholarly journals in the UAE. The combination of regional indexes and international directories to measure the country’s scholarly journal output can also be replicated and built upon for other countries where the major international bibliometric databases do not provide a comprehensive representation of scholarly publishing activities. Keywords Open Access· Scientific publications· Scholarly publishing· DOAJ· ROAD· Ulrichsweb Introduction Research is increasingly playing a pivotal role in the economic and social development of nations, especially as more countries are seeking to shift to the knowledge-economy. In the words of Marginson (2012, p. 18), “Research is a public good that enables other public goods and private goods.” Consequently, there is mounting pressure on governments to * Mohamed Boufarss Mohamed.bouf[email protected] 1 Faculty ofInformation Technology andCommunication Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
Vol.:(0123456789) Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03349-0 1 3 Charting theOpen Access scholarly journals landscape intheUAE MohamedBoufarss1 Received: 17 October 2019 / Published online: 25 January 2020 © The Author(s) 2020 Abstract The purpose of this study is to chart the scholarly journal landscape in the UAE in order to provide a scientific perspective on research productivity, distribution, and access in the country and lay the foundations for further research in this area. The study aims also to contribute to research endeavoring to paint a global picture of scholarly publishing. We carried out a mapping of scholarly journals published in the UAE compiled from international and local sources. The resulting journal list was studied focusing on the share of OA titles, language of publication, discipline, and type of publisher. Our results show that: (1) 534 journals are published in the UAE and that the share of OA is quite noteworthy with about 64% of all online journals; (2) the APC-based OA model is prevalent with around 75% of OA journals levying a publication fee; (3) UAE journals are predominantly in English while the number of Arabic-language journals is marginal; (4) science, technology and medicine prevail as the most prevalent subject areas of the journals; and (5) commercial publishers control most of the publications especially in the medical field. The study lays a foundation for further studies on scholarly journals in the UAE. The combination of regional indexes and international directories to measure the country’s scholarly journal output can also be replicated and built upon for other countries where the major international bibliometric databases do not provide a comprehensive representation of scholarly publishing activities. Keywords Open Access· Scientific publications· Scholarly publishing· DOAJ· ROAD· Ulrichsweb Introduction Research is increasingly playing a pivotal role in the economic and social development of nations, especially as more countries are seeking to shift to the knowledge-economy. In the words of Marginson (2012, p. 18), “Research is a public good that enables other public goods and private goods.” Consequently, there is mounting pressure on governments to * Mohamed Boufarss Mohamed.bouf[email protected] 1 Faculty ofInformation Technology andCommunication Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
1714 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 Arab Impact Factor uses quantitative and qualitative evaluation criteria such as number of citations, academic originality and quality, editorial board, publication regularity, peerreview, and adherence to scholarly publishing ethics (Kabil 2015). The Arabic Citations and Impact Factor (ARCIF), however, was established by a commercial publisher, eMarifa. Its first report, released in 2016, included 362 Arabic journals. ARCIF website promises no bias against any discipline but does not disclose how differentiation between disciplines is factored in. One of the objectives it set for itself is to become a reference for improving the international rankings of Arab universities by eliminating bias against them. The Arab scholarly publishing landscape is expecting a new citation index in 2020. In partnership with Clarivate Analytics, the Egyptian Knowledge Bank will be launching TheArabic Citation Index (ARCI) (Skelton 2018). This tool aims to highlight the research output of the Arab countries especially in the humanities and social sciences which are often neglected in international databases such as ISI and Scopus as well as boost the international rankings of Arab universities (Sawahel 2018). Methodology Previous bibliometric studies of scholarly publishing landscapes in national contexts have utilized two distinct approaches. Journal level analyses such as Björk’s (2019), and article level studies such as Mikki etal. (2018) and Wang etal. (2018). Notwithstanding their approach, these studies reveal and corroborate the existence of a shortcoming in bibliometrics indexing services as identified by Mongeon and Paul-Hus (2015) and later by SomozaFernández etal. (2018). These services’ biases in subject, geographical and language coverage limits their effectiveness in comparative studies. In order to overcome these indexing coverage limitations, data for this study was aggregated in line with Björk’s (2019) methodology from a combination of local, regional and international sources. While Björk (2019) utilized Scopus as the main international non-OA dedicated source of journals published in the countries of interest, we have used Ulrichsweb which has proven to have more journal indexing coverage than some other indexes as stated by Mongeon and Paul-Hus (2015). This study opted to complement Ulrichsweb data with data from other sources. The following sources were used to extract data on all journals meeting criteria of being a scholarly peer-reviewed journal, active and from publishers registered in the UAE: • Scimago journal and country Ranking • Ulrichsweb Serials Directory • Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) • Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources (ROAD) • SherpaRomeo • Websites of UAE higher education institutions • The Arabic Citations and Impact Factor (ARCIF) • Directory of Free Arab Journals (DFAJ) • Arab Impact Factor (AIF) • A general search on Google for any scholarly journals published in the UAE The data was extracted from all these sources between the months of February and April 2019. After extraction, a couple of non-journal records were removed from the Scimago 1715 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 data (139 journals). The full data on UAE journals was exported from Ulrichsweb (560 journals). 196 titles of these have ceased publication, are duplicated records, have unclear status or on CD-ROM. The remaining 364 active print and online journals were added to the final collated list. An additional 84 titles were added from ROAD. SherpaRomeo was then browsed for publisher policies revealing a list of 9 OA journals. The list of journals manually collected from DOAJ was 18 journals. Data on another 91 titles was manually collected from HEIs and publishers’ websites, ARCIF, DFAJ and AIF. Three titles in print were isolated leaving us with a total of 88 online journals. All data was then collated into one worksheet (696 journals). This list was deduplicated leaving a total of 534 unique journal titles. Metadata collected from all sources, and manually from the journals’ websites, when not available, includes ISSN, title, publisher, start year, language, frequency, URL, print versus online status, OA status, APC, and subject area. Figure1 shows the contribution of each source to the initial dataset as well as title overlaps. “Other sources” includes all the other sources used in this study but not explicitly listed in the Venn diagram. The final collated list was then filtered to study aspects such as the share of OA journals in the UAE, language distribution, type of publisher (HEI, commercial or governmental publishers), and discipline. In the instances where explicit metadata on these aspects is absent in the source from which data was extracted, a manual verification on the journal website was performed. For discipline analysis, journals were assigned a subject based on the title, metadata from the indexing service or based on the scope of the journal. Results Overview ofUAE journals Data collected from the different sources used in this study identified a total of 534 unique titles published in the UAE. Nearly 71% (377) of these were available online. Fig. 1 Journal titles sources overlap and contribution to the dataset. Created with http://bioin forma tics.psb. ugent .be/webto ols/Venn/
1714 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 Arab Impact Factor uses quantitative and qualitative evaluation criteria such as number of citations, academic originality and quality, editorial board, publication regularity, peerreview, and adherence to scholarly publishing ethics (Kabil 2015). The Arabic Citations and Impact Factor (ARCIF), however, was established by a commercial publisher, eMarifa. Its first report, released in 2016, included 362 Arabic journals. ARCIF website promises no bias against any discipline but does not disclose how differentiation between disciplines is factored in. One of the objectives it set for itself is to become a reference for improving the international rankings of Arab universities by eliminating bias against them. The Arab scholarly publishing landscape is expecting a new citation index in 2020. In partnership with Clarivate Analytics, the Egyptian Knowledge Bank will be launching TheArabic Citation Index (ARCI) (Skelton 2018). This tool aims to highlight the research output of the Arab countries especially in the humanities and social sciences which are often neglected in international databases such as ISI and Scopus as well as boost the international rankings of Arab universities (Sawahel 2018). Methodology Previous bibliometric studies of scholarly publishing landscapes in national contexts have utilized two distinct approaches. Journal level analyses such as Björk’s (2019), and article level studies such as Mikki etal. (2018) and Wang etal. (2018). Notwithstanding their approach, these studies reveal and corroborate the existence of a shortcoming in bibliometrics indexing services as identified by Mongeon and Paul-Hus (2015) and later by SomozaFernández etal. (2018). These services’ biases in subject, geographical and language coverage limits their effectiveness in comparative studies. In order to overcome these indexing coverage limitations, data for this study was aggregated in line with Björk’s (2019) methodology from a combination of local, regional and international sources. While Björk (2019) utilized Scopus as the main international non-OA dedicated source of journals published in the countries of interest, we have used Ulrichsweb which has proven to have more journal indexing coverage than some other indexes as stated by Mongeon and Paul-Hus (2015). This study opted to complement Ulrichsweb data with data from other sources. The following sources were used to extract data on all journals meeting criteria of being a scholarly peer-reviewed journal, active and from publishers registered in the UAE: • Scimago journal and country Ranking • Ulrichsweb Serials Directory • Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) • Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources (ROAD) • SherpaRomeo • Websites of UAE higher education institutions • The Arabic Citations and Impact Factor (ARCIF) • Directory of Free Arab Journals (DFAJ) • Arab Impact Factor (AIF) • A general search on Google for any scholarly journals published in the UAE The data was extracted from all these sources between the months of February and April 2019. After extraction, a couple of non-journal records were removed from the Scimago 1715 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 data (139 journals). The full data on UAE journals was exported from Ulrichsweb (560 journals). 196 titles of these have ceased publication, are duplicated records, have unclear status or on CD-ROM. The remaining 364 active print and online journals were added to the final collated list. An additional 84 titles were added from ROAD. SherpaRomeo was then browsed for publisher policies revealing a list of 9 OA journals. The list of journals manually collected from DOAJ was 18 journals. Data on another 91 titles was manually collected from HEIs and publishers’ websites, ARCIF, DFAJ and AIF. Three titles in print were isolated leaving us with a total of 88 online journals. All data was then collated into one worksheet (696 journals). This list was deduplicated leaving a total of 534 unique journal titles. Metadata collected from all sources, and manually from the journals’ websites, when not available, includes ISSN, title, publisher, start year, language, frequency, URL, print versus online status, OA status, APC, and subject area. Figure1 shows the contribution of each source to the initial dataset as well as title overlaps. “Other sources” includes all the other sources used in this study but not explicitly listed in the Venn diagram. The final collated list was then filtered to study aspects such as the share of OA journals in the UAE, language distribution, type of publisher (HEI, commercial or governmental publishers), and discipline. In the instances where explicit metadata on these aspects is absent in the source from which data was extracted, a manual verification on the journal website was performed. For discipline analysis, journals were assigned a subject based on the title, metadata from the indexing service or based on the scope of the journal. Results Overview ofUAE journals Data collected from the different sources used in this study identified a total of 534 unique titles published in the UAE. Nearly 71% (377) of these were available online. Fig. 1 Journal titles sources overlap and contribution to the dataset. Created with http://bioin forma tics.psb. ugent .be/webto ols/Venn/
1716 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 About 64% (240) of these online journals are OA. While 111 OA journals are listed in Ulrichsweb, only 18, 35 and 84 are listed in DOAJ, Scimago and ROAD, respectively. 85 OA titles identified from HEI websites and other sources such as ARCIF, DFAJ, and AIF were not indexed in any of these international indexes and directories. Table1 shows that print journals represent only about 30% of all journals. Almost all print titles except 3 are listed in Ulrichsweb. OA journals publication year The results obtained from analysis of journal publication year are shown in Fig.2. This data covers only journals that are current and OA. These results indicate that the oldest UAE journal published its first issue in print long before being available online and OA back in 1983. The number of journals released per year picked up around 2004 to hit an all-time high of 38 in 2007, before receding to a range of 7–24 journals per year. The gap of a decade from 1990 to 2001 where no journals are recorded is due to the fact that we added the date the first print issue was published as the date the journal flipped to OA could not be identified. The data recorded after 2000 is in alignment with the important developments in the OA movement such as: the release of Eprints Table 1 Overview of journals in the UAE Source All journals Print Online OA Ulrich’s 364 154 210 111 Scimago 139 – 139 35 DOAJ 18 – 18 18 ROAD 84 – 84 84 Others 91 3 88 86 Total 696 157 539 334 Unique titles 534 157 377 240 1 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 8 5 38 31 10 16 7 10 20 11 24 14 13 15 1 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 # of new journals Publicaon year No of Journals Fig. 2 UAE OA journals by year of publication 1717 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 software (2000); Open Journal System (2001); DSpace; and Budapest open Access Initiative (2002). Born versusconverted OA journals Further analysis of the OA journals’ segment shows that a total of 214 titles started as OA and that 26 print journals flipped to OA (Table2). Almost all journals from commercial publishers started as OA (189 of 190). 22 of the 32 journals published by universities previously in print converted to OA. 15 journals published by government entities and associations started as OA and only 3 converted from print to OA. Article processing charges Analysis of APC status demonstrates that a confirmed 70% of OA journals in the UAE are charging publication fees (Table3). About 92% of these are published by commercial publishers. In fact, 81% of all OA journals owned by these publishers collect APCs. In contrast, only around 13% of HEIs charge author fees. Nearly 50% of OA journals published by government entities and associations are not charging APCs. APC data could not be collected for 15 journals and thus were excluded from the analysis. Further examination of APC data as shown in Fig.3 reveals that the biggest share of journals (83) charge APCs in the 40–500 USD segment. A further 72 journals charge between 501 and 1000 USD. Only 3 journals charge more than 1001 USD. No data could be collected on 15 OA journals. The average fee charged by journals with confirmed APCs stands at around 496 USD. Table 2 Born OA versus converted OA journal by type of publisher Type of publisher Started as OA Converted to OA Commercial publishers 189 1 HEIs 10 22 Government entities and associations 15 3 Total 214 26 Table 3 OA journals APC by type of publisher APC No APC No data Commercial Publishers 154 22 14 HEIs 4 28 0 Government and Associations 9 8 1 All OA journals 167 58 15
1716 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 About 64% (240) of these online journals are OA. While 111 OA journals are listed in Ulrichsweb, only 18, 35 and 84 are listed in DOAJ, Scimago and ROAD, respectively. 85 OA titles identified from HEI websites and other sources such as ARCIF, DFAJ, and AIF were not indexed in any of these international indexes and directories. Table1 shows that print journals represent only about 30% of all journals. Almost all print titles except 3 are listed in Ulrichsweb. OA journals publication year The results obtained from analysis of journal publication year are shown in Fig.2. This data covers only journals that are current and OA. These results indicate that the oldest UAE journal published its first issue in print long before being available online and OA back in 1983. The number of journals released per year picked up around 2004 to hit an all-time high of 38 in 2007, before receding to a range of 7–24 journals per year. The gap of a decade from 1990 to 2001 where no journals are recorded is due to the fact that we added the date the first print issue was published as the date the journal flipped to OA could not be identified. The data recorded after 2000 is in alignment with the important developments in the OA movement such as: the release of Eprints Table 1 Overview of journals in the UAE Source All journals Print Online OA Ulrich’s 364 154 210 111 Scimago 139 – 139 35 DOAJ 18 – 18 18 ROAD 84 – 84 84 Others 91 3 88 86 Total 696 157 539 334 Unique titles 534 157 377 240 1 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 8 5 38 31 10 16 7 10 20 11 24 14 13 15 1 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 # of new journals Publicaon year No of Journals Fig. 2 UAE OA journals by year of publication 1717 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 software (2000); Open Journal System (2001); DSpace; and Budapest open Access Initiative (2002). Born versusconverted OA journals Further analysis of the OA journals’ segment shows that a total of 214 titles started as OA and that 26 print journals flipped to OA (Table2). Almost all journals from commercial publishers started as OA (189 of 190). 22 of the 32 journals published by universities previously in print converted to OA. 15 journals published by government entities and associations started as OA and only 3 converted from print to OA. Article processing charges Analysis of APC status demonstrates that a confirmed 70% of OA journals in the UAE are charging publication fees (Table3). About 92% of these are published by commercial publishers. In fact, 81% of all OA journals owned by these publishers collect APCs. In contrast, only around 13% of HEIs charge author fees. Nearly 50% of OA journals published by government entities and associations are not charging APCs. APC data could not be collected for 15 journals and thus were excluded from the analysis. Further examination of APC data as shown in Fig.3 reveals that the biggest share of journals (83) charge APCs in the 40–500 USD segment. A further 72 journals charge between 501 and 1000 USD. Only 3 journals charge more than 1001 USD. No data could be collected on 15 OA journals. The average fee charged by journals with confirmed APCs stands at around 496 USD. Table 2 Born OA versus converted OA journal by type of publisher Type of publisher Started as OA Converted to OA Commercial publishers 189 1 HEIs 10 22 Government entities and associations 15 3 Total 214 26 Table 3 OA journals APC by type of publisher APC No APC No data Commercial Publishers 154 22 14 HEIs 4 28 0 Government and Associations 9 8 1 All OA journals 167 58 15
1718 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 Language ofpublication Table4 presents the breakdown of the UAE print, online and OA journals by language. The predominance of English as a language of publication among the UAE scholarly journals is obvious. 96% or 151 out of the 157 print journals are accepting only articles written in English. Similarly, 94% of online journals are in English. This is cascaded down to OA journals of which 90% or 216 out of 240 publish only articles in English. Surprisingly, Arabic-language journals represent only less than 1% of the, print, online, and OA Journals. The few Arabic and multilingual OA journals are predominantly in the humanities and social sciences with 20 out of 24 titles. These are mostly published by universities or government entities (21 titles). Type ofpublisher Table5 shows that the UAE journal publishing landscape is dominated by a few commercial publishers like Bentham, Science Publications, Scholars Middle East, Tathqeef and Science Publishing Corporation. Together, they account for over 92%, 76%, and 62% of print, online, and OA journals, respectively. Journals published by educational institutions account for only about 3%, 9%, and 13% of all, print, online and OA journals, respectively. The remaining quarter of all OA journals are published by associations, government entities and small publishers. Bentham Publishers dominates the journal publishing landscape across all categories. Interestingly, the data reveals that all online journals published by government entities and associations are OA. 83 72 3 15 40 - 500USD 501 - 1000USD 1001 - 3000USD No data Fig. 3 OA journals APC segments Table 4 UAE journals by language of publication Language Print Online OA Arabic 3 2 2 English 151 353 216 Multilingual 3 22 22 1719 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 Breakdown bysubject Data in Table6, conclusively, shows that the medical field and affiliated sub-fields dominate the UAE journals output with 78 print, 176 online, and 80 OA titles. Engineering is the second strongest discipline with 42 online and 15 print journals. Almost all online journals in business, humanities, agricultural and veterinary sciences, education, law, IT and environmental studies are OA. In contrast, only around 46% of journals in medical sciences and 61% in engineering are OA. Further analysis reveals that a little more than 50% of OA journals in the humanities and social sciences are published by universities and government entities. It can be seen from the data in Table6 that all education journals are published online and are OA. Discussion Given the wide disparity in the coverage of the journal directories and indexes and in the absence of local indexing services, this study cannot unequivocally claim to have captured every single journal published in the UAE. Nevertheless, it provides the best available scan Table 5 Journals by type of publisher Publisher Print Online OA Bentham 115 201 64 Science Publications 28 31 31 Universities 5 32 32 Scholars Middle East 0 22 22 Tathqeef 0 16 16 Science Publishing Corporation 1 16 16 Associations 2 12 12 Government Entities 1 6 6 Others 5 41 41 Table 6 Journals distribution by discipline Subject Print Online journals OA Medical sciences 78 176 80 Engineering 15 42 25 Business and management 2 28 28 General sciences 9 27 22 Humanities and social sciences 2 19 18 Agriculture and veterinary sciences 5 16 15 Chemistry 16 14 3 Biology 17 14 10 Education 0 10 10 Law 2 6 6 IT 6 8 7 Environmental sciences 4 11 10 Others 1 6 6
1718 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 Language ofpublication Table4 presents the breakdown of the UAE print, online and OA journals by language. The predominance of English as a language of publication among the UAE scholarly journals is obvious. 96% or 151 out of the 157 print journals are accepting only articles written in English. Similarly, 94% of online journals are in English. This is cascaded down to OA journals of which 90% or 216 out of 240 publish only articles in English. Surprisingly, Arabic-language journals represent only less than 1% of the, print, online, and OA Journals. The few Arabic and multilingual OA journals are predominantly in the humanities and social sciences with 20 out of 24 titles. These are mostly published by universities or government entities (21 titles). Type ofpublisher Table5 shows that the UAE journal publishing landscape is dominated by a few commercial publishers like Bentham, Science Publications, Scholars Middle East, Tathqeef and Science Publishing Corporation. Together, they account for over 92%, 76%, and 62% of print, online, and OA journals, respectively. Journals published by educational institutions account for only about 3%, 9%, and 13% of all, print, online and OA journals, respectively. The remaining quarter of all OA journals are published by associations, government entities and small publishers. Bentham Publishers dominates the journal publishing landscape across all categories. Interestingly, the data reveals that all online journals published by government entities and associations are OA. 83 72 3 15 40 - 500USD 501 - 1000USD 1001 - 3000USD No data Fig. 3 OA journals APC segments Table 4 UAE journals by language of publication Language Print Online OA Arabic 3 2 2 English 151 353 216 Multilingual 3 22 22 1719 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 Breakdown bysubject Data in Table6, conclusively, shows that the medical field and affiliated sub-fields dominate the UAE journals output with 78 print, 176 online, and 80 OA titles. Engineering is the second strongest discipline with 42 online and 15 print journals. Almost all online journals in business, humanities, agricultural and veterinary sciences, education, law, IT and environmental studies are OA. In contrast, only around 46% of journals in medical sciences and 61% in engineering are OA. Further analysis reveals that a little more than 50% of OA journals in the humanities and social sciences are published by universities and government entities. It can be seen from the data in Table6 that all education journals are published online and are OA. Discussion Given the wide disparity in the coverage of the journal directories and indexes and in the absence of local indexing services, this study cannot unequivocally claim to have captured every single journal published in the UAE. Nevertheless, it provides the best available scan Table 5 Journals by type of publisher Publisher Print Online OA Bentham 115 201 64 Science Publications 28 31 31 Universities 5 32 32 Scholars Middle East 0 22 22 Tathqeef 0 16 16 Science Publishing Corporation 1 16 16 Associations 2 12 12 Government Entities 1 6 6 Others 5 41 41 Table 6 Journals distribution by discipline Subject Print Online journals OA Medical sciences 78 176 80 Engineering 15 42 25 Business and management 2 28 28 General sciences 9 27 22 Humanities and social sciences 2 19 18 Agriculture and veterinary sciences 5 16 15 Chemistry 16 14 3 Biology 17 14 10 Education 0 10 10 Law 2 6 6 IT 6 8 7 Environmental sciences 4 11 10 Others 1 6 6
1720 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 of the country’s scholarly journal landscape. 78 journals of which 76 are OA identified by this study did not appear in any of the major indexes and directories including DOAJ. This study has also conclusively demonstrated that ROAD is more exhaustive than DOAJ and Scimago in indexing OA journals. This may be attributed to differences in inclusion criteria or lack of awareness of OA journal directories among journal editors in the UAE. Our findings are also in agreement with Björk’s (2019) assertion of the limitation in DOAJ journal coverage. This may also be the result of tighter inclusion criteria (Khalifa 2017) or the delisting of journals policy introduced by DOAJ in 2014 (Marchitelli etal. 2017). The share of OA journals published in the UAE at nearly 64% of all online journals is quite considerable and ahead of most Nordic countries studied by Björk (2019) with the exception of Iceland which achieved a rate of 67%. This could be due to factors such as dominance of commercial publishers driven by a desire to increase income from publication fees, appropriate funding of journals by government, universities and associations, and availability of disposable income enabling researchers to pay APCs. This claim is further supported by the fact that 93% of all journals that started as OA are owned by commercial publishers. Furthermore, 81% of all OA journals published by these publishers collect APCs. Analysis of OA journals year of publication reveals that the years publishing peaked correspond to the entry of new commercial publishers such as Bentham into the UAE market. The increase in OA journal publishing after 2000 is consistent with Laakso etal. (2011) who reported an upsurge in OA journals from 2000 and 2009. The share of born OA journals is quite considerable at nearly 89% of all OA journals and well ahead of the 79% reported by Solomon etal. (2013) among countries such as USA and Germany and 39% for Nordic countries cited by Björk (2019). This high percentage is probably fueled by the increase in internet penetration and entry of new commercial publishers. A substantial share of print journals published mainly by HEIs have also moved online and are made available OA. The average APC of around $496 collected by publishers in the UAE is sub-par to Shamash’s (2016) £1745 for 2014–2015 and Björk and Solomon’s (2014) $1418–$2097. This study’s conclusion that 70% of OA journals in the UAE charge APCs is in stark contradiction with Crawford’s (2019b) findings which showed that about 71% of OA journals do not charge a fee. Consistent with Banks’ (2018) statement that the majority of world scholarly journals are published in English, almost all UAE journals with the exception of a few bilingual and a couple of Arabic titles are in English. It can be argued that UAE publishers are exacerbating the demise of the local language in scholarly publishing by not providing an adequate number of Arabic-language journals. This may also suggest that UAE researchers fit into Hamel’s (2007) profile of authors seeking international peer recognition and higher citation rates or driven by funders incentivizing publications in journals indexed only by Scopus or WoS. Bearing in mind that these indexing services have been proven to be biased towards English-language publications (Archambault etal. 2006; Van Weijen 2012; Mongeon and Paul-Hus 2015; Somoza-Fernández etal. 2018), it comes as no surprise that the number of Arabic-language journals is quite limited. This low count can also be attributed to Al-Aufi’s (2012) conclusion that the shift to teaching of scientific disciplines in most Arab universities resulted in scholars adopting English as a language of publication. This conviction is shared by Raven (2011) who states that English is the language of instruction at federal universities and the language of business in the UAE. The UAE scholarly publishing landscape is clearly dominated by a few commercial publishers. Bentham spearheads this with a share of around 56% of all online and 27% of all 1721 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 OA journals. The result of this study indicating that 76% of online and 62% of OA UAE journals are published by commercial publishers is in stark contradiction with Bjork’s (2019) findings that 53% of OA journals in Nordic countries were published by universities or affiliated presses and Ilva’s (2018) statement that most Finnish journals are owned by scholarly societies. The fact that UAE HEIs’ share of OA journals stands at a mere 13% further supports conclusions of Austin etal. (2014) and Chapman etal. (2014) that UAE HEIs focus on teaching, to the detriment of research. Nonetheless, the conclusion that all 32 online journals published by universities are OA suggests that funding may have a direct impact on the degree of openness. Data on distribution of journals by discipline reveals predominant interest in the sciences, technology, medicine (STM) disciplines. This may have several possible explanations such as the UAE government’s expressed prioritization of science and technology in the UAE Vision 2021, and the presence of large commercial publishers interested in these disciplines. Furthermore, the observed varying degrees of openness by discipline reveals that apart from health sciences and engineering, primarily dominated by commercial publishers, the UAE has almost achieved total openness across all other disciplines. The dominance of English-language journals and commercial publishers in the UAE may lead us to question the relevance of journal publisher countries. After all, globalization of the scholarly publishing ecosystem has led to the emergence of publishers with journals beyond geographic and linguistic boundaries of their countries of operation. A case in point is Elsevier which, even though based in the Netherlands, publishes many journals which are global in their reach and relevance. Conclusion This study set out to chart the scholarly journal landscape in the UAE with the objective of laying foundations for future in-depth research on scholarly publishing and OA. Our results indicate that DOAJ, ROAD and even regional indexes such as ARCIF and Arab Impact Factor are limited in their coverage of locally published journals. We found that Ulrichsweb lists more OA journals than indexed in DOAJ and ROAD directories, the first go-to services for OA bibliometric analyses. The evidence from this study suggests that the share of OA journals in the UAE is quite significant and that most charge APCs albeit well below international average. This study’s second major finding was that, in line with the rest of the world, the local language (Arabic) has been sidelined by English as the main language of publication regardless if the journal is in print, online or OA. Future studies could explore if this situation is due to publishers pushing for more international exposure, as a result of low supply of manuscripts in Arabic, or as an outcome of other factors such as promotion and appraisal policies. One of the more significant findings to emerge from this study is that the publishing landscape is dominated by a few commercial publishers and not by universities and associated presses as expected. Further research is required to determine why this is the case and what are the incentives for commercial publishers to establish journals in the UAE. The delisting of some UAE journals by DOAJ based on publishers’ suspicious editorial practices warrants also an in-depth study of commercial publishers in the UAE. A study on authors affiliation will also shed some light on whether the journals target local authors or a broader author base.
1720 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 of the country’s scholarly journal landscape. 78 journals of which 76 are OA identified by this study did not appear in any of the major indexes and directories including DOAJ. This study has also conclusively demonstrated that ROAD is more exhaustive than DOAJ and Scimago in indexing OA journals. This may be attributed to differences in inclusion criteria or lack of awareness of OA journal directories among journal editors in the UAE. Our findings are also in agreement with Björk’s (2019) assertion of the limitation in DOAJ journal coverage. This may also be the result of tighter inclusion criteria (Khalifa 2017) or the delisting of journals policy introduced by DOAJ in 2014 (Marchitelli etal. 2017). The share of OA journals published in the UAE at nearly 64% of all online journals is quite considerable and ahead of most Nordic countries studied by Björk (2019) with the exception of Iceland which achieved a rate of 67%. This could be due to factors such as dominance of commercial publishers driven by a desire to increase income from publication fees, appropriate funding of journals by government, universities and associations, and availability of disposable income enabling researchers to pay APCs. This claim is further supported by the fact that 93% of all journals that started as OA are owned by commercial publishers. Furthermore, 81% of all OA journals published by these publishers collect APCs. Analysis of OA journals year of publication reveals that the years publishing peaked correspond to the entry of new commercial publishers such as Bentham into the UAE market. The increase in OA journal publishing after 2000 is consistent with Laakso etal. (2011) who reported an upsurge in OA journals from 2000 and 2009. The share of born OA journals is quite considerable at nearly 89% of all OA journals and well ahead of the 79% reported by Solomon etal. (2013) among countries such as USA and Germany and 39% for Nordic countries cited by Björk (2019). This high percentage is probably fueled by the increase in internet penetration and entry of new commercial publishers. A substantial share of print journals published mainly by HEIs have also moved online and are made available OA. The average APC of around $496 collected by publishers in the UAE is sub-par to Shamash’s (2016) £1745 for 2014–2015 and Björk and Solomon’s (2014) $1418–$2097. This study’s conclusion that 70% of OA journals in the UAE charge APCs is in stark contradiction with Crawford’s (2019b) findings which showed that about 71% of OA journals do not charge a fee. Consistent with Banks’ (2018) statement that the majority of world scholarly journals are published in English, almost all UAE journals with the exception of a few bilingual and a couple of Arabic titles are in English. It can be argued that UAE publishers are exacerbating the demise of the local language in scholarly publishing by not providing an adequate number of Arabic-language journals. This may also suggest that UAE researchers fit into Hamel’s (2007) profile of authors seeking international peer recognition and higher citation rates or driven by funders incentivizing publications in journals indexed only by Scopus or WoS. Bearing in mind that these indexing services have been proven to be biased towards English-language publications (Archambault etal. 2006; Van Weijen 2012; Mongeon and Paul-Hus 2015; Somoza-Fernández etal. 2018), it comes as no surprise that the number of Arabic-language journals is quite limited. This low count can also be attributed to Al-Aufi’s (2012) conclusion that the shift to teaching of scientific disciplines in most Arab universities resulted in scholars adopting English as a language of publication. This conviction is shared by Raven (2011) who states that English is the language of instruction at federal universities and the language of business in the UAE. The UAE scholarly publishing landscape is clearly dominated by a few commercial publishers. Bentham spearheads this with a share of around 56% of all online and 27% of all 1721 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 OA journals. The result of this study indicating that 76% of online and 62% of OA UAE journals are published by commercial publishers is in stark contradiction with Bjork’s (2019) findings that 53% of OA journals in Nordic countries were published by universities or affiliated presses and Ilva’s (2018) statement that most Finnish journals are owned by scholarly societies. The fact that UAE HEIs’ share of OA journals stands at a mere 13% further supports conclusions of Austin etal. (2014) and Chapman etal. (2014) that UAE HEIs focus on teaching, to the detriment of research. Nonetheless, the conclusion that all 32 online journals published by universities are OA suggests that funding may have a direct impact on the degree of openness. Data on distribution of journals by discipline reveals predominant interest in the sciences, technology, medicine (STM) disciplines. This may have several possible explanations such as the UAE government’s expressed prioritization of science and technology in the UAE Vision 2021, and the presence of large commercial publishers interested in these disciplines. Furthermore, the observed varying degrees of openness by discipline reveals that apart from health sciences and engineering, primarily dominated by commercial publishers, the UAE has almost achieved total openness across all other disciplines. The dominance of English-language journals and commercial publishers in the UAE may lead us to question the relevance of journal publisher countries. After all, globalization of the scholarly publishing ecosystem has led to the emergence of publishers with journals beyond geographic and linguistic boundaries of their countries of operation. A case in point is Elsevier which, even though based in the Netherlands, publishes many journals which are global in their reach and relevance. Conclusion This study set out to chart the scholarly journal landscape in the UAE with the objective of laying foundations for future in-depth research on scholarly publishing and OA. Our results indicate that DOAJ, ROAD and even regional indexes such as ARCIF and Arab Impact Factor are limited in their coverage of locally published journals. We found that Ulrichsweb lists more OA journals than indexed in DOAJ and ROAD directories, the first go-to services for OA bibliometric analyses. The evidence from this study suggests that the share of OA journals in the UAE is quite significant and that most charge APCs albeit well below international average. This study’s second major finding was that, in line with the rest of the world, the local language (Arabic) has been sidelined by English as the main language of publication regardless if the journal is in print, online or OA. Future studies could explore if this situation is due to publishers pushing for more international exposure, as a result of low supply of manuscripts in Arabic, or as an outcome of other factors such as promotion and appraisal policies. One of the more significant findings to emerge from this study is that the publishing landscape is dominated by a few commercial publishers and not by universities and associated presses as expected. Further research is required to determine why this is the case and what are the incentives for commercial publishers to establish journals in the UAE. The delisting of some UAE journals by DOAJ based on publishers’ suspicious editorial practices warrants also an in-depth study of commercial publishers in the UAE. A study on authors affiliation will also shed some light on whether the journals target local authors or a broader author base.
1722 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 Finally, this study looked at journals’ distribution by discipline. This reveals a predominance of medical sciences and highlights that humanities and social sciences occupy a marginal place. Regardless of discipline, the level of openness is lower among journals owned by the big commercial publishers. This work is only a first step to draw a comprehensive picture of the UAE scholarly publishing in general and OA in particular. Forthcoming studies will look at UAE affiliated authors’ article output, funding and support for OA, institutional attitudes to OA, and OA policies and mandates. Acknowledgements This study was completed as part of a PhD program in Information Studies and Interactive Media at Tampere University, Finland. I gratefully acknowledge the guidance and invaluable advice of my supervisors Associate Prof. J. Tuomas Harviainen of Tampere University, and Associate Prof. Mikael Laakso of Hanken School of Economics. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/. References Abd Al-Mukhtar, A. M. A. (2019). Arab Universities’ scientific periodicals in global citation databases: An analytical study (Arabic) (Unpublished master’s dissertation). Minia University, Egypt. Al-Aufi, A. S. (2012). Domination of English and its impact on the Arabic System of Scholarly Communication. Journal of Arts and Social Sciences [JASS], 3(1), 5–28. https ://doi.org/10.24200 /jass.vol3i ss1pp 5-28. Alpen Capital. (2018). GCC education industry. Alpen capital report. Retrieved from https ://argaa mplus .s3. amazo naws.com/9e55a d53-477f-48f0-b202-2c2f0 3d6a0 3d.pdf. Altbach, P. G. (2013). Advancing the national and global knowledge economy: The role of research universities in developing countries. Studies in Higher Education. https ://doi.org/10.1080/03075 079.2013.77322 2. Arab Impact Factor. Retrieved from http://www.arabi mpact facto r.com/. Archambault, E., Amyot, D., Deschamps, P., Nicol, A., Rebout, L., & Roberge, G. (2013). Proportion of Open Access peer-reviewed papers at the European and world levels 2004–2011. Montreal: ScienceMetrix. Retrieved from http://www.scien ce-metri x.com/pdf/SM_EC_OA_Avail abili ty_2004-2011.pdf. Archambault, É., Amyot, D., Deschamps, P., Nicol, A. F., Provencher, F., Rebout, L., & Roberge, G. (2014). Proportion of open access papers published in peer-reviewed journals at the European and world levels–1996–2013. Montreal: Science-Metrix. Retrieved from http://scien ce-metri x.com/sites /defau lt/files /scien ce-metri x/publi catio ns/d_1.8_sm_ec_dg-rtd_propo rtion _oa_1996-2013_v11p.pdf. Archambault, É., Vignola-Gagne, É., Côtè, G., Larivière, V., & Gingras, Y. (2006). Benchmarking scientific output in the social sciences and humanities: The limits of existing databases. Scientometrics, 68(3), 329–342. Austin, A. E., Chapman, D. W., Farah, S., Wilson, E., & Ridge, N. (2014). Expatriate academic staff in the United Arab Emirates: The nature of their work experiences in higher education institutions. Higher Education, 68(4), 541–557. https ://doi.org/10.1007/s1073 4-014-9727-z. Badran, A. H. (2014). Al Muqtataf journal: A history and scientific role (1867–1952) [Arabic]. Dirāsāt, 36, 131–148. https ://doi.org/10.12816 /00085 02. Banks, D. (2018). Thoughts on publishing the research article over the centuries. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 6(1), 10. https ://doi.org/10.3390/publi catio ns601 0010. Beasley, G. (2016). Article processing charges: A new route to open access? Information Services & Use, 36(3/4), 163–170. https ://doi.org/10.3233/ISU-16081 5. 1723 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 Björk, B.-C. (2017). Journal portals—An important infrastructure for non-commercial scholarly open access publishing. Online Information Review, 41(5), 643–654. https ://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-03-2016-0088. Björk, B.-C. (2019). Open access journal publishing in the Nordic countries. Learned Publishing, 27(2), 273-10. https ://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1231. Björk, B. C., & Solomon, D. (2014). Developing an effective market for open access article processing charges. Retrieved from https ://wellc ome.ac.uk/sites /defau lt/files /devel oping -effec tive-marke t-foropen-acces s-artic le-proce ssing -charg es-mar14 .pdf. Björk, B. C., & Solomon, D. (2014b). How research funders can finance APCs in full OA and hybrid journals. Learned Publishing. https ://doi.org/10.1087/20140 203. Björk, B. C., Welling, P., Laakso, M., Majlender, P., Hedlund, T., etal. (2010). Open access to the scientific journal literature: Situation 2009. PLoS ONE, 5(6), e11273. https ://doi.org/10.1371/journ al.pone.00112 73. Chapman, D., Austin, A., Farah, S., Wilson, E., & Ridge, N. (2014). Academic staff in the UAE: Unsettled journey. Higher Education Policy, 27(1), 131–151. https ://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2013.19. Cianflone, E. (2014). Communicating science in international English: Scholarly journals, publication praxis, language domain loss and benefits. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a La Comunicación, 57, 45–58. https ://doi.org/10.5209/rev_CLAC.2014.v57.44514 . Crawford, W. (2015). Open-access journals: Idealism and opportunism. Library technology reports. Chicago: ALA TechSource. Crawford, W. (2019a). Gold open access 2013–2018: Articles in journals (GOA4). Livermore, CA.: Cites & Insights Books. Retrieved from https ://waltc rawfo rd.name/goa4.pdf. Crawford, W. (2019b). Gold open access by country 2013–2018. Livermore, CA.: Cites & Insights Books. Retrieved from https ://waltc rawfo rd.name/goacn try4.pdf. Curry, M. J., & Lillis, T. (2018). The dangers of English as lingua franca of journals. Retrieved from https ://www.insid ehigh ered.com/views /2018/03/13/domin ation -engli sh-langu age-journ al-publi shing -hurti ng-schol arshi p-many-count ries. DOAJ. (2019b). Myth-busting: All open access journals can be listed inDOAJ. Retrieved from https ://blog. doaj.org/2019/09/17/myth-busti ng-all-open-acces s-journ als-can-be-liste d-in-doaj/. DOAJ. (2019b). Myth busting: DOAJ is not inclusive. Retrieved from https ://blog.doaj.org/2019/07/31/ myth-busti ng-doaj-is-not-inclu sive/. Fukuzawa, N. (2017). Characteristics of papers published in journals: An analysis of open access journals, country of publication, and languages used. Scientometrics, 112(2), 1007–1023. https ://doi. org/10.1007/s1119 2-017-2414-y. Garfield, E. (2006). The history and meaning of the journal impact factor. Journal of the American Medical Association, 295(1), 90–93. Green, T. (2018). We’re still failing to deliver open access and solve the serials crisis: To succeed we need a digital transformation of scholarly communication using internet-era principles. https ://doi. org/10.5281/zenod o.14100 00. Gulf News. (2017). UAE launches National Strategy for Higher Education 2030. Retrieved from https :// gulfn ews.com/uae/educa tion/uae-launc hes-natio nal-strat egy-for-highe r-educa tion-2030-1.20971 91. Hamel, R. E. (2007). The dominance of English in the international scientific periodical literature and the future of language use in science. AILA Review, 20(1), 53–71. https ://doi.org/10.1075/aila.20.06ham . Hanafi, S. (2011). University systems in the Arab east: Publish globally and perish locally vs publish locally and perish globally. Current Sociology, 59(3), 291–309. https ://doi.org/10.1177/00113 92111 40078 2. Ilva, J. (2018). Looking for commitment: Finnish open access journals, infrastructure and funding. Insights—The UKSG Journal, 31(25), 1–9. https ://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.414. Jabriyah, H., Harasi, N., & Kelou, S. M. (2017). Peer-reviewed scholarly journals in Oman: Their reality and received support [Arabic]. Iraqi Journal of Information Science, 18(1–2), 1–27. Johnson, R., Watkinson, A. & Mabe, M. (2018). The STM Report: An overview of scientific and scholarly publishing, 5th Edition. https ://www.stm-assoc .org/2018_10_04_STM_Repor t_2018.pdf. Journals published by Arab research community set to benefit from greater global visibility. (2019, March 14). Retrieved from https ://www.elsev ier.com/about /press -relea ses/scien ce-and-techn ology /journ alspubli shed-by-arab-resea rch-commu nity-set-to-benefi t-from-great er-globa l-visib ility . Kabil, T. (2015). Arab Impact Factor [Arabic]. Retrieved from http://arsco .org/artic le-detai l-596-8-0. Kamal, K. (2018). Education in the United Arab Emirates. Retrieved from https ://wenr.wes.org/2018/08/ educa tion-in-the-unite d-arab-emira tes. Khalifa, M. (2017). Evaluation of Arab scientific journals according the international criteria of citations databases and journals directories: Library and information science journals as a model [Arabic]. Cybrarians Journal, (48). Retrieved from http://www.journ al.cybra rians .org/image s/048/Cybra rians _Journ al_048_Paper s_05.pdf.
1722 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 Finally, this study looked at journals’ distribution by discipline. This reveals a predominance of medical sciences and highlights that humanities and social sciences occupy a marginal place. Regardless of discipline, the level of openness is lower among journals owned by the big commercial publishers. This work is only a first step to draw a comprehensive picture of the UAE scholarly publishing in general and OA in particular. Forthcoming studies will look at UAE affiliated authors’ article output, funding and support for OA, institutional attitudes to OA, and OA policies and mandates. Acknowledgements This study was completed as part of a PhD program in Information Studies and Interactive Media at Tampere University, Finland. I gratefully acknowledge the guidance and invaluable advice of my supervisors Associate Prof. J. Tuomas Harviainen of Tampere University, and Associate Prof. Mikael Laakso of Hanken School of Economics. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/. References Abd Al-Mukhtar, A. M. A. (2019). Arab Universities’ scientific periodicals in global citation databases: An analytical study (Arabic) (Unpublished master’s dissertation). Minia University, Egypt. Al-Aufi, A. S. (2012). Domination of English and its impact on the Arabic System of Scholarly Communication. Journal of Arts and Social Sciences [JASS], 3(1), 5–28. https ://doi.org/10.24200 /jass.vol3i ss1pp 5-28. Alpen Capital. (2018). GCC education industry. Alpen capital report. Retrieved from https ://argaa mplus .s3. amazo naws.com/9e55a d53-477f-48f0-b202-2c2f0 3d6a0 3d.pdf. Altbach, P. G. (2013). Advancing the national and global knowledge economy: The role of research universities in developing countries. Studies in Higher Education. https ://doi.org/10.1080/03075 079.2013.77322 2. Arab Impact Factor. Retrieved from http://www.arabi mpact facto r.com/. Archambault, E., Amyot, D., Deschamps, P., Nicol, A., Rebout, L., & Roberge, G. (2013). Proportion of Open Access peer-reviewed papers at the European and world levels 2004–2011. Montreal: ScienceMetrix. Retrieved from http://www.scien ce-metri x.com/pdf/SM_EC_OA_Avail abili ty_2004-2011.pdf. Archambault, É., Amyot, D., Deschamps, P., Nicol, A. F., Provencher, F., Rebout, L., & Roberge, G. (2014). Proportion of open access papers published in peer-reviewed journals at the European and world levels–1996–2013. Montreal: Science-Metrix. Retrieved from http://scien ce-metri x.com/sites /defau lt/files /scien ce-metri x/publi catio ns/d_1.8_sm_ec_dg-rtd_propo rtion _oa_1996-2013_v11p.pdf. Archambault, É., Vignola-Gagne, É., Côtè, G., Larivière, V., & Gingras, Y. (2006). Benchmarking scientific output in the social sciences and humanities: The limits of existing databases. Scientometrics, 68(3), 329–342. Austin, A. E., Chapman, D. W., Farah, S., Wilson, E., & Ridge, N. (2014). Expatriate academic staff in the United Arab Emirates: The nature of their work experiences in higher education institutions. Higher Education, 68(4), 541–557. https ://doi.org/10.1007/s1073 4-014-9727-z. Badran, A. H. (2014). Al Muqtataf journal: A history and scientific role (1867–1952) [Arabic]. Dirāsāt, 36, 131–148. https ://doi.org/10.12816 /00085 02. Banks, D. (2018). Thoughts on publishing the research article over the centuries. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 6(1), 10. https ://doi.org/10.3390/publi catio ns601 0010. Beasley, G. (2016). Article processing charges: A new route to open access? Information Services & Use, 36(3/4), 163–170. https ://doi.org/10.3233/ISU-16081 5. 1723 Scientometrics (2020) 122:1707–1725 1 3 Björk, B.-C. (2017). Journal portals—An important infrastructure for non-commercial scholarly open access publishing. Online Information Review, 41(5), 643–654. https ://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-03-2016-0088. Björk, B.-C. (2019). Open access journal publishing in the Nordic countries. Learned Publishing, 27(2), 273-10. https ://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1231. Björk, B. C., & Solomon, D. (2014). Developing an effective market for open access article processing charges. Retrieved from https ://wellc ome.ac.uk/sites /defau lt/files /devel oping -effec tive-marke t-foropen-acces s-artic le-proce ssing -charg es-mar14 .pdf. Björk, B. C., & Solomon, D. (2014b). How research funders can finance APCs in full OA and hybrid journals. Learned Publishing. https ://doi.org/10.1087/20140 203. Björk, B. C., Welling, P., Laakso, M., Majlender, P., Hedlund, T., etal. (2010). Open access to the scientific journal literature: Situation 2009. PLoS ONE, 5(6), e11273. https ://doi.org/10.1371/journ al.pone.00112 73. Chapman, D., Austin, A., Farah, S., Wilson, E., & Ridge, N. (2014). Academic staff in the UAE: Unsettled journey. Higher Education Policy, 27(1), 131–151. https ://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2013.19. Cianflone, E. (2014). Communicating science in international English: Scholarly journals, publication praxis, language domain loss and benefits. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a La Comunicación, 57, 45–58. https ://doi.org/10.5209/rev_CLAC.2014.v57.44514 . Crawford, W. (2015). Open-access journals: Idealism and opportunism. Library technology reports. Chicago: ALA TechSource. Crawford, W. (2019a). Gold open access 2013–2018: Articles in journals (GOA4). Livermore, CA.: Cites & Insights Books. Retrieved from https ://waltc rawfo rd.name/goa4.pdf. Crawford, W. (2019b). Gold open access by country 2013–2018. Livermore, CA.: Cites & Insights Books. Retrieved from https ://waltc rawfo rd.name/goacn try4.pdf. Curry, M. J., & Lillis, T. (2018). The dangers of English as lingua franca of journals. Retrieved from https ://www.insid ehigh ered.com/views /2018/03/13/domin ation -engli sh-langu age-journ al-publi shing -hurti ng-schol arshi p-many-count ries. DOAJ. (2019b). Myth-busting: All open access journals can be listed inDOAJ. Retrieved from https ://blog. doaj.org/2019/09/17/myth-busti ng-all-open-acces s-journ als-can-be-liste d-in-doaj/. DOAJ. (2019b). Myth busting: DOAJ is not inclusive. Retrieved from https ://blog.doaj.org/2019/07/31/ myth-busti ng-doaj-is-not-inclu sive/. Fukuzawa, N. (2017). Characteristics of papers published in journals: An analysis of open access journals, country of publication, and languages used. Scientometrics, 112(2), 1007–1023. https ://doi. org/10.1007/s1119 2-017-2414-y. Garfield, E. (2006). The history and meaning of the journal impact factor. Journal of the American Medical Association, 295(1), 90–93. Green, T. (2018). We’re still failing to deliver open access and solve the serials crisis: To succeed we need a digital transformation of scholarly communication using internet-era principles. https ://doi. org/10.5281/zenod o.14100 00. Gulf News. (2017). UAE launches National Strategy for Higher Education 2030. Retrieved from https :// gulfn ews.com/uae/educa tion/uae-launc hes-natio nal-strat egy-for-highe r-educa tion-2030-1.20971 91. Hamel, R. E. (2007). The dominance of English in the international scientific periodical literature and the future of language use in science. AILA Review, 20(1), 53–71. https ://doi.org/10.1075/aila.20.06ham . Hanafi, S. (2011). University systems in the Arab east: Publish globally and perish locally vs publish locally and perish globally. Current Sociology, 59(3), 291–309. https ://doi.org/10.1177/00113 92111 40078 2. Ilva, J. (2018). Looking for commitment: Finnish open access journals, infrastructure and funding. Insights—The UKSG Journal, 31(25), 1–9. https ://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.414. Jabriyah, H., Harasi, N., & Kelou, S. M. (2017). Peer-reviewed scholarly journals in Oman: Their reality and received support [Arabic]. Iraqi Journal of Information Science, 18(1–2), 1–27. Johnson, R., Watkinson, A. & Mabe, M. (2018). The STM Report: An overview of scientific and scholarly publishing, 5th Edition. https ://www.stm-assoc .org/2018_10_04_STM_Repor t_2018.pdf. Journals published by Arab research community set to benefit from greater global visibility. (2019, March 14). Retrieved from https ://www.elsev ier.com/about /press -relea ses/scien ce-and-techn ology /journ alspubli shed-by-arab-resea rch-commu nity-set-to-benefi t-from-great er-globa l-visib ility . Kabil, T. (2015). Arab Impact Factor [Arabic]. Retrieved from http://arsco .org/artic le-detai l-596-8-0. Kamal, K. (2018). Education in the United Arab Emirates. Retrieved from https ://wenr.wes.org/2018/08/ educa tion-in-the-unite d-arab-emira tes. Khalifa, M. (2017). Evaluation of Arab scientific journals according the international criteria of citations databases and journals directories: Library and information science journals as a model [Arabic]. Cybrarians Journal, (48). Retrieved from http://www.journ al.cybra rians .org/image s/048/Cybra rians _Journ al_048_Paper s_05.pdf.
1554 Scientometrics (2020) 124:1553–1577 1 3 Introduction Around a decade ago, Ofek (2011) stated that “Today...the spirit of science in the Muslim world is as dry as the desert”. Anecdotal statements such as this referring to the low scientific research and publication output in the UAE are often made within academia and beyond as people believe that the heydays of Arab civilization and scientific prosperity are long gone. There is, however, increasing evidence that scientific research is gaining strength in the UAE. The steady advancement of the UAE in international rankings and indexes such as QS World University Rankings and Global Knowledge Index, as well as promising UAE initiatives that aim to boost scientific research output are a testament to this change (Quacquarelli Symonds Limited, 2019; Times Higher Education 2019). As higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UAE increasingly compete with their international counterparts, engagement and involvement in scholarly communication initiatives such as open access (OA) seems inevitable. The UAE makes for an interesting context since research is growing and being shaped nationally at a time when possibilities for OA have become available. OA, where access to research articles or monographs is provided online for free, has been seen by some as a path to break free of the increasingly expensive current readerpays or double-dipping models while also unlocking access to research publications for an unlimited audience (King and Alvarado-Albertorio 2008). At the detailed level, many mechanisms could lead to publications becoming available OA, but traditionally a distinction between two different OA routes is made. Gold OA, where the publication is made OA on the web directly by the publisher, often through the payment of an article processing charge (APC) (Esposito 2016). In Green OA, however, free access to the publication (often in accepted manuscript format) is provided through a repository or the author’s or institutional website. As this model has the potential to achieve OA targets, researchers’ attitude toward the use of APCs to advance OA remains ambivalent. Universities around the world have seen mounting pressure from national and international science policy, and to an increasing degree research funders, to provide open and equitable access to research outputs. Reactions to these demands are often framed in the form of OA initiatives and policies. Recent data from the Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies (ROARMAP) and SHERPA/Juliet reveal a high concentration of OA policies in Europe and the Americas (ROARMAP 2020; JISC 2020). The year 2012 marked the beginning of some of the strongest OA policies in the UK such as the Finch Report, Wellcome Trust reinforced OA policy, and RCUK new OA policy (Rumsey 2017). This culminated in the establishment of the Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) and the upcoming REF 2021. Similar efforts are led by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) in the USA. The recently enacted OPEN Government Data Act (S. 760 / H.R. 1770) and the related upcoming rumored revision of the US government OA policy aim to push towards immediate OA to all public-funded research. As institutional and even national efforts are challenged to create radical change in scholarly publishing that transcends borders, some multi-institutional and multi-national initiatives have started to emerge. These include, among others, the European Union’s H2020 Programme, Plan S, OA2020, and AmeliCA. The H2020 Programme is the European Union’s main mechanism for distributing research funding which stipulates that “each beneficiary must ensure open access to all peer-reviewed scientific publications” (European Commission …, 2017, p. 5). OA2020 is another initially European but currently global initiative that aims to boost the transformation of existing paywalled journals to OA with 1555 Scientometrics (2020) 124:1553–1577 1 3 minimal additional cost (Max Planck Digital Library 2020). On the other side of the Atlantic, the Open Knowledge for Latin America and the Global South started the AmeliCA initiative in 2018 with the objective of putting academia back in charge of scholarly publishing through diamond open access, i.e. journals that are free for both authors and readers (AmeliCA 2020). Plan S, launched by a coalition of research funders (cOAlition S), is an international initiative that aims to make all research funded by cOAlition S funders available as immediate OA by 2021. OA transcends the initial motivator of public good to other objectives such as boosting research impact, increasing institutional visibility, and guaranteeing long-term costeffective access to research. Mueller-Langer etal. (2020) have demonstrated that providing OA to journals boosts research output by up to 29.6%. There are increasing indicators that HEIs in the UAE are striving to achieve all or some of these goals. However, a scan of existing literature reveals limited research on OA in the UAE. Tennant etal. (2016) state that “At the current stage, Open Access has become such a global issue that it is critical for all involved in scholarly publishing, including policymakers, publishers, research funders, governments, learned societies, librarians, and academic communities, to be wellinformed on the history, benefits, and pitfalls of Open Access.” By studying scholarly publishing and OA in the UAE, this study will illuminate the economic, social, ethical and academic impacts of OA and inform future publishing policies and strategies development and implementation. The objective of this study is to assess current awareness, support, policies, and practices related to scholarly journal publishing among UAE HEIs, particularly in relation to OA publishing. In doing so, it seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate on the global changes in scholarly publishing in general and OA in particular. Furthermore, it tries to discover what HEIs in the UAE are doing in relation to OA, including an investigation of existing OA policies and funding options available to authors to publish OA. It will also examine how HEIs in the UAE assess publications and publication activity of researchers in the context of promotion and performance appraisals of faculty. We are in particular interested in the organizational level rather than the behaviour and attitudes of individual researchers. HEIs interface more directly with national science policy, whereas individuals can be assumed to be more concerned with more immediate and practical aspects of their work. Organisations are also not mobile, with a large part of the research conducting staff in the UAE being expats, we are concerned with better understanding the organisations who plan to remain actors in the landscape for the long term. The level of domain expertise concerning publishing needed to reflect upon the themes in focus also support the notion of gathering insights from experts being able to answer on behalf of organisations. Literature review Scientific research environment intheUAE The UAE has seen a progressive increase in scientific research and scholarly publishing output in recent years as attested by different rankings and indexes. The Global Knowledge Index 2018 (UNDP & MBRF, 2018) and Arab Knowledge Index 2016 (UNDP & MBRF 2016) have both put the UAE ahead of all other Arab countries in several categories. According to Nature Index 2018 (Springer Nature 2018), the UAE is second
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