Sorbonne Université, Paris, France, is a key site for John Willinsky's historical work on scholarship and intellectual property. Just as there are roads, cities, people, and infrastructure that connect life here, the same is true of the research that is helping make scholarly publishing a global public good. John took the shot after giving a copyright talk to librarians from leading European libraries. From John Willinsky on his Amend Copyright Tour campaign. Sorbonne Université, Paris, France, 2022. For more details on the campaign: https://pkp.sfu.ca/2022/10/17/the-pkp-amend-copyright-tour-2022/

Research

PKP began as a research initiative in which faculty and students investigated ways of improving public access to scholarly publications, with the software development following shortly thereafter, as the resulting studies of open science, related economic and legal models, metadata, social media, and historical precedents have continued to inform the building of innovative open source platforms and tools.

Metadata for Everyone

Juan Pablo Alperin, Mike Nason, and Marco Tullney
Crossref
Identifying and measuring metadata quality issues across cultures, link.
2022-
Shi, J., Nason, M., Tullney, M. & Alperin, J.P. (2023). Identifying Metadata quality issues across cultures. Preprint.
Metadata ensures accurate identification and citation of a work. It can improve discoverability, access, dissemination, preservation, and, arguably, research impact. It can help disambiguate similar works. The work outlined in this proposal will serve to “prove” that metadata quality, consistency and completeness impact individuals and communities.

OJS Global Usage Tracking

Saurabh KhannaJon BallJuan Pablo AlperinJohn Willinsky
Stanford University Graduate School of Education
2020-
Khanna, S., Ball, J., Alperin, J. P., & Willinsky, J. (2022). Recalibrating the scope of scholarly publishing: A modest step in a vast decolonization process. Quantitative Science Studies; 3 (4): 912–930. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00228. The preprint was published at SciELO Preprints.
Based on 2020 beacon data from instances of OJS, this this study identifies the countries (156), languages (60), and disciplines (roughly all) of some 25K journals using the software, along with their very different indexing levels in major scholarly indexes and low presence on predatory journal lists.
This bar graph snip shows some of the information about OJS usage but the link to the full graph and paper is to the left of this image.

Open Science in a Post-Pandemic World

Juan Pablo Alperin, Germana Barata, Isabella Peters, Stephen Pinfield, Alice Fleerackers
Trans-Atlantic Platform Recovery, Renewal and Resilience in a Post-Pandemic World Award—which includes contributions from Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) in Canada, São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) in Brazil, Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the UK, and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in Germany.
2022-
The COVID-19 pandemic served to challenge the way we carry out, communicate, and engage with science. To better understand the long-term impacts of this shift for a more resilient and informed society, this transnational team will assess interplay between researchers, policymakers, science communicators, and the public.
Bear statues painted in culturally diverse ways illustrate the diversity, inclusion, and openness of this location where a sprint was held. Photograph was taken by a PKP staff Jason Nugent.

Journal Integrity Initiative (JII)

Juan Alperin, Lucia Cespedes, Natascha Chtena, Alice Fleerackers, Lauren Maggio, Emily Rose Southerton, Laura Moorhead, Daniel Pimentel, and John Willinsky
Private Donor, Stanford University
The 5-Point Journal Integrity Initiative: A New Standard for Public Access to Research, link.
2021-
Willinsky, J. & Pimentel, D. (2023). The Publication Facts Label: Ascertaining a publication’s adherence to scholarly standards, SciELO Preprints, link.
With the global distribution of open access publishing resulting in increasing public availability of research, this project seeks to advance the public’s and the professions’ ability to assess the trustworthiness of the research in its compliance with scholar publishing standards.
A proposal of what the publication facts might look like in a snapshot, taken from the output that is listed to the left of this image.

Sharing Health Research

Juan Pablo Alperin, Alice Fleerackers, Michelle Riedlinger, Lauren Maggio, Laura Moorhead, Rukhsana Ahmed
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)
2020
Sharing Health Research examines the on-going transformations in the online media landscape, with a focus on how they contribute to the wider communication and uptake of health research. It examines how health information circulates online, and provides insight into the sharing of reliable health information.
An infographic illustrating a preprint paper at the top, a bunch of likes and loves, technology like cell phones, engagements like comments and reactions, then finally global reactions

Copyright Reform

John Willinsky
Arcadia Fund
2019-
Willinsky argues in his new (open access) book that copyright is not doing as much as it could to help move scholarly publishing to open access. The book proposes a legal remedy for promoting sustainable, immediate, and universal open access for research publications known as statutory licensing to ensure that publishers are fairly compensated for providing immediate open access by the institutional users and funders of these publications.
The book cover of the book 'Copyright's Broken Promise'

Science reported in the News

Demonstrates how scholars can use Altmetric news mention data as a relatively reliable source to identify research mentions.

Open Data for Development

A stewardship approach to thinking about data governance can support social processes that empower development and alter relations of power.

Open science in biomedicine

Core set of 19 open science practices identified by 80 participants in the study will form the foundation for institutional dashboards.

Payments for course readings

Analyses readings assigned to students, with bearing on a Supreme Court case, while proposing a three-step method for setting fees.

Science reported in the News

Demonstrates how scholars can use Altmetric news mention data as a relatively reliable source to identify research mentions.

Open Data for Development

A stewardship approach to thinking about data governance can support social processes that empower development and alter relations of power.

Open science in biomedicine

Core set of 19 open science practices identified by 80 participants in the study will form the foundation for institutional dashboards.

Payments for course readings

Analyses readings assigned to students, with bearing on a Supreme Court case, while proposing a three-step method for setting fees.

Research Resources

In its commitment to open science, PKP is making available the data it collects annually, with the publishing platform operator’s consent, from the publishing software beacon, which includes publishing and indexing information from OJS, OMP, and OPS installations. Data is made available under a CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication.

  • Khanna, S., Raoni, J., Smecher, A., Alperin, J.P., Ball, J., Willinsky, J. (2022). Details of publications using software by the Public Knowledge Project, V3. Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OCZNVY
  • Khanna, S., Raoni, J., Smecher, A., Alperin, J.P., Ball, J. (2021). Details of publications using software by the Public Knowledge Project, V1. Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OCZNVY


This data has been used to plot the usage of OJS:

  1. Animated map showing growth by country here (1991-2021).
  2. Map of OJS Version 2 and OJS Version 3 usage here (2020).
  3. Figures representing usage by time, country, number of articles here (2020).