[U-10] Open Access Journals of Japan and Immediate Open Access Mandate

[U10-01] Trends in Open Access, Perceptions in Astronomy, and the Future

★Invited Papers

*Kazuki Ide^1,2, Harufumi Tamazawa³ (1.Center for Infectious Disease Education and Research (CiDER), The University of Osaka, 2.Research Center on Ethical, Legal and Social Issues, The University of Osaka, 3.Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo)

Keywords:Open Access, Open Science, Scholarly Publishing, Scholarly Communication

As the mandate for” immediate open and public access” continues to advance, it has become increasingly important to acquire basic knowledge about academic journals and to reconsider how we approach open access. This lecture aims to introduce domestic and international trends related to open access, share the results of a questionnaire survey conducted with The Astronomical Society of Japan (ASJ), and engage in in-depth discussions with other speakers and participants. To approach the topic of open access, the lecture will first provide an overview without limiting the scope to any specific field. It will cover the history of the digitization of academic journals, publication formats, trends in the number of published papers and the proportion of open access, related challenges, and policy developments. Based on this overview, the results of the survey targeting the ASJ will be shared. The survey was conducted from July to August 2024. It consisted of up to 22 questions (depending on branching) covering respondent background information, open access, and preprints. The survey was distributed via the TENmongaku NETwork mailing list (TENNET; 2,478 registered members as of July 2024), and the platform Questant (Macromill, Inc.) was used for administration. Responses were obtained from 246 individuals. By age group, 37 to 60 respondents were represented across age groups (20s to over 60s, 15.0–24.4%). Regarding affiliation, 233 respondents (94.7%) were affiliated with universities, other higher education institutions, or research organizations. 221 respondents (93.2%) had experience publishing peer-reviewed articles in academic journals. While 223 respondents (94.1%) expressed a desire to publish articles through open access, only 175 respondents (73.8%) had prior experience, indicating a gap between aspiration and actual experience. As for preprints, 235 respondents (99.2%) reported knowing the term, but 146 respondents (62.1%) indicated that preprints include preprints include both manuscripts that have not undergone peer review and “manuscripts accepted after peer review but not yet typeset or published.” This highlights the fact that the definition of "preprints" varies across disciplines (e.g., Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), an international committee on scholarly research and its publication, defines preprints as manuscripts that “pre-peer reviewed articles”). The lecture will introduce the actual use of preprints based on the survey results. Details of the free-response section will be presented in a separate talk by Dr. Tamazawa during the same session. Based on these findings, as well as a survey conducted with The Molecular Biology Society of Japan (Ide K, Nakayama J. Genes Cells. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1111/gtc.13015), we aim to collaboratively consider the way forward.