Toward the Global Integration and Public Utility of Open Science: A Publication Facts Label
- 2025-09-16 14:00
- 14:30
- Room: 81/R-003B - Science Gateway Auditorium B
- Speaker:
- John Willinsky, , John Willinsky is Khosla Family Professor Emeritus, Stanford University and founder of the Public Knowledge Project, developer of Open Journal Systems, the most widely used journal publishing platform in the world. He is the author of a dozen books, most recently the open access Copyright's Broken Promise: How to Restore the Law's Ability to Promote the Progress of Science (MIT Press, 2023), and over 100 articles. , Stanford University, https://www.stanford.edu/
The emergence of a digitally enabled Open Science has coincided with the vast growth of high education in the Global South, leading to a vast expansion of research and publishing activity, as attested to, for example, by the 55,000 journals (almost entirely open, without fees for readers or authors) using the journal publishing platform Open Journal Systems (OJS) launched in 2002. The rate and scale of this expansion of research may well lead to a great many missed opportunities in utilizing relevant research findings, vital to the advancement of science, whether through shortfalls in indexing or mistrust of unfamiliar sources. On the principle that we not only to open science but must find ways of supporting researcher and public use of this open science activity, I present an experiment in developing a credible standardized label for each research publication that precisely summarizes its adherence to scholarly publishing standards in ways designed to inform readers about those standards. The resulting “Publication Facts Label,” lists eleven data points, from number of reviewers to days to publication, all securely drawn from the journal publishing platform. Intended for industry-wide use, it is currently being tested with journals using OJS, with this presentation reviewing the label’s design for researchers and public, its integrity and trust features, the implementation plan, as well, as its review by Nature readers, open access publishers, school students, and others, while offering attendees ways of seeing the label in action and, if so inclined, supporting its adoption.