Project description:Hybrid Open Access is an intermediate form of OA, where authors pay scholarly publishers to make articles freely accessible within journals, in which reading the content otherwise requires a subscription or pay-per-view. Major scholarly publishers have in recent years started providing the hybrid option for the vast majority of their journals. Since the uptake usually has been low per journal and scattered over thousands of journals, it has been very difficult to obtain an overview of how common hybrid articles are. This study, using the results of earlier studies as well as a variety of methods, measures the evolution of hybrid OA over time. The number of journals offering the hybrid option has increased from around 2,000 in 2009 to almost 10,000 in 2016. The number of individual articles has in the same period grown from an estimated 8,000 in 2009 to 45,000 in 2016. The growth in article numbers has clearly increased since 2014, after some major research funders in Europe started to introduce new centralized payment schemes for the article processing charges (APCs).
Project description:BackgroundThe use of minimally invasive approaches is scarce in open aortic arch repair because of its perceived high operative risk and technical difficulty.MethodsThis study enrolled 59 consecutive patients (aged 58.2±13.2 years) undergoing elective arch replacement either through upper hemi-sternotomy (n=58) or mini-thoracotomy (n=1) between 2015 and 2020. Of these, 44 underwent hemiarch replacement and 15 underwent total arch replacement. Moderate hypothermic circulatory arrest was used for all patients while antegrade cerebral perfusion was selectively used for total arch repair. For more efficient distal aortic anastomosis in limited spaces, inverted graft anastomosis was utilized whenever possible.ResultsHemi-sternotomy involved upper sternal separation down to the second, third, and fourth intercostal spaces in 1 (1.7%), 30 (50.8%), and 27 (45.8%) patients, respectively. Concomitant cardiac procedures included root replacement in 19 patients (32.2%) and aortic valve replacement in 21 patients (35.6%). Circulatory arrest, cardiac ischemic, cardiopulmonary bypass, and total procedural times were 8.9±3.4, 91.1±31.1, 114.6±46.2, and 250.3±79.5 min, respectively for total arch repair, and 25.0±12.1, 72.3±16.6, 106.0±16.9, and 249.1±41.7 min, respectively for hemiarch repair. Conversion to full-sternotomy was required in 1 patient (1.7%) due to bleeding. There was one case of mortality (1.7%) attributable to low-cardiac output syndrome following hemiarch repair concomitantly with Bentall procedure. Major complications included requirement for mechanical support in 1 (1.7%), temporary neurologic deficit in 1 (1.7%), newly initiated dialysis in 3 (5.1%), and re-exploration due to bleeding in 2 (3.4%).ConclusionsMini-access open arch repair is technically feasible and achieved excellent early outcomes.
Project description:BackgroundCardiotocography (CTG) is a monitoring of fetal heart rate and uterine contractions. Since 1960 it is routinely used by obstetricians to assess fetal well-being. Many attempts to introduce methods of automatic signal processing and evaluation have appeared during the last 20 years, however still no significant progress similar to that in the domain of adult heart rate variability, where open access databases are available (e.g. MIT-BIH), is visible. Based on a thorough review of the relevant publications, presented in this paper, the shortcomings of the current state are obvious. A lack of common ground for clinicians and technicians in the field hinders clinically usable progress. Our open access database of digital intrapartum cardiotocographic recordings aims to change that.DescriptionThe intrapartum CTG database consists in total of 552 intrapartum recordings, which were acquired between April 2010 and August 2012 at the obstetrics ward of the University Hospital in Brno, Czech Republic. All recordings were stored in electronic form in the OB TraceVue®;system. The recordings were selected from 9164 intrapartum recordings with clinical as well as technical considerations in mind. All recordings are at most 90 minutes long and start a maximum of 90 minutes before delivery. The time relation of CTG to delivery is known as well as the length of the second stage of labor which does not exceed 30 minutes. The majority of recordings (all but 46 cesarean sections) is - on purpose - from vaginal deliveries. All recordings have available biochemical markers as well as some more general clinical features. Full description of the database and reasoning behind selection of the parameters is presented in the paper.ConclusionA new open-access CTG database is introduced which should give the research community common ground for comparison of results on reasonably large database. We anticipate that after reading the paper, the reader will understand the context of the field from clinical and technical perspectives which will enable him/her to use the database and also understand its limitations.
Project description:Conservation science is a crisis discipline in which the results of scientific enquiry must be made available quickly to those implementing management. We assessed the extent to which scientific research published since the year 2000 in 20 conservation science journals is publicly available. Of the 19,207 papers published, 1,667 (8.68%) are freely downloadable from an official repository. Moreover, only 938 papers (4.88%) meet the standard definition of open access in which material can be freely reused providing attribution to the authors is given. This compares poorly with a comparable set of 20 evolutionary biology journals, where 31.93% of papers are freely downloadable and 7.49% are open access. Seventeen of the 20 conservation journals offer an open access option, but fewer than 5% of the papers are available through open access. The cost of accessing the full body of conservation science runs into tens of thousands of dollars per year for institutional subscribers, and many conservation practitioners cannot access pay-per-view science through their workplace. However, important initiatives such as Research4Life are making science available to organizations in developing countries. We urge authors of conservation science to pay for open access on a per-article basis or to choose publication in open access journals, taking care to ensure the license allows reuse for any purpose providing attribution is given. Currently, it would cost $51 million to make all conservation science published since 2000 freely available by paying the open access fees currently levied to authors. Publishers of conservation journals might consider more cost effective models for open access and conservation-oriented organizations running journals could consider a broader range of options for open access to nonmembers such as sponsorship of open access via membership fees.
Project description:The implementation of policies promoting the adoption of an open science (OS) culture must be accompanied by indicators that allow monitoring the uptake of such policies and their potential effects on research publishing and sharing practices. This study presents indicators of open access (OA) at the institutional level for universities worldwide. By combining data from Web of Science, Unpaywall and the Leiden Ranking disambiguation of institutions, we track OA coverage of universities' output for 963 institutions. This paper presents the methodological challenges, conceptual discrepancies and limitations and discusses further steps needed to move forward the discussion on fostering OA and OS practices and policies.
Project description:The essential role of journals as registries of scientific activity in all areas of knowledge justifies concern about their ownership and type of access. The purpose of this research is to analyze the main characteristics of publishers with journals that have received the DOAJ Seal. The specific objectives are a) to identify publishers and journals registered with the DOAJ Seal; b) to characterize those publishers; and c) to analyze their article processing fees. The research method involved the use of the DOAJ database, the Seal option and the following indicators: publisher, title, country, number of articles, knowledge area, article processing charges in USD, time for publication in weeks, and year of indexing in DOAJ. The results reveal a fast-rising oligopoly, dominated by Springer with 35% of the titles and PLOS with more than 20% of the articles. We've identified three models of expansion: a) a few titles with hundreds of articles; b) a high number of titles with a mix of big and small journals; and c) a high number of titles with medium-size journals. We identify a high number of titles without APCs (27%) in all areas while medicine was found to be the most expensive area. Commercial publishers clearly exercise control over the scope of journals and the creation of new titles, according to the interests of their companies, which are not necessarily the same as those of the scientific community or of society in general.
Project description:Observational and experimental studies of rodent voiding behaviors have greatly contributed to our understanding of lower urinary tract function including the complex social, environmental, and internal stimuli that affect voiding in health and models of disease. Void spot assays (VSA), cystometry (awake or anesthetized), and uroflowmetry are techniques commonly used in rodent models to assess voiding. Uroflowmetry is non-invasive and can be performed multiple times in the same freely moving animals and can be used to generate synchronized video corresponding to each void to characterize micturition patterns (e.g., droplets versus solid stream). However, approaches to evaluate uroflowmetry in rodent models vary widely across laboratories. Most importantly, an open access software to run these tests is not freely available (although complete systems are commercially available), limiting use of this important assay. We developed the Void Sorcerer, an uroflowmetry system for mice for reliable determination of frequency, voided volume, voiding duration, interval times between micturitions, and flow rate. This report provides a detailed description of how to build this system and includes open access software for developing uroflowmetry capability in their laboratories and improve upon it in a cost-effective manner. Our goals are to improve access, increase reproducibility among laboratories, and facilitate standardizing testing procedures.