(30 Dec 2022) Goodbye to 2022 and hello to 2023; let’s look at what stories at LibraryLearningSpace.com (LLS) attracted our readers the most in 2022.
The statistics show that the reader’s interest lies in specific topics that make more sense by looking at a higher level. But feel free to go directly to the listing at the end of the article.
Prepare for OA
Over 2022, open science policies in the US (OSTP, NIH) and Australia (NHMRC) and the number of new transformative agreements in the APAC region have taken off. More readers were keen to learn more and visited “Toolkits to foster Open Access (OA) agreements.” They are practical guidelines for negotiating an OA agreement between the library consortium and publishers. Without surprise, this page became the most visited page regarding OA and the fourth most visited page.
Focus on Research Support
The emphasis on research impact has flipped a new page for research assessment, but citation indicators still have a complementary role. The releases and updates on CiteScore, JIF, and the new ISI indicator “Collaborative CNCI” have attracted our readers to the top 10, top 5, and top 2, respectively.
Our top 8 is Hijacked Journal Checker from Retraction Watch, addressing the global concern of paper submission to the wrong journals. The journal list is expanding; it has 162 journals and is growing.
News on Pirate Sites attracts the most attention
Three posts among our top 10 are regarding pirate sites. While Sci-Hub remains the most known source for “free” scholarly publications, interestingly, its audiences are not necessarily from poorer economics. Another site, Zlibrary, “a shadow library project for file-sharing access to scholarly journal articles, academic texts, and general-interest books,” according to Wikipedia, has been blocked by US and Indian officials. Yet we observed many US readers were reading about a possible alternative to Zlibrary. It is not our intention to encourage the illegal share of academic content. Still, it shows the pressing need for students to access quality research content without the paywall barrier, regardless of geographical location or economic status.
In addition to the three topics, other news that caught our reader’s eye includes the Call for papers for the 18th Congress of Southeast Asian Librarians (CONSAL XVIII) and the debate on whether academic journals should ban Russian researchers from publishing manuscripts. The voice continues since the crisis is in no way ending, but we don’t see significant changes in the number of Russian publications from primary indexing services.
These conclude our top ten posts of 2022. We are looking forward to 2023 with your continuous support of LLS!
List of the top 10 posts on LLS in 2022
#10 CiteScore 2021 values are now available in Scopus
#9 Sci-Hub downloads show countries where the pirate paper site is most used
#8 Retraction Watch introduces Hijacked Journal Checker
#7 ZLibrary sites blocked in India following the court order
#6 Few journals heed calls to boycott Russian papers
#5 AHCI and ESCI journals will have Journal Impact Factors in JCR 2023 release
#4 Toolkit to foster Open Access agreements
#3 Call for paper: CONSAL Conference 2022
#2 ISI proposes new citation credit indicator ‘Collaborative CNCI’
#1 “Anna’s Archive” opens the door to Z-Library and other pirate libraries
