Open Access Publishing - lessons learned from BOBCATSSS 2022 and recommendations for the future -

Poster Presentation at BOBCATSSS 2023

Abstract:

As co-organisers of BOBCATTTS 2022 in Hungary and responsible for the Book of Abstracts, we have given a lot of thought to the publication of abstracts and conference papers within our project group. How can we make the Book of Abstracts more easily and quickly accessible to all and make our project work sustainably visible? We decided to publish the Book of Abstracts, hereafter referred to as BoA, as a publication on an open access repository (and in parallel also as a print version), because we wanted to provide online participants of the BOBCATSSS with a fast-turnaround, free access to the conference abstracts, to remain flexible with regard to the continuous addition of content such as slides, and all in all to increase the visibility of the BoA and the conference contributions. We opted for a green OA strategy because an existing repository, Zenodo, is wonderfully easy to use and for our purpose at least as good for publishing as the journals of OA publishers. In addition, one is in control of the peer review process (we implemented it via easychair) and is not dependent on the publisher’s timetable.

We started by collecting the abstracts and formatting them. In Zenodo we set up the BOBCATSSS 2022 conference as a community and created a page for the BoA. The individual abstracts also got their own page so that the full texts could be published after the conference.

At the beginning, the pages for the BoA and the individual abstracts were created as drafts. Metadata such as publication type, title, authors, keywords and access rights were entered. In addition, the ORCID IDs of the authors were entered. Through direct linking, other publications by the authors can be found via the ORCID ID. In addition, a DOI was created for each page. After we had created the drafts at Zenodo, we continued to work on the content of the BoA. On the title page of the work, the DOI for the BoA and the CC licence were added, along with the title, authors and conference information. After the preface, the table of contents and the contributions of the plenary speakers, the abstracts of the papers begin. Each abstract has been included with the authors, affiliation, type of paper and DOI as well as keywords and topics. The DOIs were inserted in such a way that subsequently in the PDF version a forwarding link leads to the publication.

After completion of the BoA, the print version and the digital version were compiled in parallel. After the conference, we received the full texts of the papers and were able to upload and publish them as PDF files to the already prepared abstracts. Each paper received a Zenodo page with a summary of the abstract submitted, the talk given, the keywords submitted and the authors' ORCID IDs.

We were able to publish it for free in time for the conference and the papers immediately after the conference, and we learned a lot new about OA publishing.