This year, there will be some small updates regarding how Open Access VIS works.
1. For papers, only persistent archives will be allowed
It’s great that you have a website or a github repositry, but link rot has been a serious problem on OAVIS with about 5% of PDFs disappearing each year. Reliable archives keep papers in a freely accessible, persistent, immutable, and uniquely identifiable way. Archives that meet these criteria include:
Do university repositories count? They can, but most are very bad at documenting their compliance with the above criteria. I don’t want to have to “just trust that this repository is a reliable one”. If it’s a trustworthy repository, it can have an “about” page that documents its reliability.
2. For preregistrations, data, and materials, the URL must be in the paper!
It’s common for authors to have a repository with a similar but not quite identical name to the paper. Figuring out if the repository is associated with the paper and what content is in it is a difficult and time consuming judgement call. It’d be better if the criteria were more objective. So put the URL(s) in the paper. Better yet, put it in the abstract! Here is an example.
OAVIS will still be offering the “partial credit” badges for material posted on personal websites or github. But your work is much more reliable if all material needed to replicate or reproduce your work is on a freely accessible, persistent, immutable, and uniquely identifiable repository such as:
- OSF
- Zenodo
- Aspredicted (only for preregistrations)
See guides for open materials and data in chapter 7.
3. Papers not shared via a reliable archive will be called out.
I can’t force authors to share their publicly funded work reviewed by volunteers. I tried to, but I can’t. However, I see no reason why the OAVIS site should promote research that its visitors cannot read.
OAVIS has mainly operated with an approach of positive reinforcement. But there are many people who the site has not reached. Last year, I tried graphing the authors with the most open and most hidden papers. There was backlash to the latter graph, but many people on the “most hidden” list responded by sharing their work. So expect something similar this year.
4. The site will freeze before the conference. Post your work ASAP.
The 2019 VIS papers are finalized and sent to the publisher in August. There is no reason to wait months to post them. It’s not like you can change the paper. All scanning for the site will happen long before the VIS conference begins.
Aside: Are you unhappy with IEEE’s draconian copyright?
Change it! Add the SPARC author addendum to the copyright form that IEEE sends you. More information about author rights.