News round-up
It’s all about open
Here, we present a round-up of recent news stories in Research Information relating to open science and open access
December 2020: UK collaboration to accelerate global open access UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), Wellcome and Jisc, the not-for-profit research and education technology provider, are among the first organisations supporting the establishment of a new independent body called Open Access Switchboard. The Switchboard will help the research community transition to full and immediate open access and simplify efforts to make open access (OA) the predominant model to publish research. Led by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), the OA Switchboard is a not-for-profit collaboration among funders, institutions, consortia and publishers to provide essential infrastructure, standards and back-office services. It will support information sharing, as well as help reduce barriers to the open access market. It aims to allow funders, publishers and institutions to streamline their communications, improve transparency of data collection and storage, and reduce costs. UKRI, Wellcome and Jisc are all represented on the OA Switchboard’s board of directors. Rachel Bruce, UKRI’s head of open
research, said: ‘We are delighted to form this partnership to enable shared infrastructure, bringing transparency, efficiency and cost effectiveness to the OA ecosystem. The OA Switchboard has the potential to enable a breakthrough in the transformation to open access, supporting it as a predominant model of research publication.’ Liam Earney, Jisc’s executive director of digital resources, added: ‘This working relationship underscores Jisc’s commitment to driving a sustainable and equitable transition to OA. Crucially, it will enable institutions to have clearer, automated reporting of OA publications, and it will help foster the inclusion of more publishers in the transition to OA, regardless of size or business model.’ ‘We believe the OA Switchboard has the
potential to streamline the management of open access publishing for all parties. We
30 Challenges in the Scholarly Publishing Cycle 2020/2021
look forward to working with Jisc and UK institutions to incorporate the OA Switchboard into Wellcome’s open access reporting processes,’ said Hannah Hope, open access project manager at the Wellcome Trust. And Yvonne Campfens, executive director of the OA Switchboard, added: ‘Other industries have tackled similar problems successfully a long time ago, which gives me confidence that we can apply this to open access ecosystem. However, to address challenging topics
around communication and data across different stakeholder groups, and to implement a cost-effective collaborative infrastructure solution, transparency is key, and an independent neutral intermediary is indispensable.’ Development of the OA Switchboard began
“The initiative builds on library journal membership models such as Open Library of the Humanities”
in 2020. The OA Switchboard was due to become operational as of 1 January, and will supersede the organisation and governance structure of the 2020 project. Jisc is working with the OA Switchboard to explore how UK institutions can best benefit from the shared data and infrastructure this service will provide. Institutions are encouraged to get involved by contacting Yvonne Campfens, project manager, to find out how the Switchboard works and can help drive the transition to OA.
November 2020: Springer Nature unveils alternative OA route All authors submitting to Nature and the
Nature research journals will now have the option to publish open access. Springer Nature announced in October that German authors would be able to publish their primary research open access in Nature and the Nature research journals, thanks to a ground-breaking agreement with the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL). While highly effective in transitioning articles to open access, transformative agreements like this can be complicated and take time to put in place. In recognition of this, authors seeking to publish OA in Nature and the Nature research journals will no longer have to wait. From January all authors were able
to publish Gold OA when submitting to Nature and the 32 Nature primary research journals and will be afforded the same article processing charges (APC) as MPDL, which is €9,500. As such, these will be the first highly selective journals to offer their authors an immediate OA publishing option this way. Research published in Nature and the
Nature research journals is downloaded by institutional users over 30 times more than papers in a typical journal. Springer Nature says dedicated in-house teams promote the research articles widely, this year achieving around 10,000 mentions in policy documents, generating over 100,000 news stories around the world and attracting over three million mentions on Twitter. This new open access option is positive
news also for Plan S-funded authors, as it means that Springer Nature is delivering on its commitment to enable gold OA publishing in all its owned journals by January. Springer Nature was also due to roll out a
new OA pilot from January. The pilot initially covers six journals and offers authors the chance to publish in one of a number of Nature portfolio journals, while only submitting once, hence reducing their time and uncertainty, and increasing efficiency for all. Authors willing to opt-in to the pilot will pay
an editorial assessment charge and have their manuscript guided through the submission process by a Nature research editor who offers
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