Read the full story in Nature.
International agencies need the mandate, funds and expertise to connect information — otherwise pandemics, hunger and unsustainability will go unsolved.
Category: Open access
NSF-funded project to evaluate open-access educational resources
Read the full story from the University of Nebraska.
Brian Couch, associate professor of biological sciences at Nebraska, is leading a new NSF-funded project to assess the quality and implementation of open educational resources: publicly available lesson plans, lab activities and other course materials designed, in this case, for undergraduate biology courses.
Royal Society of Chemistry launches open access journal Energy Advances
Read the full story from the RSC.
Our new Gold Open Access journal Energy Advances focuses on energy science, and in particular the interdisciplinarity required for exciting breakthroughs in the field.
Energy Advances welcomes research from any related discipline including materials science, engineering, technology, biosciences and chemistry. Our aim is for it to embrace exciting energy science research – particularly at the boundaries where disciplines cross, and where communities collaborate to inspire new thinking.
The push for open access is making science less inclusive
Read the full story at Times Higher Education.
Researchers in developing countries could be frozen out by high article charges unless wider publishing reform is undertaken, say four Brazilian researchers.
Fund to Mission open access monograph model
Read the full story from the University of Michigan.
The University of Michigan Press has been taking steps to develop a publishing program that aligns with our mission and commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. This is why the Press is transitioning to an open access monograph model we term “Fund to Mission.”
Fund to Mission demonstrates a return to the origins of the university press movement and moves toward a more open, sustainable infrastructure for the humanities and social sciences.
Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers immediately free to all
Read the full story in Science.
The United Kingdom currently has one of the highest rates of open-access publication in the world, with many researchers posting their research papers on websites that make them publicly available for free. But the country’s leading funding agency today announced a new policy that will push open access even further by mandating that all research it funds must be freely available for anyone to read upon publication.
The policy by the funder, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will expand on existing rules covering all research papers produced from its £8 billion in annual funding. About three-quarters of papers recently published from U.K. universities are open access, and UKRI’s current policy gives scholars two routes to comply: Pay journals for “gold” open access, which makes a paper free to read on the publisher’s website, or choose the “green” route, which allows them to deposit a near-final version of the paper on a public repository, after a waiting period of up to 1 year. Publishers have insisted that an embargo period is necessary to prevent the free papers from peeling away their subscribers.
But starting in April 2022, that yearlong delay will no longer be permitted: Researchers choosing green open access must deposit the paper immediately when it is published. And publishers won’t be able to hang on to the copyright for UKRI-funded papers: The agency will require that the research it funds—with some minor exceptions—be published with a Creative Commons Attribution license (known as CC-BY) that allows for free and liberal distribution of the work.
Science family of journals announces change to open-access policy
Read the full story in Nature.
Subscription journals will let some Plan S funded researchers share accepted manuscripts under open licences.
A new mandate highlights costs, benefits of making all scientific articles free to read
Read the full story in Science.
In 2018, a group of mostly European funders sent shock waves through the world of scientific publishing by proposing an unprecedented rule: The scientists they funded would be required to make journal articles developed with their support immediately free to read when published.
The new requirement, which takes effect starting this month, seeks to upend decades of tradition in scientific publishing, whereby scientists publish their research in journals for free and publishers make money by charging universities and other institutions for subscriptions. Advocates of the new scheme, called Plan S (the “S” stands for the intended “shock” to the status quo), hope to destroy subscription paywalls and speed scientific progress by allowing findings to be shared more freely. It’s part of a larger shift in scientific communication that began more than 20 years ago and has recently picked up steam.
Data sharing — move from clique to click-to-download, Byrd urges
Read the full story in Environmental Factor.
By making the data they collect easily available for use by others, researchers amplify the benefit to society of funding they received.
Open Access Comes to Selective Journal
Read the full story at Inside Higher Education.
Nature sets article processing charge at the equivalent of $11,250 for researchers selecting open-access publishing.
Environmental News Bits 