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The Global Flourishing Study Launches Open Access of Sample Research Data with the Center for Open Science

The first sample dataset from the Global Flourishing Study (GFS) initiative is now available to researchers, with the project’s initial full dataset scheduled for release in the coming months through the Center for Open Science (COS). 

The GFS, a partnership among Gallup, COS, and researchers at Baylor University and Harvard University, is a $43.4 million, five-year study of 200,000 individuals in 22 countries. The GFS data will be an open-access resource for researchers, journalists, policymakers, and educators worldwide.

While several studies have tracked respondents over time in a single country, the scope and breadth of GFS is unprecedented.

Project co-director Dr. Byron Johnson, Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences and Director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor, commented: “On a project of this scale, it is critical that the data be available to a broad research audience in a way that it is transparent, ethical, and reproducible. The open-access expertise of COS makes this possible.”

The sample dataset release offers a first glimpse into data that will yield valuable insights over the next several years.

“This sample dataset enables researchers to develop hypotheses and analysis plans ahead of the full dataset release,” said Dr. Huajin Wang, COS’s Director of Programs. “COS offers guidance to researchers for data access, and facilitates transparency and rigor in using this one-of-a-kind data resource.” 
Researchers can access GFS data in three ways:

  • Preregistration: Preregister an analysis plan now to receive early access to the full dataset available in the coming months at cos.io/gfs.
  • Registered Report: Early access is also available to those that submit a Registered Report to a journal. With Registered Reports, a journal reviews the preregistration plan and agrees to publish the findings regardless of the outcome, protecting against publication bias.
  • Public release: Those wishing to receive the data without preregistration can access the non-sensitive data on the first anniversary of data release for each wave. Access to sensitive data will require institutional review board approval.

“This will be an extraordinary open-access data resource for the entire global research community and COS’s role is critical to ensuring that this is so,” said project co-director Dr. Tyler VanderWeele, the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard.

As Gallup’s CEO Jon Clifton remarked, “Open access to the Global Flourishing Study’s data will revolutionize the field, enabling thought leaders around the world to uncover insights and innovations that redefine our grasp of human flourishing and ultimately enhance lives across the globe.

Register for webinars taking place in September to learn more about using the sample dataset from this study, preregistration and Registered Reports, and how to gain access to the full dataset when it becomes available.

For more information on GFS’s data access, visit: cos.io/gfs. 

Society for Scholarly Publishing Mentorship Application Window Open

Applications are open for the next cohort of the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s ongoing Mentorship Program! Our Career Development Committee seeks potential mentors and mentees to connect for professional development, information exchange, networking, personal growth, and career advancement.

Mentorship is valuable for professionals at all career levels. It provides mentors and mentees opportunities to develop new relationships, share experiences, and learn from others outside their organizations.

This exciting program connects members of SSP for professional development, information exchange, networking, personal growth, and career advancement. Learn more about the benefits of an SSP mentorship.

The next cohort will run from September to March 2024, and we are accepting applications for mentees and mentors now through September 4, 2023. Participants will be notified in late September.

SSP is deeply committed to fostering a community that supports and benefits from the talents of scholarly publishers from a wide range of backgrounds. We believe that our community must center on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, and we strongly encourage people from traditionally marginalized groups to apply as mentors or mentees.

We want to thank our program sponsors, American Geophysical Union and ITHAKA. Organizations interested in sponsorship opportunities should contact partnerships@sspnet.org. 

The Mentorship Program is made possible by the Generations Fund. Generous donations from members and industry endow the Generations Fund to allow SSP the resources, in perpetuity, to continue this program. Learn more or make a gift to help us reach our $500,000 goal.

There is no cost to apply, but participants (mentors and mentees) must be SSP members. Visit SSP’s Mentorship page for more information about program details, eligibility requirements, and how to apply.

Wolters Kluwer’s Lippincott journals receive a record 8 Grand Awards in 2023 APEX Awards

Wolters Kluwer Health today announced that 15 of its Lippincott healthcare titles received 28 wins in the 35th annual Awards for Publication Excellence (APEX) Competition. Seven of these titles received the prestigious Grand Awards including PRS Global Open, Neurology Today, Nurse Educator, The Nurse Practitioner, American Journal of Nursing, Nursing Management, and Emergency Medicine News.

An industry tradition since 1988, the honors are awarded based on excellence in editorial content, graphic design, and overall communications, recognizing extraordinary work by professional communicators. For the 2023 program more than 1,100 nominations were received and only 100 Grand Award Winners were selected. Grand Awards honor outstanding works in each main category, while Awards of Excellence recognize exceptional entries in each of the individual sub-categories.

“We are honored for APEX to recognize the outstanding editorial work in our print, online, and social media,” said Jennifer Brogan, Vice President, Global Journal Publishing & Society Solutions at Wolters Kluwer Health Learning, Research & Practice. “Our publishing and editorial teams, together with our society partners, are committed to delivering the most accurate and timely information to healthcare professionals whenever and wherever they need it require.”

Wolters Kluwer’s awards include:

Grand Awards

Awards of Excellence

Wolters Kluwer Health provides trusted clinical technology and evidence-based solutions that engage clinicians, patients, researchers and students in effective decision-making and outcomes across healthcare. The division of Wolters Kluwer supports clinical effectiveness, learning and research, clinical surveillance and compliance, as well as data solutions.

Karger Announces Partnership with Brazilian Press Service Agência Bori to Advance Effective Science Communication

Brazilian Authors and Scientists to Benefit from Increased Visibility and Coverage of Selective Karger Journal Articles

To further strengthen the connection between science and the media, Karger Publishers  and Agência Bori have partnered to routinely deliver scientific papers to the Brazilian press. Starting in August 2023, Agência Bori will select Karger’s papers with journalistic relevance and Brazilian authorship to publicize to its community of more than 2,600 registered journalists. 

This partnership, with the aim of serving the media’s growing interest in health topics, is the first of its kind for Agência Bori. The agency’s aim is to monitor science papers produced by Brazilian researchers with the help of Karger Publishers. The Brazilian science outreach project is specialized in supporting journalistic coverage with science-based evidence in the form of explanatory texts. 

“One of the main goals of science is social impact, and sharing research results with society in an accessible language is the first step towards that,” says Victor da Silva Carvalho Business Manager for Karger in Brazil. “Agência Bori is an authority when it comes to scientific journalism. Partnering with them benefits the Brazilian public that can receive updates on impactful health research published by Karger. It also benefits Brazilian authors, which can have their studies in the spotlight, generating greater visibility, awareness, and even potentially impacting positively their academic careers.”

Bori has developed a process to monitor, select and translate Brazilian science to journalistic language. In its first three years of operation, more than 450 studies have been disseminated in this process.

“Health sciences are a hot topic for journalists. Bringing content from different Health journals of Karger to Bori will, certainly, benefit journalists covering these topics and generate interest in Brazilian society, as well”, says Natalia Flores, content manager of Agência Bori. 

The goal is to democratize scientific knowledge while bringing an even greater impact to Karger’s published research. An average of two or three papers per month will be disseminated to the Brazilian press through Bori’s service.

New call for joint effort to bolster research integrity

Paper outlines roles for every part of the research landscape to help improve trust in research – including journalists

Who’s responsible for upholding research integrity, mitigating misinformation or disinformation and increasing trust in research? Everyone – even those reporting on research – says a new article published by leading research integrity experts.

In their paper published in the journal Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics, Dr Leslie McIntosh (Vice President Research Integrity, Digital Science) and Ms Cynthia Hudson Vitale (Director, Science Policy and Scholarship, Association of Research Libraries) call for improved policies and worldwide coordination between funding bodies, publishers, academic institutions, scholarly societies, policy-makers and the media.

“Scientific reputation requires a coordinated approach across all stakeholders,” they write.

“The burden of improving scientific integrity most naturally falls on those individuals conducting research; yet their work does not occur in a vacuum… the responsibility of upholding, fostering, and maintaining scientific integrity should rest on all stakeholders producing and consuming scientific information.”

Dr McIntosh says this sentiment is echoed by Dr Holden Thorp’s recent comments in Science when writing his editorial about Generative Approach to Research Integrity.

In their article, Dr McIntosh and Ms Hudson Vitale say: “Systematic change comes when all players in the ecosystem work toward a common goal. Organizational stakeholders must coordinate efforts to fortify science integrity: making science better, and better science easier.”

They say a global shift in culture will lead to advances in research integrity. To do this, responsibility must be shared, with “changes needed at the macro level in the scientific ecosystem”.

“The current ‘culture’ of science may be collaborative at the research level, yet is often disparate at the ecosystem level… disparate stakeholders and processes across the research integrity ecosystem need to increase coordination and communication,” they write.

Dr McIntosh and Ms Hudson Vitale have produced a table that summarizes the roles to be played and the changes required of each of the key stakeholder groups. This includes:

Funders – Funding agencies “hold critical keys in fortifying the ecosystem”; researchers and academic institutions, which are motivated to earn funding for research, will respond to agency policy requirements, including a tightening of research integrity.

Publishers – “…must further their push for research transparency and move beyond just data into the sharing of complete methods, interactive models, code, and software.”

Scholarly societies – Global coordination between societies and other stakeholders is needed. “Through coordination with other societies, publishers, and researchers, scholarly societies can support graduate students, faculty, and researchers in this critical research skill of the education and implementation of transparently reporting research. From an infrastructure perspective, this would be invaluable.”

Academic research institutions – They should assess their services available to researchers, and consider additional ways to support responsible collaboration on research integrity, while offering solutions to streamline and alleviate any unnecessary demands on researchers.

Journalists and Media – “Journalists are an integral part of the new public and scientific discourse necessary for a well-informed community,” Dr McIntosh and Ms Hudson Vitale write.

“Given the important role that journalism has in shaping and influencing public discourse (e.g., COVID pandemic public discourse), the integrity and factualness of news articles is critical to uphold a well-informed community and create checks on federal and local policies.

“News organizations and media platforms (including and especially social media) must support the resources and initiatives that can enhance trust in science communication and make journalism a trusted source of scientific information.”

Policy-makers – “More policy-makers must establish policies to increase trust and uphold the research integrity of science, and then follow up those policies with assessments, modifications, and refinement to support the research enterprise.”

See their full paper here: https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2023.1134082

New Plain Language Summaries of Publications Unlock the Latest Medical Research for Patients, Healthcare Professionals and Policymakers

Patients, policymakers, caregivers and primary care physicians can now keep up to date with the latest medical articles through clear, jargon-free summaries. Launched by Taylor & Francis, Plain Language Summaries of Publications (PLSPs) are peer reviewed, open access articles written for non-specialist readers, so everyone can benefit from new research findings.

Many Taylor & Francis journals already support authors to include plain language summaries alongside their research papers. However, as standalone articles, PLSPs provide much more space to explore the significance of published research, as well as enabling graphics, video and audio content to support understanding. Researchers are also encouraged to bring in additional co-authors for the PLSP who themselves are patients or caregivers.

PLSPs are published open access, which improves discoverability and ensures everybody can read the research summary. They have their own DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and can, with the relevant permissions, summarize research articles published in any peer-reviewed journal.

Jonathan Patience, Head of Publication Development at Taylor & Francis, explained: “There are many groups who want to stay informed about the latest research, including patients, caregivers and advocacy groups. Unfortunately, the technical language researchers use in articles written for their peers is not usually very accessible. That’s why we’ve introduced Plain Language Summaries of Publications, to help many more people understand and act upon the latest knowledge”.

Kelly Soldavin, Senior Editor at Taylor & Francis, added: “Plain language summaries have become pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry best practice for supporting research accessibility, especially as an essential resource for improved communication between healthcare professionals and patients. We expect PLSPs will be a welcome publishing option for researchers in all therapeutic areas”.

Trishna Bharadia, multi award-winning health advocate and patient engagement consultant, said: “With the general move in healthcare towards shared-decision making models, the need to be an informed patient and/or caregiver has never been as important as it is now. We are in an age where information is increasingly at our fingertips, especially through the internet and the growth of open access, however, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the information is understandable for patients and the public”.

Bharadia added: “Plain language summaries of publications provide a perfect bridge between non-scientists and the scientific world, whilst at the same time helping to prevent misinterpretation and misinformation. This will be crucial in ensuring that patient communities are better able to make informed decisions about their care and treatment decisions. In short, these standalone articles can help to educate, inform and increase confidence for patients to have those important conversations with their healthcare providers”.

Taylor & Francis has a growing portfolio of over 340 Medical and Healthcare journals and recently announced its support for Open Pharma, an initiative focused on improving the transparency, accountability, accessibility and discoverability of published research.

More details about Plain Language Summaries of Publications can be found on Taylor & Francis Author Services.

RSC – Boosting Open Access in North America through transformative agreements

We have agreed read and publish deals with 28 North American institutions in 2023 alone so far, taking our total in the region to 35

These agreements have helped us reach the milestone of collaborating with more than 1,000 institutions globally in 32 different countries

We recently penned our first deals with institutions in Canada and Mexico

The growth of transformative agreements within the North America region includes multiple read and publish deals in the USA and new country deals in Mexico and Canada. This builds on a trend of year-on-year growth within the region, since our first deal with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, signed in 2018.

This acceleration has been on the back of the US Government’s Open Access mandate by 2026 and our own personal Open Access commitments. The number of deals has grown rapidly within the region every year, with 2023 seeing 28 new deals in the region, including our first agreements with partners in Canada and Mexico.

As Peter Hranjec, our Senior Sales Executive for the region explains, the total number of institutions supported is now 35. He said: “Growing our read and publish community in North America is an important step in ensuring that high quality research is as accessible as possible to researchers everywhere and further underlines our commitment to Open Access. The partnerships between the RSC and these institutes are paving the way forward towards OA transformation.”

Sara Bosshart, Royal Society of Chemistry Head of Open Access, said: “We were very excited last year to announce that we aim to make all of our fully RSC-owned journals Open Access within the next five years.

“Open Access is at the core of our mission to help the chemical sciences make the world a better place and by making our 44 RSC-owned journals free-to-read, we’ll be providing unrestricted global access to all of the cutting-edge research we publish.

“A key priority for our transition is to ensure that our global author base continues to have the same ability to publish in our journals. For this reason, we’re planning to spend the next two years working with our global partners, institutions and community to develop new Open Access models that function at an institutional level, rather than relying solely on author publication charges.

“Transformative agreements are an essential stepping stone in our journey towards 100% Open Access as they form the basis for future OA agreements and allow us to transition gradually from subscriptions to Open Access. They also strengthen the relationships we have with our US institutional partners and create a forum for conversation and collaboration towards a joint OA future.

“Our end goal is an open access future that ensures that everyone, everywhere has the same potential to access and contribute to the latest discoveries in the chemical sciences and beyond – and we’re looking forward to working collectively with our community to achieve this vision.”

Our North American R&P growth in numbers

  • 2018: One agreement (our first in the USA – Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT))
  • 2019-21: Three agreements (all in the USA)
  • 2022: Seven agreements (all in the USA)
  • 2023: 35 agreements (21 in the USA, one in Mexico, and 13 Canada)

Building a community, supporting institutions

A number of the institutions who have recently joined the RSC’s read and publish community explain their motivation for signing these transformative agreements.

Molly Beisler, Director of Collections and Discovery at University of Nevada, Reno, says: “We are excited to have this chance to support University researchers in publishing open access with RSC. This both extends the reach of the research that is being done on campus, and also helps our researchers comply with open access requirements for projects that receive federal funding.’

Khaleedah Thomas, Copyright and Scholarly Communication Librarian Colorado State University, said: “CSU Libraries is excited to continue supporting sustainable publishing models with our latest open access agreement with the Royal Society of Chemistry. By engaging in transformative agreements, we hope to accelerate the transition to fully open access publishing, which promotes open knowledge sharing and equity in scholarly publishing.’

Jolie Graybill, Dean of Libraries at North Dakota State University added: “NDSU Libraries is excited to support Open Access publishing via read and publish agreements. It is an opportunity for the NDSU Libraries to support campus authors in their publishing endeavors. We hope to enter into more transformative agreements in the upcoming years as they become more widely available and attainable.”

Public access to published science is under threat in the US

The US House Appropriations Committee has released its 2024 Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill. It proposes new spending of $58 billion and seeks to “rein in the Washington bureaucracy by right-sizing agencies and programs.

As a group of eight leading science, open access publishers, the Fully OA group has signed a letter to the House Appropriations subcommittee to raise the dangers of the bill’s draft language. If enacted, it would block federally funded research from being freely available to American taxpayers without delay on publication.

Individual Americans would be prevented from seeing the full benefits of the more than $90 billion in scientific research they fund each year via taxes. Science for the few who can access it – as opposed to the many who pay for it – is inefficient as scientific or democratic governmental policy.

Response to House Appropriations Committee release of the Fiscal Year 2024 bill for the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee

In our capacity as representatives of leading fully Open Access research publishers and Open Science platforms, we submit our objection to the draft language2 in the Subcommittee’s FY24 spending bill3 that blocks implementation of the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s (OSTP) August 2022 guidance to make federally funded research freely available without delay.

As a group of global publishers, we share a single aim – the transition to fully open scientific communication for the benefit of all parts of society. We believe the restriction of funds as outlined in Sec 552 of the bill is detrimental to this goal. We strongly support the OSTP guidelines which we believe represent a significant policy advancement for global scientific and academic research.

If enacted, the current Appropriations Bill will prevent American taxpayers from seeing the societal benefits of the more than $90 billion in scientific research that the U.S. government funds each year, as most of the research remains locked behind publishing paywalls. And it will remove the current requirement for commercial publishers to adapt their business models to make public access to science fair. Science for the few who can access it – as opposed to the many who pay for it – is inefficient as scientific or governmental policy.

The political and societal move towards Open Science is well established as the demand for access to all publicly funded research intensifies. The retention of the 12-month embargo, as the Appropriations Bill stipulates, is a retrograde step within the global context of research and access to scientific literature.

As part of an established ecosystem of publishers, funding organizations, and governmental and scholarly institutions, we have seen prominent examples of the collaborative advancement of Open Science:

• The world’s largest subscription publishers were transitioning to open policies for years prior to the OSTP announcement, in accordance with the principles

1 Committee Releases FY24 Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, Jul 13, 2023, Press Release.

2 “SEC. 552. None of the funds made available by this or any other Act may be used to implement, administer, apply, enforce, or carry out the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s August 25, 2022, Memorandum to Executive Departments and Agencies entitled, ‘‘Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research.”

3 A Bill Making appropriations for the Departments of Commerce and Justice, Science, and Related Agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, and for other purposes.

of Plan S4 and alongside the organizations of cOAlition S.5 These efforts have received strong support from the Association of Research Libraries,6 academic societies, and individual researchers.

  • Funders such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation7 and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute8 have already limited or removed embargoes as a part of their funding mandates.
  • Longstanding governmental efforts, such as the NASA Transform to Open Science (TOPS) initiative,9 increasingly rely on making published results of federally funded research more openly available to researchers and the public. The United States is a global scientific leader. The inclusion of the current language in relation to Sec 552 would be a block on the advancement of US research and its influence within the international scientific community. We would be happy to work with the Committee to develop alternative language that maintains the existing direction of Open Science policy and scientific freedom.

Sincerely,

Damian Pattinson Executive Director eLife

Julia Kostova Director Frontiers

Gunther Eysenbach CEO & Publisher JMIR Publications

Stefan Tochev CEO
MDPI

Cc:

Caroline Edwards Executive Director
Open Library of Humanities

Peter Binfield
Publisher & Co-Founder PeerJ Inc.

Alison Mudditt CEO
PLOS

Brian Hole
CEO
Ubiquity Press Inc.

Arati Prabhakar, Ph.D.
Director of the White House Office of Science andTechnology Policy, and Assistant to the President for Science and Technology

Wolters Kluwer delivers strong Lippincott journal performance in 2023 Journal Citation Reports

Wolters Kluwer Health today announced strong results for the Lippincott portfolio of journals in the 2022 Journal Impact Factor (JIF), the journal metric released annually by Clarivate Analytics as part of the Journal Citation Reports(JCR). Against an industry backdrop of declining JIFs, Lippincott’s performance in the latest rankings showed consistent year-over-year improvements.

The annual rankings evaluate over 21,500 high-quality academic journals from more than 250 scientific and research disciplines. The JCR and JIF have long been trusted by the global academic community as a key performance indicator of the most impactful journals in a given field. Researchers turn to these rankings as an assurance that they can confidently rely on the information and data provided as adhering to research integrity standards.

Despite industry change, Lippincott rises

The 2023 rankings featured 387 Wolters Kluwer journals, with more than half (52%) receiving improved rankings from the previous year and an overall net increase for the portfolio. Impressively, three Lippincott titles came in at #1 in their respective categories, Academic Medicine, Circulation and Ear and Hearing.

“Over the past few years, we have seen a tremendous amount of disruption and change when it comes to the JIF calculations, starting in 2020 with the introduction of early access and followed by inflated results from the surge of research during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Jennifer Brogan, Vice President, Global Journal Publishing & Society Solutions, Health Learning, Research & Practice at Wolters Kluwer. “This year’s rankings indicate a return to normal and, moving forward, the numbers will show a truer year-over-year reflection of the academic research landscape.”

New titles and top 10 recognitions

Despite the recent drop-off in overall output across scientific publishing, Lippincott journals maintained, and in some cases, improved their overall rankings. For categories such as Anesthesiology, Cardiac and Cardiovascular Systems, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Peripheral Vascular Disease, and Transplantation, Lippincott publishes multiple journals that were recognized in the Top 10.

“Ear and Hearing and the American Auditory Society have had a very fruitful publishing relationship with Wolters Kluwer and have benefited from the breadth of the Lippincott platform,” said Ruth Litovsky​, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Ear and Hearing. “The strong connections and trust that Wolters Kluwer has across the medical research industry is unmatched and allows our team to focus on providing the best possible content to our audience, with minimal focus on business processes that can slow down publishing.”

While the 2023 analytics showcase Wolters Kluwer’s long-time prominence in academic research, new additions to the publishing lineup were also included. In fact, 164 newer Lippincott journals were included in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), where the titles received JIFs for the first time. 

To learn more about the titles within the Wolters Kluwer Lippincott publishing lineup, please visit lww.com. For a comprehensive look at the process for journal rankings over the years, please read this American College of Sports Medicine blog post.

Wolters Kluwer Health provides trusted clinical technology and evidence-based solutions that engage clinicians, patients, researchers and students in effective decision-making and outcomes across healthcare. The division of Wolters Kluwer supports clinical effectiveness, learning and research, clinical surveillance and compliance, as well as data solutions.

Transformative Agreement Signed between the Microbiology Society and National Taiwan University

The Microbiology Society and National Taiwan University (NTU) are pleased to announce a five year transformative agreement, starting in 2024. The Publish and Read agreement, the first for the Microbiology Society in Taiwan, will allow affiliated researchers to publish an unlimited number of Open Access articles and enjoy full read access in Society titles.

Peter Cotgreave, Chief Executive of the Microbiology Society: “This deal, the first of its kind for the Microbiology Society in Taiwan, marks another milestone in the international growth of our innovative Publish and Read model. We look forward to supporting researchers at the prestigious NTU to increase the reach of their work with simplified Open Access publishing.”

Tammy Chang, Commercial Manager Greater China & South East Asia at Accucoms: “We are thrilled to have collaborated with the Microbiology Society in Taiwan to promote Open Access and facilitate knowledge dissemination in the field of Microbiology. We are glad to have brokered this first “Publish and Read” deal with our esteemed customer National Taiwan University, who appreciates the commitment of the Microbiology Society to foster innovation, encourage collaboration and promote open science principles.”

The Society’s Publish and Read model continues to grow from strength to strength since launching in 2020, supporting organisations and researchers to simplify processes and enjoy the benefits of Open Access publishing.

Affiliated authors at Publish and Read institutions are entitled to:

  • Unlimited Open Access publishing: any article published with a corresponding author from a Publish and Read institution will be Open Access by default.
  • Unlimited usage: any user associated with a Publish and Read institution can access the entire archive of Society content, back to 1947, for reading and for text and data mining.

Authors can check if their institution is eligible here.

Publish and Read will cover all the Society’s six titles, including the hybrid Journal of General Virology, Journal of Medical Microbiology, International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, and fully Open Access titles Access Microbiology, Microbiology, Microbial Genomics.

ARL Awarded Grant to Continue Research on Institutional Expenses for Public Access to Research Data

The US Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has awarded the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), in collaboration with Duke University, the University of Minnesota, and Washington University in St. Louis, all of whom are members of the Data Curation Network (DCN), a $741,921 National Leadership Grant to examine institutional expenses for public access to research data. This research builds upon ARL’s existing Realities of Academic Data Sharing initiative.

Public access to research data is critical to advancing science, solving real-world problems, and supporting research integrity. In recent years, a number of funding agencies and publishers have required the management and broad sharing of research data and other related research outputs to accelerate and expand the impacts of their investments. Research institutions, and the research libraries at these institutions, have invested in and developed infrastructure and services to support researchers in meeting these requirements. These services and infrastructures are not only housed in the library, but are spread across the institution, in various administrative units, such as campus IT, the research office, and institutes and research centers. Given the growth in demand, its distributed nature, and functional nuance, the costs of public access to research data and data sharing are not well understood. The many unknowns about the institutional landscape for funded research-data sharing hamper collaborations and institutional ability to plan and budget appropriately.

“Academic and research libraries have made significant investments in support of federal agency requirements for public access to research data, yet have little institutional data about these services, infrastructure, and costs,” said ARL Vice President/President-Elect Trevor A. Dawes, vice provost for Libraries and Museums and May Morris University Librarian at the University of Delaware. “Funding agencies, institutions, and organizations must understand the local landscape and the required investments necessary to optimize public access to research data. This research helps to further our understanding of these investments.”

Building upon ARL’s previous National Science Foundation grant, this work will expand research into the expense and service models for public access to research data by digging deep into the expenses within an institution (including campus IT, the research office, centers and institutes, and libraries) and recruiting a diverse set of five institutions to participate in the next round of research. As an incentive for participating, these five institutions will receive a no-cost two-year membership in the DCN and access to a full-time DCN employee to assist with local, institutional research-data services outreach and service development.

Grant funds will be used for community building, research-team staffing, and tools and technology.

Research4life partners commit to free and low-cost access and training through 2030

More than 200,000 resources available to researchers, doctors, NGOs and policymakers through at least 2030 to boost evidence-based research, healthcare, policymaking and global justice.

The Research4Life partners announced today that they have agreed to extend their partnership through 2030. The partners have also decided to formally recognize the role of Chief Operations Officer being carried out by Kimberly Parker, an early contributor to  Research4Life who has worn many hats, and has been with the World Health Organization as the programme manager for Hinari since 2008.

Research4Life currently provides more than 11,000 institutions in 125 lower income countries, areas and territories with free or low-cost access to peer-reviewed online publications from the world’s leading scholarly publishers. The renewed commitment to 2030 will ensure that the more than 200,000 peer reviewed academic journals, books and databases from some 200 scholarly publishers available through the public-private Research4life partnership will continue to reach research communities in low- and middle-income countries.

Kimberly Parker, Research4Life’s newly designated Chief Operations Officer, said, “The partnership’s overwhelming support to extend the Research4Life mandate to 2030 recognizes the programme’s success in enabling research through training and equitable access to scholarly, professional and research content. I am delighted that Research4Life’s hidden operations now have visibility with the recognition of the role of COO, and this visibility gives us impetus to move the partnerships goals closer to fulfillment.”

Phuntsho Norbu, a researcher and lecturer at Khesar Gyalpo University of Medical Sciences of Bhutan, was one of several Country Connectors that was able to travel to meet with Research4Life’s partners  for their annual General Partners Meeting in Washington D.C.. Norbu spoke about the benefit that Research4Life has offered his University, which is one of the leading users of R4L in that country. He notes, “Thanks to Research4Life for providing digital access to evidence-based research, it has enabled a group of around 100 researchers that are doing research for the government – research that is directly influencing policy – to have access to the multidisciplinary research we need.”

User representative Khutsafalo Kadimo from Botswana, who also traveled to the event, discussed the value of Research4Life resources for his country, as well as the unique innovations they have used to solve gaps in their healthcare. “We have 0.3 doctors for every 1000 people in Botswana; in order to solve this massive problem, we have been working with ITOCA to share Research4Life Hinari research with our communities of nurses.”

Our keynote for the event, Geraldine Richmond, the United States Under Secretary for Science and Innovation at the Department of Energy (DOE), emphasized that she was a big fan of the work Research4Life is doing to make the research divide smaller. Richmond also echoed the need for Research4Life’s goals to align with local priorities, and for strategies to include capacity building that will enable researchers to publish and access research in the Global South. She explained that the work we do was very much in line with her work, and that equity was key: “Equity is woven into everything we do, so outreach to communities has to address inequities.”

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