Thursday, June 19, 2025
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Cambridge reaches 100 million learners milestone

Cambridge University Press & Assessment is reaching more than 100 million students and other learners. 

The figure underlines Cambridge’s unique capability and reach across more than 170 countries, spanning books and learning materials, assessments, curriculum development and education reform. 

The news comes just two years after Cambridge Assessment and Cambridge University Press came together as a single organisation in August 2021.

The two organisations set an ambitious target of reaching 100 million learners by 2026. That goal has been met ahead of schedule.

Cambridge supports this huge number of learners through exams such as GCSEs and IGCSEs, A levels and Cambridge Nationals, English language tests and tools including IELTS and Linguaskill, reference sources such as Cambridge Dictionary Online, and through Cambridge curricula, support for teachers and education reform programmes.

Peter Phillips, Chief Executive of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, said: 

“This is a moment to celebrate. I’m delighted that we have passed our target of reaching more than 100 million learners, something which has happened only because of our deep commitment to students and teachers and to the quality of our assessments and learning materials to support them.

“Each of those learners has their own story, aspirations and potential. Our commitment to every one of them has remained the same, and will remain the same, regardless of how many more people we reach.”

Cambridge works in partnership with the huge community it reaches around the world to design, iterate and improve approaches to assessment and learning materials.

Feedback from students and teachers informs – and strengthens – the products and services that Cambridge delivers.  

Even greater reach – scholarly publishing

The full reach of Cambridge University Press & Assessment is in fact significantly greater than 100 million.

In addition to our work with learners and teachers, the Academic team enables millions of researchers to access outstanding academic books, research journals and other scholarly materials. Researchers downloaded 114 million of them digitally over the last year, in addition to all the physical copies they read. 

Cambridge’s commitment to open access academic publishing is enabling more people than ever to access high-quality research. Within the last year, more than 50 percent of Cambridge University Press journal articles were published open access.

The organisation is on course for the vast majority of its research papers to be open access by 2025. 

This year, Cambridge also removed open access publication fees for scholars from more than 100 low- and middle-income countries to expand access to the highest quality material in an equitable way. 

OpenAIRE Awarded Contract for the National Open Access Monitor, Ireland

IReL is pleased to announce that OpenAIRE has been awarded the contract to develop a National Open Access Monitor, based on public open data, to analyse and track progress towards 100% open access in Ireland. This contract results from an open tender run by IReL with Education Procurement Services. The work to be delivered also includes a report which provides a baseline analysis of the state of open access (OA) in Ireland, both from an overall perspective and domain-level; investigates the accuracy and viability of the data on current Irish OA publishing output; and documents challenges that should be addressed in long-term monitoring solutions and recommends steps to be taken, including workflows for data validation and enrichment. The contract is for a one-year period with the potential to renew.

“With the development of this monitor Ireland is joining several other EU countries who are leading the way in terms of laying the foundation for monitoring Open Science globally. At a national level, this monitor will not only measure our progress towards 100% OA but also help inform targeted actions to achieve OA in a sustainable and equitable manner.” (Susan Reilly, IReL Director)

“A reliable and transparent national monitoring mechanism will enable all stakeholders to track progress towards 100% Open Access to research publications, which is one of the key objectives outlined in Ireland’s National Action Plan for Open Research. NORF looks forward to the development of this monitor and encourages national stakeholders to follow and engage with the project as it progresses.” (Daniel Bangert, National Open Research Coordinator, NORF)

“OpenAIRE is pleased to join IReL and NORF in the development of Ireland’s National Open Access Monitor, a project that directly reflects our foundational mission of advancing Open Science. We aim to provide a sustainable solution that caters to the distinct needs of all stakeholders, from researchers and institutions to policymakers and funders. Besides tracking progress, this effort is also about deciphering the complexities of open access, pinpointing potential areas for improvement, and empowering stakeholders to make informed, strategic decisions.” (Natalia Manola, OpenAIRE CEO)

An introductory webinar for stakeholders will be held in September. Please join the National Open Access Monitor Project mailing list for details of this webinar, and ongoing project updates, news and actions for stakeholders: https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NATIONAL-OA-MONITOR-UPDATES&A=1. For more information, please contact Dr Catherine Ferris, Project Manager, National Open Access Monitor Project, IReL, Maynooth University: catherine.ferris@mu.ie.

STM’s SDG Roadmap is launched!

STM has released the first part of a new SDG Roadmap to guide publishers large and small in implementing the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and supporting sustainability more broadly. This dedicated toolkit of resources for scholarly publishers takes the potentially overwhelming framework of the SDGs and breaks it down into concrete steps.

The roadmap offers practical suggestions, starting with small steps like signing the SDG Publishers’ Compact and sending a questionnaire to gather your colleagues’ views about SDGs. Later, it guides you through selecting the SDGs that are most relevant to your organisation, nominating individual(s) to coordinate SDG efforts and more. 

Our goal is to have at least 50% of STM members sign up. Will you join us in supporting sustainability and social responsibility? 

Explore the roadmap & sign up here.

SSP Announces 2023 New Directions in Scholarly Publishing Seminar

We are excited to announce our seventh annual New Directions in Scholarly Publishing Seminar, happening October 4 and 5 at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Conference Center in Washington, DC, and online.

This year’s seminar, “Navigating the Shifting Sands: Managing Disruptions in Scholarly Communications,” will help attendees identify and address commercial and cultural disruptions. This hybrid meeting will allow attendees to connect in person and online.

Join us as we review industry shifts and discuss how to manage change best and embrace new paradigms in our field. The New Directions Seminar working group, led by Lettie Conrad (independent consultant), developed the program, which identifies current challenges and new developments in every step of the scholarly process–from research preparation to discovery to promotion. Speakers will represent a diverse and passionate group of experts from academia, publishing, libraries, and industry service providers.

The Keynote speaker, Dr. Rebecca Weintraub Brendel (Director of the Center for Bioethics and the Director of the Master of Science in Bioethics Program at Harvard Medical School), will close the day on October 4. Dr. Brendel will reflect on challenges and opportunities for navigating new directions in research integrity, addressing what drives fraud and what publishers can do to safeguard quality and trust in scholarly communications.

Session topics include:

  • Rethinking Funding, Research Projects, and the Global Body of Knowledge
  • Tech Topics that ChatGPT Thinks You Should Know About
  • Sharing and Publishing Research Data: Challenges & Opportunities
  • Authorship in the Age of AI
  • New Models and New Voices
  • Developing a Growth Mindset

View the complete program and registration details!

Whether you are an early-career professional or a seasoned veteran interested in learning more about the solutions to current challenges in our field, there is a seat for you at our seminar in person or online.

Early registration discounts are available through September 8, 2023. Bulk registration discounts are available for virtual attendees.

Thank you to New Directions sponsors Access Innovations, Data Conversion Laboratory, Morressier, and Silverchair. Additional sponsorship opportunities are still available. Contact Kristin Totoro at partnerships@sspnet.org.

Informa Markets and HIMSS Join Forces to Expand the HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition

Informa Markets and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) are proud to announce a landmark partnership to propel the growth and evolution of the HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition. Informa Markets will take on management of the HIMSS Exhibition, while HIMSS will continue to oversee developing expert content and programming.

Recognized as the most influential healthcare technology event of the year, the HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition brings together the global health ecosystem to network, discover, learn and innovate. As one of the largest healthcare events in North America, it draws 40,000 health professionals, technology leaders, providers and governmental organizations from around the world. Informa Markets is the world’s leading exhibition organizer, connecting communities across diverse sectors ranging from Fashion to Engineering, Health and Wellness to Construction, and more, with a portfolio encompassing over 450 brands.

This partnership will bring together the scale, expertise and resources of the world’s leading exhibitions organizer with the unparalleled thought leadership that HIMSS has established in the health tech community. Participants will continue to benefit from HIMSS’ excellence in curating content and programming that showcases the latest advancements and innovations in health information and technology, while drawing on Informa Markets’ unrivaled expertise in delivering world-class event experiences. With a strong presence in the Healthcare and Medtech space through brands such as FIME, Arab Health and IME, Informa Markets is an ideal partner to elevate the HIMSS Exhibition to new heights. Under Informa Markets’ leadership, the 2024 version of the HIMSS Conference and Exhibition will provide fresh opportunities and enhance the customer experience for HIMSS members, featuring improved digital features, enhanced registration processes, marketing tools and cutting-edge product discover applications.

“The HIMSS 2023 Global Health Conference and Exhibition was an outstanding success. We are determined to continuously advance this conference and exhibition, delivering ever greater value to everyone who attends: speakers, sponsors, exhibitors and healthcare professionals,” said Hal Wolf, President & CEO of HIMSS. “With the remarkable growth that the Global Conference has reached, it’s the right time to partner with North America’s leading exhibitions organizer, Informa Markets, who shares our vision to make the HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition the best it can be for the entire ecosystem.

After a successful 2023 conference hosted in Chicago, the 2024 HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition will move to Orlando, where Informa’s South Florida Ventures team has recently added Art Miami, the Miami International Boat Show and Premiere Beauty to its rapidly growing luxury lifestyle portfolio in the region, under the leadership of Ken McAvoy.

“We are thrilled to expand our work connecting the healthcare community with the addition of the HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition,” said Ken McAvoy, President, South Florida Ventures at Informa Markets. “Drawing on our extensive experience in organizing some of the largest and most successful events in the U.S., combined with HIMSS’ unparalleled expertise in the digital health space, we are excited to collaborate and leverage our resources to deliver even greater benefits and value to the HIMSS community and its members.”

The highly anticipated 2024 HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition, the inaugural edition under this new partnership, will take place in Orlando, FL, on March 11-15. Expect a groundbreaking event that will shape the future of healthcare technology. Learn more.

MIT Press’s Direct to Open (D2O) achieves second year goal, opens access to 82 new books in 2023

With 322 participating libraries and new consortium agreements, the D2O publishing model has now opened access to more than 160 scholarly monographs and edited collections.

Thanks to the support of libraries participating in Direct to Open (D2O), the MIT Press will publish its full list (see below) of 2023 scholarly monographs and edited collections open access on the MIT Press Direct platform. 

Launched in 2021, D2O is a sustainable framework that harnesses the collective power of libraries to support open and equitable access to vital, leading scholarship. D2O moves scholarly books from a solely market-based, purchase model, where individuals and libraries buy single eBooks, to a collaborative, library-supported open access model. Instead of purchasing a title once for a single collection, libraries now have the opportunity to fund them one time for the world through participant fees. 

“With the successful conclusion of our second year of Direct to Open, we are thrilled to make the Press’s complete list of 2023 monographs openly available,” said Amy Brand, director and publisher of the MIT Press. “This achievement comes at a pivotal time for open science, research, and publishing and would not be possible without the partnership and collaboration of D2O member libraries and consortia. Together, we are proving open access scholarship is not only achievable, but sustainable and scalable.”

In its second year, 322 libraries, an increase of 33% from the first year, from around the globe committed to support D2O. Expanding D2O’s international footprint, the Press also entered into all-in agreements with Big Ten Academic Alliance and the Konsortium der sächsischen Hochschulbibliotheken, as well as central licensing and invoicing agreements with Council of Australian University Librarians, Center for Research Libraries; Greater Western Library Alliance, MOBIUS, Northeast Research Libraries, Jisc, Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration and Innovation, SCELC, and Lyrasis.

“When we launched Direct to Open two years ago, we passionately believed that taking action to foster a more equitable, sustainable, and open scholarly communication ecosystem was vital and urgent,” said Amy Harris, senior manager, library relations and sales at the MIT Press. “Success was not guaranteed and has required dedicated, hard work to achieve this year; but we have been truly humbled by the support of all of the participating libraries and our consortia partners.”

In the coming year, the Press will seek to expand library participation in the model. Supporting libraries not only contribute to opening frontlist titles, but also receive exclusive participation benefits including term access to a backlist collection of over 2,400 titles. To learn more about Direct to Open, or to sign-up to become a participating library, visit direct.mit.edu/books/pages/direct-to-open or contact the MIT Press library partnerships and sales team.

List of MIT Press 2023 monographs and edited collections included in the Direct to Open model:

eLife and PREreview to enhance the ‘publish, review, curate’ ecosystem through adoption of COAR Notify

eLife and PREreview are pleased to announce that the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) will provide them with technical and funding support to implement the COAR Notify technology. With this support, the organisations will work to connect separate services within the ‘publish, review, curate’ ecosystem.

The project will put in place the basic infrastructure and protocols needed for all-round and standardised connections between preprint repositories, community-led preprint review platforms, journals, and preprint review aggregation and curation platforms. The aim is to lower existing technological and cost barriers so that as many of these services as possible can more easily participate in the ‘publish, review, curate’ future for research.

The COAR Notify Initiative, launched by COAR in 2021 and 2022, was awarded funding by Arcadia – a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge. The aim of the COAR Notify Initiative is to promote community adoption of a standard and decentralised approach to link research outputs that are hosted in different repository networks with resources from external services, such as overlay journals and groups that provide open peer review. This approach makes use of the COAR Notify Protocol – the ‘technical glue’ that connects these services together, and is based on established web-based technologies Linked Data Notifications and Activity Streams. eLife and PREreview will adopt this approach within their systems to support the ‘publish, review, curate’ model that puts preprints first.

As a flavour of this model, eLife publishes preprints that it invites for review as Reviewed Preprints, alongside the public reviews and eLife assessment of the work. The assessment includes a shared vocabulary, adding a ‘curate’ component to the model. For the accompanying infrastructure, the organisation is working with Coko to develop Kotahi, an open-source platform for managing the submission and review of preprints. Meanwhile, PREreview provides a website for the crowdsourcing of preprint reviews, and is one of a number of reviewing groups on Sciety – a website developed by the team at eLife to aggregate evaluated preprints from across the web into one place.

Partners for more than two years, eLife and PREreview have a common goal to promote community engagement in open peer review. PREreview engages the whole scientific community with collaborative and constructive full-length peer reviews of preprints. These preprint reviews are openly available for anyone to read, including editors and publishers who may consider the work for formal publication in a journal. The COAR Notify Initiative aligns with both PREreview and eLife’s goals by providing a standard approach for linking preprints hosted on different platforms with groups that provide open review.

By implementing the COAR Notify Protocol into bioRxiv/medRxiv, SciELO Preprints, Kotahi, PREreview, Sciety and other platforms, the partners aim to serve three workflows in the ‘publish, review, curate’ ecosystem. These include: author-driven requests for open, community-led peer review of their preprint; journal-driven requests for open, community-led peer review of a manuscript or preprint submitted to them for review and publication; and the ingestion and display of aggregated preprint review requests from multiple sources – that is, preprint servers including bioRxiv and other repositories – as well as resulting reviews published across preprint review platforms such as Sciety.

The interactions between these platforms provide an ideal scenario for the adoption of the COAR Notify model, which will support existing communications as well as allow them to scale beyond the current partners. Most notably, for author-driven requests of peer review, the COAR Notify Protocol will enable the organisations to provide a shared interface that connects preprint repositories with preprint review services. This work will first be carried out between bioRxiv and PREreview. The rest of the project will then focus on connecting bioRxiv and Kotahi, and SciELO Preprints and PREreview, by the end of 2023.

This work feeds into a larger project that will continue at least until the end of 2024, with the integration of the COAR Notify Protocol further into Kotahi and Sciety.

Paul Shannon, eLife Head of Technology and Innovation, says: “Some preprint platforms, like SciELO Preprints, have previously experimented with the ability for preprint authors to click a button that requests a peer review from PREreview. The problem is that these solutions were specific to the service and not easily reused by others. COAR has developed a protocol based on open standards which will enable us to harness the power of open-source technology to provide a solution that works for those services, and many more besides. This adds to the ‘publish, review, curate’ ecosystem and makes the technology available for other reviewing groups and organisations that wish to implement and build upon it.”

eLife and PREreview are not the first organisations to work with the COAR Notify Protocol. The nonprofit Peer Community In – an organisation of researchers offering the peer review, recommendation and publication of scientific articles in open access for free – has adopted the technology to support communications with Hyper Articles en Ligne (HAL), the French national repository, and Episcience, an overlay journal platform. Alongside PREreview, eLife’s goal is to use the protocol to support reviewing groups across the globe. While the project will initially focus on PREreview and Brazil-based SciELO Preprints, the partners hope that many other groups on Sciety will come on board as the work progresses.

Chad Sansing, Product Manager at PREreview, welcomes this collaboration. He says: “We’re excited to pilot this work with eLife, COAR, and preprint servers like biorXiv and SciELO Preprints to further improve the timeliness and helpfulness of peer preprint reviews for preprint authors from around the world.”

Kathleen Shearer, COAR Executive Director, adds: “COAR strongly endorses the ‘publish, review, curate’ model as an alternative to traditional publishing. We’re delighted to support the eLife and PREreview teams in their efforts to adopt COAR Notify, which will allow this model to scale and flourish.”

More information about Arcadia is available at https://www.arcadiafund.org.uk.

To read more about eLife’s new publishing model, see https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/741dbe4d/elife-s-new-model-open-for-submissions.

For more information about eLife and Coko’s work on Kotahi, visit https://elifesciences.org/for-the-press/a587f01b/elife-extends-support-for-coko-s-work-on-open-source-publishing-solutions.

To read more about eLife and PREreview’s partnership, visit https://elifesciences.org/for-the-press/a5f813bc/elife-and-prereview-extend-partnership-to-boost-community-engagement-in-open-peer-review.

And for more information about SciELO and Sciety, see https://elifesciences.org/for-the-press/281cccbb/sciety-welcomes-asapbio-scielo-preprints-crowd-review-for-the-evaluation-of-brazilian-portuguese-preprints.

Dimensions to boost discoverability of Oxford University Press online journals and books

The world’s largest linked research database, Dimensions, will grow its knowledge base even further, thanks to a new partnership with the world’s largest university press, Oxford University Press (OUP).

Under the agreement, more than 27,000 books and 500 journal titles from OUP’s Oxford Academic digital publishing platform will be fully indexed and discoverable in Dimensions, adding another rich resource of academic material to the world’s largest research database, in fields such as the arts, humanities, economics, science, technology, history, and politics.

The move will enable users of Dimensions – a flagship Digital Science product – to obtain further insights from the vast data contained in these volumes, due to full text indexation and improved metadata, such as affiliation data, funding data, references, corresponding authors, and much more.

Dimensions covers millions of research publications connected by more than 1.8 billion citations, supporting grants, datasets, clinical trials, patents and policy documents. This includes 136 million publications from 107,000 journals, 59 preprint servers, and more than 1.6 million books.

Andrew Sandland, Senior Business Development Manager for Oxford University Press, said: ”Oxford University Press welcomes this new partnership with Digital Science and Dimensions. We have a commitment to making the research that we publish as accessible as possible for researchers and academics, to help increase access to the wealth of information and knowledge within the content. Our Oxford Academic titles currently number more than 40,000 books and more than 500 journals, and we are pleased to be part of the expansion of the Dimensions research database.”

Christian Herzog, Chief Product Officer for Digital Science and co-Founder of Dimensions, said: “With OUP being the world’s largest university press, and because they’re such an important publisher of books in the humanities and social sciences, we see this as adding further value to our world-leading Dimensions database. Thanks to this partnership with OUP, we’re pleased that Dimensions will be able to further expand its access to data, and continue to provide the best possible solutions to the global research community.”

Sage and PubGrade form Partnership to empower Contextually Targeted Digital Advertising

The partnership opens new opportunities in contextual advertising across the Sage journals.

PubGrade, a leader in scientific digital display advertising, and Sage, a global academic publisher of books, journals, and library resources, have launched an advertising partnership that allows clients to leverage contextually targeted ad campaigns across all Sage journals.

This partnership expands PubGrade’s ever-growing publisher ad network, and demonstrates Sage’s commitment to providing innovative resources that allow wider audiences to benefit from its vast social and behavioural science content.

“We are excited to reach this agreement with PubGrade as it will open up the potential for advertisers to benefit from Sage’s dedicated research-focused content and loyal readers,” said Roberto Mastrorilli, director of commercial sales at Sage. “This agreement also enables us to join PubGrade’s expanding publisher ad network, fostering collaboration within the industry and driving innovation forward.”

John Michael, commercial director at PubGrade, said, “We are delighted to have expanded our publisher network with the renowned Sage. It is part of our ongoing strategy to assist publishers in embracing the benefits of generating supplementary revenues, particularly from granular, contextually targeted digital advertising campaigns. This partnership further solidifies our commitment to providing cutting-edge advertising solutions to publishers and advertisers alike.”

For more – https://bit.ly/3s0NI0R

Digital Science announces exclusive rollout of Dimensions AI Assistant beta version

Digital Science is pleased to announce a limited and exclusive beta launch of Dimensions AI Assistant, a new research tool designed to enhance how users engage with the wealth of knowledge available on Dimensions, among the world’s largest linked research databases.

Dimensions AI Assistant utilizes advanced artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to provide users with semantically rich summaries and contextualized results, surpassing traditional keyword-based searches.

To ensure that Dimensions AI Assistant meets the needs of its target audience, Dimensions is inviting a limited number of beta testers globally to actively participate in shaping how AI will support Dimensions users in the future. These users will be based in various sectors, including academia, corporations, publishers, government agencies, and funding organizations – representing Digital Science’s key client base.

Christian Bode, Head of Product at Dimensions, said: “We consider the beta launch of Dimensions AI Assistant as a crucial step in improving the product, directly engaging with our community to receive user feedback on new AI based functionality.

“The valuable insights gathered during our closed beta phase will guide Dimensions in refining and optimizing Dimensions AI Assistant to align with user expectations and requirements. By prioritizing user input, we can create a research tool that truly caters to the diverse needs of the research community,” he said.

Digital Science CEO Daniel Hook emphasized the company’s commitment to an ethical and responsible approach to AI. “We recognize the challenges inherent in using AI, especially for something as fundamental and impactful as research. The ethical and social implications of this technology cannot be ignored and hence we feel that an ethical and responsible approach is needed, even in the face of rapid innovation and the hype around AI,” Dr Hook said.

“We are committed to releasing tools where we either explicitly understand and can state their downsides or where we have a high degree of confidence and trust in their outputs. We believe this approach is crucial so we can empower users to discern when they can trust the AI and when they should exercise caution.”

The closed beta launch of Dimensions AI Assistant represents the first step in Dimensions’ broader vision of developing additional AI helpers. The insights from beta testers will play a pivotal role in exploring opportunities to integrate Dimensions AI Assistant into Dimensions Analytics, further enhancing research capabilities.

Jisc launches review of open access and the role of transitional agreements

To kick start the slow shift towards fully open access academic publishing, Jisc has launched a review.  

Commissioned and governed by Jisc’s strategic groups with input from Deltathink, an open access data and analytics company, the aim is to gather evidence, agitate discussion in the higher education sector and make recommendations for action.  

Exploring the open access landscape in general and the particular role of transitional agreements (TAs), the review findings will be published early in 2024. 

Jisc’s head of research licensing, Anna Vernon, explains why the review is necessary:  

“The UK has been a leader in the transition to open access, driven by funder policy and institutional demand for a publishing ecosystem that is affordable, fair and transparent.  

“However, two decades on from the first talks on open research, overall progress remains slow.  

“We know the UK higher education institutions Jisc represents in sector negotiations with publishers are frustrated with the status quo. We hope this review will kick-start the process by supplying the evidence to drive sector consensus on what future open access publishing models should look like.”  

The review aims to answer the following questions: 

• What proportion of scholarly literature is OA? 

• What impact have Jisc-negotiated TAs had on the open access of UK research publications? 

• What effect have TAs had on costs for UK higher education providers? 

• How far have TAs facilitated author compliance with funder requirements? 

• To what extent have TAs enabled greater transparency around publisher OA processes for the academic sector? 

For more information on how Jisc is supporting OA, visit the open access pages. 

PeerJ announces Professor Lesley Rogers and Professor Michael Wink as Co-Editors-in-Chief of PeerJ Open Advances in Zoology

The Open Access publisher PeerJ has announced their first Editor-in-Chief partnership in the Open Advances series.  Professors Lesley Rogers and Michael Wink will jointly steer the development and forthcoming launch of the new title, PeerJ Open Advances in Zoology journal.

Rogers and Wink are award-winning senior academics, with decades of experience in the field, conducting cutting-edge zoological research at the highest level. Together, they will provide the intellectual leadership for the journal; they will help to recruit an Editorial Board; and they will define the ‘global challenges’ on which the journal will focus.

Lesley Rogers, Professor Emeritus at the University of New England, Australia, discovered lateralization in the chick forebrain, when lateralization was still believed to be unique to humans. 

Professor Rogers joined the University of New England in 1985 and was appointed to a personal Chair in 1993 as Professor of Neuroscience and Animal Behaviour. In 2000 she was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. She combines her research interests with a commitment to communicating science to a broader audience and writing books.  Her publications include 300 scientific papers and book chapters, 19 books and many edited special issues, mainly on brain, behavior and evolution. Her interests extend to her actively promoting the role of women in science and addressing issues of biology and politics. Her work has been cited over 22,000 times. Lesley was a founding member of the PeerJ Editorial Board.

“Amidst the rising costs and competition for Open Access publication of scientific papers, this new journal offers free and equitable publication of excellent science to researchers in all countries. This is an exciting new venture aimed at cutting-edge research and discussion of ideas addressing the pressing challenges to animal life now and into the future,” said Professor Rogers

Michael Wink is a Senior Professor at Universität Heidelberg. Michael has a wide range of expertise, including ornithology, chemical ecology, and evolution. An expert in phylogeny, Michael has a particular interest in birds and ornithology, and is one of the world’s authorities on owl molecular taxonomy and systematics of owls.

In 1989, Professor Wink was appointed Professor of Pharmaceutical Biology at Universität Heidelberg, and has held numerous positions at the university. He was a founding member of the PeerJ Editorial Board and has been Section Editor for Zoology since 2021. Michael is an incredibly productive researcher, having published over 1200 original papers and more than 20 books, as well as mentoring over 125 PhD students. His work has been cited over 55,000 times.

“This novel series of PeerJ opens up a new era of Open Access publishing, as it will be free of charge for both readers and authors. I hope that we can attract excellent reviews and original contributions which provide new data, new syntheses or new challenges,” said Professor Michael Wink

Dr. Stephen Johnson, PeerJ Publishing Editor for Open Advances series, said “This is an exciting time for PeerJ and I am looking forward to working with Michael and Lesley to build a world-class editorial board, and define the scope of PeerJ Open Advances in Zoology so we can start accepting submissions. The journal will publish important work, with no financial barriers to publish or read, while continuing our commitment to the highest standards of ethics, data availability and developmental peer review.” 

The Open Advances series at PeerJ will take on a crucial responsibility: combining the prioritization of research that tackles global challenges head-on, with an equitable approach that ensures every researcher has an equal opportunity to contribute to answering critical questions in their field.

The journal’s focus on the most important global challenges in zoology means that its scope will evolve as questions are answered, new avenues of investigation are discovered and new challenges facing the zoological world are identified. Michael and Lesley will work closely with the Editorial Board to identify the challenges which the journal will initially tackle, and oversee the creation of an evidence base that will address those challenges. 

“At PeerJ, we believe in empowering scholars to address the most pressing issues of our time, and that starts with removing barriers to equitable access to scientific communication, and allowing the expert community to determine and drive the scope and focus of the work they publish. With Lesley and Michael at the helm, we are excited to see what challenges the journal takes on, and the progress it makes in addressing them,” said Peter Binfield, PeerJ’s Co-Founder and Publisher.

PeerJ has made a commitment that journals in the Open Advances Series will be fee-free for authors, in an effort to ensure that research addressing the most important issues of the day is both freely accessible to all to read, and that authors face no financial barriers to publication. 

Read more about the Open Advances series here: https://peerj.com/open-advances 

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