UK universities united in pushing for a better deal with Springer Nature

February 22, 2023

Five higher education sector groups have jointly agreed a statement in support of continuing negotiations with the academic publisher, Springer Nature (SN).

UK universities have two agreements with Springer Nature, which expired on 31 December 2022. On behalf of the sector, Jisc is handling negotiations for a new agreement that aims to deliver read access and open access publishing across the SN portfolio.

The latest proposal, received in November, did not meet sector requirements and has been rejected by the sector but, as the statement demonstrates, the groups are united in their desire to reach an acceptable agreement.

The terms of the expired agreements, including access to SN journals, are being honoured by SN until further notice.

Signed by Guild HE, MillionPlus, N8 PVC-Rs, the Russell Group and the University Alliance, the statement says:

Our university members are fully behind the recent decision by the sector, and the negotiating team, to reject the latest offer from Springer Nature. We recognise and welcome the improvements that Springer Nature has made to its offer throughout the negotiations. However, the latest proposal still does not meet the needs of the sector and our members.

UK universities agreed a clear set of requirements at the start of the negotiations and these must be met before we will support an agreement with Springer Nature. The requirements include reducing and constraining costs, ensuring all UK research can be published open access, and providing greater transparency on costs and Springer Nature’s transition to open research.

We support the continuation of negotiations in the hope an appropriate agreement can be reached which will make the transition to open access financially sustainable and equitable.

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics selects DataSalon for easy access to business intelligence

February 22, 2023

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics have adopted DataSalon’s cloud-based service MasterVision to join together their customer data into a complete single customer view which will help generate leads, increase insight, and build global sales.

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) announced today the adoption of DataSalon’s MasterVision platform in order to better understand their customer data and revenue streams and how they fit together and impact each other.

MasterVision joins up all of SIAM’s different datasets to put them into a context not available in the separate systems from which these datasets come. And because it is fully customisable to the individual publisher, MasterVision has the flexibility to include not only SIAM’s core submissions, subscriptions, sales, usage and denials data, but also additional customer data such as members, student chapters, conferences and donations.

MasterVision also enhances SIAM’s own data by offering full integration with Ringgold, which will be invaluable to SIAM when prospecting for new customers, allowing them to perform white space analysis in order to see which relevant Ringgold institutions are not customers or do not currently have a complete set of holdings.

SIAM were also attracted by the ability to load COUNTER usage and denials data into MasterVision automatically each month via SUSHI – as well as the additional information DataSalon could infer from this data, such as cost per download.

MasterVision’s user-friendly search and analytics tools empower SIAM’s sales and marketing staff to take control of their own data analysis. Now that the initial set-up is complete, DataSalon are continuing to work with SIAM to support their business use cases, for data insights, using MasterVision’s saved searches, search templates, and dashboards to make it easy for even non-technical staff to access this information.

Kivmars Bowling, Publications Director, commented: “SIAM is delighted to be working with DataSalon to help us link up our author and member data with subscriptions, usage, and denials. Previously we had these data sources in separate systems and delivering business insights was a highly manual process. MasterVision now gives us the complete 360º picture to fully understand all the different interactions and touchpoints any individual or institution may have with SIAM. This will be transformative in enabling us to better serve our communities in a much more personalized way and further deliver on the society’s mission.”

Nick Andrews, Managing Director of DataSalon commented: “We’re very excited to be working with SIAM – their staff have a very clear idea of what they want to find out from their data, and it’s a pleasure to use our knowledge of scholarly publishing and our experience in creating business analysis tools to support this.”

[Further notes for editors are included in the attached]

This release can also be found on our website: https://www.datasalon.com/news

New partnership to promote open data awareness and participation in Africa

February 22, 2023

Figshare – a world leader in digital infrastructure that supports open research, and part of Digital Science – has formed a new partnership with the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA), which is committed to open data and information sharing across Africa.

The partnership is aimed at promoting open data awareness and participation in Africa, to improve access to and use of open data across the continent.

Helena Asamoah-Hassan, Executive Director of AfLIA, said: “We are excited to enter into this partnership with Figshare, to work on collaborative activities that support awareness of open science and data repositories, and to support the research and education communities in Africa.

“Open data has the potential to drive innovation, economic growth, and social development by enabling individuals and organizations to make more informed decisions. However, in many African countries, access to open data is limited, and there is a lack of awareness and understanding of its potential benefits.

“Through our open data initiatives, we aim to support African higher education and research institutions, ultimately contributing to a stronger open science ecosystem in Africa for the benefit of our communities, and the world.”

Daniel Hook, CEO of Digital Science, said: “At Digital Science, we believe that research needs to be open, collaborative and inclusive so that the benefits are accrued rapidly, maximally and fairly. It is humbling to see the leadership shown by the willingness of so many researchers and institutions in Africa to embrace open and FAIR data principles, and I am proud that Figshare is able to support AfLIA through this new partnership.

“By providing key infrastructures such as those in this project we hope to increase Africa’s voice in the global research ecosystem and foster not only openness and collaboration but also diversity.”

As a key part of the partnership, Figshare and AfLIA are building an open access repository portal to host and disseminate AfLIA’s conference proceedings – including papers, presentations, posters, and videos – from 2023 onwards.

The AfLIA Conference Repository will provide authors, researchers and presenters at AfLIA conferences with improved archiving, and increased access to all resources and outputs. The repository will also include other features, such as altmetrics and citation data. Authors will get credit for all their outputs.

Figshare and AfLIA will work together to raise awareness of Open Science and Open Data principles and practices contextualized to Africa, including effective data management in data repositories, intellectual property rights, the FAIR data principles, data sovereignty, and will contribute to developing stakeholders’ professional skills.

Knowledge Unlatched shares results of 2022 pledging

February 16, 2023

Hundreds of new titles to be published Open Access in 2023

Knowledge Unlatched (KU), a Wiley brand, is pleased to share the results of its 2022 pledg- ing round, which ended in December 2022 and once again saw hundreds of libraries world- wide pledge support for OA book and journal collections offered by KU and its partners.

Overall, about 283 books will be made available OA in 2023. These include 184 books from the KU Select 2023 HSS Books Collection, two Focus Collections—Climate Change and Global Health—and around 99 books from KU’s partner collections. In addition, KU will support the publication of 700 peer-reviewed blog posts and 10 videos. KU’s efforts also contributed to the sustainability of 52 journals thanks to the successful continuation of 4 Subscribe-to- Open (S2O) partnerships and an additional 4 journals from the final year of the KU Select Journals collection. Additionally, over 200 additional books were made OA last year through KU Open Services—a service that helps publishers make titles OA on a title-by-title basis. KU expects similar numbers in 2023, bringing the combined number of books expected to be published OA via KU in 2023 to nearly 500.

In 2022, 77 publishers joined forces with KU to unlatch new content, including 28 university presses, and among these and others: the University of Michigan Press, Routledge/ Taylor & Francis, Central European University Press, Berghahn Books, University of California Press, International Water Association Publishing, Pluto Press, EDP Sciences, transcript, and wbv Media.

To date, some 670 institutions worldwide have supported KU initiatives. By the end of this year, KU’s total impact will number around 4,000 books and about 60 journals published OA.

KU will continue to provide the title lists for each collection and update its ‘unlatching’ and ‘upcoming titles’ dashboards regularly to give librarians a full overview of titles and their status.

For more information, please contact Neil Christensen at neil@knowledgeunlatched.org.

Reviewer Credits and Science Open cooperate to make Peer Review visible

February 16, 2023

Reviewer Credits (RC), the global expert network that makes peer review visible and helps researchers get recognition for their work, is partnering with ScienceOpen (SO), the research, networking, and discovery platform. Together, both companies will highlight research articles in ScienceOpen’s database that have been reviewed by Reviewer Credit members. Moreover, the reviewer status from RC will be reflected in SO’s user profiles.

“Peer review as the central mechanism of quality control in scholarly publishing is of central value to academics,” says Dr. Stephanie Dawson, ScienceOpen’s CEO. “Recognizing researchers for their important contribution to a functioning publishing ecosystem is vital to keep it functioning.”

“Making peer review visible on as many articles as possible is the best way to remind researchers of its importance”, says Dr. Sven Fund, Reviewer Credit’s Managing Director. “In an environment where manipulated peer reviews are a growing concern, we want to make a positive contribution through labelling scientific self-control.”

First successful projects selected for funding through new open access community framework

February 16, 2023

Three OA publishing initiatives to be fully funded through 2022 pilot scheme that aims to boost smaller publishers and improve decision-making

A new approach for supporting diversity in the open access (OA) marketplace, in which UK higher education institutions pledge to support publishers over a three-year period, has achieved funding targets for three initiatives.

The open access community framework (OACF) was announced in February 2022 and launched at the ‘Supporting community-based open research initiatives’ webinar in May.

It aimed to help small publishers reach a wider potential pool of supporters and to group funding requests to institutions to help their strategic decision-making and budget planning.

Eligibility was limited to publishers using the ‘diamond OA’ model, with no charges for subscriptions or article processing charges, that also operate on a not-for-profit basis.

To facilitate Jisc members’ engagement with OA initiatives such as the OACF, three institutions shared their experiences of creating strategies and managing budgets to support diamond OA at the webinar.

After the event, member institutions could commit funding to whichever of the ten approved initiatives they chose. The pledging window closed on 30 November.

Each initiative had a funding target, and Jisc worked with publishers to determine a range of fee levels aligning broadly with Jisc bands to ensure that institutions of all sizes and budgets could engage with the OACF. Twenty-one institutions pledged support, 17 supporting more than one initiative, and a total of 67 orders were made, valued at £128k.

All ten initiatives received some funding and three achieved their funding target: Peer Community Journal, SciPost and the University of London Press’ New Historical Perspectives book series.

Helen Dobson, licensing portfolio specialist for research at Jisc, said:

“The OACF has provided a simple mechanism for small publishers to increase awareness of their diamond OA initiatives with our members and we’re delighted three publishers have reached their funding target.

“The pilot has raised the profile of community-based funding models and stimulated conversations among Jisc members on how to support diamond OA and open research infrastructure more broadly.”

Paula Kennedy, Head of Publishing at University of London Press, said:

“We’re very pleased to have received support through the OACF for our ‘New Historical Perspectives’ series, which we publish with the Royal Historical Society and Institute of Historical Research.

“This successful OA series, aimed at early-career researchers, has high demand from authors and with OACF funding we can now publish three extra titles a year.

“As a smaller university press publishing on behalf of a society, we wanted to pilot a model that we hope other learned society publishers can benefit from.”

Dr Jan Willem Wijnen, Strategy Officer for Scipost, said:

“The OACF has worked out very well for us, so we are happy. Not just for the provided funds but also because OACF has turned out to be a smart and successful way for academic libraries to work together to support developments in open science.”

For more details on the OACF pilot and how it worked, visit the Jisc open access webpages.

Renewal of Read & Publish Open Access agreement between The Company of Biologists and MALMAD

February 16, 2023

Following the success of our first three-year cost-neutral Read & Publish Open Access (OA) agreement with MALMAD, we are delighted to announce that we have signed a renewal agreement from 1 January 2023 – 31 December 2025.

Researchers at seven leading institutions in Israel can continue to publish an uncapped number of research articles immediately OA without charge in The Company’s hybrid journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology. They also have unlimited access to the journals and their archives dating back to 1853.

Dr. Sigal Lahav Scher, MALMAD Director, says:

“The Company of Biologists was one of the first publishers MALMAD signed a Read & Publish agreement with. We are now very pleased to renew the agreement, covering the costs for researchers at seven institutions in Israel to publish an unlimited number of Open Access articles in all three of The Company’s hybrid journals, whilst also giving them reading access. Our continued cooperation is an important step in the transition to Open Access.”

Sarah Logan, Regional Sales Manager (Africa, The Middle East, Central and Southeast Asia, China and Japan) at The Company of Biologists, says:

“We were one of the first not-for-profit publishers to launch a cost-neutral Read & Publish OA initiative and our 2020-2023 agreement with MALMAD was one of the first we signed. Since then, the initiative has gone from strength to strength. We now have agreements with ten library consortia and we are delighted to be renewing our agreement with MALMAD for a further three years.”

Claire Moulton, Publisher at The Company of Biologists, says:

“Our Read & Publish initiative has been a great success thanks to the tremendous support we have received from libraries and library consortia around the world. Over 600 institutions in 39 countries are now participating, and this helped us to meet our Transformative Journal targets for OA growth in 2021 and 2022.

We have had fantastic feedback from authors who benefitted from immediate and fee-free OA publishing during our first three-year agreement with MALMAD, and we look forward continuing our partnership to further accelerate the transition to OA in the biological and biomedical sciences in Israel.”

Springer Nature continues its focus on tailored solutions for academics with acquisition of researcher-created writing tool, TooWrite

February 14, 2023

Springer Nature today announces the acquisition of innovative digital writing aid, TooWrite. This is the latest addition to the publisher’s growing portfolio of digital solutions for academics designed to help improve their working lives.

Developed by researchers for researchers, the TooWrite platform streamlines and simplifies scientific writing by guiding researchers through the process as if they were answering a questionnaire. In addition, expert how-to guides are attached to each question, supporting researchers as if they had an editor by their side. By structuring it in this step-by-step way, researchers’ time is freed up by making the writing process more efficient. Currently available to support the writing of abstracts (beta prototype), it is being developed to support the writing of full research papers.

Speaking of the acquisition, Eugenie Regan Vice President, Research Solutions commented:

“Researchers are at the heart of what we do. They need to work fast and are under multiple challenges. As such we are committed to working with them to address their pain points and find solutions. TooWrite is one such example and will form a part of our growing portfolio of tools and services developed to support researchers at every point in their research journey. We look forward to further enhancing our offering for researchers ensuring they can spend their time where they want to, on their research, advancing discovery and contributing to tackling the social challenges that surround our world.”

As part of this acquisition, TooWrite’s co-founder and academic Ivy Cavendish will be joining Springer Nature in a newly created role, Head of Writing Solutions, where she will oversee the platform’s development. Commenting on the role, Ivy remarked:

“I am delighted to be joining Springer Nature and to have found a new home for TooWrite. This has always been a grass-roots project, starting from a small flat in Angel with my co-founder Algernon Bloom, where I first built TooWrite as a one-off to help him write his thesis. Having seen the impact TooWrite could have on the lives and careers of the researchers around us we set out to create our ‘science writing revolution’.

“Our aim with TooWrite has been to put the needs of researchers front and center and build a tool that can make it easier and quicker for researchers to get their work out where it can make a difference – a goal Springer Nature shares. I look forward to seeing how TooWrite will now benefit from the expertise in solutions and platforms that they can offer, whilst working with their team of experts to build on the way in which Springer Nature offers a portfolio of tailored and scalable solutions for our community.”

TooWrite will sit as part of services offered as part of Springer Nature’s Research Solutions’ digital products. Ivy will remain responsible for its development, with the current focus remaining on building the platform to support thesis and paper writing, beyond its current abstract and application support.

More on TooWrite and a demonstration can be seen here on its original product website. More on the publisher’s commitment to research and services can be found here and its research solutions portfolio can be explored here.

Society for Scholarly Publishing Mentorship Program Application Window Open

February 14, 2023

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.

This program is ideal for professionals at all career levels to develop new relationships, share experiences, and learn from others outside their organizations by connecting with a mentor. The next cohort will run from March through September 2023, and SSP is accepting applications for mentees and mentors now through February 24.

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 diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, and we strongly encourage people from traditionally marginalized groups to apply as mentors or mentees.

Selected participants are matched with mentors or mentees by the Career Development Committee. They are expected to meet at least once monthly for six months. In addition, mentors and mentees must attend an orientation and virtual discussion group. There is no cost to apply, but program participants (mentors and mentees) must be SSP.

We want to thank our program sponsors, American Geophysical Union and ITHAKA. Organizations interested in sponsorship opportunities should contact Christina DeRose at 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.

Visit SSP’s Mentorship page for more information about program details, eligibility requirements, and how to apply.

HEAL-Link launches open research publishing hub with F1000

February 14, 2023

HEAL-Link has partnered with open research publisher F1000 to launch HEAL1000, an open research publishing hub in Greece for all researchers affiliated with its 43 member institutions.

HEAL1000 is hosted on F1000’s own pioneering open research publishing platform, F1000Research, and enables all HEAL-Link affiliated authors the opportunity to rapidly share any sound research output, thereby accelerating the dissemination of knowledge and the pace of new discoveries. HEAL-Link joins other prominent supporters of open research, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the European Commission and Wellcome in adopting this innovative publishing model.

The publishing hub (or ‘gateway’ as it’s known on F1000Research) recognizes the value in offering a diversity of article publishing options, from brief reports to systematic reviews, and from registered reports to software tool articles, providing a route to publish across the research lifecycle for all researchers inHEAL-Link member institutions. The gateway will adopt F1000’s open data policy and post-publication open peer review model, promoting reproducibility, transparency, and collaborative practices. As part of F1000Research, all publications that pass peer review will be indexed in major databases, such as Scopus, DOAJ and PubMed.

HEAL1000 is a multidisciplinary English language gateway, accepting research across engineering, economics, humanities, health and more. Once published, all content on the HEAL1000 gateway will be available to researchers, teachers, journalists — anyone and everyone — free of charge.

The launch of HEAL1000 is the result of a major collaborative effort across HEAL-Link’s 43 Greek member institutions. It marks the first publishing partnership for F1000 with a consortium, extending the existing partnership with Taylor & Francis, through which HEAL-Link members have access to a wide range of journals as part of an ongoing three-year deal. The gateway showcases the consortium’s commitment to challenging the limitations of current publishing systems and providing their researchers with the tools to share and build on knowledge. HEAL Link will be covering the cost of APCs, so publication will be at no cost to eligible authors.

Professor Mavroeidis Angelakeris, Chairman of HEAL-Link, said:

“Strongly supporting open science, HEAL-Link is initiating the HEAL1000 gateway for all researchers affiliated with its member institutions to publish a wide variety of research outputs. Research published on HEAL1000 will be publicly available to read, download, and reuse, with author-managed open peer review and an open data policy.”

Rebecca Lawrence, Managing Director for F1000, said:

“HEAL1000 exemplifies open research’s potential to provide researchers across disciplines with more opportunities to share their work, rapidly build on findings, enhance discoverability and support greater collaboration across borders. F1000 is pleased to be partnering with this impressive consortium of libraries to further the reach of open research publishing and innovation in the region.”

HEAL1000 is now accepting submissions from all eligible researchers.

END

Access Lab 2023 program announced!

February 14, 2023

OpenAthens launch their annual conference program. Speakers will discuss global challenges and opportunities in access to resources.

We are excited to launch our program for Access Lab 2023. Access Lab is taking place from 20-23 March, online. With free sessions running at all hours of the day, we guarantee there will be something that works for you. And if you can’t make it, the sessions will be available to view afterwards so we encourage you to register for the conference so you can catch up later!

Our 2023 event program

Access Lab provides a space to explore, discuss and learn from your peers. We have an online program packed full of case studies, best practice and discussions to get you thinking about improvements you could take away.

Our conference brings together delegates and speakers from across the globe to look at challenges facing the sector in different regions. Topics include user experience, customer case studies on moving to federated single sign-on and systems integration, the impact of cookie privacy changes, and data trends. This year’s speakers include:

Emily Singley, VP North American library relations, Elsevier
Balakrishna Rao, director digital & IT, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India
David Leffler, discovery and access librarian, Liberty University
Chandler Christoffel, user experience librarian, University of Georgia
Emma Wilson-Shaw, e-resources manager, OpenAthens
Lim Peir Jiunn, senior technical specialist, OpenAthens

Our 2023 keynote speaker Emily Singley from Elsevier will join us to discuss how librarian partnerships drive innovation, improve user experience, and ensure equitable and secure access for everyone.
Commenting on the event programme, Emily said:

‘’It’s great to see a diverse group of speakers from across the world. I’m excited to join the conference to learn about the challenges our peers are facing and to be part of the OpenAthens global community’’.

An exciting feature of the event is the Best Publisher UX Awards. Now in its fourth year, Jane Charlton, international marketing manager at OpenAthens will announce the winner of this year’s award on Monday 20 March at 12:50pm EDT/16:50pm GMT. Jane says:

“We recognize that user experience is important to librarians and this topic features strongly in our program sessions. We’ll also announce the winner of our 2023 ‘Best publisher UX award’ which aims to reward publishers for placing users first and center in their service design.”

User experience is a key theme throughout this year’s program. Our e-resources manager, Emma Wilson-Shaw, will chair a panel debate discussing ‘Why consistent user experience is essential for global research (and how to achieve it)’. Delegates will be able to ask questions to the live panel.

More information about Access Lab 2023 including the full program can be found on our website.

Who can attend?

Whether you are a publisher, provider, library or IT professional, our event allows you to join our global community to share knowledge, challenges and updates from across the industry. We will also be on hand to answer any questions you may have about OpenAthens and how we can help you to make things simpler!

How to register
It is free to register for Access Lab 2023. You can register now on our website.
Sessions will be recorded and made available to registered attendees after the event.

If you have any questions or are interested in sponsoring the event, please contact Laura Bloomfield Hall, senior events manager; events@openathens.net.

Bioscientifica has today announced the launch of its open-access journal: Microbiota and Host.

February 14, 2023

The new journal will publish research and reviews that advance our understanding of the impact of commensal microbiota on their human, and non-human hosts. The editorial board, led by Professor Bina Joe from the University of Toledo, is committed to offering rigorous peer review with an aim to offer a first decision within two weeks.

In her launch editorial, Professor Joe said: “Microbiota and Host is a timely journal being launched to serve as the receptacle for highly impactful research in delineating the mechanisms governing microbiota-host interactions […] The vision of our Journal is to encourage studies which enable us to forge ahead beyond taxonomic associations of microbiota with the host to functional characterizations of such associations”.

Victoria Merriman, Bioscientifica’s Publishing Development Manager said: “research on the microbiome has been making international headlines, as new studies have demonstrated the significant impact of microbiota on human health. This journal will provide an exciting new platform for this emerging field of research, with Bioscientifica’s strong track record of journal development enabling the journal to deliver its strategic aims.”

Microbiota and Host is now open for submissions, and Bioscientifica is sponsoring the article publishing charge during the launch period.

https://www.microbiotahost.com

Our 2023 event program Access Lab provides a space to explore, discuss and learn from your peers. We have an online program packed full of case studies, best practice and discussions to get you thinking about improvements you could take away.

Who can attend?

Our 2023 event program

Access Lab provides a space to explore, discuss and learn from your peers. We have an online program packed full of case studies, best practice and discussions to get you thinking about improvements you could take away.