De Gruyter’s newly founded not-for-profit arm, eBound, is pleased to announce it will fund the digitization of George Anton Kiraz’ comprehensive private book and manuscript collection on Syriac and Eastern Christianity.

George Kiraz’s collection is the largest private, non-institutional collection on Syriac Christianity with a focus on religious and cultural studies. It includes many titles that are considered lost due to the destruction of institutions, universities and libraries during conflicts in the Middle East. The collection includes academic books and fiction in Syriac, Arabic, Malayalam and European languages, published from the 19th to the early 20th century, with some titles from as early as the 1500s.

De Gruyter eBound’s funding will allow George Kiraz to use a high-quality scanner to digitize 2,000 titles non-destructively. Once digitized, the titles will be freely available as open access eBooks on degruyter.com. 

George Kiraz is the founder and director of Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, the Editor-in-Chief of Gorgias Press, and a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He has been collecting books on Syriac and Eastern Christianity since he was a teenager, a story that he tells in his recent memoir, Water the Willow Tree: Memoirs of a Bethlehem Boyhood (2022).

The digitization of George Kiraz’ collection, which was supported by eBound’s Advisory Board, fits perfectly with De Gruyter eBound’s mission to support the publishing of mission-driven scholarly monographs and to make these publications sustainable and accessible to a global audience. De Gruyter launched eBound in June 2022.

“This project makes a unique collection of titles by authors from a minority community digitally available for the first time. We couldn’t have wished for a better project to support in our first round of funding. True to the mission of De Gruyter eBound, George Kiraz is trying to preserve the cultural heritage of a whole diaspora group and make it accessible to a global audience. I am excited that we can help him by providing a technical infrastructure to make these titles available in open access to any interested reader in the world,” said Linda McGrath, Executive Director of eBound.

“I began to collect books when I was fourteen,” said George Kiraz, founder and Director of Beth Mardutho. “Now, De Gruyter eBound allows me to share hundreds of my books with the rest of the world. I do not see myself as an owner of these books. Rather, a custodian. What took me decades to collect on the Syriac and wider Middle Eastern heritage will soon be available to the world.”

The Public Library of Science (PLOS) today announced that it has partnered with EarthArXiv, which enables authors submitting to PLOS Climate, PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, and PLOS Water to post preprints with ease. Beginning next year, submitting authors will have the option to automatically forward their manuscript to the EarthArXiv preprint server, directly from our submission system.

PLOS sees preprints as integral to our mission of accelerating progress in scholarly research, and to our goal of increasing adoption of Open Science practices. Authors use preprints to establish priority, broadcast results, seek community feedback, and advance their careers. Early, transparent sharing via preprints disseminates new insights faster and increases efficiency across the entire research ecosystem.

“Researchers told us they needed a community-recognized solution for sharing preprints when submitting to PLOS Climate, PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, and PLOS Water. We’re thrilled to partner with EarthArXiv – hosted by the California Digital Library – to offer these research communities an integrated solution that meets their needs and enhances our author service,” said Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Director of Open Research Solutions at PLOS.

EarthArXiv is a community-based server, governed by a diverse advisory council with representatives from many regions and institutions, and hosted by the California Digital Library (CDL), an organization committed to open scholarship.

Tom Narock, Co-Founder of EarthArXiv and a member of its Advisory Council adds, “The EarthArXiv preprint community welcomes PLOS as a new partner. We are excited to combine our joint interests in open-access research publication. Preprints allow colleagues to easily find, use, and review the latest research results. PLOS’ streamlined integration with EarthArXiv expands our open-access research offerings while making preprinting easier for Earth science researchers.”

EarthArXiv is PLOS’ third preprint server integration. Our previously established partnerships with bioRxiv and medRxiv have shown that preprint posting is a valued author service, and that making preprint sharing easy for authors increases their uptake. PLOS is now expanding the benefits of facilitated posting to more of the researchers and research communities we serve.

Acquisition is an important addition to Springer Nature’s leading OA portfolio

The Cureus Journal of Medical Science has been acquired by Springer Nature. With its innovative business model, Cureus solves the challenge of open access (OA) publishing of peer-reviewed articles by medical professionals without access to research grant funds. 

Founded in Silicon Valley in 2009, Cureus has designed a unique, highly efficient, OA publishing platform. Well-drafted, relevant and credible submissions are published for free following peer review. Relevant submissions that do not meet Cureus language and formatting standards require the purchase of the journal’s low-cost editing service. Cureus’s use of a ‘do-it-yourself’ submission platform and article templates allows for rapid turn-around times, with more than half of all accepted articles published in 3 weeks or less of initial submission. 

Cureus has established itself as a leader within the Open Access publishing movement with a philosophy emphasizing scientific credibility over perceived impact. This has resulted in over 32,000 articles published to date as well as a growing monthly audience of over one million unique readers contributing over three million monthly article views.

Cureus founder and Dorothy TK Chan Professor of Neurosurgery and Radiation Oncology (Emeritus) at Stanford University, John Adler, said: 

“I am incredibly excited by our new relationship with Springer Nature. I am confident that together we can accelerate Cureus’ mission to eliminate publishing barriers for new medical knowledge and create an entirely new category of healthcare network.”

Joachim Krieger, Managing Director Springer Nature Health, commented: 

“We are delighted to welcome Cureus to the Springer Nature family. With their community-focused approach to publishing and the innovative new thinking and culture they will bring, I am looking forward to working together to create a dynamic, open repository of medical knowledge accessible to the whole world”. 

Alexander Muacevic, Cureus co-founder and Medical Director of the European Radiosurgery Center in Munich and Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Munich, added:

“As two practicing Neurosurgery professors, we founded Cureus as much as a community network as an academic journal. Moving forward as part of Springer Nature will enable us to grow and deliver on our vision of a next generation medical knowledge sharing community”.

With the focus on physicians and medical practitioners, Cureus joins Springer Healthcare, Springer Medizin and Bohn Stafleu van Loghum, as part of the newly formed Springer Nature health division. It follows the acquisition earlier this year of Austrian health tech start-up, Medbee. 

The acquisition complements Springer Nature’s over 20 year commitment to OA. With c600 fully OA journals and the ability to publish OA on the remainder of their 2400 titles, including Nature, Springer Nature supports over 2.5 million authors globally in making their research OA. In 2021 Springer Nature became the first publisher to publish over one million articles OA.

As an active participant in the fast-changing open medicine landscape, Wolters Kluwer, Health has published a new report titled, “The Path to Open Medicine: Driving Global Health Equity through Medical Research.” The paper defines what open medicine means today and sets forth a vision of how all stakeholders in the space, including funders, institutions, publishers, and researchers, must collaborate to deliver on the collective benefit of medical research and ultimately advance global health equity.

The report is intended to sit within the ongoing global conversation around increased openness in scientific research, including the recent policy guidance issued by the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in August 2022. This measure will ensure key research and data is shared freely and openly across the scientific and healthcare landscapes – contributing to the acceleration of scientific breakthroughs that can help save lives and equip stakeholders, from policymakers to care providers, with the information they need to drive more equitable healthcare.

A call for stakeholder collaboration in medical scholarly research

Wolters Kluwer’s new report asserts that while much progress has been accomplished towards the vision of open medicine, the necessary infrastructure, policies, and practices to truly achieve the mission that the scientific community set for itself more than 20 years ago are still not fully in place. It emphasizes that one of the main barriers is the notion that global health equity can be attained through the actions of a single category of stakeholder.

“Global health equity is a mission that carries the highest level of significance for the quality of life for people everywhere, and at Wolters Kluwer we embrace that mission fully. We regard open medicine as a key step to achieving that goal. Our leading role in medical research publishing enables us to contribute significantly to innovation, but delivering on the vision of open medicine will require collaboration across the landscape,” said Vikram Savkar, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Medicine Segment, Health Learning, Research & Practice at Wolters Kluwer, and member of the Board of Directors for The International Association for Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers. “We look forward to aligning with other key stakeholders to make collective progress on a road forward.”

A roadmap to achieving open medicine 

The report charts a path towards open medicine through a rapid broadening of where medical research is conducted, with a particular focus on ensuring that funding for medical research and dissemination of research results can be distributed globally. Detailed sections outline what it will take from stakeholders to make progress toward the collective aim of research that advances global health and equitable access to the best care everywhere. The forward-looking model also factors in anticipated advancements in policy, process and technology that will be needed to make open medicine possible.

“Delivering on the promise of open medicine will require bold leadership and unprecedented collaboration among stakeholders across the scholarly publishing industry,” said Angela Cochran, Vice President of Publishing at the American Society of Clinical Oncology and Associate Editor of The Scholarly Kitchen, “The time is now for us to commit to working toward the values of open medicine for the benefit of people from all parts of the globe.”

Learn More About Wolters Kluwer’s commitment to open medicine