De Gruyter is pleased to announce a new eBook distribution agreement with independent publisher Berghahn Books. The strategic partnership entails hosting and worldwide distribution of more than 2,000 frontlist, backlist and archive titles published by Berghahn via degruyter.com. At least 20% of Berghahn’s total frontlist collection will be exclusively available as DRM-free through De Gruyter.

Berghahn Books is a family-run publishing house that produces more than 125 new titles a year, including in the areas of History, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Migration and Development, and Film. Founded in 1994 by Marion Berghahn, the house prides itself in identifying and adopting titles that promote the ideals of equality and tolerance in both theory and application.

De Gruyter is proud to further cement its commitment to supporting and sustaining independent, commercial publishers with a progressive mission through this new partnership. The synergy in vision and a deep commitment to advancing title access with a user-centric approach in mind ensures that the partnership will flourish prosperously.

Berghahn Books is the latest partner to join De Gruyter’s University Press Library (UPL), which allows libraries to purchase the complete frontlist collection of leading academic presses in multi-user access. The University Press Library started out in 2014 as a pilot with three university presses. Today, 20 academic presses are part of UPL.

“De Gruyter has always been an advocate of supporting high-quality independent publishing houses such as Berghahn Books,” said Steve Fallon, VP Americas and Strategic Partnerships, De Gruyter. “The rigorous peer-review process and subject-area focus makes Berghahn Books an excellent addition to De Gruyter’s University Press Library business model. With the new award-winning platform andexclusivity of 20% of Berghahn’s frontlist, De Gruyter aims to prioritize access and increase visibility for Berghahn and other partner titles by ensuring that users have access to their titles at the point of purchase.”

“As an independent academic publisher, we are thrilled to join other mission-driven presses as part of De Gruyter’s University Press Library,” said Vivian Berghahn, Managing Director, Berghahn Books. “Our partnership with De Gruyter not only expands the global reach and discoverability of more than 2,000 Berghahn titles but also allows us to better serve libraries more widely with collection-level access to the innovative, high-quality research they could previously only purchase at a single-title level.”

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has launched a new research platform using the F1000 open access publishing model to help expedite the health benefits from publicly funded research, allowing researchers to quickly share and build on data and results. 

NIHR Open Research allows researchers to rapidly publish research information, supporting transparency, reproducibility, and impact from publicly funded research. Any NIHR research across clinical evaluation, technology development, health services, public health and social care can be published on NIHR Open Research. This approach means that researchers can put all information from their studies in the public domain, increasing the discoverability and reach of their research.

Making all research findings rapidly available on NIHR Open Research will mean that other researchers can build on new ideas straight away and avoid the risk of duplication, so that new treatments and interventions for patients will become available quicker. Research published on the platform also includes links to all supporting data, allowing reanalyses, replication, and reuse, as well as making it easier for researchers to collaborate. 

Professor Lucy Chappell, Chief Executive of the NIHR, said:

“Research is best undertaken openly, transparently, and with all aspects available, to reflect the collaborative, team science approach endorsed by the NIHR. 

“NIHR Open Research ensures that all types of findings from NIHR funded and supported research can be made freely available. Researchers will now be able to learn from the many small steps made by their peers as well as the big ones, and promising findings can be accelerated into benefits for patients and the public.”

NIHR-funded researchers can publish a broad range of research outputs on the Platform from more traditional research articles through to incremental findings, case reports and even negative/null findings, thus supporting the entire life cycle of research. 

F1000’s Managing Director, Rebecca Lawrence, commented:

“F1000 is delighted to partner with NIHR on this ground-breaking platform that has the opportunity to make a significant positive impact on health research in the UK. NIHR Open Research joins F1000’s other health and biomedical partnerships, including the Wellcome and Irish Health Research Board, and furthers our founding principles of empowering researchers and accelerating the publication of research for the public good.      

“F1000’s unique publishing and open review model ensures rigour and quality of research while bringing greater clarity to the fundamentals behind the research itself, showing how scrutiny and analysis is part and parcel of how research progresses, helping address public misconceptions and mistrust about scientific research.”

NIHR has a long-standing commitment to ensuring that NIHR-funded research findings are discoverable and reusable by all. For example, NIHR is the world’s first health research funder to publish comprehensive accounts of its commissioned research within its own publicly and permanently available journals via the NIHR Journals Library. 

Together, NIHR Open Research and the NIHR Journals Library ensure that findings from all NIHR-funded and supported research are publicly available, which, along with NIHR’s new open access policy that came into place this month, widen and enhance NIHR’s commitment to open access. The new threaded publication model introduced by the NIHR Journals Library will bring together relevant articles published on NIHR Open Research with other articles published in the NIHR Journals Library and elsewhere, to collate a full account of individual NIHR-funded research projects. 

Professor Christian Mallen, a member of the NIHR Open Research Advisory Board and an NIHR Research Professor, said:

“It is critical that research is easily accessible and available to all. Only then can we start to join together the different parts of the jigsaw that will allow us to improve outcomes for patients.”

Prof Mallen, who is also National Director of the NIHR School for Primary Care Research, added:

“All NIHR researchers can now use this exciting new Platform to share any type of finding from their research, making their work visible not only to peers and potential collaborators but also to health and care professionals, policy makers, patients, and service users, increasing the reach and potential impact of their research”.

• Visit the NIHR Open Research website

Karger Publishers has acquired the British company Research Publishing International (RPI) for an undisclosed amount. Together, RPI and Karger will support researchers and the Health Sciences/Healthcare ecosystem in making scientific findings more accessible and comprehensible to a wider audience.

On 16 June 2022, Karger Publishers acquired the science communications agency Research Publishing International, based in Gloucestershire, UK, in a move to strengthen its publishing business and expand its service portfolio. Karger supports the knowledge transfer cycle from scientific research to clinical practice, patients, and caregivers through its Healthcare publications and content services. By joining forces, RPI and Karger will also be able to provide more services to researchers who would like to have their work translated into easily accessible language and more creative formats, such as animations and podcasts, to reach a wider audience. 

RPI is a broad service media agency specialized in working with scientists and researchers all over the world. It streamlines research removing barriers to communication: It helps scientists reach huge global audiences by communicating scientific knowledge in an easy-to-understand language and an engaging creative format. It also provides a platform for researchers to share their studies whilst ensuring the work is in context by providing supporting data and conclusions. 

Under Karger ownership, RPI will continue to operate as an independent company. It will remain active in other verticals alongside Health Sciences and serve a wide range of customers in the academic and corporate sphere, including publishers.

“The acquisition of RPI is a perfect addition to Karger and fully supports our strategy. It gives us the opportunity to expand our publishing business and offer more creative formats. It brings us closer to our goal of communicating science beyond the traditional journal article to a broader audience, thereby connecting the various stakeholders in health sciences,” says Daniel Ebneter, CEO at Karger Publishers. 

Gabriella Karger, Chairwoman of the Board of Directors at Karger Publishers adds that: “RPI’s slogan – ’Collaborate. Disseminate. Engage’ – is another way of saying ’Connecting and Advancing Health Sciences’, which is our claim at Karger. Our companies’ visions and values are an ideal match, and we are thrilled to be striving forward together”.

Simon Jones, founder of RPI, is also enthusiastic. He adds that “Research Publishing International are very pleased to join forces with Karger. The acquisition represents the brightest possible future for RPI, and we are all excited to become part of the Karger family. From small acorns do mighty oaks grow: With the support of Karger we are destined to become a mighty oak in the landscape of science communications!”.

Emma Feloy, designated Managing Director at RPI adds: “We are delighted to join Karger. Together we will offer innovative communication tools to even more scientists around the world, helping more people access quality research information. The combination of Karger’s expertise and RPI’s creative services is an exciting prospect that our whole team is excited to be part of”. 

For more information on RPI, please visit ›ResearchPublishingInternational.com.