Saturday, June 28, 2025
Linkedin Twitter
Linkedin Twitter
Home Blog Page 97

Institutions partner with ACS to advance first California-wide transformative OA agreement

Three California consortia, representing nearly 60 academic and research institutions, and the Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) today announced the first-ever California-wide transformative open access agreement. It is also ACS’ first “read and publish” agreement in the U.S. composed of multiple consortia. Through a partnership with the 10-campus University of California (UC) system, the 23-campus California State University (CSU) system, and 25 subscribing institutions represented by the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC), readers and researchers at dozens of California research institutions will be able to benefit from full access to subscription content while receiving support for open access publication in ACS’ portfolio of more than 75 premier chemistry journals.

“This unique partnership across three consortia demonstrates that with open dialogue and determination, we can replace previously unsolvable challenges with mutual benefits that create greater value for our institutions and the broader scholarly community,” says Teri Gallaway, Ph.D., SCELC’s executive director. “SCELC is pleased to support this first-of-its-kind initiative to leverage the power of successful U.S. library consortia toward shared goals: to make more of California’s research and scholarship available to the world, and to promote greater access to information resources at an affordable and sustainable cost.”

The agreement lasts through 2025 and is a collaboration between institutions with a variety of needs. It exemplifies how a multiparty deal can satisfy the needs of diverse organizations via a transformative agreement. The arrangement is unique, in that it engages funder support for open access in alignment with the partnership between the institutes and publisher. As the scholarly publishing industry transitions toward an open access future, innovations like this partnership will be crucial to ensuring that all educational institutions and their researchers can participate in the full benefits of open access publication.

“The CSU libraries are proud to join in this path-breaking partnership with the UC libraries and SCELC,” says Emily Bonney, dean of the CSU Fullerton Library and chair of the CSU Council of Library Deans. “We believe that collaborating with our colleagues across the state is the key to maintaining and improving a robust scholarly communication system for the citizens of California. We want our students and faculty to have access to the wealth of scholarly research not only while they are enrolled in school but throughout their lives.”

ACS is the fourth-largest publisher of scholarly journal articles by researchers in the UC system, which includes 10 campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Making it easier and more affordable for those researchers to publish open access brings a potential for expanded visibility to their important scientific discoveries. Because the institutions involved collectively publish more than 11% of the nation’s scholarly journal articles and deliver instruction to more than 1 million California students, the impact of this agreement will be felt widely across the chemistry community.

“Free and open access to academic research is critical to the acceleration of new discoveries,” says Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, Ph.D., university librarian and professor at UC Berkeley and co-chair of UC’s negotiation team. “This unique partnership will give Californians and people around the world unprecedented access to the knowledge created by our institutions as we seek to solve some of the world’s most pressing environmental, health and scientific problems.”

A read and publish agreement is a way for institutions to maintain access to scholarly content available only through subscription, while supporting the transition to open access publishing by their affiliated researchers. Institutions are, in effect, redirecting their expenditures on subscriptions to cover the open access article publication charges. Through this partnership, hundreds of researchers at 58 institutions will be supported as they publish open access at a discounted rate in any ACS journal.

“ACS is very excited about this new agreement, as it takes the workflows behind read and publish deals to the next level,” says Sybille Geisenheyner, director of open science strategy and licensing at ACS. “As we embark upon this partnership, we invite funders to engage in this collaboration to support this transformation.”

“At ACS, we are committed to expanding our partnerships and innovating new ways to advance open access publication in chemistry,” says James Milne, Ph.D., president, ACS Publications Division. “I am confident that institutions around the world will see this collaboration as a prime example of creative thinking supporting the advancement of open science, for the benefit of chemistry and the world.”

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

About UC’s transformative open access agreements: Transformative open access agreements support the University of California’s mission as a public university and advance the global shift toward sustainable open access publishing by making more UC-authored research articles open to the world, while maintaining journal affordability. UC seeks to partner with publishers of all types, sizes and disciplines to jointly advance a worldwide transition to open access across the entire landscape of scholarly journal publishing. For more on these aims and principles, see UC’s Call to Action for Negotiating Journal Agreements at UC, the UC faculty Academic Senate’s Declaration of Rights and Principles to Transform Scholarly Communication and UC’s priorities for publisher negotiations.

The California State University (CSU) is the largest four-year regional, public university system in the United States with 23 campuses enrolling 477,000 students and employing 56,000 faculty and staff. The Chancellor’s Office coordinates approximately 80 annual library e-resource contracts for over 325 library e-resource products, with a $30 million budget for the 23 CSU libraries who serve their students, faculty, and the public with their diverse research needs. 

The Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) was established in 1986 to develop resource-sharing among the libraries of private academic institutions in Southern California. SCELC has grown to include libraries across California and 38 other states and is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt corporation. Among the top five North American consortia in terms of licensing volume, SCELC represents 112 Member institutions, over 200 Affiliate institutions, an aggregate student population of approximately 500,000, more than $200 million in library budgets, and holdings comprising more than 21 million volumes. SCELC libraries can license nearly 2,500 electronic resources from more than 100 vendors.

Taylor & Francis supports new ORCID initiative to improve visibility and reduce administrative burden for Global South institutions and researchers

Taylor & Francis Group is one of the organizations supporting a new ORCID initiative that will improve the visibility of more researchers and reduce the administrative burden for their institutions. The Global Participation Fund (GPF) will provide grants for community outreach and technical integration in parts of the world currently underrepresented in ORCID participation.

ORCID ensures researchers get the recognition they deserve through a persistent digital identifier that connects authors with their contributions. ORCID has become a critical piece of research infrastructure, integrated into platforms and processes across scholarly communications, including Taylor & Francis Online. However, there are still gaps in organizational participation, particularly in the Global South, which is what the GPF will help address.

Nitasha Devasar, Vice President for India, South Asia, and Africa at Taylor & Francis Group said, “Quality research from the Global South is growing apace. Yet researchers from these regions are not getting the recognition and the opportunities this can bring, and the entire research ecosystem is poorer for this. We are therefore delighted to partner on this important new initiative, ensuring more researchers can benefit from ORCID participation.”

Taylor & Francis was one of the original lenders who provided funding to establish ORCID in 2012. Now, ten years later, Taylor & Francis has joined other partners who are forgiving all or part of their start up loans to make the GPF possible.

ORCID expects to open its first round of grant applications later this year. For more details or to apply for funding, please visit the Global Participation Program pages of the ORCID website.

Two new journals established to support ACS’ growing applied materials portfolio

The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) is pleased to announce the launch of two new journals this spring, ACS Applied Engineering Materials and ACS Applied Optical Materials. The journals will be guided by ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces Editor in Chief Kirk Schanze, Ph.D., and each will be under the leadership of a deputy editor.

“These new journals will provide the opportunity for ACS authors to publish topically focused papers in the fields of applied optical materials and materials for a broad range of engineering applications,” says Schanze. “The journals will continue the tradition at ACS Publications for editorial excellence and peer review managed by experienced editors, combined with high-quality technical editing prior to publication.”

ACS Applied Engineering Materials will be led by Deputy Editor Jessica Schiffman, Ph.D., a chemical engineering professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Schiffman received her B.S. in ceramic and materials engineering from Rutgers University–Newark. She earned her M.Eng. from Cornell University and Ph.D. from Drexel University, both in materials science and engineering. Among other honors, Schiffman received an ADVANCE Faculty Peer Mentor Award from UMass Amherst in 2022 and was awarded the ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces Young Investigator Award in 2019. At UMass Amherst, she leads the Schiffman research group, which is innovating next-generation materials for a range of biomedical, environmental and industrial applications. 

According to Schiffman, ACS Applied Engineering Materials will be a platform for publishing high-quality research that explores the intersection of materials science, engineering, physics, mechanics and chemistry. The journal aims to provide insights on how materials such as polymers, ceramics, metals, and composites can be applied in various fields such as healthcare, extreme environments, environmental remediation, catalysis, and more. Environmental remediation involves cleaning up contaminated sites and returning them to a safe state, one of the common methods used is application of oxidizing agents like sodium persulfate, which can break down and eliminate pollutants such as chlorinated solvents, fuels, pesticides, PCBs, and other organic compounds from soil and groundwater.

ACS Applied Optical Materials will be led by Deputy Editor Elena Galoppini, Ph.D., distinguished professor of chemistry at Rutgers University–Newark. Galoppini is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, including the Rutgers Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research, and is a Kavli Frontiers of Science alumna. At Rutgers, she leads the Galoppini group, which studies the synthesis of chromophore-bridge-anchor compounds and dyes for the sensitization of nanostructured semiconductors and the development of organic/inorganic interfaces with application for dye-sensitized solar cells and sensors, among other topics. Galoppini received her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Chicago and her M.Sc. from the University of Pisa (Italy). She served on the editorial advisory board of Langmuir from 2007 to 2010.

“ACS Applied Optical Materials will provide an international forum for interdisciplinary research in optical materials,” says Galoppini. “We are looking forward to receiving high-quality manuscripts reporting research on emerging applications that integrate chemistry, materials science, engineering, optics and physics. We are especially interested in work that provides insight into the role of interfaces, materials and light-induced processes to understand the properties of optical devices.”

To meet the needs of the materials science community, ACS Publications has introduced ACS Applied Materials journals in key areas of this expanding field. With the newest additions, authors will have eight high-quality options to publish their research in this suite of journals. Both new journals will begin accepting submissions on June 15 and are expected to publish the first issues in early 2023. More information on ACS Applied Optical Materials and ACS Applied Engineering Materials  can be found on the ACS Publications website.

“We’ve expanded our portfolio of journals in the applied materials field in response to the increased funding supporting research in these fields, coupled with growing demand from our authors,” says James Milne, Ph.D., president, ACS Publications Division. “As this field continues to grow, we want to support researchers seeking to publish their best work across the applied fields of chemistry, biology, engineering and physics.”

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

Royal Society of Chemistry launches three new sustainability-focused journals

We have announced the upcoming launches of three new journals themed around sustainability, as part of our ongoing commitment to support the chemical sciences in facing up to global sustainability challenges.

Today’s global challenges range from plastics polluting the oceans, to the urgent need to find more sustainable resources. But where will new solutions come from? How can we achieve global collaboration to address the big issues? And where can the chemical sciences deliver the biggest impacts?

The new journals, RSC Sustainability, Sustainable Food Technology and EES Catalysis aim to answer these pressing questions from a range of perspectives, bolstering the RCS’s already sizeable suite of sustainability-focused journals. All the new journals are gold open access and the RSC will be covering all article processing charges (APCs) until mid-2025 – enabling scientists and institutions from around the world to share research at no charge.

Meet the new journals

  • RSC Sustainability, an inclusive and interdisciplinary journal, welcomes research from all subject areas, dedicated to solving sustainability challenges for a better, greener future.
  • Sustainable Food Technology seeks answers to big questions such as how to ensure global food security and end world hunger in an era of a global population of nearly 8 billion, as well as how to produce food more sustainably. The new journal focuses on food engineering and technologies, and is a sister journal to the established Food & Function, which publishes high quality research on food and the functions of food in relation to health.
  • EES Catalysis will publish high quality research on energy and environmental catalysis, and is the latest addition to the Energy & Environmental Science series of journals. As a multidisciplinary platform, it will cover catalysis across chemistry, materials science, engineering and beyond.

The RSC is a signatory to the SDG Publishers Compact, which aims to accelerate progress to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The aims of EES Catalysis specifically align with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 7 – to ensure access to affordable, reliable and modern energy for all.

Dr Emma Wilson, Royal Society of Chemistry Director of Publishing, said: “While the scale and seriousness of these many sustainability challenges is undoubtedly urgent, we know that scientists from around the globe are already working on innovative, ground-breaking solutions, working together and sharing ideas. I’m enthusiastic about our Royal Society of Chemistry journals taking this important step to enable them to further their work.

“It’s essential that we remove barriers to both accessing and publishing research. That’s why we’ve made all three journals gold open access, and initially waived all article processing charges. The new journals form part of our publishing strategy goals, to provide the platforms, opportunities and tools for the chemical sciences community to network, build and exchange knowledge, adapt and thrive.”

Professor Tom Welton, President of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said: “As a global society we are facing urgent and pressing challenges, from rising sea levels to impacts on food production. There is increasing pressure on scarce resources such as the precious elements required for medicine, technology, and sustainable energy, and we’re facing unprecedented levels of pollution in the natural environment and in our air.

“Many of us are concerned about our natural environment and the impacts of climate change, with three quarters of young people surveyed for our recent Green Shoots report telling us that they feel anxious about the future of the planet. The chemical sciences will be central to unearthing the technologies, methods, and knowledge needed to safeguard the future of our planet – for us and for future generations. That’s why I’m proud that the Royal Society of Chemistry is leading the way by expanding their sustainability journals portfolio with these three new journals – providing a home for even more cutting-edge research to help tackle the urgent issues facing us all.”

The announcement comes as part of the RSC’s wider sustainability programme, which encompasses policy, education, research and more. Recent activities include the Polymers in Liquid Formulations report – which raises awareness of the potential environmental impacts of products such as shampoo, detergent and paint, and the Precious Elements campaign, which highlighted the precious elements contained in everyday technology, and called for more sustainable manufacturing and better large scale recycling for these products.

Cactus Communications celebrates 20 years of serving academia and life sciences organizations worldwide

Started in 2002 with the aim of bridging the gap between research in the East and West, CACTUS today is a technology company serving customers from over 190 countries 

Cactus Communications (CACTUS) celebrates 20 years of excellence and innovation today. Founded in 2002 with the aim of helping researchers break the language barrier and getting published in international journals, CACTUS is now a multimillion-dollar technology company with 1200 full-time employees, 4500 freelancers, and 800 contractors from over 190 countries. CACTUS has been recognized as one of the best companies to work for by global platforms.

The genesis of CACTUS is now part of company lore. When Abhishek Goel visited Japan as a part of his AIESEC internship, he met a researcher at the University of Tokyo who requested him to copyedit his academic paper and make it suitable for submission to an international English-language journal. This experience got Abhishek thinking about how researchers around the world, with English as a second language, might have a similar need. This led to the idea of starting CACTUS along with his brother Anurag Goel. 

Reminiscing about CACTUS’s journey, Abhishek Goel, CEO & Co-founder, said, “We realized early on that researchers who did not speak English as their first language struggled to get published. We wanted to change this and there was no other company at the time trying to address this problem. We built editing and translation services under our brand Editage – which also celebrates 20 years – and soon expanded to publication support, pre-submission checks, research impact creation, and other solutions for authors, publishers, and life science organizations.Today, we have a researcher ecosystem that addresses needs beyond publication and end-to-end solutions for every major stakeholder in academia and life sciences. And we are just getting started.”

Anurag Goel, Co-founder & Executive Chairman, commented on CACTUS’s technology-first strategy: “Today, we are building technology solutions that can revolutionize the way research is being communicated. We are investing in start-ups in academia and life sciences that share our vision of propelling science forward with technology. In these 20 years, we have kept pace with the changing needs of the industry and have weathered global recessions. I’m excited to see what opportunities for innovation the post-pandemic landscape will bring.”

CACTUS has evolved into a global technology company that is catering to every need of the research and publishing industry through media, content, and AI solutions. CACTUS offers specialized author services, research impact acceleration, medical communication support, and technology products for business solutions under the brands Editage, Cactus Life Sciences, Researcher.Life, Impact Science, Paperpal, and Cactus Labs. With experts in over 500+ subject areas, it has helped 250,000+ researchers get published in the last 20 years. Its clientele includes major publishers like Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, Sage, Wolters Kluwer, and Springer Nature, and renowned academic societies like Royal Society of Chemistry, British Medical Society, American Psychological Association, and American Management Association.

Commenting on the technological acceleration that CACTUS has seen in the last decade, Nishchay Shah, Chief Technology Officer, said, “We have entered the AI and deep learning space to develop innovative products and build tech solutions for all stakeholders in the research landscape. We are taking the integration of technology into the researcher ecosystem very seriously. CACTUS’s next growth phase will be heavily defined by technology.”

People and culture have always played a pivotal role in CACTUS’s growth. Yashmi Pujara, Chief Human Resources Officer, emphasized the pivotal role people and culture have played in building the organization: “Our mission is to enable people to reach their highest potential and all our policies are created to build an environment conducive to this. In 2021, we became a remote-first company, allowing our global workforce to work from anywhere. This allows us to find the best talent without any geographical barriers. We now see twice the number of recruits from cities where we did not have a presence earlier. We will continue to introduce policies that encourage our employees to take ownership, learn continuously, and enjoy work. We want to continue to foster an employee culture driven by high trust and high performance.”  

Over the last 20 years, CACTUS has celebrated excellence through many external recognitions, including Best Customer-centric Culture at the International Customer Experience Awards 2021, Best Brand Experience at the CX Asia Excellence Awards 2021, Consumer Satisfaction Brand Award (CSBA) 2021 for the fourth consecutive year in South Korea, Best Company for Millennials 2019, Best Organization for Women Empowerment/Women Talent Development 2019, and one of India’s Best Workplace in Health and Wellness 2021 by Great Place to Work®(GPTW). Co-founder and CEO, Abhishek Goel, was recognized in the 2020 Asian brand and leader awards by White Page International, and CACTUS bagged two coveted Stevie® Awards in 2020 as the most exemplary employer and as the most valuable corporate response for Covid-19 initiatives.

Scholarly APIs: Current and future value

Research performing and funding organizations increasingly use scholarly application programming interfaces (APIs) to build insights and inform strategy, to the point where it is impossible to imagine a future without fundamental reliance on these interconnected data flows. Currently, your organization uses multiple APIs without which it could probably not function. Scholarly APIs have, however, received limited recognition for their strategic importance and significant potential in the scholarly industry. How do leaders from different areas think strategically about API interoperability and increasing needs for data exchange as foundations for research outcomes? Join this unique and first-time panel discussion to learn from leadership why APIs are intermediaries that scholarly professionals must know about and plan for.

Speakers confirmed:

Chhavi Chauhan, Director of Scientific Outreach, American Society for Investigative Pathology

Nici Pfeiffer, Chief Product Officer, Center for Open Science (COS)

Domenic Rosati, Natural Language Processing Researcher, scite

Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, Professor/Coordinator for Research and Teaching Professional Development in the University Library and Affiliate Professor in the School of Information Sciences and Center for Global Studies – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, School of Information Sciences

Maria Gould, Product Manager / Research Data Specialist, California Digital Library UC3 Curation Center, University of California Office of the President

This event is part of the ConTech.Live Scholarly API series. The aim of the series is to discuss explore and learn about services that extract, combine, compare, and certify critical information. To find out more about the series go to https://www.contech.live/api and watch a fireside chat between Neil Blair Christensen, Knowledge Unlatched and Clive Snell, ConTech.Live.

Register here to participate free and to become part of the ConTech community 

Find out more about all of our events https://www.contechlive.com/  

ConTech.Live – Transformation at the intersection of content, technology and chaos

Frontiers and the Consortium of Catalan University Services sign open access publishing agreement 

The Spanish research community’s growing commitment to open access publishing has been bolstered by the announcement of a new agreement between the Consortium of Catalan University Services (Consorci de Serveis Universitaris de Catalunya, CSUC) and gold open access publisher Frontiers. Under the agreement – Frontiers’ third such partnership in Spain – a further 11 institutions will be welcomed to Frontiers Institutional Partnerships program, which now includes more than 600 institutions worldwide.  

Managing director of the CSUC, Montse Soler, said, “The CSUC is committed to open science. Our agreement with Frontiers marks a major step forward in supporting our members’ smooth transition to open access publishing, while also increasing the visibility of research carried out in Catalonia.” 

The new agreement will run for three years from 1 January 2022.  “The arrangement offers authors affiliated with CSUC’s participating institutions a 10% partnership discount when publishing in one of Frontiers’ journals. As well as reducing costs for the researcher, this will bring benefits of open science to the wider research community and the public at large” says Ronald Buitenhuis, Frontiers’ head of institutional partnerships.  

The agreement with CSUC comes just two months after the announcement of an open access agreement between Frontiers and the University of León. These new relationships with Spanish partners build on Frontiers’ existing relationship with the Spanish National Research Council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC). 

In addition to its institutional partnerships Frontiers has national publishing agreements in place with the UK, Qatar, Norway, Luxembourg, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and Austria as well as 10 consortia partnerships, including three with leading funders (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Austrian Science Fund [FWF], and the Luxembourg National Fund) 

For more information on whether your article is eligible under this agreement, or if you require any further details, please contact the open access team at your university library. 

New Partnership to Boost Knowledge, Editorial Quality for Scientists in the Middle East and North Africa

Research Square Company and the Medical Agency for Research and Statistics (MARS) have signed a collaboration agreement to support the success of clinical and regulatory scientists in the Middle East and North Africa. 

Through this joint agreement, Research Square Company will support MARS’ training and consulting efforts through discounted services to MARS trainees via the company’s American Journal Experts (AJE) division. These services include English-language editing and translation, manuscript formatting, webinars, and conferences. 

“We’re passionate about our trainees’ success,” said Nouran Hamza, Founder and CEO of MARS. “This partnership with Research Square Company and AJE will bring them closer to achieving their goals.”

The partnership is also intended to help researchers in the Middle East and North Africa overcome barriers to publication in international English-language journals, which house a majority of the world’s digitally accessible and high-impact research. 

“Research Square Company is committed to ensuring that researchers in Middle Eastern and African nations have a voice in the research community,” said Rachel Burley, President of Research Square Company.  “We are very proud to be a partner in this important collaboration.”

Learn more about MARS and Research Square Company’s corporate responsibility efforts. 

ScienceOpen unveils new OA journal – Genome Integrity

ScienceOpen is pleased to announce Genome Integrity as the newest addition to our journal discovery network. This fully open-access journal will be published by ScienceOpen, bringing to you high-quality research titles in the field, as well as the most recent advancements in the understanding of the processes that regulate genome integrity maintenance.

CompuScript will be providing professional typesetting services for the Journal, marking another milestone in our successful collaboration on digital publishing solutions.

“Genome Integrity will benefit from the contextual environment of ScienceOpen, with its research embedded in our database of over 77 million scholarly records.”

In this collaboration, ScienceOpen has provided Genome Integrity with hosting services, and it has also assisted in the unification of the publisher’s information, optimization of license information, and provision of long-term digital preservation through a partnership with CLOCKSS.

Genome Integrity will gain a new potential readership as a result of our interactive discovery environment, and users will be able to access cutting-edge research in just a few clicks. They can also easily export articles in PDF format, download various citation formats, review articles, and improve scientific communication in general by spreading the word about the most recent research in the field.

More about the Journal

Effective genome integrity maintenance is required for normal cell division, tissue homeostasis, healthy organismal aging, and disease prevention such as cancer.

Genome Integrity’s publications cover a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to, induction of DNA damage, sensing, signaling, and repair of DNA damage, metaphase chromosome alterations, cell cycle regulation, genome integrity and aging, genome integrity and cancer, and so on.

The open-access publications published in this journal will help researchers to understand the processes that regulate the maintenance of genome integrity and how the maintenance affects aging and cancer development. Genome Integrity will present the most recent discoveries in the field, covering all aspects of genome integrity, the cellular processes underlying genome stability maintenance, and the effects of instability. 

We are excited to collaborate with Scienceopen.com and publish Genome Integrity on Scienceopen.com platform. With their efficient outreach, network and indexing services, Genome Integrity hopes to achieve greater recognition in the community. We believe that Genome Integrity will attract wider audience from all around the world

Dr M Prakash Hande – Editor of Genome Integrity

Institutions partner with ACS to advance first California-wide transformative open access agreement

Three California consortia, representing nearly 60 academic and research institutions, and the Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) today announced the first-ever California-wide transformative open access agreement. It is also ACS’ first “read and publish” agreement in the U.S. composed of multiple consortia. Through a partnership with the 10-campus University of California (UC) system, the 23-campus California State University (CSU) system, and 25 subscribing institutions represented by the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC), readers and researchers at dozens of California research institutions will be able to benefit from full access to subscription content while receiving support for open access publication in ACS’ portfolio of more than 75 premier chemistry journals.

“This unique partnership across three consortia demonstrates that with open dialogue and determination, we can replace previously unsolvable challenges with mutual benefits that create greater value for our institutions and the broader scholarly community,” says Teri Gallaway, Ph.D., SCELC’s executive director. “SCELC is pleased to support this first-of-its-kind initiative to leverage the power of successful U.S. library consortia toward shared goals: to make more of California’s research and scholarship available to the world, and to promote greater access to information resources at an affordable and sustainable cost.”

The agreement lasts through 2025 and is a collaboration between institutions with a variety of needs. It exemplifies how a multiparty deal can satisfy the needs of diverse organizations via a transformative agreement. The arrangement is unique, in that it engages funder support for open access in alignment with the partnership between the institutes and publisher. As the scholarly publishing industry transitions toward an open access future, innovations like this partnership will be crucial to ensuring that all educational institutions and their researchers can participate in the full benefits of open access publication.

“The CSU libraries are proud to join in this path-breaking partnership with the UC libraries and SCELC,” says Emily Bonney, dean of the CSU Fullerton Library and chair of the CSU Council of Library Deans. “We believe that collaborating with our colleagues across the state is the key to maintaining and improving a robust scholarly communication system for the citizens of California. We want our students and faculty to have access to the wealth of scholarly research not only while they are enrolled in school but throughout their lives.”

ACS is the fourth-largest publisher of scholarly journal articles by researchers in the UC system, which includes 10 campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Making it easier and more affordable for those researchers to publish open access brings a potential for expanded visibility to their important scientific discoveries. Because the institutions involved collectively publish more than 11% of the nation’s scholarly journal articles and deliver instruction to more than 1 million California students, the impact of this agreement will be felt widely across the chemistry community.

“Free and open access to academic research is critical to the acceleration of new discoveries,” says Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, Ph.D., university librarian and professor at UC Berkeley and co-chair of UC’s negotiation team. “This unique partnership will give Californians and people around the world unprecedented access to the knowledge created by our institutions as we seek to solve some of the world’s most pressing environmental, health and scientific problems.”

A read and publish agreement is a way for institutions to maintain access to scholarly content available only through subscription, while supporting the transition to open access publishing by their affiliated researchers. Institutions are, in effect, redirecting their expenditures on subscriptions to cover the open access article publication charges. Through this partnership, hundreds of researchers at 58 institutions will be supported as they publish open access at a discounted rate in any ACS journal.

“ACS is very excited about this new agreement, as it takes the workflows behind read and publish deals to the next level,” says Sybille Geisenheyner, director of open science strategy and licensing at ACS. “As we embark upon this partnership, we invite funders to engage in this collaboration to support this transformation.”

“At ACS, we are committed to expanding our partnerships and innovating new ways to advance open access publication in chemistry,” says James Milne, Ph.D., president, ACS Publications Division. “I am confident that institutions around the world will see this collaboration as a prime example of creative thinking supporting the advancement of open science, for the benefit of chemistry and the world.”

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

About UC’s transformative open access agreements: Transformative open access agreements support the University of California’s mission as a public university and advance the global shift toward sustainable open access publishing by making more UC-authored research articles open to the world, while maintaining journal affordability. UC seeks to partner with publishers of all types, sizes and disciplines to jointly advance a worldwide transition to open access across the entire landscape of scholarly journal publishing. For more on these aims and principles, see UC’s Call to Action for Negotiating Journal Agreements at UC, the UC faculty Academic Senate’s Declaration of Rights and Principles to Transform Scholarly Communication and UC’s priorities for publisher negotiations.

The California State University (CSU) is the largest four-year regional, public university system in the United States with 23 campuses enrolling 477,000 students and employing 56,000 faculty and staff. The Chancellor’s Office coordinates approximately 80 annual library e-resource contracts for over 325 library e-resource products, with a $30 million budget for the 23 CSU libraries who serve their students, faculty, and the public with their diverse research needs. 

The Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) was established in 1986 to develop resource-sharing among the libraries of private academic institutions in Southern California. SCELC has grown to include libraries across California and 38 other states and is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt corporation. Among the top five North American consortia in terms of licensing volume, SCELC represents 112 Member institutions, over 200 Affiliate institutions, an aggregate student population of approximately 500,000, more than $200 million in library budgets, and holdings comprising more than 21 million volumes. SCELC libraries can license nearly 2,500 electronic resources from more than 100 vendors.

Underline Science Closes Pre-Series A Round To Further Advance Scholarly Research With The Growth Of The Digital Video Library

Serial Entrepreneur Alex Lazinica Founder / Owner IntechOpen Aims To Open The Boundaries Of Science

Most industries have progressed from paper to all forms of content, how is it that one of our most important industries, science is staying behind. This is something Underline’s founder doesn’t understand and therefore he is going to change it with the launch of the Underline Digital Video Library (DVL). With a huge track record, this multi-accomplished founder is now taking on the big publishers in a way that hasn’t been seen before as a premier aggregator of streaming scientific conference lecture video content.  Together with his team of industry leaders, Underline is aiming to transcend the industry into the 21st century.

The mission of Underline is to improve researchers’ access to quality scientific conference lecture video content. Historically, if you did not attend a scientific conference, you would miss out on all of the conference’s lectures.  Underline’s DVL contains 26,000+ videos (Health Sciences, Life Sciences, Engineering, Technology, Social Sciences, and Humanities). The video content from the world’s prestigious scientific societies and universities, like IEEE, Endocrine, AIP, lecturers from MIT, Harvard, Facebook, Google, etc.   Each video is complete with abstract, English transcription, bio, picture of the author, and most importantly, a DOI (digital object identifier), which ensures that the video can be searched and discovered.

The company announced today that it had raised $2.5 million Pre-Series A [1] [2] [3] round of funding, led by South Central Ventures and the Dutch Founders Fund. As a result, Mr. Jure Mikuz (South Central Ventures) and Mr. Laurens Groenendijk (Dutch Founders Fund) will join the Underline Board of Directors.

“With this new round of funding, we’ll be able to enhance the Underline DVL features and content greatly. Further to grow the team and expand our go-to-market strategy,” Underline CEO and founder Alex Lazinica said in a press release. “We are looking forward to increasing our penetration into the library, government and corporate, institutional subscription market.”

South Central Ventures, who led the round, Managing Partner Jure Mikuz, said, “Underline’s mission resonates with us very well as they are addressing a global opportunity of creating a library of global scientific video content. I believe they will be successful by facilitating their excellent execution skills and deep industry knowledge. We are very excited to join Underline on this journey.”

Founding Partner Laurens Groenendijk of The Dutch Founders Fund states, ” We believe that if Underline Science manages to tap into the apparent possible network effects, it can quickly grow out be the dominant player in the field of science content aggregation. We at Dutch Founders hope to see “underlining become a verb”. If anyone is going to do it,  We know a seasoned entrepreneur like Alex is. “

Underline’s business model is an annual subscription fee for unlimited access to the entire Digital Video Library for the subscribing institution’s community.

Cambridge to be new publisher of Judgment and Decision Making

Cambridge University Press is to take on the publication of the highly-regarded psychology journal, Judgment and Decision Making.

Co-owned by the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, and the European Association of Decision Making, the open access journal has made a name for itself through publishing high impact research and its dedication to author experience.

The study and analysis of human judgments and decisions covers a range of disciplines, with the journal publishing research from across not only psychology, but experimental economics and philosophy.

Until now the journal has been self-published, with its editorial team voluntarily undertaking all production work in addition to reviewing submitted manuscripts. Partnering with Cambridge will allow them to focus on editorial duties and ensure the journal is sustainable for the long term. Cambridge will begin publishing the journal in 2023.

Ann Avouris, Cambridge’s Head of Journals, North America, said: “In less than 20 years, Judgment and Decision Making has built an enviable reputation in a competitive field, through high-quality articles, a commitment to open access and a diverse authorship.

“We are delighted its owners have chosen us to be their publishing partner. Our role as a not-for-profit university press, our commitment to open research and our strong record of books publishing in this field, all help to make us an excellent fit.”

She added: “The journal’s success to date is a testament to the dedication of its editorial team, their approach to authors and to making research open access. We are mindful of that legacy and confident we can uphold it through our growing and hugely successful programme of Transformative Agreements with institutions around the globe.”

Jonathan Baron, Founding Editor of Judgment and Decision Making said: “I am very happy about this move. Right now, Cambridge is on the forefront of working with open access online journals like ours that have also tried to avoid author charges. Our journal will also benefit by association with many other high quality journals published by Cambridge in psychology and related fields.”

1...969798...486Page 97 of 486
© STM Publishing News 2025