Prominent journal editor fired for endorsing satirical article about Israel-Hamas conflict; Science, October 24, 2023

 SCIENCE NEWS STAFF, Science; Prominent journal editor fired for endorsing satirical article about Israel-Hamas conflict

"Michael Eisen, editor-in-chief of the prominent open access journal eLife and a longtime critic of traditional journals, says he is losing that job for publicly endorsing a satirical article that criticized people dying in Gaza for not condemning the recent attacks on Israel by the Palestinian group Hamas...

Eisen has previously been a frequent, feisty participant in debates about scientific publishing, doggedly supporting the development of free access to journal articles. In 2003, he co-founded the Public Library of Science (PLOS), whose journal PLOS ONE grew to become one of the largest open-access journals. Authors pay a fee so that their articles in PLOS journals are free to read when published. Eisen has criticized the paywalls still in place at many subscription journals as slowing the progress of science and the diffusion of useful findings. But critics of PLOS’s model have suggested author fees create an incentive for journals to maximize the number of papers published at the expense of adequate peer review and quality and can create barriers for authors with limited resources."

Publishers settle copyright infringement lawsuit with ResearchGate; Chemistry World, September 18, 2023

REBECCA TRAGER, Chemistry World ; Publishers settle copyright infringement lawsuit with ResearchGate

"Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, a librarian and professor of information science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says the settlement agreement ‘signals that ResearchGate has completed its journey from disrupter to partner within the scholarly communications ecosystem’. She notes that Elsevier and ACS have been using ResearchGate’s content blocking technology since at least early 2022, which indicates that ‘a more collaborative relationship’ has been in development for some time."

Libraries announces July workshops for scholarly communications, copyright; Penn State, June 29, 2023

Penn State ; Libraries announces July workshops for scholarly communications, copyright

"Beginning July 11, Penn State University Libraries will offer virtual workshops on scholarly communications and copyright topics for students, faculty and staff. The workshops include a two-part Introduction to Copyright, a session on Penn State’s open access policy, and a workshop about copyright for authors of theses and dissertations.

Registration is free but required for all workshops. To register, please follow the links listed with each session, or contact Ana Enriquez, scholarly communications outreach librarian, at enriquez@psu.edu."

Editors quit top neuroscience journal to protest against open-access charges; Nature, April 21, 2023

Katharine Sanderson, Nature; Editors quit top neuroscience journal to protest against open-access charges

"More than 40 editors have resigned from two leading neuroscience journals in protest against what the editors say are excessively high article-processing charges (APCs) set by the publisher. They say that the fees, which publishers use to cover publishing services and in some cases make money, are unethical. The publisher, Dutch company Elsevier, says that its fees provide researchers with publishing services that are above average quality for below average price. The editors plan to start a new journal hosted by the non-profit publisher MIT Press.

The decision to resign came about after many discussions among the editors, says Stephen Smith, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, UK, and editor-in-chief of one of the journals, NeuroImage. “Everyone agreed that the APC was unethical and unsustainable,” says Smith, who will lead the editorial team of the new journal, Imaging Neuroscience, when it launches.

The 42 academics who made up the editorial teams at NeuroImage and its companion journal NeuroImage: Reports announced their resignations on 17 April. The journals are open access and require authors to pay a fee for publishing services. The APC for NeuroImage is US$3,450; NeuroImage: Reports charges $900, which will double to $1,800 from 31 May. Elsevier, based in Amsterdam, says that the APCs cover the costs associated with publishing an article in an open-access journal, including editorial and peer-review services, copyediting, typesetting archiving, indexing, marketing and administrative costs. Andrew Davis, Elsevier’s vice-president of corporate communications, says that NeuroImage’s fee is less than that of the nearest comparable journal in its field, and that the publisher’s APCs are “set in line with our policy [of] providing above average quality for below average price”."

Reducing the Choice Between a Textbook and Your Next Meal; UCFToday, March 6, 2023

James Paradiso,  UCFToday; Reducing the Choice Between a Textbook and Your Next Meal

"With textbooks and other required course materials proven to be costly, UCF faculty, staff and students have come up with creative, yet practical, solutions through the creation of Open Educational Resources (OER), a hub for free teaching, learning and research materials.

“There has always been a need for open educational resources in higher education,” says Nicole Lapeyrouse, a UCF chemistry professor and 2023 Affordable Instructional Materials (AIM) High Impact Award winner. “By adopting or creating OER, you are able to further support students by making your courses more affordable and helping reduce the financial burden on students.”

Isabella Griffin, a student in Lapeyrouse’s Chemistry Fundamentals I course, confirms those benefits.

“The free textbook has helped ease the financial burden associated with being a college student.,” she says. “Sometimes, high prices prevent students from having textbook access — to the detriment of student learning. I greatly appreciate the free and open access to [the Chemistry Fundamentals eBook]. It has increased my ability to access relevant and useful resources related to class.”

“From my own personal experience with not always having access to affordable resources,” says Lapeyrouse, “I wanted to prevent students from having to make a tough call on [whether to] buy the required resources or pay a bill.”

According to the 2022 Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey conducted by Florida Virtual Campus (FLVC), 53% of students from Florida’s public higher education institutions indicated they did not purchase a required textbook for financial reasons. Forty-four percent took fewer courses. Thirty-eight percent did not register for a specific course. And 24% dropped a course due to the high cost of textbooks."

Is a Deal Between 44 Texas Colleges and Elsevier ‘Historic’?; Inside Higher Ed, December 9, 2022

 Susan D'Agostino, Inside Higher Ed; Is a Deal Between 44 Texas Colleges and Elsevier ‘Historic’?

"As pandemic-weary U.S. colleges face strained library budgets, many seek creative ways to lower costs and preserve access to scholarly content. That shared goal brought 44 colleges in Texas together to negotiate a deal with Elsevier, the behemoth publisher of over 2,500 scientific journals, including The Lancet and Cell.

The consortium—known as the Texas Library Coalition for United Action—announced last month that it had reached a deal with Elsevier that is expected to improve access to scholarship, afford researchers greater control over their work and save the member institutions millions. Some laud the agreement as historic. Others say it falls short of long-sought-after goals. If nothing else, the deal offers one example of how a collection of colleges is moving forward in a tense academic publishing ecosystem."

Royal Society of Chemistry will make all its journals open access; Chemistry World, November 1, 2022

 JAMIE DURRANI, Chemistry World; Royal Society of Chemistry will make all its journals open access

"The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has committed to making all of its journals open access within the next five years. It is the first chemistry publisher to commit to a 100% open access model and hopes to fund the move in a way that will avoid individual authors having to pay article processing charges (APCs)."

A Little-Known Statute Compels Medical Research Transparency. Compliance Is Pretty Shabby.; On The Media, April 21, 2021

 On The Media; A Little-Known Statute Compels Medical Research Transparency. Compliance Is Pretty Shabby.

"Evidence-based medicine requires just that: evidence. Access to the collective pool of knowledge produced by clinical trials is what allows researchers to safely and effectively design future studies. It's what allows doctors to make the most informed decisions for their patients.

Since 2007, researchers have been required by law to publish the findings of any clinical trial with human subjects within a year of the trial's conclusion. Over a decade later, even the country's most well-renown research institutions sport poor reporting records. This week, Bob spoke with Charles Piller, an investigative journalist at Science Magazine who's been documenting this dismal state of affairs since 2015. He recently published an op-ed in the New York Times urging President Biden to make good on his 2016 "promise" to start withholding funds to force compliance."

National Library of Israel to open access to 2,500 rare Islamic books; Jerusalem Post, June 8, 2020

Jerusalem Post Staff, Jerusalem Post; National Library of Israel to open access to 2,500 rare Islamic books

"The National Library of Israel, in coordination with the Arcadia Fund, has announced a major initiative to open digital access to over 2,500 rare Islamic manuscripts and books, according to a press release from library on Monday. 

With the aid of a grant from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, the National Library's opening of access will include the digitization and uploading of high-resolution images of books and manucripts, improving item descriptions in Arabic and English  and the development of an English-Hebrew-Arabic digital platform."

Open Access, Open Source, and the Battle to Defeat COVID-19; JD Supra, April 22, 2020

PerkinsCoie, JD Supra; Open Access, Open Source, and the Battle to Defeat COVID-19

"No legal development over the past decades has had a greater impact on the free flow of information and technology than the rise of the open access and open source movements. We recently looked at how AI, machine learning, blockchain, 3D printing, and other disruptive technologies are being employed in response to the coronavirus pandemic; we now turn to how two disruptive legal innovations, open access and open source, are being used to fight COVID-19. Although the pandemic is far from over, there are already promising signs that open access and open source solutions are allowing large groups of scientists, healthcare professionals, software developers, and innovators across many countries to mobilize quickly and effectively to combat and, hopefully, mitigate the impact of the coronavirus."

Past coronavirus: an open-access future for academics; The Bowdoin Orient, April 3, 2020

Radu Stochita, The Bowdoin Orient; Past coronavirus: an open-access future for academics

"What Aaron Swartz left us is the courage to try and break the wall that exists between the public and the profit-driven industry of academic publishing. In his eyes, information was meant to be free and accessible. Progress was meant for the common good, in the benefit of everyone, not only for a selected few."

Nature to join open-access Plan S, publisher says; Nature, April 9, 2020

Richard Van Noorden, Nature; Nature to join open-access Plan S, publisher says

"After a change in the rules of the bold open-access (OA) initiative known as Plan S, publisher Springer Nature said on 8 April that many of its non-OA journals — including Nature — were now committed to joining the plan, pending discussion of further technical details.

This means that Nature and other Nature-branded journals that publish original research will now look to offer an immediate OA route after January 2021 to scientists who want it, or whose funders require it, a spokesperson says. (Nature is editorially independent of its publisher, Springer Nature.)...

In simple terms, the plan means that researchers funded by agencies supporting Plan S must submit their work to OA journals, or post peer-reviewed versions of their work openly online."

A Revolution in Science Publishing, or Business as Usual?; UNDARK, March 30, 2020

Michael Schulson, UNDARK; A Revolution in Science Publishing, or Business as Usual?

"Some advocates see corporate open-access as a pragmatic way of opening up research to the masses. But others see the new model as a corruption of the original vision — one that will continue to funnel billions of dollars into big publishing companies, marginalize scientists in lower income countries, and fail to fix deeper, systemic problems in scientific publishing.

As it stands, all trends point to an open-access future. The question now is what kind of open-access model it will be — and what that future may mean for the way new science gets evaluated, published, and shared. “We don’t know why we should accept that open access is a market,” said Dominique Babini, the open-access adviser to the Latin American Council of Social Sciences and a prominent critic of commercial open-access models. “If knowledge is a human right, why can’t we manage it as a commons, in collaborative ways managed by the academic community, not by for-profit initiatives?”"

Over 24,000 coronavirus research papers are now available in one place; MIT Technology Review, March 16, 2020

Karen Hao, MIT Technology Review; Over 24,000 coronavirus research papers are now available in one place

The data set aims to accelerate scientific research that could fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

"The news: Today researchers collaborating across several organizations released the Covid-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19), which includes over 24,000 research papers from peer-reviewed journals as well as sources like bioRxiv and medRxiv (websites where scientists can post non-peer-reviewed preprint papers). The research covers SARS-CoV-2 (the scientific name for the coronavirus), Covid-19 (the scientific name for the disease), and the coronavirus group. It represents the most extensive collection of scientific literature related to the ongoing pandemic and will continue to update in real time as more research is released."

Rumored executive order would change landscape of UC subscription partnerships; The Daily Californian, January 30, 2020

Alexandra Casey, The Daily Californian; Rumored executive order would change landscape of UC subscription partnerships

"Prominent Nobel laureate and chief scientific officer of New England Biolabs Rich Roberts has no online access to a paper he co-authored because his institution lacks a subscription to academic journal Nature Microbiology.

Roberts is one of 21 American Nobel laureates who submitted an open letter to President Donald Trump on Monday urging him to approve a rumored plan to make federally funded research free of cost and immediately accessible after publication. UC Berkeley’s Randy Schekman, who founded eLife — an open access scientific journal — led the Nobel laureates in their letter...

“This would effectively nationalize the valuable American intellectual property that we produce and force us to give it away to the rest of the world for free,” according to the letter from the publishers. “This risks reducing exports and negating many of the intellectual property protections the Administration has negotiated with our trading partners.”

The letter added that the cost shift could place an “additional burden” on taxpayers and undermine both the marketplace and American innovation."

Buying textbooks: 'A sense of desperation'; The Exponent (Purdue University), January 23, 2020

Joseph Ching, The Exponent (Purdue University); Buying textbooks: 'A sense of desperation'

"[Justin] Race [director of the Purdue University Press] said a major misconception is that people who purchase a physical book are buying the actual book itself. By this logic, online content would be inherently free.

“It’s much better to think of it as, ‘I am buying the intellectual property,’” Race said. “The distilled expertise by a scholar, the copy editing, proofreading, the design, the cover design — and not so much for the paper and binding.”

Purdue Libraries is in the early stages of its Open Bytes project, a partnership with the College of Engineering to create educational resources accessible to the world. These resources include textbooks, lecture notes and case studies available beginning mid-2020, according to a University press release."

Paris Musées embraces open access; europeana pro, January 9, 2020

Douglas McCarthy, europeana pro; Paris Musées embraces open access

"In a major step towards greater open access in France, Paris Musées is releasing its digital collections into the public domain with a CC0 waiver. Europeana's Douglas McCarthy spoke with Philippe Rivière, Head of Communication and Digital at Paris Musées, to find out more."

"Tell us all about the Paris Musées open access announcement. 

From January 2020, Paris Musées will begin releasing digital images of its out-of-copyright works into the public domain under the Creative Commons CC0 waiver. Our first release numbers more than 150,000 images and other sets will follow. We are publishing the material set by set so that the copyright status of the artworks and photographs can be carefully evaluated. 

Which collections and what type of images are being openly released? 

Paris Musées manages the fourteen museums of the City of Paris and altogether the collection numbers over a million artworks. From archaeology to fashion and contemporary art, the collections are remarkably diverse and they are still being digitised. Since May 2016 our collections have been accessible online at http://parismuseescollections.paris.fr/en. 

What motivated Paris Musées to adopt open access now? 

Paris Musées has been working on its open access strategy for some time and discussions intensified during the development of our collections website. Our project team was aware of the international Open GLAM movement and we wanted to make our own contribution to it."

What if "Sesame Street" Were Open Access?; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), October 25, 2019

Elliot Harmon, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); What if "Sesame Street" Were Open Access?

"The news of iconic children’s television show “Sesame Street”’s new arrangement with the HBO MAX streaming service has sent ripples around the Internet. Starting this year, episodes of “Sesame Street” will debut on HBO and on the HBO MAX service, with new episodes being made available to PBS “at some point.” Parents Television Council’s Tim Winter recently told New York Times that “HBO is holding hostage underprivileged families” who can no longer afford to watch new “Sesame Street” episodes.

The move is particularly galling because the show is partially paid for with public funding. Let's imagine an alternative: what if “Sesame Street” were open access? What if the show’s funding had come with a requirement that it be made available to the public?"

Highly Profitable Medical Journal Says Open Access Publishing Has Failed. Right.; Forbes, April 1, 2019

Steven Salzberg, Forbes; Highly Profitable Medical Journal Says Open Access Publishing Has Failed. Right.

"What Haug doesn't mention here is that there is one reason (and only one, I would argue) that NEJM makes all of its articles freely available after some time has passed: the NIH requires it. This dates back to 2009, when Congress passed a law, after intense pressure from citizens who were demanding access to the research results that they'd paid for, requiring all NIH-funded results to be deposited in a free, public repository (now called PubMed Central) within 12 months of publication.

Scientific publishers fought furiously against this policy. I know, because I was there, and I talked to many people involved in the fight at the time. The open-access advocates (mostly patient groups) wanted articles to be made freely available immediately, and they worked out a compromise where the journals could have 6 months of exclusivity. At the last minute, the NIH Director at the time, Elias Zerhouni, extended this to 12 months, for reasons that remain shrouded in secrecy, but thankfully, the public (and science) won the main battle. For NEJM to turn around now and boast that they are releasing articles after an embargo period, without mentioning this requirement, is hypocritical, to say the least. Believe me, if the NIH requirement disappeared (and publishers are still lobbying to get rid of it!), NEJM would happily go back to keeping all access restricted to subscribers.

The battle is far from over. Open access advocates still want to see research released immediately, not after a 6-month or 12-month embargo, and that's precisely what the European Plan S will do."

Open access task force releases draft recommendations; MIT News, March 18, 2019

MIT Libraries, MIT News;

Open access task force releases draft recommendations

The MIT community is invited to comment on ways to increase sharing of research, data, software, and more.

"The Ad Hoc Task Force on Open Access to MIT’s Research has released a set of draft recommendations that aim to support and increase the open sharing of MIT publications, data, software, and educational materials. They are available for public comment until April 17.

The recommendations include ratifying an Institute-wide set of principles for open science; broadening the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy to cover all MIT authors; adopting an open access (OA) policy for monographs; and asking department heads to develop discipline-specific plans to encourage and support open sharing from their faculty, students, and staff.

“Our recommendations are grounded in the view that openness leads to better research,” says Chris Bourg, director of the MIT Libraries and co-chair of the OA task force along with Hal Abelson, Class of 1922 Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “They are intended to reduce barriers and provide incentives to open sharing, while remaining flexible where needed to accommodate differences across disciplines.”"