Weekly digest: what’s happening in Open Science?

Tim Ellison

Featuring the launch of cloud-based technology that enables one-click access to research articles, the new supplement for publishing negative results, and the first publisher-owned open research platform.

Digital Science launches Anywhere Access to enable one-click access to full-text scholarly articles via Digital Science

This week, Digital Science announced the launch of Anywhere Access, a cloud-based library solution that allows researchers immediate access to online open access and subscription articles. The technology enables one-click access via ‘View PDF’ links that appear in search services including Google Scholar, PubMed, Dimensions and Primo, as well as on publisher websites. In the press release, Digital Science provides an example to demonstrate how the technology works.

CBMRT announces launch of the Null Hypothesis (H0) supplement for publishing negative results via Open Pharma

Scientists are under increasing pressure to publish negative results, but in doing so face the challenges of competing for publication space against studies with positive results and limiting their time spent on publishing research with more exciting results. In this new guest post on the Open Pharma blog, Sarah Hadley, the Deputy Director at the Center for Biomedical Research Transparency (CBMRT), announces the organization’s plans to publish the first edition of the Null Hypothesis (H0) supplement, which will include research articles on well-designed yet negative and inconclusive studies, in partnership with the medical journal Neurology later this year. The post also highlights the upcoming CBMRT annual Biomedical Transparency summits in Paris in November 2018 and Bethesda in February 2019, and invites interested parties to get in touch to register their interest.

F1000 partners with Emerald Publishing to create the first publisher-owned open research platform via F1000 blog

In this blog post, Rebecca Lawrence, the Managing Director of F1000 (the publisher that created the F1000Research open research platform), announces that F1000 is partnering with Emerald Publishing to operate an open research platform on its behalf. F1000 has previously worked with research funders such as the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop the Wellcome Open Research and Gates Open Research platforms, but Emerald Publishing will be the first publisher to use F1000’s services. Emerald Open Research will publish research that addresses the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, and will use the same post-publication peer review model as F1000Research.

The evolution of peer review via MPIP Transparency and Data Sharing blog

In this opinion piece for the Medical Publishing Insights & Practices (MPIP) blog, Richard Smith, the former editor of The BMJ, discusses the evolution of peer review, which, he argues, is paradoxically a faith-based rather than evidence-based activity. Smith highlights problems with peer review in its traditional form and shares information on other peer review models. His conclusion is that although there are many innovations in the peer review process, their effectiveness has not yet been evaluated rigorously.

The challenges for open science adoption in Europe via Medium

In this blog post, David Osimo, Director of Research at The Lisbon Council, a Brussels-based think tank, discusses the disparity between open science principles and practice. The piece argues that although open science principles are increasingly being embraced by research funders and in policy documents, the adoption of open science practices is still limited. Osimo suggests that there are two underlying reasons: a misalignment of incentives, and operational barriers related to cost and skills.