There has been an increasing trend towards open access publishing over the past 20 years, with many academic and not-for-profit research funders increasingly requiring the publications they fund to be published open access. In January 2019, Ipsen became the second pharma company to introduce an open access policy after Shire (now part of Takeda) adopted a policy over one year ago. However, the definition of open access and of different types of open access options is confusing and often poorly understood. There is also a lack of guidance on open access publishing, particularly for commercial research funders.
To address these issues, Open Pharma has developed a set of educational slides on open access, which are now available in the resources section of the Open Pharma website and to download here.
The educational materials provide:
- a blanket definition for open access
- a discussion on the benefits of open access to different stakeholders in medical publishing
- a description of the different open access options that are available, including a deconstruction of Creative Commons licences
- a summary of guidance provided by open access initiatives and declarations, including by Open Pharma
- information on open access options offered by journals, open access requirements of research funders and Plan S
- advice on what steps researchers and funders can take to overcome the barriers to publishing open access
- recommendations on how to avoid predatory publishers when publishing open access.
If you have any questions or feedback on the materials, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us here.
