Featuring a round-up of Open Access Week events, highlights from our expert panel discussion with NetworkPharma, an announcement from Galápagos, an open access explainer video, the community’s input on equitable open access, a roadmap to equity in medical communications, and a new open access agreement from Nature.
Open Access Week 2020! via The Publication Plan
This week, October 19–25, marked International Open Access Week 2020, 7 jam-packed days of online action and community content organized by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition to promote the principles and practice of open access. For the third year in a row, the event focuses on equitable open access publishing with the theme ‘Open with purpose: taking action to build structural equity and inclusion’.
Publishing open access saves lives! via NetworkPharma.tv
As part of Open Pharma’s contribution to Open Access Week, Chris Winchester (CEO of Oxford PharmaGenesis and co-founder of Open Pharma) joined Peter Llewellyn from NetworkPharma) to facilitate a multi-stakeholder panel discussion featuring Durhane Wong-Rieger (Canadian Organization for Rare Disorders), Gavin Sharrock (Wiley) and Valérie Philippon (Takeda). A recording of the discussion is now available to watch on demand for free on NetworkPharma.tv and on YouTube. If you have any comments or thoughts of your own to contribute, please do join the discussions on Twitter!
Galápagos announces its open access policy via Galápagos
Galápagos has joined Shire (now part of Takeda) and Ipsen in making its commitment to open access principles and practice a mandated company policy. From 1 November 2020, all Galápagos-funded research will be published in journals with equitable, freely accessible, open access options to “promote scientific openness as a powerful tool for building more equitable systems of sharing knowledge”.
Open access publishing 101 via Medical Publishing Insights & Practices
This 3-minute video is the first instalment of the Medical Publishing Insights & Practices series of mini modules for the collaboration’s Transparency Matters campaign. It provides a quick and easy-to-understand overview of the various open access publishing options and why you should consider choosing it.
From the community: equity in open research via The Scholarly Kitchen
Open Access Week is all about enabling community-driven conversations. With this in mind, the Scholarly Kitchen has once again opened up the floor to hear what the community has to say about achieving equitable participation in open research. This year’s line-up features:
- Alison Mudditt, CEO of the Public Library of Science
- Catriona J MacCallum, Director of Open Science at Hindawi
- Alison Denby, Vice President of Journals at Oxford University Press
- Haseeb Md Irfanullah, editorial board member for the Bangladesh Journal of Plant Taxonomy
- Liz Ferguson, Vice President of Open Research at Wiley
- Vrushali Dandawate, Ambassador for the Directory of Open Access Journals, India and Head Librarian at AISSMS College of Engineering.
A roadmap for equity, diversity and inclusion via The MAP Newsletter
In line with Open Access Week’s theme of building structural equity and inclusion, this timely article presents a call to action for the professional medical communications and publishing communities and outlines the progress that the publishing industry has made in improving the equity, transparency and accessibility of research. Of note is the Center for Information and Study on Clinical Research Participation’s educational media awareness campaign to highlight the importance of patient diversity in clinical research participation with a tagline that drives the point home: “diseases don’t discriminate”.
Nature’s first open access agreement via Nature
Although not explicitly a part of Open Access Week, the latest big news of the week is Nature’s milestone announcement of the family of journals’ first open access agreement. The deal made with the Max Planck Digital Library will allow the institution’s researchers to publish open access, but for an estimated fee of €9500 per article – an eye-watering figure that has been met with criticisms of inequality and exclusion.
We at Open Pharma would like to continue to encourage all our readers to look after themselves and their community and to continue to follow advice from their country’s government and health organizations.
Coronavirus mental health and well-being resources:
