This week, we read ‘The State of Open Data 2022’ survey report and about how data sharing practices are evolving. We hear about changes in Science’s open access policy, the call for European organizations to enable immediate open access to publicly funded research, and the launch of a new AI-powered open access research newsfeed. We also read about the battle between APCs and diamond open access. Finally, we highlight three upcoming ORCID webinars celebrating International Open Access Week and ORCID’s 10th anniversary.
To read:
The State of Open Data 2022 via figshare | 1-hour read
The report from ‘The State of Open Data 2022’ survey – the largest quantitative survey on researcher attitudes towards open data and data sharing – has been released. An annual collaboration between Digital Science, figshare and Springer Nature that is now in its 7th year, the 2022 survey was the largest since the COVID-19 pandemic began, with over 5400 respondents. The report also includes guest articles from open data experts at the National Institutes of Health, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and many more.
The data sharing floodgates are nearly open via The Scholarly Kitchen | 6-minute read
With the release of The State of Open Data 2022 report, it appears that researchers are slowly moving towards effective data sharing and open data practices. This article by Simon Linacre (Head of Content, Brand & Press at Digital Science) evaluates the findings of the survey and highlights that almost 80% of respondents agreed that “making research data openly available should be common practice”. The article also highlights how more researchers (73%) have an awareness of the FAIR data principles than in previous surveys (66% in 2021 and 35% in 2018). Interestingly, the report also showed that the four primary motivations for researchers to share data are citations, impact and visibility, public benefit, and mandates.
The open access policy of Science is changing via Nature | 3-minute read
The high-impact journal Science has announced that it will allow authors to publicly share almost final versions of their research in any repository immediately upon publication, and without paying any fees. This differs from other high-impact journals, such as Cell and Nature, that charge most authors an article processing charge (APC) to publish their articles open access. Science’s new open access policy will take effect from the beginning of 2023 and will apply to all five subscription journals in the Science family.
European organizations urged to enable open access to publicly funded research via Research Professional News | 2-minute read
The Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER) and Knowledge Rights 21 have called on European national governments and the European Union to introduce laws to ensure immediate open access to publications that report publicly funded research. Only seven European countries currently have similar laws, but these only apply following an embargo period after initial publication. European organizations have been urged to institute laws without such embargos and, instead, to mandate immediate public open access to this important research.
ScioWire: an open access research newsfeed powered by AI via STM Publishing News | 2-minute read
SciencePOD – a global network of over 600 professional scientific content creators – has announced a “newsfeed to seek, sort, summarise and share open-access research”. Called ScioWire, the newsfeed uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create digestible and contextualized summaries of open access research. The AI tool produces the bite-size summaries in a bespoke manner, tailoring the open access research output based on researcher inputs. SciencePOD hopes that ScioWire will save researchers time in finding relevant publications while also promoting open access research.
Could ending APCs save open access? via Nature | 5-minute read
While APCs have become ubiquitous in North America and Europe since the mid-2000s, the publishing landscape in Latin America has favoured a different open access model in which institutions publish journals that are edited by their faculty members – a type of diamond open access. However, due to perceived prestige and greater international recognition, many scholars in Latin America want to publish in North American and European journals instead of local ones, meaning they must spend more of their budget on APCs. This comes at the expense of investment into the local diamond open access infrastructures. This article argues that the tables should be turned and that it is the diamond open access model that should be more widely embraced, not APCs.
To engage with:
Open Access Week at ORCID via ORCID
Next week is International Open Access Week! To celebrate, ORCID is hosting two free webinars on 25 October to draw attention to selected open access organizations from around the world and to highlight the fantastic work that they are doing. Hear from KAUST, INFLIBNET India, SciELO-PKP and ARDC to learn about their contributions to open access, the importance of open science infrastructures, and how these organizations use ORCID.
Celebrate ORCID’s 10th anniversary! via GoTo Webinar
Next week ORCID is also celebrating its 10th anniversary! On 27 October, ORCID will host a webinar discussing the importance of persistent identifiers in scholarly communications and open science. The webinar will focus on how ORCID was created, how it has evolved over time, the challenges and surprises that ORCID has had to overcome, and what the future holds for the organization. Also, 10 lucky registrants will have the chance to win a 10th anniversary swag bundle!
Have you watched our Open Pharma Symposium ‘Who can we trust? Open science and pharma research’? Watch it here on our YouTube channel!
