T&F makes moves on diversity, research assessment, and data sharing
Taylor & Francis has announced two new partnerships with diversity action organisations, signing the Joint Commitment for Action on Inclusion and Diversity in Publishing, coordinated by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and partnering with the Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC) to incorporate its recommendations into the company’s working practices, training, and guidance for colleagues.
T&F has also signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) to improve how the outputs of scholarly research are evaluated, and introduced a new Books Data Sharing Policy encouraging authors to share their data sets according to FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability) principles.
Atlantis takes the plunge with Springer
Springer Nature has acquired Atlantis Press, the international open access publisher responsible for producing more than 200 STM conference proceedings annually, and with an existing portfolio of 1,200 proceedings. Atlantis’s growing journal business, comprising 20 titles, will transfer to Springer; 115 books published by the press were already hosted and distributed by them.
Transformative Deals
The University of California has signed several new transformative agreements. A three-year cost-neutral Open Access agreement with the Company of Biologists provides corresponding authors at all ten UC campuses with publication in the Company’s three hybrid journals and two open access journals, as well as unlimited access to the archives of the three hybrid titles. A three-year deal with the Royal Society will see UC libraries pay at least the first $1,000 of the article processing charge for all UC authors, and also provide researchers with access to the full portfolio of Royal Society journals.
Springer Nature has also signed a three-year institutional open access book agreement with the University of California’s Berkeley Library which will provide funding to UC Berkeley affiliated authors for OA book publication across both STM and HSS subjects. The deal builds upon the transformative journal deal signed by the two parties last year.
Jisc, which recently launched a new toolkit to assist university presses in finding sustainable ways to publish open access, has signed a read-and-publish deal with Karger providing researchers at participating institutions with access to all the publisher’s journals and OA publication without cost to the author in all its journals.
Irish library consortium IReL has concluded two new transformative deals with publishers. A three-year read-and-publish agreement with SAGE will provide member institutions with read access to SAGE’s portfolio of over 1,100 journals from 1999 onwards, unlimited OA publishing in the company’s hybrid journals and a 20% discount on publishing in its Gold OA titles. A four-year deal with Wiley will provide participating institutions with access to the Wiley journals and the ability to publish OA articles in both hybrid and gold titles.
Emerald, recently announced as the winner of the ‘SME Strategy’ category at the 2021 Inside Out Mental Health Awards for prioritising employee well-being, has signed a three-year transformative open access agreement with Sweden’s Bibsam Consortium. Researchers from 29 participating institutions will gain read access to more than 200,000 articles from 310 journals, as well as payment of publication costs in all Emerald hybrid journals, Gold OA journals, and the Emerald Open Research peer review platform.
New tools and platforms
Clarivate has released a new interactive tool to showcase in a single visualisation the range of a researcher’s publication and citation impact through time. The Web of Science Author Impact Beamplots are intended to enable users of research metrics to engage more actively with data and provide new opportunities to conduct research assessment responsibly.
MIT Press has launched a new scholar-focused hosting and publishing services operation in collaboration with its partner the Knowledge Futures Group. MIT Open Publishing Services (MITops) will offer mission-aligned partners a range of services including editorial development and peer review support; professional copy editing and design; publicity and marketing; and hosting on the Pub open-source platform. The aim is to enable academic institutions to decrease their dependence on huge multinational providers.
IOP Publishing, whose recently issued annual report showed increases of 10% and 40% in article and ebook downloads respectively, has launched a new e-learning hub offering free access to its peer review programme dedicated to the physical sciences.
Journals
Oxford University Press has launched a new journal, Exposome, devoted to the role played by environmental factors in human health and disease.
Springer Nature will be launching two three new online-only journals in early 2022. Nature Synthesis and Nature Cardiovascular Research will be Plan S-compliant transformative journals, while Nature Reviews Psychology will be the first Nature Reviews journal in the social and behavioural sciences.
Alastair Horne is a PhD student at the British Library and Bath Spa University.