cOAlition S
Open access initiative cOAlition S has announced a new Rights Retention Strategy. Member organisations will be updating their grant conditions to require the application of Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licences to all Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs) or Versions of Record (VoR) that report original research supported in part or in whole by their funding. Subscription publishers are being contacted and encouraged to modify their existing publishing agreements to ensure compliance; they are also being asked to indicate how they will manage future submissions from authors funded by cOAlition S members. A series of webinars providing information for publishers on the strategy will take place shortly.
The cOAlition has also confirmed that the tender for its new Journal Checker Tool has been awarded to UK data services and software company Cottage Labs, which will work in partnership with the Antleaf consultancy and data providers Open Access Button and DOAJ. The tool, which is scheduled to be ready for use by the end of this year, will help researchers who receive funding from cOAlition S member organisations to identify journals or platforms that enable compliance with Plan S requirements.
HighWire bought by MPS
US publishing tools and platform provider HighWire Press has been acquired by MPS, the rapidly expanding content and platform solutions business that was originally established in 1970 as an Indian subsidiary of Macmillan before a change of ownership in 2011-12.
Emerald scores sustainability hat-trick
Emerald has demonstrated its active support for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals with three announcements this month. A partnership with ScienceOpen will see the creation of three new SDG-inspired collections of Emerald publications based around the themes of responsible consumption, equal access to digital technology, and reduced inequality. The Bingley-based publisher has also issued a new Global Inclusivity Report highlighting the barriers preventing inclusivity in society, the role of research in helping to solve these issues, and systemic issues within the academic research sector, all based on a survey of 1,055 academic researchers across nine countries. It has also signed up to the Research4Life partnership providing developing countries with free or low-cost access to academic and professional peer-reviewed content.
Partnerships
De Gruyter has announced two new partnerships to support the development of its new digital publishing platform. 67 Bricks, which recently announced the appointment of Michelle Bandiera as publishing consultant, will act as software development partners on the new platform, which is intended to facilitate a more user-centred and data-driven approach from De Gruyter. LibLynx will be providing the platform with identity, access, and analytics services.
Wiley, which recently appointed former Amazon executive Mariana Garavaglia to its Board of Directors, has signed a new ten-year contract with healthcare evidence-provider Cochrane to continue publishing its Cochrane Library to December 2030. Wiley is also among eight further signatories to the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Joint commitment for action on inclusion and diversity in publishing, which launched last month and committed organisations to undertake a proactive stance against bias, to work together to better reflect the diversity of their communities, and to remove barriers for under-represented groups; SAGE and eLife are among the other new signatories, taking the total to nineteen.
OpenAthens has announced a partnership with QxMD which will see the former’s single sign-on technology used for authentication on the latter’s Read app, which provides healthcare information to medical staff, students, and librarians.
Transformative deals
Taylor & Francis has signed a read-and-publish deal with the Finnish library consortium FinELib which will give researchers at fifteen participating institutions read access to T&F journals and the opportunity to publish in more than 2000 of its hybrid journals without paying article processing charges; its Finnish journal Annals of Medicine will also become fully open access.
The Royal Society of Chemistry has concluded an agreement with Jisc that will give researchers at participating institutions unlimited read access to paywalled journals and APC-free publication from 2021 through a single annual institutional fee.
Journals in brief
Springer Nature, which has already this month opened its new IT hub in Lisbon and concluded its previously announced transformative deal with the Consortium of Swiss University Libraries, has launched a new open access journal series. The Discover series will comprise up to forty new titles covering topics from across the full range of applied science, physical, life, medical, and social science disciplines; manuscripts will be published between seven and ten weeks after submission.
The journal Metallomics has transferred from the Royal Society of Chemistry to Oxford University Press.
Clarivate has released its latest annual Web of Science Journal Citation Reports, compiling data on more than 12,000 journals from 83 countries in five continents and including, for the first time, a breakdown of a journal’s articles by access model. This year, 33 journals were suppressed for displaying anomalous citation behaviour, and 15 were issued with an Editorial Expression of Concern.
Alastair Horne is a PhD student at the British Library and Bath Spa University.