Line-up for Research and Scholarly Publishing Forum announced
The London Book Fair has announced the line-up for next month’s Research and Scholarly Publishing Forum, taking place on Thursday 10 June this year as part of The Online Book Fair. Chaired jointly by Information Power’s Dr Alicia Wise, the programme creator, and Steven Inchcoombe, Chief Publishing and Solutions Officer at Springer Nature, the Forum will ask ‘How Open Are We?’
Inchcoombe and Wise will be joined by Dr David Sweeney, Executive Chair at Research England, and Dr Sudeshna Sarkar, Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, who will be the keynote speakers. Sessions will offer a wide range of perspectives on a broad array of open access topics, including An Asia Pacific Perspective On Read & Publish OA Agreements, and A Society Publisher Perspective On Subscribe to Open OA Models. Further details and booking information can be found here.
The Scholarly Stream will also be taking place online this year, on Thursday June 24. More information will follow shortly.
Clarivate to acquire ProQuest
Library content and technology solutions provider ProQuest is to be acquired by Clarivate later this year in a deal worth more than $5bn. The agreement is expected to add significantly to Clarivate’s bottom line: ProQuest posted revenues of $876m in 2020, and more than £100m in savings are anticipated across the combined organisation within the first eighteen months.
Taylor & Francis launches new book platform
Taylor & Francis has announced a first joint initiative with F1000, the open access publisher it acquired last year. Open Plus Books aims to combine a traditional print book publishing model with F1000’s open research model, enabling authors to publish books open access on its open research platform within days of submission. Chapters are standalone items, able to be updated, revised, and added to by the author, and can also include data sources, encouraging replication and reuse. In other F1000 news, the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) open access journal MedEdPublish will soon be migrated onto a new platform built on F1000 technology.
Emerald report looks to the future
Emerald Publishing has published a report investigating the presentation of research and the types of innovation that might help research drive real-world change. Surveying 1,500 academics from over 100 countries worldwide into, Is research output fit for the future? finds that a majority believe that research is difficult to use outside of academia, and that there needs to be greater focus on real world experiences.
Global initiatives
PLOS has announced the latest step in an initiative that will see it working alongside local communities to expand its presence into different continents: a new partnership with the Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa), a non-profit trust based in Kenya, dedicated to improving African researchers’ visibility and impact through training in scholarly communication. The agreement aims to ensure the representation of the interests and values of African research communities in PLOS publications, policies, and services, and to ensure that Open Science practices work for local stakeholders.
Springer Nature has announced two new steps to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals: reference work the African Handbook of Climate Change Adaptation will be made open access, and a new white paper Harnessing Science for a Sustainable Future: Narrowing the Policy, Research, and Community Divide published in partnership with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). The publisher has also launched a new online magazine reporting on scientific research and policy across Africa: Nature Africa.
SAGE extends partnership with Jisc
SAGE has announced a further partnership with Jisc that will see hybrid gold open access articles published as part of the pair’s recent read-and-publish included in the latter’s Publications Router tool, which enables institutions to capture their OA articles directly into their repositories. The publisher has also added integration with EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) to its Lean Library browser extension.
Transformative deals
Wiley has concluded a four-year read-and-publish agreement with swissuniversities that will provide members and customers of the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries (CSAL) with access to its subscription journals while enabling researchers at participating institutions to publish in Wiley’s near-1400 hybrid journals.
The Company of Biologists has agreed a read-and-publish deal with Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL). Researchers in thirty developing and transition economy countries will be able to publish fee-free in Development, Journal of Cell Science, and Journal of Experimental Biology; they will also gain unlimited free access to the journal archives.
Emerald Publishing has signed a three-year transformative deal with Ireland’s IReL consortium which will give researchers at participating institutions read access to all Emerald journal content plus publishing vouchers for use with all Emerald journals, Gold OA journals and the Emerald Open Research peer review platform.
Springer Nature has agreed a four-year transformative agreement with the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (Crue Universidades Españolas) and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Affiliated researchers will have full access to all Springer subscription journal content and will be able to publish their work open access in Springer Nature’s portfolio of more than 2,300 titles.
Taylor & Francis has signed a three-year read-and-publish deal with the Consortium for Swiss Academic Libraries which will enable researchers at the 26 participating institutions to publish in all its Gold OA and most of its hybrid journals. They will also be able to read articles from across the T&F journal portfolio.
Journals
The Royal Society has committed to flipping its journals Biology Letters, Interface, Proceedings A, and Proceedings B to an entirely open access model once 75% of their articles are being published OA. The transition will be driven primarily through transformative deals with major institutions, following the launch of the society’s read and publish scheme in January this year.
Springer Nature has acquired full ownership of the British Journal of Cancer (BJC), having previously published the journal in partnership with Cancer Research UK.
Alastair Horne is a PhD student at the British Library and Bath Spa University.