Oxford tackles bias, implements new policies
Oxford University Press, which recently announced a new partnership with the Genetics Society of America to publish the journals GENETICS and G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics, has launched a new Virtual Inclusion Programme to help its employees recognise and tackle unconscious bias. The mandatory programme uses a blended learning approach to enable it to be delivered online during lockdown. OUP has also implemented new research data policies in almost 300 of its journals, emphasising the inclusion of data availability statements, and of full citations to datasets in reference lists.
Wiley announces new partnerships
It’s been a busy month for Wiley, whose President and CEO Brian Napack was last month unanimously elected as chair of the board of directors of the Association of American Publishers. The company has partnered with the German open access project DeepGreen to distribute research published under the Wiley/Projekt DEAL agreement to repositories at more than 500 academic institutions throughout the country. It has also signed a deal with the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) to publish its open access Journal of Extracellular Vesicles.
Is India planning nationwide subscription deals?
Nature has reported that the Indian government is planning a new policy that would make scholarly publications freely accessible throughout the country, not only at scholarly institutions. It is said to be intending to negotiate with publishers on nationwide subscriptions while encouraging its researchers to archive accepted manuscripts in public online repositories.
Open access
A new cross-publisher initiative has been launched with a call for publishers to make their abstracts open and to deposit them with Crossref in order to boost the discoverability of research. The Initiative for Open Abstracts already has the support of forty publishers, including Cambridge University Press, SAGE, and F1000.
OAPEN has launched a new free-to-access open access books toolkit for researchers and academic book authors, aiming to help authors better understand OA for books, increase trust in OA book publishing, provide reliable and easy-to-find answers to questions from authors, and to provide guidance on the process of publishing an OA book. Created in collaboration with Springer Nature and the University of Glasgow, the toolkit was written by a group of stakeholders drawn from the global academic community and from scholarly communications organisations.
The Copyright Clearance Center has launched Open Access Workflow Services, a new consulting practice offering strategic open access and transformative agreement workflow support to publishers and other key stakeholders in the scholarly communications ecosystem.
Frontiers has partnered with the Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences on an open access agreement offering fee-free publication in any Frontiers journal for eligible authors, with costs being handled centrally via a discounted payment system.
Knowledge Unlatched, which recently appointed Dr Olaf Ernst as Chief Solutions Officer (CSO), has partnered with IWA Publishing, the International Water Association’s publishing subsidiary, to convert its entire portfolio of ten subscription journals to open access from 2021, on a subscribe-to-open basis.
IntechOpen has reached a new milestone with the publication of its 5000th open access book, Preparation of Space Experiments.
Partnerships
Portland Press, the publishing subsidiary of the Biochemical Society, has partnered with Charlesworth Author Services to provide its global biosciences author community with English language editing and publication support services via English and Chinese local-language web portals.
EMS Press, the European Mathematical Society’s publishing division, has signed a three-year deal with Jisc providing institutions with discounted access to a flexible package of five journals on a subscribe-to-open basis.
Spotlight on Research has partnered with Science Open in a move which will see its journals featured in a new collection on the Science Open platform.
News in brief
Emerald, F1000 Research, and Wellcome Open Research have all announced new trans-inclusive policies giving authors the freedom to change their name on published articles.
Springer Nature has launched a new range of purchasing options for its ebooks, including Single Title (buying a minimum of twenty titles from a range of disciplines and years), Access & Select (an evidence-based selection combined with ebook access and additional services), and a set of five reference modules.
University of Buckingham Press has announced the launch of the Journal of Medical Education Research (JMER) in partnership with the University of Buckingham Medical School, with the first Issue scheduled for mid-2021.
Altmetric has celebrated a decade of innovation and growth in altmetrics with the publication of a new report: the state of altmetrics.
IOP Publishing, which recently appointed Julian Wilson as its new sales and marketing director, has launched what it describes as ‘the world’s first peer review certification programme dedicated to the physical sciences’. Peer review excellence: IOP training and certification is free and combines online learning with the opportunity to review a manuscript in real time, tutored by experienced editors and reviewers.
EBSCO’s Serials Price Projection Report for 2021 has predicted a rise of 2-3% for individual journals and 1-3% for e-journal packages.
Alastair Horne is a PhD student at the British Library and Bath Spa University.