OPEN SCIENCE
Crossref have released their 2019 annual report. It is an expanded version with many additional facts. The number of registered items continues to grow at around 9-10% a year. Preprints were the fastest-growing category with a 165% growth. See also the image below.
An open platform for the rapid review of outbreak-related preprints. PREreview has partnered with Outbreak Science to conduct peer review of preprints relevant to disease outbreaks. The aim is a system to quickly disseminate reliable information during outbreaks.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative have opened their second funding cycle for Essential Open Source Software for Science.
PUBLISHING
Rumors are circulating about a presidential executive order mandating green open access at publication. In response, more than 125 US academic associations and societies have sent a letter to the White House petitioning against an embargo period shorter than 12 months, arguing that “Going below the current 12 month ‘embargo’ would make it very difficult for most American publishers to invest in publishing these articles.” The letter has been criticized for some of its statements: “This would effectively nationalize the valuable American intellectual property that we produce and force us to give it away to the rest of the world for free.” The STM Association as well as another group of societies have also sent letters arguing against the rumored plans.
Responding to these, SPARC have released a statement, arguing that “Without a zero-embargo policy, the U.S. stands to fall substantially behind many other nations that have already introduced strong open access policies.” The Open Research Funders Group has also reaffirmed is support for open science. Those responding on Twitter against the American publishers’ statement have been using the hashtag #OAintheUSA.
A dialogue has taken place between Springer Nature and cOAlition S as part of the consultations around Plan S. The publisher is proposing an alternative timeframe and metrics, as outlined in their proposal. The response by cOAlition S focused on the open access transition of Nature Communications as a single, successful counter-example.
Scholarly Review, Old and New. Mark Hooper takes a broad view on the origins of peer review, back to Cicero and Atticus’ business relationship. Published by the Journal of Scholarly Publishing.
EVENTS
Reproducibility, Replicability and Trust in Science, a workshop “to position the challenge of reproducibility and replicability as a behaviour-change problem that when addressed can lead to culture change within research.” Held on 9 – 11 September, 2020, at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Hinxton, UK.
OTHER
Tracy Teal named new Dryad Executive Director. Congratulations!
The White House intends to nominate Sethuraman Panchanathan to be the Director of the US National Science Foundation. He is Executive Vice President, ASU Knowledge Enterprise Development and Chief Research and Innovation Officer at Arizona State University (ASU).
Growth of content registered at Crossref.
Credit (CC-BY): Crossref Annual Report & Fact File 2018-19, retrieved 22 December 2019. https://doi.org/10.13003/y8ygwm5