OPEN SCIENCE
FDA and NIH let clinical trial sponsors keep results secret and break the law. Charles Piller reports in Science that many institutions fail to report the results of clinical trials. Less than 45% of clinical trials reported the results early or on time, and 31.6% of trials failed to report them at all. Whereas industry has been largely compliant, the report identifies issues with academic or federal sponsoring institutions. A scientific study by DeVito, Bacon, and Goldacre published in The Lancet this week reports similar continuing non-compliance.
Amazon AWS has launched a registry for Open Data. Existing datasets include items from the Allen Institute, NOAA and others. In 2008, a service by Google to store huge research datasets was shuttered before its official launch.
PUBLISHING
A framework to improve the transparency of open access pricing. A report commissioned on behalf of cOAlition S has taken a first step towards a common framework for the reporting of open access prices. In a next step this framework will be piloted by a number of publishers, including Annual Reviews, Brill, The Company of Biologists, EMBO Press, European Respiratory Society, Hindawi, PLOS, and SpringerNature.
How society publishers can accelerate their transition to open access and align with Plan S. Alicia Wise and Lorraine Estelle survey publishers and societies and identified 27 different business models and strategies — only 3 of these relying on article publication charges. Published in Learned Publishing. See the figure below on the journal transition status of STEM and HSS society publishers.
RESEARCH
Can the Open Science Revolution Revolutionise Gambling Research? Robert Heirene and Sally Gainsbury provide a viewpoint for psychological research.
PLOS
Registered Reports are Coming to PLOS ONE. We’re excited to launch these at scale, across all subject areas of the journal. PLOS ONE will publish the initial study protocol as a citable new article type, and also offerer authors the option to publish the reviewer reports for both publication stages.
PLOS Joins Other Publishers and Societies in Support of the Proposed White House Policy Regarding Federally Funded Research. The letter is co-signed by the Association for Research in Personality Executive Board, California Digital Library, eLife, F1000, Frontiers, SIPS Executive Committee, Ubiquity Press, and PeerJ. A number of individual researchers have also blogged in support. This follows a letter by learned societies and publishers arguing against mandates of open access (see issue 48).
EVENTS
The importance and challenges of sharing research software, in London, UK, on 5 February, 2020. Organised jointly by Open Research London and the RSLondon regional research software community for London.
UKeiG CPD Workshop: Open access, open monographs, open data, open peer review. Workshop at CILIP on 6 March, 2020, in London, UK.
OTHER
Annette Thomas is appointed the chief executive of the Guardian Media Group. Amongst other positions she previously was the Chief Science Officer of Springer Nature and Chief Executive of the Web of Science Group. Congratulations!
Journal transition status of society publishers in STEM and HSS (n = 103).
Credit (CC-BY): Wise, A., Estelle, L. How society publishers can accelerate their transition to open access and align with Plan S. Learned Publishing (33), 14–27 (2020). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1272.