Technical professional organisation IEEE, US, is seeking to increase the impact that scientific research can have on technology innovation with its first online, open-access (OA) 'mega journal' - a journal that covers a range of disciplines instead of a single-topic focus.
IEEE Access provides free online access to applications-oriented articles, meaning they explain how research can be applied in technology today. The journal is designed to appeal as much to industry as it does to academia while using a faster peer-reviewed process that maintains high article quality.
IEEE Access follows a binary peer-review process, which means submitted articles undergo the same rigorous editorial review, but the process ends with the article being accepted or rejected as opposed to undergoing multiple rounds of revisions. This results in faster publication while protecting the integrity and quality of the scholarly research.
IEEE Access is part of a growing portfolio of open-access publishing options offered by IEEE. IEEE's 425,000 members are increasingly asking for more OA options, as are organisations funding research such as the US government and Research Councils UK (RCUK). Under the model, authors pay $1,750 for each accepted IEEE Access article, and the public can then access the published article for free.
Besides IEEE Access, IEEE also offers four fully open-access, single-topic journals. Additionally, more than 100 of IEEE's existing subscription-based journals now offer an open-access option, allowing authors to choose to either publish in the traditional manner - with access provided only to paid subscribers - or pay a processing fee to publish open access and make the articles openly available to all online. For authors, these journals retain the benefit of publishing with established Impact Factors, a measure of average citations per article in a journal.
According to a 2011 report from ISI Journal Citation Reports, 17 of the top 20 most-cited journals in electrical and electronic engineering are already published by IEEE. More than 80 percent of downloads from IEEE's Xplore Digital Library database of articles come from outside the United States. The organisation expects the addition of a broad, open-access mega journal to lead to even more global sharing of information that can help bring new products and innovations to market faster.
A bill that would require California-funded research to be deposited in open access repositories recently passed the state's Assembly Accountability and Administrative Review Committee. The bill was the brainchild of California Council on Science&Tech Fellow Annabelle Kleist. Assemblyman Brian Nestande (R-Palm Desert) introduced the bill.
According to a report published in the LibraryJournal, it not clear as to how much research California does fund as agencies are not required to report their funding to the legislature. Most recent figure Nestande's office could find was $327 million in direct research funding in 2006, based on an National Science Foundation report.
As originally drafted, the bill called for a six month embargo and a new repository managed by the California State Library. However, in that form, in addition to opposition from the American Association of Publishers, NetChoice, TechAmerica, and CalChamber, it attracted critique from an unusual source - the University of California (UC) system, whose libraries spend nearly $40 million each year on access to academic journals.
In a letter to the committee, Robert L. Powell, Chair of U.C.'s Academic Council, wrote that while supporting open access in principle, the Senate has concerns that the bill's current permissible embargo period of six months may be too short, and does not conform to national open access policies. Adrian Diaz, UC, Legislative Director, asked the committee to explicitly state that UC is not a state agency, and is therefore not required to develop an open access policy of its own.
Nestande made the requested amendments, and UC now endorses the bill. She also introduced amendments to replace the new repository requirement with "allowing agencies to determine which existing repositories" they'll accept.
Academic publisher Maney Publishing, UK, is running the second in a series of 'Free Access 14' campaigns from May 13-26, 2013. For fourteen days Maney is making all 26 journals within its Health Sciences Collection freely available. Interested parties may gain access to content, which includes special issues and archived content as well as the latest research, by completing the sign-up form available at www.maneypublishing.com/fa14.
The MORE Health Sciences Collection provides instant online access to highly-regarded, evidence-based, clinically-orientated research papers that are of interest to healthcare professionals around the world. The articles integrate academic and clinical perspectives of case studies, reports and reviews providing a complete information resource.
The wide range of fields covered include audiology; physical and developmental disabilities; health and social care management; infectious diseases; haematology; medical communication; neurology; occupational and environmental health; orthodontics; physical therapy; palliative care; pathology; and rehabilitation.
All articles will be freely available from flagship journals such as Neurological Research, Journal of Manual&Manipulative Therapy, Journal of Orthodontics and Pathogens and Global Health, alongside new titles such as The Linacre Quarterly, Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless and Speech, Language and Hearing.
Anyone can register for free access to the collection, whether they are a practitioner, researcher, clinician, librarian or student.
SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, recently adopted an open access publishing program that supports the needs of authors seeking open access publication. This includes authors affected by new rules adopted in the UK by the Research Councils UK (RCUK).
The RCUK recently expanded the scope of its open-access policy, and other public funding agencies and some employers around the world have implemented or are considering similar directions.
SPIE asks payment of $100 per published journal page for two-column journals or $60 per published page for single-column journals. The new program is also responding to growing author interest in open access publication to expand the reach of their research.
Authors may continue to publish their articles in SPIE journals if they opt not to pay page charges. If accepted, these articles are published with access control and standard SPIE copyright. However, all SPIE authors are permitted to deposit their articles in institutional repositories to meet 'green' open access requirements.
In addition to the new program, review articles, tutorials, and most letters published in all SPIE journals have been made open access by SPIE without cost to either authors or readers. For its Journal of Biomedical Optics, SPIE deposits articles funded by the US National Institutes of Health with PubMed Central on the authors' behalf.
Research Councils UK (RCUK)'s revised policy on open access (OA) for publicly-funded research to be disseminated through OA routes is coming into force this month. A new metadata application profile called RIOXX has been developed by JISC and UKOLN to ensure that university institutional repositories can start to comply with this policy.
It has been observed that, currently, key information about research outputs is not systematically recorded and funders and universities face a challenge in tracking research across systems. The first release of RIOXX and the associated guidance focuses on applying consistency to the metadata fields used to record research funder and project/grant identifiers. This will allow research outputs to be consistently tracked between systems, thus saving time and effort for activities such as research reporting, compliance checking and gathering business intelligence.
RIOXX also takes into account the need for interoperability between repositories, current research information systems (CRISs) and the Outcome Collection Systems (ROS), and Researchfish operated by research funders. It has also taken into consideration other metadata schemas such as ETHoS and OpenAIRE. Future releases of the profile and guidelines will also include the agreed language to track OA publications, and support compliance monitoring with the Research Councils' policy on OA.
According to Dr Mari Williams, chair of the RCUK Research Outcomes Project, the RIOXX guidelines offer clear and practical guidance to organisations wanting to attribute research outcome information to specific funders and research grants in their repositories.
