Weekly digest: G20 open access, Cape Town Statement, and Subscribe to Open

Mark Elms

This week, we read about Indian delegates pitching for open access to research across the G20, about the release of the Cape Town Statement on fostering research integrity, and about a new open access model at Karger Publishers. We hear about the Internet Archive’s loss in court over controlled digital lending, and we also read about the pros and cons of data sharing. Finally, we watch a webinar on copyright in medical communications, and we highlight two upcoming webinars on national open access platforms and on the use of ORCID at scholarly service providers.

To read:

India pitches for open access to research across the G20 via Business Standard | 3-minute read

The first G20 Chief Science Advisers’ Roundtable took place between 28 and 30 March 2023 in Ramnagar, India as part of the upcoming 2023 G20 summit. At this roundtable, Indian delegates pitched for connecting the national archives of all G20 members in order to make published scientific research freely accessible within G20 countries. Given that about 85% of all scientific publications in the world are created within G20 nations, this would make a huge chunk of scientific research accessible to readers in these countries. The second G20 Chief Science Advisers’ Roundtable will take place between 27 and 29 August 2023 in Bengaluru, India.

Release of the Cape Town Statement on fostering research integrity via Nature | 15-minute read

Fraud and misconduct in research are some of the biggest contemporary obstacles to the advancement of scientific knowledge. Since 2007, the World Conferences on Research Integrity have met to debate and evaluate research integrity, and to determine what can be done to root out fraud and misconduct. At the 7th conference in Cape Town, South Africa, attendees discussed how certain research practices disadvantage researchers from lower- and middle-income countries and how these disadvantages can lead to misconduct. Based on discussions at this meeting and elsewhere, the Cape Town Statement on Fostering Research Integrity through Fairness and Equity has now been released. This news article by Nature digests the main findings and conclusions of the statement.

Karger Publishers pilots Subscribe to Open model via STM Publishing News | 2-minute read

Karger Publishers is expanding its ‘Subscribe to Open’ (S2O) pilot to make two of its journals open access for 2023. After a successful first phase of the S2O model, the 2023 volumes of the journals Pediatric Neurosurgery and Developmental Neuroscience will now be open access, with no article processing charges for submitting authors. Future volumes of these journals may remain fully open access or return to hybrid models, depending on whether enough institutions subscribe to the journals in future years.

Courts rule against the Internet Archive on “controlled digital lending” via The Scholarly Kitchen | 12-minute read

Last week, the Internet Archive lost its case on “controlled digital lending” (CDL), after several publishers sued the library. The Internet Archive had been using CDL initiatives – which allow libraries to digitize print books and then loan out these digital versions as long as they sequester a print copy – on a global scale. However, publishers on the whole did not accept that this was legal use of the copyrighted works and filed suit. This article summarizes the thoughts of The Scholarly Kitchen’s authors on the case and whether the outcome is the correct ruling. The Internet Archive has since said that it will appeal the court’s decision.

The pros and cons of data sharing: evidence from Chinese economics journals via Scientometrics | 25-minute read

Data sharing is a critical aspect of open science, but could open data policies have undesirable consequences? This article, published in Scientometrics and written by Liwei Zhang (Shandong University) and Liang Ma (Renmin University of China), argues that data sharing is a “double-edged sword, which can quickly increase citation performance but simultaneously accelerate the aging of articles”.

To watch:

The evolving obstacle course of copyright in medical communications via The Publication Plan | 1-hour watch

Join Peter Llewellyn from NetworkPharma as he discusses the principles and changing landscape of copyright in the world of medical communications. For this webinar, Peter is joined by Chloe Duchesne, Brian Goode and Aaron Reid from the Copyright Clearance Center.

To engage with:

The birth and growth of national open access platforms via Eventbrite

Publish OA, an open access project co-led by the Royal Irish Academy and Trinity College Dublin, was created to achieve the Irish Government’s target of 100% open access to publicly funded scholarly publications by 2030. The project’s main mission is to determine the feasibility of creating a national open access platform for journals and books in Ireland. To discuss national open access platforms, Publish OA is hosting a free webinar on 25 April 2023. You can reserve a spot at the webinar here!

Enabling Value: a new webinar series from ORCID via Zoom

The first session of a new webinar series from ORCID called Enabling Value will take place on 11 April 2023. This free webinar series will focus on how scholarly service providers are using ORCID to help achieve their aims and enhance their impact. The first webinar will feature the Lens, an organization that provides linked research data, metadata and patent information from around the world to help inform scholars and researchers. This first webinar will focus particularly on a new tool called Lens Profiles, which helps researchers to enhance and maintain their ORCID profiles with data (such as patents and metadata) from various sources.

Have you watched our talk shows on the future of pharma research communications? Catch up on Part 1 and Part 2 of the talk shows on our YouTube channel!