This week, we highlight OpenFest 2023, a celebration of open science taking place at the beginning of September. We read about ten rules to help organizations support data sharing, about scrutinizing simulation models for policymaking, and about the fair sharing of data to combat the next pandemic. We also read about the impact of transformative agreements between T&F and Jisc, and about the coverage of diamond open access journals in bibliographic databases. Finally, we hear about the shortlisted finalists for the ALPSP Awards, and we hear from some of the winners of the SSP 2023 Fellowships about their highlights from the SSP 2023 conference.
To engage with:
OpenFest 2023 via University of Sheffield
At the beginning of September, the University of Sheffield will be hosting OpenFest 2023, a multi-day, hybrid event exploring and celebrating open science. Taking place between 4 and 8 September, the festival will feature an in-person workshop on using GitHub, a showcase of open research practices at universities in Sheffield, an online symposium discussing new perspectives on open research, and an in-person workshop on redefining open research values. All the OpenFest 2023 events are free but do require registration to attend, which you can do via the links above!
To read:
Ten rules to support research data sharing via PLOS Computational Biology | 22-minute read
The free and open sharing of data is increasingly being recognized as critical for the advancement of science. But the data sharing capabilities of individual researchers often hinge on the data sharing procedures and policies of the institutions they belong to. For instance, if a researcher’s institution doesn’t provide adequate support encouraging the sharing of data, then this practice may be neglected. This paper, published in PLOS Computational Biology, describes ten rules to help organizations encourage the sharing of data by their researchers.
Questions about using simulation models in healthcare policymaking and beyond via European Commission | 4-minute read
The most important aspect of good policymaking is that it must be guided by evidence. This is especially true for policymaking related to healthcare and other areas of scientific concern, such as climate change. To support healthcare policymaking, simulation models are increasingly being used to predict the impact of policy decisions on healthcare systems and beyond. Therefore, these models – and the information being used to create them – must be open to scrutiny by policymakers, scientists and the general public. This guidance from the European Commission provides information about the use of simulation models in policymaking and a list of questions that policymakers, researchers and the public should be asking to ensure that these models are fit for purpose.
Sharing data to prevent the next pandemic via Nature | 6-minute read
The COVID-19 pandemic perfectly illustrated the advantages of open science and data sharing in how these practices helped expedite public health responses to the virus. Naturally, people are looking ahead to the next potential pandemic and asking what could be done better next time. Part of these discussions is the pandemic treaty, an agreement among countries about how best to respond to another global pandemic. A key point in this agreement is about how to fairly compensate countries that share data, because countries that shared COVID-19 genome sequences at the beginning of the pandemic were often the slowest to receive the resultant vaccine, if they got it at all. This news article in Nature discusses this issue and its potential solutions.
The effects of transformative agreements on open access in the humanities and social sciences via EurekAlert! | 4-minute read
Publisher Taylor & Francis (T&F) have released a new report about the effect of transformative agreements on open access. Titled Accelerating open access in the UK, the report looks at the first 2 years of an open access partnership between T&F and the Jisc consortium, particularly highlighting the effects that the deal has had on submitting authors in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) field. The report found that, over the course of 2021–2022, HSS authors from Jisc-affiliated institutions published six times more open access articles in T&F journals than in 2019–2020. Similar increases in the amount of open access publications were observed in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. You can read the full report and its other findings here.
Coverage of diamond open access journals in bibliographic databases via ResearchGate | 8-minute read
Diamond open access journals are often not indexed in major bibliographic databases like Web of Science and Scopus. This lack of coverage makes it challenging to measure the use of these types of journals. This paper, presented at the 51st Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science, looks at the coverage of diamond open access journals from the Directory of Open Access Journals in three bibliographic databases, namely Web of Science, Scopus and OpenAlex. The authors argue that understanding the diamond open access landscape may help library and information science professionals advise researchers on finding suitable diamond open access journals to publish in and read.
Shortlist announced for the ALPSP Impact and Innovation Awards 2023 via ALPSP | 4-minute read
As the 2023 Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) Conference and Awards hones into view, this year’s Impact and Innovation Awards shortlist has been announced. Shortlisted for this year’s Impact Award are Africa Commons, eLife, IOP Publishing, and Original Études for the Developing Conductor. For the Innovation Award, BMJ Impact Analytics, Cassyni Journal Seminar Series, Medwave and Kriyadocs, and Schol-AR are shortlisted. The awards will be presented at the ALPSP Conference, which will take place between 13 and 15 September 2023 in Manchester, UK.
Highlights of the Annual Meeting of SSP 2023 via The Scholarly Kitchen | 15-minute read
The 45th Annual Meeting of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) took place in Portland, OR, between 31 May and 2 June. Now, in what has become an annual tradition, the Scholarly Kitchen interviews some of the 2023 winners of the SSP Fellowships about their impressions and key takeaways of this year’s meeting.
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