Weekly digest: Annual Meeting of ISMPP, Annual Meeting of SSP, and tackling misinformation

Mark Elms

This week, we learn about the highlights and key moments from the 19th Annual Meeting of ISMPP, as well as what to expect at the upcoming Annual Meeting of SSP in Portland, OR, USA. We read about giant surveys of researchers aimed at helping tackle misinformation, about OUP open access agreements in Japan, and about the ASIR project. We also look at a community feedback initiative on Registered Reports and a new open access model at PeerJ. Finally, we read a literature review detailing the importance of teaching best practices in open, transparent and reproducible scholarship during researcher training.

To read:

A review of the 19th Annual Meeting of ISMPP via The MAP Newsletter | 8-minute read

The 19th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP) achieved record-high attendance of 720 attendees over the course of the 3-day event in Washington, DC. Focused on the theme of Patients First, the meeting explored the many advantages of engaging and involving patients in healthcare research and publishing. This article provides highlights, videos and photos from the annual meeting, as well as giving access to presented material within the 19th Annual Meeting Archive for ISMPP members.

Looking ahead to the 2023 Annual Meeting of SSP via The Scholarly Kitchen | 10-minute read

The 45th Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) Annual Meeting is just around the corner, with the conference taking place between 31 May and 2 June in Portland, OR, USA. To get everyone geared up for the event, Stephanie Lovegrove Hansen (Vice President of Marketing at Silverchair) met with this year’s Co-chairs to discuss the event and find out what there is to look forward to. The Co-chairs of this year’s meeting include Emily Farrell (Global Commercial Director of Open Research at Taylor & Francis), Lori Carlin (Chief Commercial Officer at Delta Think) and Tim Lloyd (Founder and CEO of LibLynx). The article also includes a video of the interview.

Surveys of researchers to help tackle misinformation via Nature | 14-minute read

Misinformation about COVID-19, global warming and other scientific topics is rife and, as witnessed during the pandemic, this can have a huge impact on public health. Tackling misinformation is therefore a crucial mission in contemporary science. As part of this mission, Peter Vickers (Professor of Philosophy at Durham University) will be sending an email to about 20 000 researchers asking them if COVID-19 is caused by a virus. This survey will be a test for a project that aims to create tools for evaluating scientific agreement on public health, climate change and other important topics. This article discusses how surveys like this one could help tackle misinformation.

OUP open access agreements in Japan via OUP Blog | 6-minute read

Oxford University Press (OUP) has signed its first national open access agreement in Asia, and its 30th worldwide, with the Japan Alliance of University Library Consortia for E-Resources (JUSTICE). This 3-year read-and-publish agreement allows members of the JUSTICE consortium to publish their research in OUP’s open access journals with discounted article processing charges (APCs). It also provides JUSTICE members with full and free reading access to OUP’s journal portfolio. This article provides some thoughts about the agreement from Tomonari Kinto (Secretariat of the JUSTICE consortium at the University of Tokyo Library) and Wataru Sakamoto (Editor-in-Chief of Plant & Cell Physiology).

Participants in the Association of Research Libraries’ ASIR project via Association of Research Libraries | 2-minute read

Following the release of the Accelerating social impact research: libraries at the intersection of openness and community-engaged scholarship report in 2022 by the Accelerating the Social Impact of Research (ASIR) project, the Association of Research Libraries has published brief profiles of the eight libraries participating in the ASIR project. These profiles aim to complement the release of the 2022 report by highlighting specific projects conducted by each of the eight libraries as part of the wider ASIR project and how these institutions are helping advance open scholarship and community engagement.

Call for feedback on Registered Reports via The Royal Society | 2-minute read

The journal Royal Society Open Science has been publishing Registered Reports since 2016 with the aim of improving the reproducibility and transparency of published research. A community feedback initiative set up by Cardiff University is now looking at how well academic journals implement various aspects of the Registered Report publication process. The initiative includes the Registered Reports Community Feedback website that collects anonymous feedback from authors and reviewers of Registered Reports. You can complete the 5–10 minute survey on Registered Reports here. The website also includes dashboards that allow people to see the quality and speed of Registered Report publishing across a range of journals.

PeerJ announces first institutional partner to join its new open access model via STM Publishing News | 3-minute read

PeerJ is a peer-reviewed, open access, scientific journal that, according to its Founder and CEO Jason Hoyt, has aimed to “leave the APC behind” since its launch in 2012. To help fulfil this aim, PeerJ has announced a new open access model called Annual Institutional Memberships (AIMs). This model will remove APCs for submitting authors and reduce open access administration fees. Instead, member institutions will pay a flat fee that will allow faculty of those institutions to publish and read research in PeerJ for free. Joining PeerJ as the first institutional member of the AIM model is the University of Bath.

Insights into teaching and learning best practice in open scholarship via Royal Society Open Science | 60-minute read

Contemporary scientific advancement is often hampered by a lack of credibility, robustness and reproducibility of research. To tackle these problems, the scientific community has promoted open and transparent research practices. This article published in Royal Society Open Science, however, argues that, while progress has been made to improve openness and transparency in research, there needs to be greater emphasis on robustly and rigorously teaching open and transparent research practices during undergraduate and postgraduate research training.

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