Weekly digest: the latest news on topics important to Open Pharma

Amy Williams

Including next steps for Open Pharma, the launch of the MyScienceOpen platform, an update on Horizon 2020 and a spotlight on predatory publishing

Open Pharma workstream overviews via the Open Pharma blog

This post reports the insights and next steps arising from discussions at the four Open Pharma kick-off meetings in May. These discussions focused on: open access; ORCID, CRediT and Convey; preprints and post-publication peer review; and layered publication platforms.

MyScienceOpen launched via STM Publishing News

MyScienceOpen is a networking platform that is integrated with ORCID to provide a comprehensive picture of the impact of researchers’ work using a variety of metrics. It also enables the addition of non-specialist summaries to research publications in order to promote accessibility.

An update on the Horizon 2020 project via the European Commission

This is a summary of the interim evaluation of Horizon 2020, which was published by the European Commission this week. The project is meeting its targets and has significantly promoted economic growth, although some parts of the project are at present underfunded.

Is technology holding back open access? via The Scholarly Kitchen

Open access has been made possible by technological advances, but could these developments be a double-edged sword? This blog explores the barriers to open access that result from the growth of social media and, by extension, the undermining of experts as the primary participants in scientific discourse.

Predatory journals are back in the firing line via the Open Pharma blog

This post considers what constitutes a predatory journal, and outlines the important work that PubsHub and Jeffrey Beall are doing to combat predatory publishing.

Cancer Research UK now accept preprints in grant applications via Cancer Research UK

The UK’s largest charity has updated its funding application guidelines to reflect their support for preprints.

Can crowd-based peer review work? via Nature News & Comment

This article reports on an experiment by Benjamin List, a director at the Max Planck Institute. List aimed to find a model to facilitate anonymous, fast, crowd-based review of scholarly research articles.