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

Amy Williams

Featuring a study on the state of open access, Elsevier’s shift in strategy with the acquisition of Bepress and a survey of open access resources

The state of open access via PeerJ Preprints

This newly posted preprint looks at the prevalence and impact of open access publishing. The study concludes with a recommendation for further research using the oaDOI service to provide evidence for the development of open access policy and practice.

Our slow progression towards open science via Times Higher Education

This piece looks at the progress that has been made towards open access to research outputs in the USA and the UK and notes that, although advances are being made, the process is painfully slow.

A summary of open access resources via Open Pharma

This post evaluates the resources available for those keen to learn more about open access, and suggests that a new approach may be needed in order to maximize engagement.

Does Elsevier’s acquisition of Bepress reflect a new direction for big-name publishers? via The Scholarly Kitchen

This week Elsevier announced its acquisition of Bepress, a leading provider of institutional repository services, raising discussion of whether this approach will be adopted by other big-name publishers.

What we want from our scholarly literature via björn.brembs.blog

This piece succinctly outlines seven key ‘functionalities’ that should be expected of scholarly literature.

How the Internet sparked the end of paywalls via Forbes

This article looks at the rise of Sci-Hub, a ‘pirate’ archive, which is thought to hold 69% of published academic research, and concludes that, in an internet age, those who try to paywall information will get left behind.