Weekly digest: what’s happening in open science?

Amy Williams

Featuring the Elsevier ‘geoblocking’ controversy, the preference of authors for open peer review, and the debated ‘death’ of transferable peer review.

Elsevier weigh in on the transition to open access via Elsevier

Elsevier have ignited further controversy this week after releasing a position statement on how to transition towards open access by default. Most notable was the intimation that ‘geoblocking’ might be introduced to allow open access only to certain countries.

Authors prefer open peer review via Science

Recent data presented at the 2017 International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication from a study conducted by the Nature Publishing Group suggest that authors, when given the option, will opt for open peer review seven times out of eight.

The impact of open access policies  via PeerJ

A study by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation on the impact an open access policy might have had on the research they have funded since 2001.

What does transparency in peer review mean to you? via BioMedCentral blogs

Following a panel debate on open peer review at the 2017 International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication, Elizabeth Moylan, a senior editor of Research Integrity at BMC, gives her perspective on the discussion.

The arXiv of the future will not look like the arXiv  via Authorea

The arXiv platform has become the face of preprints since its inception in 1991, spreading preprints beyond their origins in physics to all scientific disciplines. This article looks at how arXiv has changed since its foundation and how it is likely to develop in the future.

Are we seeing the demise of transferable peer review?  via The Scholarly Kitchen

Despite the somewhat depressing title, this article presents an interesting account of the evolution of transferable peer review. Although some platforms have fallen on tough times, Peerage of Science have protested that the model is still very much alive.