Dryad news | Invitation to comment: Dryad’s revised membership model for academic and research institutions

“In partnership with our community members, over the next six months Dryad will be piloting a more equitable and sustainable institutional membership model that also allows us to support growing demand and safeguard community ownership of Dryad. We are also standardizing our publisher membership model to align with our values of trustworthiness and inclusion.

We believe these thoughtfully designed models bring mutual benefit for Dryad and our partners, but we expect them to continue to evolve as we co-create a values-aligned, resilient future for Dryad with our community members.

As a community-led, mission-driven organization, Dryad values transparency and very much welcomes stakeholder input on this initiative. 

We therefore invite community comments and questions on our new membership model for academic institutions….”

OPERAS welcomes Spain

Welcome Spain

Please scroll down for the Spanish version: Desplácese hacia abajo para ver la versión en español

OPERAS is pleased to welcome two new members from Spain: the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) as new core member and the Spanish National Research Council State Agency (CSIC) as ordinary member. This is a very important step for OPERAS to extend the community to Spain. Together with Spain, OPERAS is now active in 22 countries.

The participation of Spain comes at a very interesting moment to align actions in favour of Open Science:

Pilar Rico-Castro (Head of the Unit for Open Access, Repositories and Academic Journals at FECYT):

FECYT is joining OPERAS as the national node for Spain. This will reinforce our role as public service providers for the diamond academic publishing system and open the door for all our research-performing organisations’ national community to join OPERAS as ordinary members. FECYT is a public entity depending on the Ministry for Science and Innovation that contributes to the design and implementation of the Open Science policies. We provide technical support, funding and certification services to our National academic publishing community, both journals and books, and to our institutional repositories. These include the ARCE service for the professionalisation of Spanish scientific journals, the biennial open call for scientific journals assessment, the annual call for collections of monographs assessment, the OJS-based open edition platform RECYT and our role in DIAMAS, which aims to create a European standard of good publishing practices. Becoming members of OPERAS will deeply benefit the implementation of the National Open Science Strategy based on sustainable, non-commercial and public-based digital infrastructures and will contribute to support the development of an ecosystem of science based on accessible, interoperable, and open scientific information. Besides, it will reinforce our public services’ internationalisation strategy set through our role in the EOSC Steering Board, the EOSC Association, OpenAIRE, LA Referencia and COAR.

Elea Giménez Toledo (Tenured Scientist at the Institute of Philosophy at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Chair of the OPERAS Scientific Advisory Committee:

Joining OPERAS means for Spain a great opportunity to connect the scientific community of the Humanities and Social Sciences with the main lines of work in scholarly communication, scholarly publishing, open science, knowledge transfer, research evaluation or terminology. It will allow us to strengthen the internal debate on all issues affecting scholarly communication in the Humanities and Social Sciences and to put our projects and realities in contact with European ones.

Pierre Mounier (OPERAS Co-Coordinator):

Having FECYT and CSIC as new OPERAS members is of primary importance for us and the coronation of a long-term effort from multiple sides. The representation and the inclusion of Spain in the OPERAS community is particularly crucial for us: Spain is an essential part of European culture and knowledge production and has a strong tradition of high-quality scholarly publication in humanities and social sciences. The linguistic dimension of this cooperation is also essential as Spanish has a global scope that extends well beyond the limits of Europe. I want to sincerely thank Elea Gimenez Toledo and Pilar Rico Castro for their constant support all along the process and want to share with our Spanish colleagues from all parts of the country our enthusiasm and impatience to start collaborating with them to widen open access to knowledge in the humanities and social sciences.

OPERAS is glad to do this important step and welcome the Spanish community. Find more details about the new members below:

Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT)

The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, F.S.P. (FECYT), is a public foundation under the Ministry of Science and Innovation. Its mission is to catalyse the relationship between science and society, promoting the growth of Spanish scientific culture and fostering knowledge transfer through outreach, education, training, information, and advice. It collaborates with other agents and stakeholders in the Science, Technology, and Innovation System to internationalise Spanish science, generate and analyse data, and provide support in scientific information management and open science promotion.

Its vision is a society that actively engages with and benefits from a science-informed perspective within an open and inclusive Science, Technology, and Innovation System. This framework enables progress in critical thinking and personal and civic development.

Its values are: Collaboration, FECYT believes in creating value through strategic institutional partnerships, promoting cooperation, participation, and interdisciplinary teamwork; Innovation, FECYT works openly to identify and incorporate emerging trends, adapting to changes in our environment, and fostering a culture of innovation; Social commitment, FECYT is ethically committed to citizens, demonstrated through transparent management, citizen participation, gender equality, citizen education, promotion of scientific culture, and open and accessible science for all;  People-oriented, FECYT team is its most valuable asset, responsible for its achievements and outcomes; Excellence, through d continuous improvement for the best use of our resources and for increasing quality, allowing for more satisfactory results and generating new capabilities and skills; and Interdisciplinarity, FECYT form multidisciplinary teams to manage projects, with the ability to address actions from different professional areas.

Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior De Investigaciones Cientifícas (CSIC)

The Spanish National Research Council State Agency (CSIC) is the largest public research organisation in Spain, the fourth-largest public research institution in the European Union and the sixth in the world. Attached to the Ministry of Science and Innovation, with an independent legal personality, the CSIC plays a key role in scientific and technological policy in Spain and around the world. 

Its aim is the promotion, coordination, development and dissemination of multidisciplinary scientific and technological research to contribute to the advancement of knowledge and economic, social and cultural development, as well as the training of personnel and advice to public and private entities in these fields. 

The CSIC carries out research, innovation and training in all fields of knowledge – from the most basic or fundamental aspects of Science to the most complex technological developments – distributed in three global areas: Life, Society and Matter. These areas include human and social sciences, food science and technology, biology, biomedicine, physics, chemistry and materials, natural resources or agricultural sciences, among others.

For this purpose, it has more than 11,000 employees, of which almost 4,000 are research staff, distributed in its 121 research institutes throughout the Spanish territory, except the Spanish School of History and Archaeology in Rome (Italy). Of these, 69 are fully owned by the CSIC. Of the other 52, 50 are co-owned and two are associated centres, all in collaboration with other Spanish universities or research institutions. Additionally, it has three National Reference Centres (INIA, IGME and IEO).

In February 2021, the CSIC received the HR Excellence in Research logo, in recognition of the institution’s commitment to developing a human resources strategy for researchers, to reinforce its alignment with the Charter & Code principles.


Spanish version:

OPERAS da la bienvenida a España

OPERAS se complace en dar la bienvenida a dos nuevos miembros de España: la Fundación Española para la Ciencia y Tecnología F.S.P. (FECYT) como nuevo miembro principal y al Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) como miembro ordinario. Se trata de un paso muy importante para que OPERAS extienda su comunidad a España.Con la adhesión de España, OPERAS está presente ya en 22 países.

La participación de España llega en un momento muy interesante para alinear acciones a favor de la Ciencia Abierta:

  • La reciente publicación en España de la Estrategia Nacional de Ciencia Abierta.           
  • Las recientes reformas legales de la Ley de la Ciencia, la Tecnología y la Innovación en 2022 y de la Ley Orgánica de Universidades en 2023, a favor de la Ciencia Abierta.
  • El papel protagonista de FECYT en el proyecto Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication (DIAMAS), la primera iniciativa financiada por el programa narco Horizon Europe que aborda nuevos modelos de publicación académica .
  • El proyecto especial del Gobierno de España con fondos europeos de recuperación PERTE Nueva economía del lenguaje, cuyos motores están directamente relacionados con los grupos de trabajo y acciones de OPERAS.
  • Las iniciativas a favor de la reforma de la evaluación de la investigación y el debate sobre modelos editoriales más sostenibles.
  • La Presidencia española del Consejo de la Unión Europea en el segundo semestre de 2023.

Pilar Rico-Castro (Jefa de la Unidad de Acceso Abierto, Repositorios y Revistas Académicas de FECYT):

FECYT se incorpora a OPERAS como nodo nacional para España. Esto reforzará nuestro papel como proveedores de servicios públicos para el sistema de publicación académica diamante y abrirá la puerta a que toda la comunidad nacional de instituciones de investigación pueda unirse a OPERAS en calidad de miembros ordinarios. FECYT es una entidad del sector público estatal, dependiente del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, que contribuye al diseño e implementación de las políticas de Ciencia Abierta. Prestamos servicios de apoyo técnico, financiación y certificación a la comunidad de edición académica nacional, tanto de revistas como de libros, y a los repositorios institucionales de acceso abierto. Entre ellos destacan el servicio ARCE para la profesionalización de las revistas científicas españolas, la convocatoria bienal de evaluación de revistas científicas, la convocatoria anual de evaluación de colecciones de monografías, la plataforma de edición abierta RECYT basada en OJS y nuestro papel en DIAMAS, a través del cual colaboramos en crear un estándar europeo de buenas prácticas editoriales. Convertirnos en miembros de OPERAS beneficiará profundamente a la implementación efecyiva de la Estrategia Nacional de Ciencia Abierta, basada en infraestructuras digitales públicas, sostenibles y no comerciales y contribuirá a apoyar el desarrollo de un ecosistema de ciencia basado en información científica accesible, interoperable y abierta. Además, reforzará la estrategia de internacionalización de nuestros servicios públicos establecida a través de nuestro papel en el EOSC Steering Board, la Asociación EOSC, OpenAIRE, LA Referencia y COAR.

Elea Giménez Toledo (Científica Titular del Instituto de Filosofía del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) y Presidenta del Comité Científico  de OPERAS:

La adhesión a OPERAS supone para España una gran oportunidad para conectar a la comunidad científica de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales con las principales líneas de trabajo en comunicación académica, publicación académica, ciencia abierta, transferencia de conocimiento, evaluación de la investigación o terminología. Nos permitirá reforzar el debate interno sobre todas las cuestiones que afectan a la comunicación académica en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales y poner en contacto nuestros proyectos y realidades con los europeos.

Pierre Mounier (Co-Coordinador de OPERAS):

Contar con la FECYT y el CSIC como nuevos miembros de OPERAS es de suma importancia para nosotros y la coronación de un esfuerzo a largo plazo desde múltiples frentes. La representación y la inclusión de España en la comunidad OPERAS es especialmente crucial para nosotros: España es una parte esencial de la cultura europea y de la producción de conocimiento, y tiene una fuerte tradición de publicaciones académicas de alta calidad en humanidades y ciencias sociales. La dimensión lingüística de esta cooperación también es esencial, ya que el español tiene un alcance global que se extiende mucho más allá de los límites de Europa. Quiero agradecer sinceramente a Elea Giménez Toledo y a Pilar Rico Castro su apoyo constante a lo largo de todo el proceso y deseo compartir con nuestros colegas españoles de todas las partes del país nuestro entusiasmo e impaciencia por empezar a colaborar con ellos para ampliar el acceso abierto al conocimiento en humanidades y ciencias sociales.

La Fundación Española para la Ciencia y Tecnología, F.S.P. (FECYT)

La Fundación Española para la Ciencia y Tecnología, F.S.P. (FECYT) es una fundación pública dependiente del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación. Su misión es catalizar la relación entre ciencia y sociedad, promoviendo el crecimiento de la cultura científica española y fomentando la transferencia de conocimiento a través de la divulgación, la educación, la formación, la información y el asesoramiento. Colabora con otros agentes y actores del Sistema de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación para la internacionalización de la ciencia española, la generación y análisis de datos y el apoyo en la gestión de la información científica y la promoción de la ciencia abierta.

Su visión es una sociedad que participa activamente y se beneficia de una perspectiva informada por la ciencia dentro de un Sistema de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación abierto e inclusivo. Este marco permite avanzar en el pensamiento crítico y el desarrollo personal y cívico.

Sus valores son: Colaboración, FECYT cree en la creación de valor a través de alianzas institucionales estratégicas, promoviendo la cooperación, la participación y el trabajo en equipo interdisciplinar; Innovación, FECYT trabaja abiertamente para identificar e incorporar tendencias emergentes, adaptándose a los cambios de nuestro entorno y fomentando una cultura de innovación; Compromiso social, FECYT está éticamente comprometida con los ciudadanos, demostrado a través de una gestión transparente, la participación ciudadana, la igualdad de género, la educación ciudadana, la promoción de la cultura científica, y la ciencia abierta y accesible para todos; Centrada en las personas, el equipo de FECYT es su activo más valioso, responsable de sus logros y resultados; Excelencia, a través de dinámicas de mejora continua que optimicen los recursos e incrementen la calidad, permitiendo obtener resultados más satisfactorios y generar nuevas capacidades y habilidades; e Interdisciplinariedad, FECYT forma equipos multidisciplinares para la gestión de proyectos, con capacidad para abordar actuaciones desde diferentes ámbitos profesionales.

El Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) 

El Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) es la mayor institución pública dedicada a la investigación en España y una de las primeras de Europa. Adscrita al Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, su objetivo es la promoción, coordinación, desarrollo y difusión de la investigación científica y tecnológica multidisciplinar para contribuir al avance del conocimiento y al desarrollo económico, social y cultural; así como la formación de personal y el asesoramiento a entidades públicas y privadas en estos campos. Su actividad científica se desarrolla a través de dos estructuras fundamentales: los institutos de investigación y los centros nacionales. Actualmente, el CSIC cuenta con más de 13.000 trabajadores en 121 institutos de investigación distribuidos por todo el territorio nacional, a excepción de la Escuela Española de Historia y Arqueología de Roma (Italia); de los cuales 69 son de titularidad propia, 50 mixtos y dos asociados. Asimismo, existen tres centros nacionales (INIA, IGME e IEO).


EU Funding

OA monograph costs | Open Research

“The majority of University and scholarly society presses that publish on open access monographs do not charge authors or readers, except for those ordering print copies.The OAPEN-UK HSS Researcher Survey (between Feb-May 2012) examined the source of funding for research underpinning authors’ last HSS monograph and found that only 22% came from research council grants, whereas 62% came from core university funds or self-funding.

The Open Book Publishers membership scheme (OBP) is a new agreement from Jisc Collections that supports the publication of Open Access research monographs. By joining this scheme, member institutions will support the publication of at least twelve new Open Access research monographs every year. For an annual fee of £270 member institutions can also offer all staff, students and alumni with a discount on any print copies of OBP titles. Any print sales to member institutions are offset against membership fees in the following year.

How much do commercial publishers charge for OA monographs?

As with open access journals there is a need for a new business model. The Wellcome Trust extended their open access policy to include monographs in 2013. They estimate: “the fee for existing open access options – ensuring all published material is converted to XML, and then made available in html and PDF – for books currently averages around £9,500, and we anticipate the average cost to make a book chapter open access will be £1,800″.

This book price seems to be halfway between what is charged by traditional publishers offering and OA option, and OA only publishers. Prices seem to vary considerably (note prices from September 2018)…”

ResearchEquals Supporting Memberships

“Supporting memberships are a community based approach to how ResearchEquals evolves. They come with membership dues (€79.99 per year or €9.99 per month) and together we build a network of people with one common denominator: To make all research work visible.

As a supporting member, you get front row in shaping ResearchEquals. Every member has equal voice regardless of whether you are a professor, junior researcher, citizen scientist, or even an institute. One member, one vote.

With a supporting membership you also get certain rights:

The right to request information
The right to petition for action or to desist action
The right to block third party acquisitions…”

CORE Welcomes 10 New Members

Our new members

University of Oxford
University of St Andrews
The University of Huddersfield
University of Lancaster
White Rose Research (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield and University of York)
University of Bristol
Queen’s University Belfast
University of Birmingham
Anglia Ruskin University
University of Chicago

 

Crossref launches Global Equitable Membership programme | Research Information

“To enable organisations from the least financially-advantaged countries to participate in the global community documenting the progress of scholarship, Crossref announces a program of free membership and content registration. 

Crossref, whose vision is a rich and reusable open scholarly record that the global community can build on forever, for the benefit of society, announces that, starting in January, organisations located in any of 58 countries on its curated list will be eligible to join as full members, and register their content and related metadata free of charge. The new scheme is known as the Global Equitable Membership (GEM) programme, and it will be available for new organisations and automatically applied to 187 existing members….”

CORE Membership – launching soon! – Research

“CORE (core.ac.uk), a not-for-profit service delivered by The Open University in partnership with Jisc, has been serving the scholarly community since 2011 and in that time has experienced phenomenal growth in every way. CORE collates Open Access research from over 10,500 data providers across the world and is now the largest collection of open access research literature. Over 30 million users each month access CORE, either via search or one of our  services. We have also worked hard to develop services for our data providers and support them with tools to help better manage the content in their repositories, including improving discoverability, registering unique persistent identifiers, enriching content with data such as missing DOIs and helping monitor that their content remains compliant with Open Access policies and mandates….

CORE is a not-for-profit endeavour, committed to the the Principles of Open Science Infrastructure (POSI), and we have always strived to ensure that the service remains completely free for public use. This means funding the service is no small task. Today sees the start of a new effort to help not only sustain CORE, but to enable us to continue to grow and support our huge community of users. 

We’re hugely excited to announce the pre-launch of the CORE Membership program, designed exclusively for organisations such as academic institutions and data providers. 

 

The new CORE Membership programme offers your organisation a very public way of supporting a key component of the global Open Science scholarly infrastructure. Your membership confers several key benefits including: …”

PeerJ welcomes Western University to our Three Year Publishing Memberships program

We are delighted to announce that Western University, Canada, has joined our Three-Year Fixed Term Memberships Program. Western is the latest institution to sign up to the program which offers an innovative alternative to Article Processing Charges for Open Access. Under the agreement, the cost of Three-Year Memberships for Western University-affiliated authors are waived, meaning no out-of-pocket fees for faculty members to publish in PeerJ’s seven journals. 

“Open access publishing is a priority for Western Libraries, and we are pleased to now offer the PeerJ membership to our researchers. We are committed to supporting cost-effective open access initiatives where our faculty are contributing or publishing. We want to make open access publishing more accessible to our researchers, and PeerJ is helping us do that,” writes Kristin Hoffmann, Research and Scholarly Communication Librarian at Western Libraries. 

Western University and Western Libraries are clearly committed to the principles of Open Access, as well as innovative, cost-effective routes to open publishing such as our Three-Year Memberships program. We are excited to welcome Western to the PeerJ community and look forward to working with their researchers across our seven journals. They are the fifth institution to provide Three Year Membership as an Open Access option to their faculty, following the University of California, Berkeley, University of Ottawa, Iowa State University and the University of Sussex

Compared to the astronomical APC fees of many other publishers, Memberships provide great value for money, and allow more authors to publish Open Access. We remain committed to promoting Memberships as the low-cost, sustainable alternative to Article Processing Charge, and welcome inquiries about the program from other universities. PeerJ Three Year Fixed Term Memberships, priced at $239 per author, are valid from the date of an author’s first publication and for a further 36 months, during which they can publish a total of three articles at any point, giving authors more flexibility as to when, and how often, they publish. When authors use their full complement of three publications, the per-author cost borne by Western averages out at under $80/article. Under the agreement, all co-authors must hold a PeerJ Membership in order to publish; any Memberships previously held by Western-affiliated authors remain valid. Authors can still choose to pay via APC fees if they prefer. 

The [Opening the Future] model in summary

“Opening the Future is a collective subscription model that, through its membership scheme, makes library funds go further: achieving the dual objectives of increasing collections and supporting Open Access. Members pay a small annual fee to get unlimited multi-user access to two series of the well-regarded Liverpool University Press backlist; the membership revenue is used to produce new OA monographs….”

News – The Open Library of Humanities welcomes Iowa State University as a higher tier supporter

“We are very pleased to announce that we have recently welcomed a new higher-tier supporter to our library board.  Iowa State University Library is a signatory of the Open Access 2020 Initiative and is active in national and international efforts to advance open access. As part of a land-grant university with a mission to create, share, and apply knowledge to make Iowa and the world a better place, the University Library works to ensure the free dissemination and preservation of the university’s research and scholarly outputs.

Iowa State University has been supporting the Open Library of Humanities since 2018 as a regular supporter and has voluntarily decided to increase its membership rate in order to contribute to the expanding of our portfolio of open access journals. In May 2021 we launched our new agreement with Jisc Collections, giving UK institutions the opportunity to voluntarily support us at a higher level (either Gold, Silver or Bronze) enabling us to expand our portfolio of open access journals. Institutions, worldwide, can also contribute at a higher level to facilitate flipping journals to open access. Iowa State University is the second institution from outside the UK that is contributing at a higher membership rate. Thanks to this contribution and the other 12 higher supporters, we will be able to continue expanding portfolio of diamond open access via our journal flipping programme, which is currently welcoming expressions of interest from subscription journals interested in becoming open access. …”

Passed our 100-member milestone for Adoptees of the Statement of Principles! – Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications

“C4DISC is honored and excited to announce that we’ve passed our 100-member milestone! The Coalition was founded by 10 trade and professional associations across the publishing and scholarly communications industry. We set out to discuss and address the diversity and inclusion issues we face as a community….”