Category Archives: oa.springer_nature

The State of Open Data Report 2023: Support for researchers still lacking – Digital Science

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“In the eighth annual The State of Open Data report released today, almost three quarters of surveyed researchers overwhelmingly said they are still not getting the support they need to share their data openly. Such data highlights the increased need for greater community collaboration and tools to support researchers in the move to sustainable open science practices.

For the remaining 23% of respondents who had sought and received support with data sharing, the support primarily came from internal sources (colleague/supervisor – 61%), followed by institutional libraries (31%), research office / in-house institutional expertise (26%), publishers (21%) and funders (17%)….”

Three US organizations reflect on their transition to OA | Research Information

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“In the US, the pace of transition to OA is accelerating. An increasing number of libraries are signing transformative agreements (TAs) that support authors to publish OA, while maintaining access to subscription content. The OSTP memorandum, with its emphasis on public access for federally funded research, has no doubt also prompted some institutions to review the support they provide for researchers whose projects must meet these requirements.

So, how can US institutions and research libraries adapt? In this new case study learn how Carnegie Mellon, the University of California, and SCELC provide insights into their transition to OA with Springer Nature, focusing on:

? the importance of OA for US research
? the impact of their TA
? the negotiation process
? communicating change to ensure uptake….”

Springer Nature expands its AI capability with acquisition of Slimmer AI’s Science division | Springer Nature Group | Springer Nature

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With technology having played an important role in improving the way trusted science is published for decades, global academic publisher Springer Nature has signed a definitive agreement which will see the Netherlands’ Slimmer AI’s Science division (S-AI) join the company.

Springer Nature and Slimmer AI have been working together since 2015. Using Slimmer AI’s advanced software that leverages emerging technology, the partnership has created AI tools to speed up and improve the publishing process by:

Identifying appropriate editors to guide a manuscript through the submission process, 
Increasing reviewer acceptance rates by recommending the best people to peer review a manuscript, and
Safeguarding the integrity of the scientific record by automating the identification of potential problems with papers, such as plagiarism.

 

Springer Nature’s latest Transformative Agreement an important step in global transition to OA | Springer Nature Group | Springer Nature

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“Springer Nature has agreed a Transformative Agreement (TA) in Hong Kong with all member libraries of the Joint University Librarians Advisory Committee (JULAC). This is the publisher’s first TA in this important region and, with over 700 articles published OA each year, will be the region’s largest TA. With China now leading the world in terms of research output, it also marks a significant step forward in the global transition to OA.

The three year agreement, effective from 1st January 2024, will allow affiliated researchers to publish OA in more than 1,900 hybrid journals published by Springer Nature. As part of the agreement, participating institutions retain access to all the journals they have subscribed to….”

Indian Institute of Science hosts the Springer Nature India Research Tour team on campus

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“The Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru hosted the 9th research summit as part of Springer Nature’s India Research Tour, being conducted in collaboration with the Indian Ministry of Education on Monday, 9 October 2023. The event focused on the role of open science and transformative agreements to make research more accessible for all….

Under a transformative agreement subscription access and OA publishing are brought together into one reading and publishing contract across a consortium of institutions. This means that researchers in those institutions can publish under the ‘gold’ open access model, while also gaining access to research in subscription journals….”

The role of gender and coauthors in academic publication behavior – ScienceDirect

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Abstract:  This paper contributes to the literature on differences in publication behavior of male and female scientists by examining two natural experiments in Germany that exogenously varied the attractiveness of journals. As a result of transformative open access publication agreements, journals published by Springer Nature and Wiley became more attractive as outlets for authors in Germany, while Elsevier journals lost some of their attractiveness within Germany due to substantial cancellations by university libraries. Studying 243,375 published articles in economics between 2015 and 2022, our findings suggests that men tend to seek reputation, while women favor visibility through open access, at least at the margin. While authorship in teams can dilute these behavioral patterns, female economists publish more single-authored papers. Overall female researchers appear to contribute more to the public good of open science, while their male colleagues focus on private reputation. These findings may offer an additional explanatory channel for the academic gender gap.

The next chapter for protocols.io

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“Today, Springer Nature announced the acquisition of protocols.io. The press release is available here, but in this blog post we would like to share what this means for protocols.io as a company and for the researchers using the platform. Before we delve into the details, it is important to confirm that our business model, open access repository, and mission and vision will not alter with this acquisition….”

Springer Nature continues open research drive with acquisition of protocols.io | Springer Nature Group | Springer Nature

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“Springer Nature, the world’s leading publisher of protocols, has acquired protocols.io – a secure platform for developing and sharing reproducible methods.

Scientific advancement depends on data credibility and work that can be verified, built upon and reproduced. Sharing  all elements of research, including data, methods and materials, and even negative results, makes research more  efficient, enables reproducibility and therefore builds trust in science. Studies show that lack of awareness of existing work or negative results leads to unnecessary duplication and could waste up to €26 billion in Europe alone. 

By laying out detailed step-by-step instructions for research methods, aiming to standardise the process, ensure accuracy of results and enabling research to be reproduced, protocols have a vital role to play in addressing this. With protocols.io joining Springer Nature’s leading protocol offering, researchers will now have the option to make their protocols openly available on the protocols.io platform (fully OA)  as well as publishing them in peer-reviewed publications (searchable via the Springer Nature Experiments)….”

Transformative agreements are the key to open access| Times Higher Education (THE)

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“During the same period, Springer Nature signed 15 new transformative agreements and renewed five more, increasing the number of institutions covered by a TA by 22 per cent. Indeed, by 2022, articles published open access via a TA accounted for a full 20 per cent of all gold OA articles.

TAs are clearly where our focus should be. We published three times more OA articles in our Springer hybrid titles last year via TAs than via author choice. Moreover, in countries where we have a TA, up to 90 per cent of articles we publish are now published OA. In Germany, OA articles have grown by a factor of almost nine as a result of our TA with Projekt DEAL….”

The value of journals | Nature Neuroscience

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“While we recognize the importance of open science and encourage deposition of submitted manuscripts on preprint servers, we feel this initial editorial filter serves a complementary function. Preprint servers enable speedy and frictionless communication of all types of scientific findings, a bit like listing an item on the auction site eBay. Browsing content on preprint servers is a bit like shopping on eBay, too. With such a wide array of papers, a scientist is bound to find some that are of interest. But, in the absence of an editorial filter, one may have to spend time wading through irrelevant or lower quality offerings.

Such an ‘unfiltered’ approach also omits the value added by the peer review process. As we have learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, rapid and open scientific communication is valuable, but peer review is also critical to ensure the quality of the scientific record….”

Guest Post – Why Are UK Libraries Signing a Springer-Nature Deal They Don’t Seem to Like? | The Scholarly Kitchen

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post is by Peter Barr. Peter is Head of Content & Collections at the University of Sheffield Library.

At the beginning of May 2023, Jisc announced that UK Universities had agreed a new 3-year read and publish open access deal with Springer Nature (SN). This combines the previous read-only Nature Journals agreement with the existing Springer Compact Open Access agreement, and means that of the major publishers of UK research outputs, all but IEEE now have some form of Transformative Agreement (TA) through Jisc. However, while the announcement of the 2022 TA with Elsevier was celebrated as “unique both in the level of savings and the access it delivers and… a major step in the transition towards full, equitable and affordable… open scholarship”, the tone of the SN announcement was notably more muted. It was highlighted that a large number of UK institutions only accepted the agreement with significant reservations. Chief among these was the failure to get SN to move from a very high calculation of its publishing costs (the controversial €9,750 APC) or even to provide an explanation, in context, as to how it is justified. The inability to achieve truly transformative terms was predicted and comes against a backdrop where a group of UK campaigners were calling for rejection of anything that fell short of the ideal. Yet libraries, who are chiefly responsible for the administration of such agreements, find themselves continuing to sign TAs while becoming increasingly convinced that they do not represent the desired transformation. Therefore, some explanation of why this has happened — and keeps happening – is necessary. It is worth considering what more could have been reasonably achieved via library-publishing negotiation, and whether – with existing systemic limitations – academic libraries would be in a position to take risks without clearer expressions of support from their institutions and communities.

[…]

68% of ‘transformative journals’ to be kicked out of Plan S scheme – Research Professional News

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“Coalition S strategy head criticises efforts from American Chemical Society, Elsevier and Springer Nature

Just over two-thirds of the ‘transformative journals’ permitted to receive funding from organisations participating in the Plan S open-access initiative are to be kicked out of the scheme for failing to meet their targets.

Under Plan S, a group of international funders require papers reporting research they have supported to be made openly available immediately under certain conditions. These include that the funders will only pay for publication in hybrid journals—which combine open-access and subscription options—if those journals have committed to transforming to full open access at a given rate.

Coalition S, the participating funder group, announced on 20 June that it would remove 1,589 out of 2,326 journals (68 per cent) from the transformative journals scheme. It said they failed to meet their requirements to increase their share of open-access content by 5 percentage points annually on an absolute basis and 15 per cent annually on a relative basis, and to revoke the subscription option once 75 per cent of articles are made openly available.

The scheme, launched in 2020, is designed to encourage the transition of subscription-based scholarly publishing to full and immediate open access….”

Transformative Agreements playing vital role in OA transition | STM Publishing News

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“Data from Springer Nature shows TAs powering 3x OA growth across all disciplines  New data from Springer Nature shows the vital role transformative agreements (TAs) are playing in driving the global transition to open access (OA). They are the main reason OA is increasing in Springer Nature’s  hybrid journals, delivering OA equity across all academic disciplines. The data shows that:

In 2022 OA research published in Springer Nature’s hybrid journals by authors whose institution is part of a TA grew three times faster than OA research published in these titles by authors whose institution was not part of a TA (“author choice”) ;

The increase in number of agreements Springer Nature reached has led to OA content published in its hybrid portfolio growing by nearly 40% since 2017; 

TAs are also proving instrumental in enabling authors in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) to publish OA. Over 90% of HSS OA content in its hybrid journals, is now published via a TA, having grown at a faster rate than OA HSS content not published via a TA…”

Mixed feelings emerge on Springer Nature deal with British universities

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“As part of the new deal with the German-British publisher announced last month, universities will have unlimited open-access publishing in Springer and Palgrave hybrid titles, while free-to-read publishing will be available in Nature and Nature research journals, although this option will be restricted to a certain number of papers….

While the agreement would “result in real-term cost savings for all institutions” and was accepted by all universities that responded to a consultation, a large number had “significant reservations” about the deal, added Jisc….

These concerns centered on the high cost of publishing open access outside the agreement and limited transparency, particularly regarding how Springer Nature’s article-processing charges (APCs) are calculated, with gold open access for Nature priced at 8,490 pounds ($10,616). Springer Nature was one of several major publishers—along with Elsevier—which opted in November not to participate in Plan S’s Journal Comparison Service, in which journals shared information about their costs and services.

 

Paul Ayris, pro vice provost at University College London (libraries, culture, collections, open science) told Times Higher Education that the sector would only “grudgingly” accept the new deal because it “bakes into the system the high prices that we’ve seen with subscriptions.”…”