Category Archives: oa.funders.private

An open ecosystem for scientific research: A commentary by Greg Tananbaum – PhilanTopic | PND | Candid

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“Our organization, the Open Research Funders Group (ORFG), is a collaborative of 25 philanthropies representing annual giving of $12 billion that is committed to the open sharing of research outputs. Our members aim to increase the impact of the work we support by creating an open ecosystem for scientific research—where data, analytics, methods, materials, and publications are openly available to all to access, test, and build upon. This approach closes information-sharing gaps, encourages innovation, and increases trust in the scientific process.  

In the wake of a tumultuous 2020—the inequity laid bare by the George Floyd killing and the rampant disinformation surrounding COVID-19—ORFG members realized that we needed to think even more expansively about our entire grantmaking processes and whether they reflect our values. To truly support open research, inclusivity, and equity, we understood we needed to rethink how we make decisions about where our money goes, from the way we build and socialize funding programs, to how we develop diverse applicant pools, all the way through how we support grantees and alumni.

To accomplish this, we engaged with the Civic Science Fellows program to support a fellow, Eunice Mercado-Lara, who could connect with broad and diverse communities to help shape our grantmaking processes. Open science seeks to level the playing field by providing wide access to the research process and products, and it is one component of the larger civic science movement, where science and evidence inform equitable and inclusive solutions to society’s most pressing problems. Major scientific advances such as gene editing, artificial intelligence, and vaccine technology can be transformational, but only when we successfully grapple with the array of complex political, social, and ethical questions that inevitably accompany these developments….”

ORFG Invites Feedback on Open and Equitable Grantmaking Draft Primers — Open Research Funders Group

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“The Open Research Funders Group (ORFG), in conjunction with the Health Research Alliance and PREreview, is pleased to release the initial drafts of a set of primers designed to render the grantmaking lifecycle more open and equitable. For the past nine months, the ORFG and our partners have been exploring tangible ways to make both the processes of grantmaking and the resulting research outputs more transparent, inclusive, and trustworthy.  With significant co-creation from our working group and the broader community, we have identified interventions across the grantmaking lifecycle – program development, dissemination and publicity, application mechanics, proposal review, funding decisions, grantee and alumni support, and impact assessment. For each stage, the primers detail specific actions funders can take to ensure a broader range of voices and perspectives are engaged and supported.  These interventions will be actively tested over the next year by a cohort of 11 philanthropies, with results and lessons learned reported transparently at the conclusion.

The primers are works in progress and we welcome ongoing input and questions from all parties. Please explore the drafts and leave feedback, either anonymously or with attribution. If you prefer, you can also (1) email us your thoughts and/or request to arrange a call to share it verbally, and/or (2) join our recurring Open Community Calls. We will continue to update these primers to reflect the insights of the community.”

Job: Grants Manager, Lund Trust

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Lund Trust is looking for a grants manager to join its small team. Lund Trust aims to support transformative work that greens people’s lives in the UK, particularly young people’s lives. The Grants Manager will help develop a portfolio of grants and funding programmes to meet that aim. The grants manager will:

Identify and research opportunities to make grants and create funding programmes.
Make recommendations and give advice to our Board.
Manage a portfolio of grants and funding programmes.
Share what we learn from our research and portfolio through our website, social media and networks.

Job: Associate Program Officer, Knowledge & Research Services | Gates Foundation

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We are seeking an Associate Program Officer, Knowledge & Research Services who will support this work by managing the process necessary to implement the Open Access Policy and other Knowledge & Research Services, as well as communicate these policies to grantee authors and publishers. Additionally, we’ll look to you to innovate and offer new ways to make our system and process more efficient. This is a full-time + benefits role!

What will you do?

Interact and communicate clearly and consistently with grantees and partners in the field, as well as internal mainstreaming partners via the Open Access ZenDesk instance. Primarily focused on communicating the open access policy and workflows for grantee authors.

Process invoices for open access publishing fees by validating eligibility, submitting for payment processing, and approving the payment through internal workflows. This includes managing publisher dashboards by reviewing article requests against the policy criteria.

Analyze open access spend data in Excel and other programs. Use data to support better decision making.

Provide basic service support for the library services such as: subscription access, Reprints Desk account creation and troubleshooting any issues employees may have in accessing subscriptions.

Knowledge management for the library function to optimize managing access to resources, subscriptions, and vendor engagement

Provide some project management support in assigned areas. Help design and operationalize processes and systems.

Support the communications and advocacy of the Gates Open Research platform.

Support team external open access engagement by maintaining strategic roadshow materials.

Being a part of the team!

Able to work with flexibility, efficiency, and diplomacy in a fast-paced, meaningful environment. Open to rapid change and able to learn new things quickly. Able to distill what is needed next, even without expertise in programmatic content.

Recognizes complexity and assesses risks and alternatives considering competing requirements and incomplete knowledge.

Understands basic investment rules, regulations, policies, processes, and practices and can advise when they are applicable. Is an expert in all phases of investment-making, and engages partners and decision-makers.

Ability to effectively communicate with external partners.

Demonstrates expert knowledge of Access, Excel, SharePoint, and other web-based software applications. Basic SharePoint site administration skills, including metadata tagging, document view creation, archiving, and crafting and maintaining confidential files.

What we need from you

Bachelor’s degree and 3+ years of related experience, or equivalent experience.

An understanding of scholarly communications and the academic publishing ecosystem, as well as familiarity with library functions and research needs would be preferred.

* The foundation requires all employees based in the United States to provide proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 upon hire unless they qualify for a medical or religious exemption.

*Applicants for this role will only be considered if they possess current USA Work Authorization, and do not require employer-sponsored VISA support to begin or remain in this role.

ORFG Civic Science Fellow

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“The ORFG is seeking a fellow to help develop, launch, and oversee an Open & Equitable Model Funding Program to address inequities in the research community.  The ORFG has come to the belated realization that we need to be much more actively engaged in building a just, inclusive world.  Given our remit, we aspire to leverage open research practices to create a more transparent, welcoming, and collaborative research ecosystem. This has the potential to close knowledge gaps and level the playing field for researchers around the world. Paywalls and siloed systems serve as barriers between the “haves” and the “have-nots” in the research community. This wall often presents itself at the first point of exploration, limiting the potential audience to well-funded researchers with strong professional networks and robust institution-sponsored subscriptions, excluding many who might bring new and differing perspectives to the research process.  Open activities can be a necessary, though by no means sufficient, tool to lower these barriers.

In 2020, the ORFG launched an Equity & Open Science Working Group, which includes representatives from five ORFG members, as well as seven scholars, scientists, and activists working at the intersection of open research and marginalized communities.  The working group has determined that to rapidly and visibly champion a more equitable and open research environment, philanthropies should leverage the best asset they bring to the research conversation – their grantmaking capabilities. The ORFG, in collaboration with the Health Research Alliance, has created the rough framework of an Open & Equitable Model Funding Program, co-created from the ground up with traditionally underrepresented communities and based on principles of equity, social justice, and open research….”

Incentivization Blueprint — Open Research Funders Group

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“A growing number of funders are eager to encourage grantees to share their research outputs – articles, code and materials, and data. To accelerate the adoption of open norms, deploying the right incentives is of paramount importance. Specifically, the incentive structure needs to both reduce its reliance on publication in high-impact journals as a primary metric, and properly value and reward a range of research outputs.

This Incentivization Blueprint seeks to provide funders with a stepwise approach to adjusting their incentivization schemes to more closely align with open access, open data, open science, and open research. Developed by the Open Research Funders Group, the Blueprint provides organizations with guidance for developing, implementing, and overseeing incentive structures that maximize the visibility and usability of the research they fund.

A number of prominent funders have committed to taking steps to implement the Incentivization Blueprint. Among them are the following: …”

Open Research Funders Group (ORFG) | DORA

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“The ORFG released guidance for funders called, Incentivizing the sharing of research outputs through research assessment: a funder implementation blueprint. The group created the document to assist funders in encouraging researchers to maximize the impact of their work by openly sharing research outputs. The blueprint identifies three goals to be successful:

change the perception that publication in high-impact journals is the only metric that counts;
provide demonstrable evidence that, while journal articles are important, we value and reward all types of research outputs; and
ensure that indicators like the venue of publication or journal impact factor are not used as surrogate measures of quality in researcher assessment.

To do this, the blueprint provides three steps with concrete actions for funders: 1) policy development and declarations, 2) implementation, and 3) engagement.  Template language for funders is included in the document to promote easy uptake….”

Gates Open Research – A summary of year four -Gates Open Research Blog

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“We are pleased that more authors are choosing to publish with us, hosting the work of 2000 published authors, a third of whom have published at least twice.  Since launch, we have published 291 articles and 846 peer review reports, which are all assigned a DOI.

Research Articles remain our most popular peer reviewed article type, representing 48% of the published work. We’ve seen a rise in other article types, publishing more Open Letters and Study Protocols, at 23% and 15% respectively. We see the value in non-traditional article types, and this increase shows how researchers can benefit from the flexibility of communicating research beyond the standard research article, which isn’t necessarily the best or most appropriate format to convey research. Representing a smaller proportion but no less important are Method Articles, Software Tools and Research Notes at 5%, 4% and 2% respectively….”

Publishing in hybrid, open access journals | Press release | Wellcome

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“Wellcome has updated its guidance for researchers to help them comply with our open access policy and support them when some journals have discouraged them from making their Author Accepted Manuscripts open access….

‘We are disappointed that some publishers are implementing processes that seek to discourage our researchers from exercising their right to make their Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) open access. We urge these publishers to stop these practices and instead focus their efforts on developing Plan S-aligned publishing options. 

‘Where publishers embrace this transition, we will fund fair and reasonable publishing costs. Moreover, under this model, the Version of Record will be made open access, and as such the author will not need to make use of their right to share the AAM.

 

‘In the meantime, when faced with an obligation to agree pay an Article Processing Charge (which we will not fund) we encourage our researchers to either contact the journal to request a waiver to this fee, or to consider submitting their manuscript to a different journal. …”

Open Science – Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

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“Our goal is universal and immediate open sharing of all scientific knowledge and outputs. With our Open Science program, we empower more people to engage in research practices that accelerate the pace, robustness, and reproducibility of science through partnerships, policies, and grants. Helping scientists build on each others’ work can dramatically accelerate the pace of discovery, and in turn, our understanding of health and disease.

We support our grantees and the broader scientific community to deposit software code to open repositories, make experimental protocols openly accessible, and submit manuscripts to preprint servers to communicate results more quickly….”

Open Access Policy – Grant Funding | Wellcome

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“Our OA policy for journal articles is in line with the key principles of Plan S

(opens in a new tab. Wellcome is a member of cOAlition S(opens in a new tab) and is committed to working in partnership with other funders to make all research articles OA.

Our policy for monographs and book chapters remains unchanged….

We updated our grant conditions in January 2021 to include:

a new condition that all grantholders – both new and current – will automatically grant a CC BY public copyright licence to all their future Author Accepted Manuscripts. This will apply to manuscripts that are:

reporting original research
supported in whole, or in part, by Wellcome grant funding.

an update to the existing condition whereby grantholders must also include the following statement on all submissions of original research to peer-reviewed journals: …”

Powerful US research funder unveils strict open-access policy

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“One of the world’s richest biomedical research organizations, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), announced on 1 October that it will require scientists it funds to make papers open access (OA) as soon as they are published — a change to its current policy, which allows a delay of up to one year before results must be free to read.

The non-profit organization, based in Chevy Chase, Maryland, is only the second US funder to insist on immediate open access, after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington. As part of the policy change, HHMI has joined the coalition of funders and organizations behind Plan S, a European-led initiative that is pushing for research to be immediately accessible on publication, and is supported by national research agencies and charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust and the Gates foundation. The HHMI’s shift is a boost to Plan S, and having more US-based funders on board will help build momentum towards open access, says Peter Suber, director of the Harvard Open Access Project and the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The HHMI spent US$763 million on biomedical research in 2019 and supports around 4,750 researchers, producing around 2,500 papers a year. Its new policy states that from 2022, HHMI scientists must either publish papers OA or deposit their accepted manuscripts in a repository openly under a liberal publishing licence….”

What Our New Open Science Policy Means for the Future of Research | by Dawid Potgieter | Templeton World | Sep, 2020 | Medium

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“We are at the beginning of a new, five-year strategy to support scientific research on human flourishing, and as part of that, Templeton World Charity Foundation has revised its grant-making activities to incentivize open science best practices across all fields of inquiry which we support. Open science refers to a process whereby research data, methods and findings are made open and available to all researchers — regardless of affiliation — for free. This may sound like inside baseball, but it will affect all of us by radically changing the way scientists work, accelerating the pace of scientific breakthroughs, and making the upper echelons of science more global and more inclusive.

OUR NEW POLICIES

Our new commitment includes two policies. Our Open Access Policy requires that anyone who uses Foundation research dollars must make their final paper openly accessible to anyone with an internet connection. They can still publish in any journal they like, and our policy allows for a number of options to stay compliant. This policy aligns with Plan S, and we are delighted to also be joining cOAlition S. As a part of this new policy we will also commit more resources toward article processing charges to facilitate this transformation.

In support of this, we also launched a Research Assessment Policy, which seeks to increase fairness and scientific rigor. Researchers have typically been encouraged to publish in journals with a high impact factor, but they tend to have a paywall. Under our new research assessment policy, we put value on the quality of data, code and methodologies produced by the researcher, and we will not prioritize impact factor. These changes are the result of a long process of analysis and our core conviction that open science is a requirement for driving scientific breakthroughs in the future. This policy aligns with the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)….”

HHMI, one of the largest research philanthropies, will require immediate open access | Science | AAAS

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“The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), one of the largest research philanthropies, said today it will begin to require its scientists to make research papers in which they played a leading role immediately free to read. HHMI now requires open access within 12 months of publica­tion.

After the policy takes effect in January 2022, the move could block the institute’s scientists, who include some of the biggest names in biomedical research, from publishing in top-tier, subscription-only journals such as Cell, Nature, and Science. Work by more than 4700 staff members, including 256 investigators and nearly 1700 postdoctoral researchers at laboratories across the United States, could be affected, HHMI says. But if elite journals continue to join the movement toward open-access publishing, HHMI authors may gain new options for compliance….”