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

Being Earnest With Collections–Voting with our Dollars: Making a New Home for the Collections Budget in the MIT Libraries

“Under the vision and leadership of new MIT Libraries Associate Director for Collections Greg Eow and Director Chris Bourg, the management of the MIT Libraries collections budget has recently been incorporated into the scholarly communications program. Essentially, the collections budget is now an element under our scholarly communications umbrella…

We made this change because we want to use our collections dollars — in a more systematic and strategic way — to transform the scholarly communications landscape towards more openness, and toward expanded, democratized access. …”

Assessing the publishing priorities and preferences among STEM researchers at a large R1 institution: Heliyon

 

 

The cost of academic publishing has increased substantially despite the ease with which information can be shared on the web. Open Access publishing is a key mechanism for amplifying research access, inclusivity, and impact. Despite this, shifting to a free-to-read publishing environment requires navigating complex barriers that vary by career status and publishing expectations. In this article, we investigate the motivations and preferences of researchers situated within our large research institution as a case study for publishing attitudes at similar institutions. We surveyed the publishing priorities and preferences of researchers at various career stages in STEM fields as they relate to openness, data practices, and assessment of research impact. Our results indicate that publishing preferences, data management experience and research impact assessment vary by career status and departmental approaches to promotion. We find that open access publishing is widely appreciated regardless of career status, but financial limitations and publishing expectations were common barriers to publishing in Open Access journals. Our findings shed light on publishing attitudes and preferences among researchers at a major R1 research institution, and offer insight into advocacy strategies that incentivize open access publishing.

Wikipedia and open access

Wikipedia is a well-known platform for disseminating knowledge, and scientific sources, such as journal articles, play a critical role in supporting its mission. The open access movement aims to make scientific knowledge openly available, and we might intuitively expect open access to help further Wikipedia’s mission. However, the extent of this relationship remains largely unknown. To fill this gap, we analyze a large dataset of citations from Wikipedia and model the role of open access in Wikipedia’s citation patterns. We find that open-access articles are extensively and increasingly more cited in Wikipedia. What is more, they show a 15% higher likelihood of being cited in Wikipedia when compared to closed-access articles, after controlling for confounding factors. This open-access citation effect is particularly strong for articles with low citation counts, including recently published ones. Our results show that open access plays a key role in the dissemination of scientific knowledge, including by providing Wikipedia editors timely access to novel results. These findings have important implications for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in the field of information science and technology.

Open Science: stakeholders welcome European efforts towards publicly owned and not-for-profit scholarly communication | Plan S

For European public research and innovation actors, scholarly knowledge is a public good. Publicly funded research and its results should be immediately and openly available to all without barriers such as subscription fees or paywalls. This is essential in driving knowledge forward, promoting innovation and tackling social issues.

Key representative organisations of the public research and innovation sector have welcomed today’s adoption of the ‘Council conclusions on high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy, and equitable scholarly publishing’.

Helsinki Initiative Webinar on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication | helsinki-initiative.org

“Helsinki Initiative organizes a webinar series on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication with speakers representing different expert communities and strands of work. This event includes three presentations ranging from language barriers in conservation science to machine translation in scholarly communication and mapping the global journal landscape.”

40 editors at a scientific journal just resigned in protest of their publisher’s “greed”

“This came to a boil on April 17, when more than 40 scientists resigned from their editorial positions at a journal called NeuroImage — one of the world’s leading publications concerning brain imaging. Founded in 1992, the journal publishes around 1,000 articles per year with an impact factor of 7.4, which is a metric for how often the journal’s research is cited by others. NeuroImage has been open access since 2020, a mode of scientific publishing that eschews paywalls, allowing anyone to read the research, share it and build upon it….”

Scholarly Communications Librarian

Description

Join a team of collaborative and creative library faculty at Colby College! Be a part of the growing movement toward more open and inclusive scholarship and teaching. The Colby College Libraries invite applications for the position of Scholarly Communications Librarian.

Overview and Primary Objectives

The Scholarly Communications Librarian is a faculty librarian position with teaching responsibilities and is a member of the Digital Initiatives (DI) team. The Librarian serves as the Libraries’ expert on scholarly communication, including alternative publishing models, scholarly visibility and impact, online identity management, open educational resources, and equitable access to the College’s scholarly output. The Scholarly Communications Librarian will develop and implement educational programs, support metadata creation for digital assets, and serve as an advisor for researchers (as well as library staff) on scholarly communications and digital scholarship issues.

The Scholarly Communications Librarian will collaborate with the Digital Archives Librarian to manage and develop the College’s institutional repositories. The Scholarly Communications Librarian will also collaborate closely with colleagues in other departments, including Collections Management and Special Collections and Archives, on open access, metadata standards and the preservation of, and discovery and access to, the scholarly output of the College….”

What Is the Shared Infrastructure for Scholarly Communication? – The Scholarly Kitchen

“Scholarly communication is a complicated sector, with numerous participants and multiple mechanisms for communicating and reviewing materials created in an increasing variety of formats by researchers across the globe. In turn, the researcher who seeks to use the products of this system wishes to discover, access, and use relevant and trustworthy materials as effortlessly as possible. The work of driving efficiency into this complex sector while bringing its multiple strands together seamlessly for the reader (or, increasingly, for a computational user) rests on a foundation of infrastructure, much of it shared across multiple publishers and other providers. We are currently at work on an Ithaka S+R research study examining this shared infrastructure to support efforts to ensure it is fit-for-purpose. Today, we provide additional background about the project and a landscape review on shared infrastructure, which we published earlier this week….”

Scholarly Communication Infrastructure Guide: Buy, Build, or Partner A Decision-Making Framework to Support Campus Leaders

“The Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship (HELIOS) created this rubric to assist institutions in making informed decisions when buying, building, or sharing/partnering on scholarly communication infrastructure.”

OpenCon Librarian Community Call: May 09, 2023 | Do new librarians feel prepared for scholarly communication positions?

“Scholarly communication and adjacent positions are now standard in most academic institutions, but do new librarians feel prepared? Join us in May to discuss what training you received (or what you wish you’d received), where you learn about new developments, and what you would tell people who are starting in these positions. We will use Etherpad with a moderator to have an engaging and anonymous conversation regarding MLIS education and scholarly communication. Also, as part of May’s call, we will begin conversations around this year’s Open Access Week theme, Community over Commercialization…”

Journal Observatory – Home

“The scientific community is quickly becoming more transparent in research. Scientific publications are becoming more and more openly accessible but openness should also extend to peer review, preprinting, preregistration, data sharing, metadata availability, and related issues.

Research funders and other stakeholders are putting a significant effort into promoting open science practices in scholarly communication. But there is a lack of high-quality infrastructure that provides information on the openness, policies and procedures of scholarly journals and other publication outlets. Consequently, it can be challenging to answer questions like: how do journals organise quality assurance and peer review? How do journals support open access publishing? How do journals or preprint servers support preregistration, preprinting, and data sharing? How diverse are the editorial teams of journals?…”