Category Archives: oa.grants

ORFG Advances Efforts to Improve Research Output Tracking — Open Research Funders Group

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“In June of 2022, the Open Research Funders Group (ORFG) launched a public effort to improve research output tracking. We began by publishing an open letter to the community, outlining priority areas such as persistent identifiers (PIDs) and machine readable metadata, and recommended actions for funders, publishers, infrastructure providers, and other key actors. We then opened up a survey to receive community feedback, and reported publicly on the results in September of 2022. Later that same month, we began holding regular open community calls to bring together diverse actors across the research ecosystem and discuss possible workstreams. Our community calls – four in total to date – have consistently had good engagement, with 40-50 participants per session….”

 

Get a small grant for your Open Data Day(s) 2023 event – submit your proposal now! – Open Knowledge Foundation blog

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“We at Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) are excited to announce the launch of the Open Data Day(s) 2023 Small Grants Application to support organisations hosting Open Data events and activities across the world.

The application deadline is 26th February 2023 and only registered organisations can apply for the grants to host in-person events. The events supported by the grants should take place during the Open Data Day(s) from 4th to 10th March 2023 and must be registered at the Open Data Day website….”

News – The OLH Open Access Award 2023: call for applications

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“We welcome applications that further our commitment to creating an open access scholarly environment within academia and beyond, and reflect our mission: to support and extend open access to scholarship in the humanities – for free, for everyone, for ever.  

Applications for OLH funding of up to £500 are welcomed from individuals or organisations in any location, and may be used to help fund events, projects or activities on open access or with an open access component, or other related costs that will be considered on a case-by-case basis in accordance with need and feasibility. 

Please note that the award is for projects that will promote open access within the humanities disciplines as widely as possible, and so will not be awarded to pay for individual Article Processing Charges (APCs) or article fees….”

Open Access Publishing Grants – What Are The Options?

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“Open access journals make research outputs such as journal articles and books available to the public for free and without restriction on the internet. OA material is freely available to everyone who wants to read it, and there are no access costs. As a result, open access journals charge authors an article processing fee to cover the costs of publishing their articles.

Many authors find that paying article processing costs (APCs) is a significant barrier to adopting an open access publication strategy. A large proportion of authors from underdeveloped nations experience this. However, there are various funding options available to authors to cover the cost of APC. Numerous universities have also established central funds to pay the costs of APCs….”

Open Access Publishing Grants – What Are The Options?

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“In many cases, funding organisations expressly permit the use of research money to cover the costs of article processing charges (APCs) to publish in open access journals and the costs of Book Processing Charges (BPCs) to publish open access volumes. Many universities have now established central funds to pay the costs of APCs and BPCs, as well. The following is a list of available funding sources for APCs and BPCs.

National or international funding bodies permit the use of research monies to pay for open access APCs for books and articles published in open access journals.
Open access publishing agreements are another method of obtaining financial support. Many organisations worldwide assist scholars in obtaining gold open access publication in their preferred journals. These transformational and consortium agreements can benefit writers by lowering their APCs or by letting them to publish open access without incurring any additional costs.
Many universities also have open access memberships with open access publications, which they use to share research findings. Researchers situated at these universities may be able to publish gold open access articles at no cost to themselves if they meet specific criteria.
In some instances, open access publishers provide discounts or fee exemptions to researchers from impoverished nations.
There are other general resources for Open Access Funding available on the internet. These may be found in the databases of Sherpa Juliet, The Open Access Directory, SPARC, and other similar organisations, among others. Sherpa Juliet is a searchable database of open access policies for research funding organisations. The Open Access Directory keeps track of a list of institutional funding that supports open access publishing initiatives. SPARC maintains a list of North American institutions and university libraries establishing open access grants for their respective research and teaching….”

Arcadia supports Redalyc and AmeliCA in its endeavor to advance diamond Open Access

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The Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM) awarded $3.6 Million grant from Arcadia – a charitable of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin – for Redalyc and AmeliCA. The project’s purpose is to strengthen and expand the current efforts of these two initiatives on non-commercial Open Access through the consolidation of an Open Infrastructure for capacity building, visibility, discoverability, quality assurance, technological development and sustainability of diamond OA publishing that yields more equitable and inclusive participation in the communication of science.

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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.”

De Gruyter launches not-for-profit foundation: De Gruyter eBound | STM Publishing News

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“De Gruyter, independent scholarly publisher and founder of the University Press Library distribution model, is launching De Gruyter eBound, a not-for-profit foundation, in the United States. The initiative’s goal is to support the publishing, sustainability, and accessibility of mission-driven scholarly monographs for not-for-profit and Open Access publishers.

Among other planned activities, De Gruyter eBound will offer grants for new publications as well as fund original studies that help key actors in the industry to develop new solutions for and insights on the future of the mission-driven scholarly monograph….”

Call for Advisory Committee Participation · Open Grants

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“Planning for Open Grants: Fostering a Transparent and Accessible National Research Infrastructure, an initiative led by the University of Florida, has undertaken an 18-month effort to establish a blueprint for implementation of a repository of openly accessible grant proposals and funding guidelines. Bringing experts together is crucial to the success of this initiative, both to envision the potential benefits as well as potential barriers. 12 advisors—including grant funders, research administrators, librarians, archivists, scholars, policy experts, and technologists—have joined the project to engage in conversation and provide feedback on deliverables throughout the award period.

We seek 8 additional advisors to provide their unique perspectives on this endeavor, rooted in individual lived experience and professional interest. Advisors will be paid a $1000 honorarium and $1000 travel stipend and commit to:

attending a 1.5 day in-person meeting at the University of Florida in 2022 (tentatively May or June),
participating in 2-3 virtual follow-up discussions, and
providing feedback on deliverables….”

Beyond manuscript peer review – Announcing Open Grant Reviewers in the making

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“We are thrilled to announce that PREreview will work with Open Research Funders Group (ORFG) and Health Research Alliance (HRA) to develop Open Grant Reviewers, a mentoring and training program for grant reviewers founded on principles of equity, openness, and social justice.

At PREreview, we are passionate about re-imagining a scholarly peer review process where all researchers are trained, valued, and recognized for their contributions to advancing knowledge….

With Open Reviewers, our training and mentoring program that empowers early-career researchers (ECRs) to contribute to scholarly peer review, we engage researchers in conversations around how systems of oppression manifest in the peer review process, how to identify how our own biases inevitably affect how we review and how to address it in service of better peer review.

While Open Reviewers in its current format is meant to train researchers in how to conduct manuscript peer review, much of its content and format can be adapted to other forms of reviewing, such as grant reviewing.

It is in this capacity that PREreview is collaborating with the ORFG and HRA, organizations who have already begun the groundwork towards the development of an Open & Equitable Model Funding Program, a new model of grantmaking to make both the process of grantmaking and the resulting research outputs more transparent, equitable, and inclusive. The program will design a range of interventions across the grantmaking cycle, including how funding schemes are developed, socialized, reviewed, overseen, supported, and evaluated. The plan is to pilot these interventions with a cohort of philanthropies in 2022 and 2023….”

OSF Preprints | A survey of funders’ and institutions’ needs for understanding researchers’ open research practices

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Abstract:  A growing number of research-performing organisations (institutions) and funding agencies have policies that support open research practices — sharing of research data, code and software. However, funders and institutions lack sufficient tools, time or resources to monitor compliance with these policies.

  To better understand funder and institution needs related to understanding open research practices of researchers, we targeted funders and institutions with a survey in 2020 and received 122 completed responses. Our survey assessed and scored, (from 0-100), the importance of and satisfaction with 17 factors associated with understanding open research practices. This includes things such as knowing if a research paper includes links to research data in a repository; knowing if a research grant made code available in a public repository; knowing if research data were made available in a reusable form; and knowing reasons why research data are not publicly available. Half of respondents had tried to evaluate researchers’ open research practices in the past and 78% plan to do this in the future. The most common method used to find out if researchers are practicing open research was personal contact with researchers and the most common reason for doing it was to increase their knowledge of researchers’ sharing practices (e.g. determine current state of sharing; track changes in practices over time; compare different departments/disciplines). The results indicate that nearly all of the 17 factors we asked about in the survey were underserved. The mean importance of all factors to respondents was 71.7, approaching the 75 threshold of “very important”. The average satisfaction of all factors was 41.3, indicating a negative level of satisfaction with ability to complete these tasks. The results imply an opportunity for better solutions to meet these needs. The growth of policies and requirements for making research data and code available does not appear to be matched with solutions for determining if these policies have been complied with. We conclude that publishers can better support some of the needs of funders and institutions by introducing simple solutions such as: – Mandatory data availability statements (DAS) in research articles – Not permitting generic “data available on request” statements – Enabling and encouraging the use of data repositories and other methods that make data available in a more reusable way – Providing visible links to research data on publications – Making information available on data and code sharing practices in publications available to institutions and funding agencies – Extending policies that require transparency in sharing of research data, to sharing of code

How can publishers better meet the open research needs of funders and institutions?

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“Publishers investing in simple solutions in their workflows can help to better meet the needs of funders and institutions who wish to support open research practices, research released this week by PLOS concludes.

Policies can be an effective solution for changing research culture and practice. A growing number of research-performing organisations (institutions) and funding agencies have policies that support open research practices — sharing of research data, code and software — as do publishers. Seeking to deepen our understanding of funder and institution needs related to open research, we surveyed more than 100 funders and institutions in 2020. We wanted to know if they are evaluating how researchers share data and code, how they are doing it, why they are doing it, and how satisfied they are with their ability to get these tasks done. Our results are available as a preprint along with an anonymised dataset….

Simple solutions more publishers could provide include:

Mandatory Data Availability Statements (DAS) in all relevant publications.
Across the STM industry around 15% of papers include a DAS. Since we introduced our data availability policy in 2014, 100% of PLOS research articles include a DAS.
Supporting researchers to provide information on why research data (and code) are not publicly available with their publications.
Time and again “data available on request” has been shown to be ineffective at supporting new research — and is not permitted in PLOS journals. 
Enabling and encouraging the use of data repositories.
Recommending the use of data repositories is a useful step, but making them easily and freely accessible — integrated into the publishing process — can be even more effective. Rates of repository use are higher in journals that partner closely with repositories and remove cost barriers to their use.
Providing visible links to research data on publications. Many researchers also struggle to find data they can reuse, hence PLOS will soon be experimenting with improving this functionality in our articles, and integrating the Dryad repository with submission….”

 

Open Grant Proposals · Business of Knowing, summer 2021

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“One of those informal frontiers is crowdfunding for scientific research. For the past year, I’ve worked on Experiment, helping hundreds of scientists design and launch crowdfunding campaigns for their research questions. Experiment has been doing this for almost a decade, with more than 1,000 successfully funded projects on the platform. The process is very different than the grant funding mechanisms set up by agencies and foundations. It’s not big money yet, as the average fundraise is still ~$5,000. But in many ways, the process is better: faster, transparent, and more encouraging to early-career scientists. Of all the lessons learned, one stands out for broader consideration: grant proposals and processes should be open by default.

Grant proposals that meet basic requirements for scientific merit and rigor should be posted online, ideally in a standardized format, in a centralized (or several) database or clearinghouse. They should include more detail than just the abstract and dollar amount totals that are currently shown now on federal databases, especially in terms of budgets and costs. The proposals should include a DOI number so that future work can point back to the original question, thinking, and scope. A link to these open grant proposals should be broadly accepted as sufficient for submission to requests from agencies or foundations….

Open proposals would make research funding project-centric, rather than funder-centric….

Open proposals would promote more accurate budgets….

Open proposals would increase the surface area of collaboration….

Open proposals would improve citation metrics….

Open proposals would create an opportunity to reward the best question-askers in addition to the best question-answerers….

Open proposals would give us a view into the whole of science, including the unfunded proposals and the experiments with null results….”