Calls to align incentives in academia to promote open research practices are not new. However, in recent years research funders are increasingly implementing policies and schemes designed to promote open science practices amongst researchers. In this post, Maria Cruz and Hans de Jonge outline details of the Dutch Research Council’s (NWO) new Open Science Fund, … Continued
Category: Wellcome Trust
Wellcome Open Research, the future of scholarly communication?
In this blog, Robert Kiley and Michael Markie, discuss the ambition behind creating Wellcome Open Research, an innovative funder led publishing platform, and assess the success of the platform over its first two years. Going on to imagine a future, in which all research is published using the principles behind Wellcome Open Research, they suggest the potential benefits such a […]
Funder open access platforms – a welcome innovation?
Funding organisations commissioning their own open access publishing platforms is a relatively recent development in the OA environment, with the European Commission following the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation in financing such an initiative. But in what ways, for better or worse, do these new platforms disrupt or complement the scholarly communications landscape? Tony Ross-Hellauer, Birgit Schmidt and Bianca […]
Top ten tips for universities seeking to implement Open Access
With funders requiring open access and researchers increasingly aware of it, now is the time for universities to make significant headway in providing a coherent plan for encouraging wider open access adoption. Neil Jacobs from Jisc provides an overview of what actions have been taken around the sector and outlines ten specific areas that institutions should consider further in order to […]
Elsevier’s new sharing policy is really a reversal of the rights of authors.
Virgina Barbour takes to task publishing giant Elsevier for their latest round of introduced restrictions on the sharing of academic research. Their new policy states that, if no article processing charge is paid, an author’s accepted version of the article cannot be made publicly available via their institution’s repository until after the embargo period, which can ranges from six months to four […]
Publication bias against negative findings is detrimental to the progression of science.
As a large funder of biomedical research, the Wellcome Trust is keen to ensure that the findings of that research are widely and openly shared. There is a body of evidence that indicates a bias against writing up and publishing of negative findings. Jonathon Kram and Adam Dinsmore, from the Wellcome Trust evaluation team, discuss why this could create a barrier to scientific progress. There is a […]
Wellcome Trust’s Open Access spend 2012-13: Are fees charged by major publishers creating a new serials crisis?
Publishers have reacted to open access mandates by offering hybrid “Open” options through Article Processing Charges. Ernesto Priego digs into the data released by the Wellcome Trust on the highest and lowest article processing charge expenditures in 2012-2013 and finds these figures reveal a mere inversion of the business model. Enabling Open Access costs money. But does it cost as much as reflected […]