Note: PLOS and other prominent organizations delivered the following letter to the Trump Administration on January 17, 2020. We encourage all publishing organizations and scholarly societies who would like to join us in support of OA in the USA to reach out to us at community@plos.org — we can prepare an expanded letter with more signatories as necessary. Please also consider voicing your support on social media with the hashtag #OAintheUSA.
Category Archives: oa.elife
News & Views: Spotlight on Open Access Hosting Platforms – Delta Think
“Regular readers of News & Views know that we at Delta Think track open access journal launches as a way to monitor industry and discipline-specific trends in Open Access. There is no doubt that demand—by virtue of the proliferation of OA journals needing hosting—is increasing. But what about supply?
There are several well-established hosting platform service providers who support mixed model content portfolios (e.g., Atypon, Highwire, Ingenta, PubFactory, and Silverchair). There are also new entrants on both the commercial and not-for-profit side who have scaled their core businesses to include hosting (e.g. River Valley Technologies and SPIE).
Today, however, we’re looking at a third segment of the hosting market—platforms that have been developed specifically and exclusively for open access content. We asked three hosting platform providers —Cambridge Open Engage (from CUP), Phenom (from Hindawi Limited), and Libero (developed by eLife and supported by the Libero community)—to tell us about their evolution as an OA hosting platform and their view of the future….”
Executive Director | Inside eLife | eLife
“eLife is a non-profit organisation inspired by research funders and led by scientists. Founded in 2011 by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust, eLife’s mission is to help scientists accelerate discovery by developing and operating a platform for research communication that encourages and recognises the most responsible behaviours in science. eLife also invests in innovation through open-source tool development to accelerate research communication and discovery.
eLife is now seeking to appoint a new Executive Director to lead the continuing development and success of eLife and the realisation of its ambition for broader impact. Reporting to the Board of Directors, the Executive Director is one of the public faces of eLife and leads the multidisciplinary team of just under 50 staff based in Cambridge, UK. Together with the Editor-in-Chief of eLife, the Executive Director is responsible for the delivery of eLife’s mission….”
Executive Director | Inside eLife | eLife
“eLife is a non-profit organisation inspired by research funders and led by scientists. Founded in 2011 by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust, eLife’s mission is to help scientists accelerate discovery by developing and operating a platform for research communication that encourages and recognises the most responsible behaviours in science. eLife also invests in innovation through open-source tool development to accelerate research communication and discovery.
eLife is now seeking to appoint a new Executive Director to lead the continuing development and success of eLife and the realisation of its ambition for broader impact. Reporting to the Board of Directors, the Executive Director is one of the public faces of eLife and leads the multidisciplinary team of just under 50 staff based in Cambridge, UK. Together with the Editor-in-Chief of eLife, the Executive Director is responsible for the delivery of eLife’s mission….”
Journal’s plan to review preprints aims to kill ‘desk rejects’ | Times Higher Education (THE)
“An open access pioneer’s plan to “reshape” peer review, which will see experts evaluate preprints regardless of whether they are due to be published in a particular journal, has sparked debate among academics.
Michael Eisen, editor-in-chief of eLife, said that the online periodical would start taking requests to conduct reviews of preprints on the BioRxiv server even if they had not been formally submitted to the title. The reviews themselves would then be posted on BioRxiv for everyone to read.
This would mark a significant shift from the traditional model of peer review, under which submissions are “triaged” by journal staff ahead of potential review by experts, which inform a decision on whether to publish the paper and are shared with the authors only….”
eLife introduces first demonstration of the open-source publishing platform Libero Publisher | For the press | eLife
“eLife is pleased to announce the first working example of its open-source journal hosting and post-production publishing system, Libero Publisher.
The demo showcases some of the essential components of a journal on Libero Publisher, including a homepage and research articles with author lists and affiliations, figures and references. Additional features are being added weekly, sometimes daily, as the platform evolves quickly to accommodate increasingly complex content types.
Libero Publisher is designed to help publishers deliver beautifully presented content to readers on any device, wherever they are. It is just one component of Libero, a community-driven and open-source platform of services and applications being built to help content providers do more with everything they publish….”
Welcome to the Libero Demonstration Journal – eLife Libero
“The Libero community is pleased to present a demonstration of Libero Publisher to exhibit the progress we’ve made so far and to gather feedback as we continue to iteratively develop new features. Being an open-source platform for scholarly publishing, the components of Libero Publisher have always been available for use and downloadable from GitHub. But, if you’re not familiar with cloning code repositories and running software containers, it can be difficult to track the project’s progress due to the lack of visible milestones. This is why we’ve taken the time to showcase some great examples of compatible journal content on a brand new instance of Libero Publisher at https://demo.libero.pub.
We have selected examples from journals of different sizes and disciplines, and will continue to grow the example set as more publishers test their content on the platform or new features are added. You’ll recognise the examples as scholarly articles with titles, authors, keywords, abstracts, content and figures. Other elements will continue to be added, and you can keep track of what to expect next on our public roadmap: https://elifesci.org/roadmap….”
Meet Mike Eisen | Podcasts | Naked Scientists
“In 2019, eLife appointed UC Berkeley geneticist Mike Eisen as the new Editor-in-Chief. His role is to drive the on-going development of eLife and steer the journal through the evolving landscape of science publishing. Ever since his institutional library thwarted his efforts, over 20 years ago, to download papers for his research project, Eisen has been a powerful proponent of the value of the open access movement. Chris Smith went to see him to hear his views on how science publishing needs to change, what he has planned for eLife, and how he almost became a radio sports commentator….”
Open-source Bazaar: Ensuring independent, open infrastructure in the age of acquisitions | Events | eLife
“With critical infrastructures like hosting platforms and manuscript submissions systems being acquired by large commercial publishers, smaller and society publishers wonder what other curve balls the future will bring. Will end to end workflow solutions lock them in? Or will such monopolies lock them out from participation? Community-owned infrastructure can be an answer. More and more open source collaborations are maturing and entering the ecosystem.
Other initiatives are emerging as service partners to help small players who lack technical resources or who simply aren’t interested in running a solution themselves. This informational and interactive session seeks to bring community-owned and governed initiatives with those exploring future alternatives to infrastructure consolidation….”
Dear eLife: please give us eLife ONE | Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week
“I do see why some people think it’s desirable to have an OA alternative to Science and Nature. But I can’t understand at all why they won’t add a second, non-selective journal — an eLIFE ONE, if you will — and automatically propagate articles to it that are judged “sound but dull” at eLIFE proper (or eLIFE Gold, as they may want to rename it). Way back in I think 2012 I spoke separately to Randy Schekman and executive director Mark Patterson about this: both of them were completely uninterested then, and it seems that’s still the case.
This is why Mike Eisen’s appointment is such a surprise. In a recent interview regarding this appointment, he commented “Our addiction to high-impact factor journals poisons hiring and funding decisions, and distorts the research process” — which I agree with 100%. But then why has he taken on a role in a journal that perpetuates that addiction?
We can only hope that he plans to change it from within, and that eLife ONE is lurking just beyond the horizon….”