By Rob Johnson and Victoria Ficarra, 20/05/2020 In this time of global crisis and uncertainty, scientific research, and equitable access to its outputs, has assumed a central role in the lives of billions of people across the globe. As a mission-driven business, we are fortunate to work with stakeholders across the research and international development communities to improve the effectiveness …
What does COVID-19 mean for scholarly communication? Four areas to consider.
By Lucia Loffreda, 07/04/2020 (links updated 13/04/2020). On 30 January 2020, the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. By mid-March, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the outbreak had reached official pandemic status. And today, the coronavirus is directly affecting 203 countries and territories worldwide. In a matter of weeks, the …
An Open Agenda: European Funder Approaches to Open Science
Written for The Scholarly Kitchen by Rob Johnson and Vanessa Proudman, 26/2/2020.This article was originally posted on the Scholarly Kitchen website. Drawing on our recent survey of European funders commissioned by SPARC Europe, we explored what European funders are doing to drive change in scholarly communication, and argue that funders’ open policies could be backed up more by funders’ own …
Is scholarly publishing changing for the better? 3 themes to keep on the radar
By Andrea Chiarelli, 20/01/2020 Last week, over 270 scholarly communication professionals from 150+ organisations and 19 countries gathered in Berlin for the Academic Publishing in Europe (APE) conference. The organisers (rightly) describe the conference as “the mecca of scholarly publishing”: indeed, over the course of two days, policymakers, funders, CEOs and other organisational leaders shared their views on the changing …
Open Access Research: A Review of DFID’s Policy and Practice
By Lucia Loffreda, 04/11/19 In late 2018, Research Consulting completed an independent review of the UK Department for International Development’s (DFID) Research Open and Enhanced Access Policy. Now, at a time of rapid development in the open access (OA) and open research data (ORD) landscapes, we’re pleased to share the findings in our latest report. The review stems from the …
Research4Life Infrastructure Review and Landscape Analysis
By Victoria Ficarra, 08/10/19 We are delighted to announce that in the coming months Research Consulting will be conducting a landscape analysis and infrastructure review of Research4Life’s operational effectiveness as part of the programme’s regular evaluation process. Research4Life works to provide developing countries with free or low-cost access to academic and professional peer-reviewed content online via its five programmes: Hinari, …
Report on European research funder Open Policies and practices
By Victoria Ficarra, 30/09/19 Research Consulting was commissioned by SPARC Europe to undertake research on European research funder Open policies and practices. The report is now publicly available on the SPARC Europe website and on the Reports page of our website. We supported SPARC Europe in the development and analysis of a survey conducted in spring this year, with responses …
Openness and integrity: A tale of two papers
By Rob Johnson, 09/09/2019 This is the text of a talk given by Rob Johnson, Director, at the Westminster Higher Education Forum event Next steps for protecting research integrity in the UK (9 September 2019) I’d like to tell you the story of two papers, published in perhaps the two most prestigious academic journals in the world, Nature and Science. …
A resilient and optimistic community: My first time at the ARMA conference, Belfast 2019
By Victoria Ficarra, 25/06/19 On Sunday 16th June, I boarded a small plane heading to Belfast with my colleagues, Rob Johnson and Mattia Fosci. Our destination was the 2019 ARMA Conference, which this year explored the themes of ‘prosperity and resilience in research management.’ It was my first time attending a conference on research management and I was feeling a …
Are preprints paving the way to science in real time?
Written for Knowledge Exchange (KE) by Andrea Chiarelli, 22/05/2019. This article was originally posted on the KE website and the Jisc Scholarly Communications blog. ArXiv, the most widely known preprint server, has received over 1.5 million preprints since its inception in 1991. BioRxiv, a growing equivalent in the life sciences that was started in 2013, hosts over 40,000 submissions representing …