By Victoria Ficarra, 23/09/2020 This work was prepared by Maurits van der Graaf of Pleiade Management & Consultancy in collaboration with our Director, Rob Johnson at Research Consulting. The aim of this work is to bring awareness and accessibility to the dataset produced by Walt Crawford on OA journals (GOAJ) and his accompanying publications. The interactive dashboard below, prepared by …
ICSR White Paper on Achieving an Equitable Transition to Open Access in Lower and Middle-Income Countries
By Victoria Ficarra 07/09/2020 We are pleased to announce that the findings of a White Paper co-authored by our director, Rob Johnson and produced by Elsevier in collaboration with the International Association of STM Publishers, is now publicly available on the Elsevier ICSR Perspectives site. The paper assesses the current level of uptake of Open Access (OA) publishing models in …
Using business as a force for good, and why Research Consulting decided not to become B-Corp certified
By Lucia Loffreda, 04/06/2020. Research Consulting recently participated in the Nottingham Consultancy Challenge – a University of Nottingham initiative partnering Nottingham-based SMEs with undergraduate students to work on bespoke consultancy projects. Our project, which we introduced in a previous blog post, involved working with five students to investigate the potential for Research Consulting to become a certified B-Corporation – a …
Equitable access to research in a changing world: Research4Life Landscape and Situation Analysis
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 …