Now that October has come and gone, I’d like to take a minute to reflect on our recent Open October programming. Open October is an annual, month-long series of events highlighting trends in open science, open data and open access presented by Bernard Becker Medical Library in collaboration with Washington University Libraries. The goal of the events is to raise awareness of these trends among our campus community and foster discussion.
Open October 2024 started with a lively panel discussion with WashU Medicine faculty on October 1st about trends in publishing and open access: “Scientific Publishing and Openness: Perspectives from Insiders.” The panelists shared their experience in editorial roles with journals and agreed on the need for transparency and rigor, the value of preprints, and accessibility to published research findings.
Dr. Janine Bijsterbosch shared her experience with being part of a group of editorial staff that resigned from Elsevier’s for-profit NeuroImage and started a new competing journal, Imaging Neuroscience, published by non-profit publisher MIT Press. Dr. Jay Piccirillo discussed JAMA’s policy change that allows authors to post their final, peer-reviewed manuscript to a repository with no embargo period to support authors needing to comply with evolving funder public access policy requirements, and Dr. Carey-Ann Burnham described her role as Editor-in-Chief of a new Open Access journal focused on case reports, ASM Case Reports, with the goal to make case reports on infectious diseases broadly accessible.
Among the points discussed during the session was the relative role of open access publishing at different career stages and in different fields within the broad landscape of biomedical research. The importance of journal selection was discussed as well, with thoughts around how authors should carefully review journals they are considering for publication. Some recommendations were starting with journals you read and publish in, reviewing the About the Journal section on a journal website, which article types are accepted by the journal, to name a few. Also discussed was the misconception that Open Access journals are predatory journals. Additional thoughts were shared around the cost of publishing in general and publishing open access in particular, the accessibility of publishing open access in settings where funding is limited and the role of libraries in this evolving space.
The panel session was recorded and is available for viewing here.
On October 23, Dr. Bonnielin Swenor, Director of the Johns Hopkins University Disability Health Research Center, presented: “How Open Science Can Advance Equity for People with Disabilities” and discussed ways open science approaches can improve access to science and research for people with disabilities. This event was presented in collaboration with the Center for Health and Science Communication at Becker Library. Among the points made by Dr. Swenor were that accessibility should be focused on “equivalent ease of use” and institutional efforts towards inclusion for disabilities are usually centered on just meeting legal standards. The Q&A portion was filled with engaging discussion around ways authors can talk to publishers about making their research publications more accessible, conversations that are happening within government funding agencies, the role of Creative Commons licenses in accessibility efforts, the exhausting aspect of continual advocacy, and more.
The talk was recorded and is available for viewing here.
As we take these thoughts and discussions forward from our Open October programming, I’d like to remind you of some resources available through Becker Library related to publishing open access. If you are working on manuscripts and want to publish under an Open Access license, consider a journal that is among the 17 agreements Becker Library has with publishers to help with waivers or discounts of Article Processing Charges (APCs). Our most recent publisher agreement is with Elsevier. Under the Elsevier agreement, WashU Corresponding Authors are eligible for waivers and discounts on Article Processing Charges (APCs) for Open Access articles in over 2,500 Elsevier journals. As of November 2024, there are remaining APC waivers for Hybrid journals including Hybrid Cell Press journals. In addition, there are APC discounts for Gold journals including Gold Cell Press and Gold Lancet journals. For a full list of agreements, see: Article Processing Charges (APCs): Waivers and Discounts for WashU Authors. Please reach out with interest around other publishers and feel free to share your thoughts as these discussions continue. We welcome your feedback.