Increasing transparency and openness
18 June 2021
The Microbiology Society is pleased to announce three new initiatives that provide article-level metrics of all Open Access (OA) articles published by the Society’s six journals.
Using these routes, the Society is rising to the challenge of providing the data to stakeholders, when, where and however they need, be they Open Access (OA) managers, librarians, consortia managers, funders, those with Publish and Read transformative agreements, those subscribing institutions considering converting and those with articles paid by an article processing charge (APC). The new reporting mechanisms in place from June are:
The OA Switchboard
As community-based infrastructure, the OA Switchboard is an independent intermediary and integrator, connecting parties and systems, and streamlining the communication neutral exchange of OA related publication-level information. The OA Switchboard sends structured article data in standardized (JSON or Excel) formats to libraries. It sends both VoR data sourced directly from the Microbiology Society’s publishing platform, Ingenta, as well as AAM (author accepted manuscript) data indicating APCs for OA articles not covered by, the uncapped fee-free Publish and Read agreements the Society now have with over 100 libraries.
“Participating in the early development cycles of this important resource helped us to improve the service level we offer institutional customers. Collaborative working with an organisation like OASB, which listened hard and offered solutions, has produced a great outcome and I’d urge others to sign up. The more who use it, the better a resource it becomes”, commented Gaynor Redvers-Mutton, Head of Business Development and Sales at the Microbiology Society.
The Society’s connector to the OA Switchboard, combining data from several sources and turning these/that into the standardised messaging protocol, was built by technology partner, Elitex, and moved to the operational stage in June. Direct enquiries on signing up to: Yvonne Campfens, Executive Director, [email protected]
OA agreement management and reporting
An industry-leading collaboration between Aries Systems’ Editorial Manager and CCC’s RightsLink for Scientific Communications (RightsLink) provides a smooth author journey by powering fee-free and APC-funded routes to OA publication that are seamlessly integrated into the manuscript workflow. RightsLink also offers rich insight for institutions who wish to track OA output and expenditures in a single view across more than 30 participating RightsLink publishers.
RightsLink’s OA agreement management tools are used to facilitate OA publishing agreements between other leading publishers and nearly 1,000 institutions worldwide. “Institutional customers upgrading to Microbiology Soceity’s Publish and Read transformative agreement will now use the same intuitive interface and dashboard to review and report on their OA output at the earliest opportunity” adds Gaynor Redvers-Mutton. The Society’s agreements will be activated on 18 June. Enquiries about RightsLink should be directed to Craig Sender ([email protected]).
Publishing history tracker
As we embark on a renewal season actively promoting conversion to Publish and Read transformative agreements, we have also developed a simple and accessible solution hosted on our own publishing platform. Customers will be able a look-up their researchers’ publishing history in each of the Society's journals.
Image: Dennis Kunkel Microscopy/Science Photo Library.