U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is making his voice heard in the quest for open access of vital scientific research.

After losing his son to cancer in May of 2015, Biden has been on a mission to accelerate cancer research in search of a cure. In order to make those leaps and bounds in prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, Biden is now pushing for an open access database to gain better understanding of the disease and advance innovation.

According to The Washington Post, Biden stated that the path toward breakthroughs relies upon increasing the number of researchers who can access data.

While the scope of ECS’s science may be different, our mission to accelerate innovation and open access to our research is the same.

ECS’s Free the Science initiative aims to make all of the research in our Digital Library free to publish and free to read – freeing the science for everyone.

Instead of putting money into the publishing industry, Free the Science is investing in research – allowing scientists to share their work with readers around the world and attracting more minds to think about how to solve some of our planet’s most pressing problems.

Learn more about Free the Science.

Open Access LogoWhen eLife emerged in 2012, the biomedical journal aimed to be on-par with such competitors as Nature and Cell as far as content goes, but publish those papers at no cost to the author or reader.

After 1,800 papers four years of a complete open access model, eLife will get another boost from its funders to allow the journal to continue down its path of high standards and openness.

eLife’s status in the field is rising quite quickly,” eLife editor Sjors Scheres told Nature News. “I liked the idea behind it — to make a high-impact journal completely driven by scientists, and open.”

ECS’s Free the Science initiative draws many parallels to eLife’s publication model. Much like eLife, ECS looks to maintain our rigorous peer-review process as we move toward making the ECS Digital Library completely open access.

Free the Science is an initiative that seeks to remove all fees associate with publishing and accessing our scientific content so scientists can share their research with readers around the world, allowing more minds to think about and solve problems.

Learn more about Free the Science and watch our video explaining why it has never been more important to advance our technical domain.

digital_library_hiresPlease let your librarians know that our subscription prices for 2017 are up on our website.

As part of our commitment to Free the Science…

  • The Digital Library has not increased in price since 2013!
  • ECS members continue to be eligible for one OA Article Credit per year.

If you would like your institution to subscribe to ECS Plus (which allows authors affiliated with a subscribing institution unlimited article credits for publishing OA), please let your librarian know that you would value it.

Open access continues to gain momentum globally

openaccessroundGlobally, open access can help create a world where everyone from the student in Atlanta to a researcher in Haiti can freely read the scientific papers they need to make a discovery; where scientific breakthroughs in energy conversion, sensors, or nanotechnology are unimpeded by fees to access or publish research.

The global open access effort aims to break down barriers and make online scholarly information free to everyone, promote the global exchange of scientific discoveries, and open the door to the faster development of practical applications that could address some of the world’s most pressing issues.

(READ: “Robert Savinell on Preserving Scientific Research“)

Accelerating discovery in Africa

Recently, Senegal started building this framework for African countries that often lack access to scientific and education information. During April’s Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, representatives from the west-African country decided to begin the process to ensure the establishment of a national open access policy, making them the first African country to establish such a policy.

Leaders hope this new policy will encourage the creation of open platforms free and accessible for all researchers, innovators, teachers, students, media professionals, and the public and will encourage collaboration, production, dissemination, and knowledge economies.

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Free the Science 5K is Back!

Free the Science 5K

Free the Science 5K at the 227th ECS Meeting in Chicago.

Start jogging now, because this May the Free the Science 5K returns to the ECS biannual meeting. Join us in San Diego on Tuesday, May 31st at 0700h for a refreshing morning run in support of ECS’s Free the Science initiative.

Free the Science reflects ECS’s bold commitment to advancing and openly sharing scientific research. In light of the importance of our fields to global progress and sustainability, we want to publish the best research in electrochemistry and solid state science at no charge to authors, and make it freely available to all readers.

You can help us reach this goal by running to Free the Science. All profits from the 5K will go toward making the Free the Science vision a reality. To join the race, simply add a ticket to your meeting registration or visit the customer service counter at the meeting. Early-bird registration for the race is $30; onsite is $35. And don’t forget to invite your local friends—the race is open to the public!

Rather sleep in on Tuesday? You can still support Free the Science in many ways, including donating or choosing to publish open access. Learn more about Free the Science.

Come out and join us on Tuesday morning—get charged up with a run through the beautiful San Diego waterfront and show your support for open science.

 

Open Access vs. Illegal Access

openaccessroundIt’s always questionable to blog about something that is gaining attention because it’s illegal, but that’s the case with the latest crop of articles about open access in popular media.  While the scientific community has been debating the merits of open access for a while now, the business behind scientific publishing is getting a lot more attention lately because of Alexandra Elbakyan, a graduate student from Kazakhstan who has hacked into hundreds of scholarly journals.

Elbakayn leaked millions of documents, opening a (albeit illegal) door for the public to freely access just about every scientific paper ever published.

To some, Elbakyan is a hero – taking a stand for the public’s right to know. To others, she is a criminal.

“Realistically only scientists at really big, well-funded universities in the developed world have full access to published research,” said Michael Eisen, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a longtime champion of open access. “The current system slows science by slowing communication of work, slows it by limiting the number of people who can access information and quashes the ability to do the kind of data analysis” that is possible when articles aren’t “sitting on various siloed databases.”

This from The New York Times:

Journal publishers collectively earned $10 billion last year, much of it from research libraries, which pay annual subscription fees ranging from $2,000 to $35,000 per title if they don’t buy subscriptions of bundled titles, which cost millions. The largest companies, like Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer and Wiley, typically have profit margins of over 30 percent.

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Ways to Get ECS Article Credits

In 2015 ECS published just over 700 Open Access papers. This was fantastic news for ECS’s mission to Free the Science, and even better news for our authors as 96% of those papers were published as OA at no charge.Open Access Logo

Why were we giving away so many article credits? When ECS first launched our Author Choice Open Access program in February 2014, we wanted to explore the feasibility – both financially and practically – of supporting OA as far as we could in our publications.

It quickly became obvious how eager our community was to assist in ECS’s commitment to disseminate our research as widely as possible. In another commitment to our libraries, though, we had promised not to increase subscription prices, and have stuck by that commitment since 2013.

Moving into 2016, we wanted to continue to offer Article Credits to as many authors as possible, but also needed to ensure that our publications are self-sustaining. In order to accomplish this, we launched a new product called: ECS Plus. This offers libraries a subscription to all of our content PLUS unlimited Article Credits for authors affiliated with their institutions.

I wanted to use this blog post as an opportunity to remind authors interested in publishing Open Access to take advantage of the many ways you can publish OA with ECS for free, or at a very reduced cost:

  • Our new product, ECS Plus, is exceptionally competitively priced and includes a complete subscription to ECS’s Digital Library, as well as unlimited article credits for affiliated authors. Please encourage your librarians if this is something that you or your colleagues value!
  • ECS Members receive 1 free article credit per year – if you’re not yet a member, it might be time to consider joining us. Find out about becoming an ECS member, and other benefits of joining, by checking out our new membership page!
  • Once an ECS Member’s article credit has been used, any subsequent OA publications receive a 75% discount – that’s $600 off our already low APCs.

If you have any questions about changes to our Author Choice Open Access program, you can find out more on our information pages about OA, ECS Plus, and on our subscription information pages – or you can get in touch with us directly at oa@electrochem.org.

ECS’s goal is to make Open Access publishing free for all our authors. To help make this a reality please give to the Free the Science Fund.

How Has ECS Open Access Made a Difference?

ECS Digital LibraryWe are collecting stories from you about how having our peer-reviewed content from the ECS Digital Library has made a difference in your work.

Did you find content in our digital library that you would not have otherwise had access to that shaped your thinking and your research?

In 2014 ECS Digital Library started offering a portion of our published articles as open access. It was the start of our bold commitment to what we are calling — Free the Science. Through this mission-driven initiative, we are striving to open access to the entire ECS Digital Library–making all content from ECS journals freely available to all readers, while remaining free to publish for authors.

We caught a glimpse of the Free the Science ultimate vision during Open Access Week in October 2015: We made 100% of the content in the ECS Digital Library completely free to access for seven straight days and saw a 51% increase in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society usage compared to the same week in 2014.

We want to tell your story. Or maybe you know someone who our open access research has helped. Please contact me at Rob.Gerth@electrochem.org.

Free the Science 5K Results

Top male and female finishers,

Top male and female finishers, Matthew Lawder and Elizabeth Jones.

We’ve got the results of the Free the Science 5K held during the 227th ECS Meeting. The reigning champ, Matthew Lawder, was first overall with a time of 16:45. In the women’s category, Elizabeth Jones was the first with a time of 22:06.

Proceeds from this event will benefit the ECS Publications Endowment.

(PS: Were you in the race? Get your official time online here!)

This race is Lawder’s third straight overall Free the Science 5K win. His first victory was during our Orlando meeting, followed by our meeting in Cancun.

“I’m hoping to go the the Phoenix meeting so I can defend my title,” said Lawder.

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open access cakeFebruary 2015 marked the one year anniversary of ECS’s Author Choice Open Access Program. This has been a year full of exciting changes and challenges for the Society, as well as our authors. ECS is excited to say that, with the help of our authors and editors, we have moved one step closer in our mission to Free the Science™.

In the first full year of the program ECS received over 1,000 open access submissions with CC BY being the favored license (making up close to 60% of papers submitted)!

Open access (OA) submissions came from as many as 44 different countries with top submitters consisting of:

  • USA – 33%
  • China & Japan – tied at 11%
  • South Korea – 8%
  • Germany & Canada – tied at 5%

ECS is also pleased to share that 95% of submitted papers were eligible for article credits.

So what are you waiting for? Become an integral part of our mission, help Free the Science, and submit your manuscript as OA today!

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