Monitoring Bulletin – April 2020
Highlights
- The Covid-19 epidemic is also shaking up the scientific publishing sector.
Covid-19 – emergency law. The law voted on March 23, 2020 for lockdown, also stipulated for the immediate publication of research results about the virus. “Available scientific data justifying the lockdown decision are made public.” (Article 2) Urgent law number 2020-290 of March 23, 2020 to deal with the Covid-19 outbreak.
Publisher policy during Covid-19. ACS opted for an wider open policy that makes all articles and underlying data about Covid-19 public. RSC lists the articles in a dedicated separate collection and has created a coronavirus field on their site. All editorial choices are listed on the Couperin site and Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers site.
- ERC Agenda: decisions and a resignation
IRCELyon grant recipient. Barbara Nozière, CNRS researcher at the Institute of Research on Catalysis and the Environment is one of the 185 ERC grant recipients. Her atmospheric chemistry research aims to improve observation of gaseous organic radicals.
New ERC chairman Chairman since January 1, 2020, Mauro Ferrari announced his resignation from ERC on April 7. His decision stems from a disagreement about the use of ERC funds which he wanted to massively target to Covid-19, as outlined in his statement.
Opening research data
ACS plans to improve the way NMR data is shared. Since February 2020, ACS has put in place a platform to facilitate the deposit of NMR data according to FAIR principles. To date, only two organic chemistry journals, Journal of Organic Chemistry and Organic Letters, are participating in the pilot project. They are inviting authors to use the service to submit their FID files. See this article for more information about the situation.
Is your data FAIR? Several disciplines have been investigated in a European report about FAIR data practice, including physics. Common standardization efforts to improve the interoperability of formats in astrophysics are suggested, particularly for data from virtual observatories. The aim is to integrate the data into the European cloud EOSC. Remarks can be made until April 17. Click here.
Canada’s roadmap. After France with the CNRS roadmap in November 2019, Canada’s has adopted a plan for open science, including publications and data. Federal departments and agencies are invited to “develop strategies and tools to implement FAIR data principles to ensure the interoperability of scientific, research and metadata standards by January 2023, as part of a phased plan for full implementation by January 2025”.
Scientific edition: zoom on your disciplines
Open Status of Geochemistry Publications. Out of 56 reviews in a study led by Olivier Pourret, earth science researcher, 50 practice open access via the gold OA model which tends to prefer publication fees paid by authors (APC). ACS’s Earth and Space Chemistry or Elements journal practices the highest fee, at €4,000. See the complete article in HAL.
The Mersenne Center announces the open publication of two journals about chemistry and physics. From this year, the Comptes-rendus Physique (8 issues per year) and Chimie are available in open access, at no cost to authors. This is the diamond model of open access.
An interesting platform has just been initiated by Dutch researchers who have created the site responsiblejournals.org. It is possible to consult peer-review policies of journals that have agreed to share their practices. For example, RSC Advances and Physical Review Letters. RSC Chemical Biology is a pioneer in the group, having accepted to make correctors’ comments public.
Legal obligations
Reach Implementation. Reach has become the world’s largest chemical database with 21,500 identified substances, making it possible to provide accurate information about environmental or health risks. This aim of this review is to restrict or find a substitute for certain products. Unfortunately, a lot of data is missing from files submitted to the European agency responsible for monitoring the sector. See this article published on the RSC website.
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