open access

Academic Book Week: Tips for Academic Book Authors

Academic Book Week (#AcBookWeek) is a week-long celebration of the diversity, variety and influence of academic books throughout history run by the Booksellers Association, returning for a fourth year from 4-9 March 2019. This week on The Source, we are recognizing the important role of academic books, including how they engage critical audiences such as the media and policy-makers, as well as reflecting on their evolution and what the future might hold for this research format. This blog focuses on open access book publishing. Springer Nature publishes open access books and chapters under its SpringerOpen, Palgrave Macmillan and Apress imprints. … Read more…

Let’s be Open about Data Sharing

We’re recognizing Love Data Week (February 11-15) and this year’s theme is ‘data in everyday life.’ We’ve asked several researchers who participated in our Better Science Through Better Data event to reflect on the importance of data sharing in their own lives. We’ll be sharing their stories all week so keep checking back! Written by Claudia Wolff In November 2018, I was invited to give a lightning talk at the #scidata18 conference. My first open data conference ever. This invitation made me start thinking about my personal perspective of data sharing from an early career researcher point of view; what it … Read more…

Love Data Week 2019: Our Top 5 Articles on Data Topics

We’re celebrating Love Data Week 2019 all week long! This year’s theme is data in everyday life and to that end, we are bringing you some of the most popular articles published in Springer Nature’s Research Data Community, exploring data topics that help advance our knowledge of the world, from social media data for urban sustainability to the tricks of evolving large brains. Take a read below! 1. Social Media Data for Urban Sustainability Transitioning complex social-ecological-technological urban systems to sustainability is a fundamental challenge for governments, scientists, and practitioners in the 21st century. At the same time increasingly ubiquitous big … Read more…

There is no such thing as too esoteric for the Internet (and other reasons to publish your data)

We’re recognizing Love Data Week (February 11-15) and this year’s theme is ‘data in everyday life.’ We’ve asked several researchers who participated in our Better Science Through Better Data event to reflect on the importance of data sharing in their own lives. We’ll be sharing their stories all week so keep checking back! Written by Dr. James Avery Every day I benefit from someone having taken the time to share something online. In my home life it could be a video recipe, a guide to replacing a float ball valve in the tank in the loft or how to take a … Read more…

Data Needs People. People Don’t Need Data.

We’re recognizing Love Data Week (February 11-15) and this year’s theme is ‘data in everyday life.’ We’ve asked several researchers who participated in our Better Science Through Better Data event to reflect on the importance of data sharing in their own lives. We’ll be sharing their stories all week so keep checking back! Written by Alasdair Rae I’m supposed to write all about how I love data and how it can change the world. But I’m not going to. Not because I’m grumpy, but because I think we’re thinking about it all wrong. You see, a lot of the buzz around … Read more…

A Pioneer of Open Access

When Manuel Llinás was nearing the end of his postdoc at UCSF in 2002, he had a body of research that culminated in an impactful paper on the genome of the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. The paper was very attractive to a number of subscription journals. At the time, open access options were not readily available, but he chose to publish in the first issue of a yet unknown open access journal, PLoS Biology. He discussed his decision to make the leap into the frontiers of open access. You can listen to more details about this story on Open Voices, where … Read more…

Open Access: The Prelude of the Open Scientific Research

By: Kai Tao; Prof. Ehud Gazit’s Post-doc, Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology Department, Tel Aviv University “When everybody adds fuel, the flames rise high.” Since the first open access (OA) journal, Journal of Medical Internet Research, started to solicit contributions in 1998, more presses and journals are joining in the exploration of this publication mode. Up until today, OA refers not only to open publications for readers, but also to free platforms for people of any background to share their ideas, talk, and comment on scientific researches. Accordingly, the advantages of OA to scientists are considerably obvious, including: OA can bring more … Read more…

How important are open access books to academic authors?

By: Christina Emery How important are open access books to academic authors? To kick off Academic Book Week in April, Springer Nature held a free event for researchers exploring open access (OA) books, discussing topics such as why academics publish OA books, how the impact of their research can be tracked, and the future of OA book funding. Researchers in the hard sciences are more familiar with the concept of open access article publishing, but we were interested in talking to researchers across various disciplines, including the Humanities and Social Sciences, specifically about OA books. You can read what the … Read more…

Researching the Choice to Publish Open Access

Interested in publishing open access, but have your mind set on publishing in a subscription-based journal? Our Open Choice option allows you to publish open access in more than 1,900 Springer Nature journals, making your research more visible and accessible, immediately on publication. Learn more about Open Access in this excerpt from Open access, social norms and publication choice by Matteo Migheli and Giovanni B. Ramello from the European Journal of Law and Economics. Find out more about the Open Access options available to our authors, including our OA funding options. The full article can be read via the SharedIt … Read more…

Why I Published an Open Access Book

On April 23rd, Springer Nature is participating in Academic Book Week, a global awareness event that aims to champion and showcase the evolution of academic books. Authors Prof. Owen Davies (History, University of Hertfordshire) and Dr. Roseli Pellens (Macroecology, Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité, Paris), who are participating in a panel discussion share their experiences of publishing an open access book. “Publishing is about communication beyond academia.” – Prof. Owen Davies Prof. Owen Davies has been interested in open access for more than ten years, having personally experimented with creating and uploading his own PDF online. There was interest in … Read more…