Open Access flourishes further | I, Science

"In February 2014, The Royal Society announced the launch of a new journal called Royal Society Open Science. The Royal Society was the first ever publisher of scientific research and has decided to adapt their new journal to the open access publishing model.The journal aims to publish across a broad range of disciplines, from life sciences to mathematics, publishing all articles that are scientifically sound without judging importance or their potential impact on the reader. This setup is similar to that of PLoS One, the world’s largest science journal.The journal will offer open peer review as an option, where the peer reviewers’ names are included on reports and these reports are made available online after articles are published. The journal will also offer article level metrics, a way of judging research at the article level instead of the journal level as well as encourage post publication comments on journals. Also this February, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), well known for publishing the high impact factor journal Science, announced the launch of their first open access journal called Science Advances. The AAAS has been criticised in recent years for adhering to the traditional model of publishing, but the advocates of open access welcome this step forward of AAAS into the world of open access. Some saw it as a matter of time, as the publisher of the main competitor and fellow subscription journal Nature launched an open access journal called Scientific Reports in 2011 as well as buying the rapidly growing open access publisher, Frontiers, last February. The Wellcome Trust, who have quite a strict open access policy and insist that research funded by them should be published in open access journals, launched a new platform called Mosaic earlier this March. Mosaic aims to publish long feature articles under the most liberal open access license, CC-BY. The Wellcome Trust have made it clear that the aim of Mosaic is not to showcase the achievements of the Wellcome Trust, but to rather publish interesting content that engages the broadest possible audience. The editors of Mosaic actively encourage all of their content, with the exception of a few photos, to be republished on other platforms for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Their ‘Killer Dust’ piece was republished on the I, Science website earlier this week."