With apologies for the delay in getting these online, here are the notes from the December meeting of the Jisc-Elsevier open science forum. The forum next meets in September and December 2019.
The 2017 infrastructure agreement between Jisc and Elsevier noted that priorities existed that were not documented in that agreement, but that both parties would identify and prioritise via a ‘statement of intent’ that documented clearly their common interests and intentions to act. That document is now agreed and available here.
Statement of Intent – Jisc-Elsevier Open Science Forum.
The statement of intent is a good start, but we expect to find further areas of collaboration through the Jisc-Elsevier open science forum and therefore the document remains open, so further measures can be incorporated as they are identified.
Jisc, a not-for-profit organization committed to providing UK universities and colleges shared digital infrastructure and services, and Elsevier, the information analytics business specializing in science and health, have signed an agreement setting out how they will work together to support institutions to comply with UK open access policies, as part of their Open Science partnership, agreed in 2016 as a component of the UK Elsevier ScienceDirect renewal.
Both Jisc and Elsevier share the goal of making academic research and its contribution to scholarship, education, and social and economic development visible, and to support the successful and efficient, implementation of funder open access policies. In particular, Jisc and Elsevier share a commitment to help institutions implement the open access eligibility criteria for the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF).
With timely access to Elsevier’s ScienceDirect article and journal-level metadata, for example article acceptance date, embargo date, and grant/funder IDs, Jisc’s Publications Router service will be able to support UK institutions more efficiently and comprehensively identify UK-published articles at various stages of the publication process. UK institutions will be able to access this metadata via Elsevier’s APIs directly within their institutional repository or can get tailored feeds via the Jisc Publications Router. Subsequently institutions can ingest metadata into library systems and repositories giving institutions greater insight into their researchers’ publishing activities-empowering them to take steps to comply with open access policies.
Elsevier publishes 17 percent of UK authored papers and so this agreement marks a significant contribution towards helping UK universities identify publications and contribute towards REF compliance. This agreement boosts Router’s input coverage of UK authored papers from 63 percent to 74 percent, taking into account some overlap with sources already used by Router.
Jisc and Elsevier anticipate further opportunities for this kind of collaboration will be identified by the Jisc-Elsevier Open Science Forum, an additional outcome of the 2016 UK ScienceDirect agreement between Elsevier and Jisc Collections.
“This kind of interoperability between Jisc and Elsevier services makes a real difference to open science, easing its implementation and helping funders realize their aspirations,” said Professor Mark E. Smith, Vice Chancellor of Lancaster University and Chair of the Forum. “I hope the Forum will continue to provide a strong basis for collaboration of this kind, across the research lifecycle.”
“This agreement marks an expansion of our existing partnership with Jisc by working with them on another area of importance to UK institutions,” said Gemma Hersh, Vice President of Global Policy, Elsevier. “We are committed to working with all stakeholders to support platform interoperability and compliance with open access policies and are pleased to be able to use our technology infrastructure to enhance the discoverability of research outputs.”
“Integrating ScienceDirect APIs into the Jisc Publications Router automates and accelerates what used to be a very manual and cumbersome process,” said Bill Hubbard, Head of Scholarly Communications Support at Jisc. “The Router supports UK institutions to more easily comply with the approaching REF21 assessment – as well as with open access and funding body compliance more broadly. This project addresses several of our most pressing needs around identifying and gathering article metadata across UK research institutions. We’re pleased to work with Elsevier to deliver this service to our members.”
The Jisc-Elsevier Open Science (OS) Forum was formed to identify and undertake areas of joint activity that could improve the implementation open science and address some of the challenges. The formation of the Forum followed the November 2016 ScienceDirect agreement in the UK, where it was agreed that Jisc and Elsevier should work with the Higher Education sector to find ways to improve conditions for open science more generally outside of the negotiations. OS covers a wide range of activities, however, activity will initially focus on open access, open research data and open metrics and indicators.
The terms of reference and initial membership of the forum are available here [pdf]
On this site we will publish the papers and notes from the Forum meetings (two or three per year), and information about the joint activity that Jisc and Elsevier pursue through this collaboration.