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In 2016, Crossref launched a metadata schema for ‘posted content’ with the aim of better accommodating the metadata needs for preprints, working papers, theses, reports, and related outputs, which are not typically peer-reviewed. In 2021, Crossref formed an Advisory Group (AG) to discuss how the quality of metadata for preprints using this schema could be improved. The group focused on four topics: 1) preprints as an article type (rather than subtype of posted-content); 2) relationships to/from preprints; 3) versioning; and 4) withdrawal/removal of preprints. The recommendations that resulted from the group’s deliberations have been published previously. Here we provide further background to the recommendations and report more details of the discussions.

The Crossref Preprint Advisory Group (AG) was formed in June 2021 to discuss metadata issues related to preprints. It has the following aims...

A comment on “For NGOs, article-processing charges sap conservation funds” by Wood et al.

Background: Digital tools that support open science practices play a key role in the seamless accumulation, archiving and dissemination of scholarly data, outcomes and conclusions. Despite their integration into open science practices, the providence and design of these digital tools are rarely explicitly scrutinized. This means that influential factors, such as the funding models of the parent organizations, their geographic location, and the dependency on digital infrastructures are rarely considered. Suggestions from literature and anecdotal evidence already draw attention to the impact of these factors, and raise the question of whether the open science ecosystem can realise the aspiration to become a truly “unlimited digital commons” in its current structure. Methods: In an online research approach, we compiled and analysed the geolocation, terms and conditions as well as funding models of 242 digital tools increasingly being used by researchers in various disciplines. Results: Our findings indicate that design decisions and restrictions are biased towards researchers in North American and European scholarly communities. In order to make the future open science ecosystem inclusive and operable for researchers in all world regions including Africa, Latin America, Asia and Oceania, those should be actively included in design decision processes. Conclusions: Digital open science tools carry the promise of enabling collaboration across disciplines, world regions and language groups through responsive design. We therefore encourage long term funding mechanisms and ethnically as well as culturally inclusive approaches serving local prerequisites and conditions to tool design and construction allowing a globally connected digital research infrastructure to evolve in a regionally balanced manner.

AfricArXiv is a community-led digital archive for African research working towards building an Africa-owned open scholarly repository; a knowledge commons of African scholarly works. We are partnering with established scholarly repository services to provide a platform for African scientists of any discipline to present their research findings and connect with other researchers – on the African continent and globally. It is our aim to promote discoverability of African research output according to sfDORA : https://sfdora.org/read/ FAIR principles: https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/ Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism: https://www.helsinki-initiative.org/en To contextualize the above to the African scholarly community we have postulated 10 African Principles for Open Access in Scholarly Communication: https://info.africarxiv.org/african-oa-principles/

An enormous wealth of digital tools now exists for collaborating on scholarly research projects. In particular, it is now possible to collaboratively author research articles in an openly participatory and dynamic format. Here we describe and provide recommendations for a more open process of digital collaboration, and discuss the potential issues and pitfalls that come with managing large and diverse authoring communities. We summarize our personal experiences in a form of ‘ten simple recommendations’. Typically, these collaborative, online projects lead to the production of what we here introduce as Massively Open Online Papers (MOOPs). We consider a MOOP to be distinct from a ‘traditional’ collaborative article in that it is defined by an openly participatory process, not bound within the constraints of a predefined contributors list. This is a method of organised creativity designed for the efficient generation and capture of ideas in order to produce new knowledge. Given the diversity of potential authors and projects that can be brought into this process, we do not expect that these tips will address every possible project. Rather, these tips are based on our own experiences and will be useful when different groups and communities can uptake different elements into their own workflows. We believe that creating inclusive, interdisciplinary, and dynamic environments is ultimately good for science, providing a way to exchange knowledge and ideas as a community. We hope that these Recommendations will prove useful for others who might wish to explore this space.

Proceedings of Open Practices IN Education (OPINE) - Research Symposium, 14-15 November 2019, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. A Leibniz Research Alliance Open Science event, https://zenodo.org/communities/lfvos

There is no clear-cut boundary between Free and Open Source Software and Open Scholarship, and the histories, practices, and fundamental principles between the two remain complex. In this study, we critically appraise the intersections and differences between the two movements. Based on our thematic comparison here, we conclude several key things. First, there is substantial scope for new communities of practice to form within scholarly communities that place sharing and collaboration/open participation at their focus. Second, Both the principles and practices of FOSS can be more deeply ingrained within scholarship, asserting a balance between pragmatism and social ideology. Third, at the present, Open Scholarship risks being subverted and compromised by commercial players. Fourth, the shift and acceleration towards a system of Open Scholarship will be greatly enhanced by a concurrent shift in recognising a broader range of practices and outputs beyond traditional peer review and research articles. In order to achieve this, we propose the formulation of a new type of institutional mandate. We believe that there is substantial need for research funders to invest in sustainable open scholarly infrastructure, and the communities that support them, to avoid the capture and enclosure of key research services that would prevent optimal researcher behaviours. Such a shift could ultimately lead to a healthier scientific culture, and a system where competition is replaced by collaboration, resources (including time and people) are shared and acknowledged more efficiently, and the research becomes inherently more rigorous, verified, and reproducible.

Preprints (early, complete versions of manuscripts made available online before journal-organized peer review) are shifting the scholarly publishing model by accelerating open access and, potentially, open review. Making these tools interoperable with preprint infrastructure will increase the confidence of the scientific community in preprints. In addition, it will influence commercial publishing services to embrace new business models to innovate towards openness.OSF Preprints is open-source software maintained by the Center for Open Science (COS). OSF Preprints hosts 26 community-run services, providing the ideal conditions to integrate with open review platforms such as Peer Community In (PCI), PREreview, and Hypothes.is and to assess whether a fully open model can compete with and disrupt scholarly publishing across disciplines. We integrated hypothes.is and now propose to add the other platforms.With support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, we are investigating how to improve trust in preprints with signals of credibility to improve chances that an open model can innovate scholarly publishing. Making those signals standard, interoperable, and machine-readable with validation will facilitate adoption and impact. We propose to build open-source open science badges for preprints to be interoperable with other scholarly publishing platforms.In 2020, COS advanced its sustainability plan for the preprints infrastructure with a distributed cost model for the shared infrastructure. Six of the services primarily serve under-resourced scholarly communities in the developing world. We request the costs for maintenance of those services for 2020 to extend their opportunity to develop institutional support for sustaining their services.

Presentation about Open Science in Medical Research as part of the Open Day within the Erasmus Mundus FetalMed-PhD Summer School 2019, Barcelona, Spain For more details visit https://www.eventbrite.es/e/open-science-em-fetalmed-phd-summer-school-2019-tickets-66206221591

Handelte es sich bei dem Beitrag des Präsidenten der Freien Universität Berlin Günther M. Ziegler “Die Bedeutung der Verlage wandelt sich” wieder nur um ein “Loblied auf “Open Access" als Zukunft des wissenschaftlichen Publizierens”? Diesen Vorwurf jedenfalls machte Wolfgang Sander dem Präsidenten in seinem kurzen Kommentar vom 12. Juni 2019. Doch nicht in jeder Kürze liegt immer auch Würze: Die von Sander vorgetragenen, aber kaum näher begründeten Vorbehalte gegen Open Access sind, wie im Folgenden ausgeführt, nicht stichhaltig. Auf das von Ziegler beschriebene und kritisierte Geschäftsmodell wissenschaftlicher Verlage geht Sander mit keinem Wort ein. Stattdessen werden - wie so oft in der Debatte um Open Access - pauschal die Langzeitarchivierung und die Frage der Publikationskosten als ungelöste oder gar unlösbare Probleme angeführt. Die Autor*innen dieser Erwiderung nehmen im Folgenden zu diesen Fragen Stellung.

The changing world of scholarly communication and the emerging new wave of ‘Open Science’ or ‘Open Research’ has brought to light a number of controversial and hotly debated topics. Evidence-based rational debate is regularly drowned out by misinformed or exaggerated rhetoric, which does not benefit the evolving system of scholarly communication. This article aims to provide a baseline evidence framework for ten of the most contested topics, in order to help frame and move forward discussions, practices, and policies. We address issues around preprints and scooping, the practice of copyright transfer, the function of peer review, predatory publishers, and the legitimacy of ‘global’ databases. These arguments and data will be a powerful tool against misinformation across wider academic research, policy and practice, and will inform changes within the rapidly evolving scholarly publishing system., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

The changing world of scholarly communication and the emergence of ‘Open Science’ or ‘Open Research’ has brought to light a number of controversial and hotly-debated topics. Yet, evidence-based rational debate is regularly drowned out by misinformed or exaggerated rhetoric, which does not benefit the evolving system of scholarly communication. The aim of this article is to provide a baseline evidence framework for ten of the most contested topics, in order to help frame and move forward discussions, practices and policies. We address preprints and scooping, the practice of copyright transfer, the function of peer review, and the legitimacy of ‘global’ databases. The presented facts and data will be a powerful tool against misinformation across wider academic research, policy and practice, and may be used to inform changes within the rapidly evolving scholarly publishing system.

Germ cells are a population of cells that do not differentiate to form somatic tissue but form the egg and sperm that ensure the reproduction of the organism. To understand how germ cells form, holds a key for identifying what sets them apart from all other cells of the organism. There are large differences between embryos regarding where and when germ cells form but the expression of Vasa protein is a common trait of germ cells. We studied the role of vasa during germ cell formation in the crustacean Parhyale hawaiensis. In a striking difference to the posterior specification of the group of germ cells in the arthropod model Drosophila, all germ cells in Parhyale originate from a single germ line progenitor cell of the 8-cell stage. We found vasa RNA ubiquitously distributed from I-cell to 16-cell stage in Parhyale and localized to the germ cells from 32-cell stage onwards. Localization of vasa RNA to the germ cells is controlled by its 3'UTR and this could be mimicked by fluorescently labeled 3'UTR RNA. Vasa protein was first detectable at the 100-cell stage. MO-mediated inhibition of vasa translation caused germ cells to die after gastrulation. This means that in Parhyale Vasa protein is not required for the initial generation of the clone of germ cells but is required for their subsequent Proliferation and maintenance. It also means that the role of vasa changed substantially during an evolutionary switch in the crustaceans by Parhyale from the specification of a group of germ cells to that of a single germ line progenitor. This is the first functional study of vasa in an arthropod beyond Drosophila. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The arthropod cuticle is a multilayered extracellular matrix produced by the epidermis during embryogenesis and moulting. Molecularly and histologically, cuticle differentiation has been extensively investigated in the embryo of the insect Drosophila melanogaster. To learn about the evolution of cuticle differentiation, we have studied the histology of cuticle differentiation during embryogenesis of the amphipod crustacean Parhyale hawaiensis, which had a common ancestor with Drosophila about 510 million years ago. The establishment of the layers of the Parhyale juvenile cuticle is largely governed by mechanisms observed in Drosophila, e.g. as in Drosophila, the synthesis and arrangement of chitin in the inner procuticle are separate processes. A major difference between the cuticle of Parhyale and Drosophila concerns the restructuring of the Parhyale dorsal epicuticle after deposition. In contrast to the uniform cuticle of the Drosophila larva, the Parhyale cuticle is subdivided into two regions, the ventral and the dorsal cuticles. Remarkably, the boundary between the ventral and dorsal cuticles is sharp suggesting active extracellular regionalisation. The present analysis of Parhyale cuticle differentiation should allow the characterisation of the cuticle-producing and -organising factors of Parhyale (by comparison with the branchiopod crustacean Daphnia pulex) in order to contribute to the elucidation of fundamental questions relevant to extracellular matrix organisation and differentiation.

Clotting is critical in limiting loss of hemolymph and initiating wound healing in insects as well as in vertebrates [1]. Clotting is also an important immune defense, quickly forming a secondary barrier to infection, thereby immobilizing, and possibly killing bacteria directly [2, 3]. Here, we describe methods to assess clotting and to extract the clot from Drosophila larval hemolymph by using aggregation of paramagnetic beads. The validity of the assay was demonstrated by characterization of mutants. We show that clotting occurs in the absence of phenoloxidase and that the Drosophila clot binds bacteria. We also describe a pullout assay to purify the clot as a whole, free from entrapped hemocytes and cellular debris. Proteins subsequently identified by mass spectrometry include both predicted and novel clot proteins. Immune induction has been shown for three of the latter, namely Tiggrin and two unknown proteins (GC15825 and CG15293) [4, 5] that we now propose function in hemolymph clotting. The most abundant clot protein is Hemolectin [6], and we confirm that hemolectin mutant larvae show clotting defects.

A review of the events surrounding the Heinsberg Study in Germany and the lessons learned for open science practices and communications.