Fostering a Climate of Open Science

OPEN ACCESS WEEK 2022 BLOG SERIES
Celebrate Open Access Week 2022 with ACS Publications
Fostering a Climate of Open Science
Open Access Copyright and Licensing: A Guide for Authors
The Journey to Open Access: Past and Present
Looking Ahead: The Future of Open Access

Open Access vs. Open Science—What’s the Difference?

“Open access” and “Open Science” are terms frequently used in the scientific and scholarly publishing communities, but they are not the same. Open access refers to the process of making research articles openly and freely available for anyone who wants to access them. However, it is just one piece of the Open Science puzzle.

Open Science describes a broad, collective movement with a goal of increasing transparency and access across all components of the research process beyond the traditional article—including open peer review, data repositories, scholarly communication, and much more. Open Science champions a globally inclusive landscape built on collaboration across academic fields and among researchers around the world.

ACS Publications is at the forefront of initiatives, products, and services supporting open access and the broader, ever-evolving Open Science landscape. Read below to learn more about our commitment to Open Science and the various resources available for our community.

ChemRxiv: Celebrating Five Years of Preprints

Launched in 2017, ChemRxiv serves as the primary preprint server for the global chemistry community. By allowing authors to share initial versions of their manuscripts online prior to formal peer review, ChemRxiv supports the Open Science goals of global collaboration and advancing scientific progress through the timely sharing of research.

Now in its fifth year, ChemRxiv is home to more than 14,000 unique preprints across all fields of chemistry, which have generated nearly 38 million views and downloads.

SciMeetings: Global Visibility Beyond the Conference

SciMeetings is an ACS platform that helps researchers easily and openly share their work presented at conferences and events. SciMeetings is an invaluable tool that offers worldwide visibility for conference posters and presentations, extending reach and impact beyond that of a typical week-long scientific meeting. All published items receive a DOI, enabling them to be easily cited by others.

More than 273,000 research items have been uploaded to SciMeetings since its launch in 2020, and the platform continues to grow and support researchers in alignment with Open Science goals.

Toward Greater Transparency in Peer Review

Peer review is an essential step in the publishing process, but it has traditionally existed as a confidential exchange between authors and reviewers. To support our commitment to Open Science objectives, ACS Publications launched a transparent peer review pilot in ACS Central Science and The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters in 2021, providing authors with the option to make their peer review correspondence publicly available (while still maintaining reviewer anonymity).

Transparent peer review allows readers and emerging researchers to gain a better understanding of an article’s journey through the peer review process, and it also upholds research integrity by instilling a higher level of accountability for authors, reviewers, and editors. To date, the transparent peer review pilot has resulted in more than 250 published papers with publicly available peer review correspondence.

Taking Data Sharing to a New Level

Around the same time as the 2021 transparent peer review pilot launch, ACS Publications also announced a new Research Data Policy aimed at establishing open data sharing as the eventual norm across all journals. At the initial Level 1 of this four-level policy, authors are strongly encouraged to make the data associated with their research openly available for ease of analysis, comparison, and even reproducibility by others in the field.

One year later, three journals decided it was time to level up. in September 2022, ACS Publications launched a new Data Availability Statement pilot for The Journal of Organic Chemistry, Organic Letters, and ACS Organic & Inorganic Au. These journals now fall under Level 2 of the Research Data Policy, which requires authors to submit a statement describing the availability status of all supporting data associated with the article’s results. Although still in its early days, this new pilot has great potential to lead more journals into further supporting Open Science through the public visibility and sharing of research data.

Our commitment to Open Science is ever-growing. If you are interested in learning more about how ACS Publications supports the Open Science movement, visit our all-new Open Science Resource Center to find out how you can take the next step toward making science more accessible for all.