Since The Electrochemical Society’s inception in 1902, the Society has stood for the advancement of electrochemical and solid state science and technology. As part of this mission, ECS is working to Free the Science by making all content from ECS journals free and fully accessible to the public: an initiative that is gaining traction and attention in the scholarly publishing community.

UCL’s Town Hall meeting on Plan S

On January 8, the University College London (UCL) held a town hall meeting to discuss the principles of Plan S, a plan that supports open access initiatives like Free the Science, which aims to make all research funded by public grants provided by cOAlition S funders openly available by 2020.

The plan has since received some backlash and concerns from the academic and scholarly publishing communities, including UCL, the host of the Plan S discussion. (more…)

Since 2018, all the members of the German consortium of The Electrochemical Society led by the Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) – German National Library of Science and Technology have benefited from a special publishing option: ECS grants all institutions participating in its program an unlimited number of article processing charge (APC) credits. This allows all scientists affiliated with participating institutions to publish open access articles in ECS journals free of charge. (more…)

When ECS launched the Free the Science initiative, the Society made a commitment to constructive, industry-wide disruption based on a simple tenet—research should be free for authors to publish and free for readers to access.

Already the initiative has had momentous impact.

Since ECS began offering open access as a publishing option in 2014, over 35% of its journal articles have been published open access. Over 90% of those articles were published at no cost to authors, thanks to the over $2.1 million in article processing charge credits the Society provided.

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With top academic publishers like Elsevier holding a 35-40% profit margin and for-profit academic publishers earning $25.2 billion a year, Jason Schmitt began to wonder about the consequences of paywalls on access to scientific research. His questions led to his October 2018 documentary film, Paywall: The Business of Scholarship, where he questioned publishing practices and the public’s limited access to information.

According to IMDb, while filming, Schmitt says he was struck by the global energy and enthusiasm toward open access and the strong resistance to the movement by many of the world’s top publishers. “Further, I found that the funds paid to academic publishers are heavily burdening the higher education market, contributing to the rising tuition fees at all universities, the closure of many institutions and, ultimately, limiting science and progress.” (more…)

During International Open Access Week 2018 (October 22-28), an event organized by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), the Society took down the paywall to the ECS Digital Library for the fourth consecutive year, making over 141,000 scientific articles and abstracts free and accessible to everyone.

If you participated in the event, please take a moment to tell us more about your experience.

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In honor of International Open Access Week, from October 22-18, The Scholarly Kitchen wrote a two-part series focusing on both publishers and researchers from disadvantaged global research landscapes. The following publishers and researchers share their thoughts, concerns, successes, and setbacks on their journey to complete access for all. (more…)

Free download of over 141,000 articles and abstracts.

ECS is celebrating International Open Access Week by giving the world a preview of what complete open access to peer-reviewed scientific research will look like. This year’s theme is “Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge.” ECS is taking down the paywall October 22-28 from the entire ECS Digital Library, making over 141,000 scientific articles and abstracts free and accessible to everyone.

This is the fourth consecutive year ECS will take down its paywalls during Open Access Week, an annual event organized by SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. Eliminating the paywall during Open Access Week allows ECS to give the world a preview of the potential of its Free the Science initiative.

Free the Science is ECS’s move toward a future that embraces open science to further advance research in our field. This is a long-term vision for transformative change in the traditional models of communicating scholarly research. ECS last opened its digital library in April 2018 for the second Free the Science Week.

“ECS is working to disseminate scientific research to the broadest possible audience without barriers,” says Mary Yess, ECS chief content officer/publisher. “Through Open Access Week, we’re able to once again highlight a new scholarly publishing model that promotes authors and the science they do.”

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ECS trading cards recognize some of the top female scientists in the field.

Change isn’t easy. For women, it took lobbying, protests, campaigns, and even jail time to receive the right to vote. It wasn’t until August 26, 1920, when women’s fight for change finally paid off. The Nineteenth Amendment was added to the United States Constitution, giving women the right to vote as citizens of the United States, regardless of their sex. Today, we celebrate women, their achievements, and the continued need for change.

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ECS celebrates Krishnan (Raj) Rajeshwar, a professor, researcher, former Interface editor, and former ECS president, by honoring him, on the occasion of his 70th birthday, with a Journal of The Electrochemical Society focus issue on semiconductor electrochemistry and photoelectrochemistry.

Learn more.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to fundamental studies on electrochemistry, photoelectrochemistry, and semiconductor devices.

Raj has spent a great deal of his career focusing in on the understanding and application of semiconductor electrochemistry and photoelectrochemistry himself. His research also includes work in solar energy conversion, environmental chemistry, and more. It’s evident that Raj is passionate about his life’s work.

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Jan Talbot (center) with Wendy Coulson (left) and Nicole Pacheco (right), Talbot’s graduate students.

One of the pioneers for women in engineering, Jan Talbot retired from the University of California San Diego on July 1, 2018.

Talbot was one of two women in her chemical engineering class at Penn State University. In 1970, when she started her program, there were only seven women and nearly 3,000 men in engineering.

According to the National Science Foundation, in 1973, 576 women in the U.S. graduated with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. Two years later, Talbot was one of the 372 women that earned a master’s.

After completing her degrees at Penn State, she became one of two women in her class to graduate from the University of Minnesota in 1986 with a doctorate in engineering and one of 225 women to earn that degree in the whole country.

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