Three new Editors’ Choice articles have been published recently in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society (JES) and ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology (JSS).

An Editors’ Choice article is a special designation applied by the Journals’ Editorial Board to any article type. Editors’ Choice articles are transformative and represent a substantial advance or discovery, either experimental or theoretical. The work must show a new direction, a new concept, a new way of doing something, a new interpretation, or a new field, and not merely preliminary data.

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Nobel laureates are speaking out on immigration policies, highlight their own status as immigrants and the importance of open boarders to advance science. Of the year’s Nobel Prize winners, six affiliated with U.S. universities are immigrants.

Across the globe, many countries have been discussing and legislating new immigration policies that make it more difficult to travel from place to place. These immigration conversations have led to moves such as the UK’s Brexit, Hungary’s attempts to keep “outsiders” from crossing its boarder, and U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall on the U.S./Mexico border.

Research conducted in late 2015 revealed that as immigration policies harden globally, scientists in the developing world are caught in the crosshairs, causing innovation and research to suffer.

“I think the resounding message that should go out all around the world is that science is global,” James Fraser Stoddart, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and a professor at Northwestern University, who was born in Scotland, told The Hill. “It’s particularly pertinent to have these discussions in view of the political climate on both sides of the pond at the moment…. I think the United States is what it is today largely because of open borders.”

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ECS shows its vision for the future of academic publishing

ECS is celebrating Open Access Week this year by giving the world a preview of what complete open access will look like. From October 24th through October 30th, we are taking down the paywall to the ECS Digital Library, making over 132,000 scientific articles and abstracts free and accessible to anyone.

Eliminating the paywall during Open Access Week is a preview of ECS’s Free the Science initiative; a business-model changing plan with the goal of making the entire ECS Digital Library open access by 2024. ECS believes that the opening and democratizing of this information will lead to rapid advances in discoveries ranging from renewable energy to clean water and sanitation.

“ECS has one core goal: to disseminate this scientific research to the broadest possible audience without barriers,” says Mary Yess, ECS Deputy Executive Director and Chief Content Officer. “The research of our authors has the ability to address some of the most critical issues across the globe, and we believe paywalls should not impede progress.”

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Open Access Week is fast upon us, and this year’s theme is “Open in Action.” ECS’s participation in Open Access Week is a preview of our vision to Free the Science, a future where authors can publish with us for free and readers can access our Digital Library without paywalls (find out more about what we’re doing to celebrate).

In the spirit of this year’s theme, ECS has created a list  of “action items” to help you make the most of the week:

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The last week of October is International Open Access Week. As ECS did last year, we are celebrating by giving the world a preview of what complete open access will look like when we have completed our Free the Science campaign. From October 24th through October 30th we are taking down the paywall to the ECS Digital Library. Over 132,000 articles will be freely available to anyone who wants to read them.

We had great success with this last year. During Open Access Week the Journal of The Electrochemical Society saw a 51% increase in usage.

Please spread the word. From October 24th through the 30th anyone will be able to read any of the content in our digital library for free.  We hope to make this the “norm” in the future through our Free the Science initiative.

At ECS, we offer your institution a subscription to ECS Plus, which gives your researchers access to a wealth of high-ranking, highly-cited research in electrochemistry and solid state science.

With ECS Plus, authors can publish an unlimited number of articles in our high-ranking journals (Journal of The Electrochemical Society and ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology) as Open Access, at no additional cost to them or your institution.

Please don’t hesitate to email Anna Olsen, Senior Content Associate and Library Liaison, with any questions you may have, or with your order!

Exciting news for PRiME 2016: Stop by the ECS Publication Booth for a chance to win 1 of 5 Open Access Credits! These credits may be used to publish your paper as OA in either JES or JSS.

Please stop by the ECS Publications Booth, located in the Honolulu Convention Center, Hall 2 Foyer, any time during Registration Hours and drop off your business card to enter the raffle. ECS will be raffling off 5 Open Access credits during the PRiME meeting (each credit is worth $800)!

Questions? Please email oa@electrochem.org and we’ll see you in Honolulu!

Scholarly publishing news has been buzzing about 1science’s recently published large-scale study on the impact of Open Access. This study analyzed more than 3 million papers and found that Open Access papers have a 50% greater citation advantage than papers in subscription-based journals.

Meanwhile, ECS has also been performing its own (much smaller-scale) research to confirm this hypothesis. In May 2015, ECS launched a study, led by Daniela Solomon, a librarian at Case Western Reserve University, to examine the citation advantage for Open Access articles published in Journal of The Electrochemical Society (JES).

The study looks at both downloads and citations of articles published in a single volume of JES. This brief note outlines the results at the end of one year; however, we consider these results preliminary as we will continue to run the study for another year.

We will publish our findings again when the study closes: in the meantime we’d be interested in hearing your comments and thoughts on our findings so far.

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Children struggle to learn when they don’t have science labs and libraries. Learning becomes difficult in classrooms that are falling apart, or where children are expected to sit on the floor because they have neither desks nor chairs.

A lack of infrastructure is just one contributor to South Africa’s entrenched and ongoing educational inequality. There is another, less frequently discussed issue that is deepening this inequality: access to quality peer-reviewed information.

Such information should be available to all South Africans whether they are school children, university students, researchers or citizen scientists. This will encourage lifelong self-learning. It will spur continued research and innovation. Access to information can bolster education, training, empowerment and human development.

International Open Access Week offers a good opportunity to explore how South Africa can improve its citizens’ access to information.

Opening up access

It has been more than 21 years since apartheid ended, but a distinction remains between South Africa’s “rich” and “poor” universities. One of the reasons for this distinction is the richer institutions’ ability to invest in research resources. They can afford expensive subscriptions to databases which contain a wealth of research – ironically funded by taxpayers’ money.

The historically disadvantaged and predominantly black universities can’t afford such subscriptions. Their academics also can’t contribute to such resources, because authors are expected to pay a fee for the “privilege” of being published.

As university budgets are slashed, even wealthier institutions are beginning to struggle with subscription and publication fee costs.

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There’s only one week left to enter ECS’s Open Access Week Competition! Don’t forget to submit your brief 200-400 word essay for a chance to win one of two cash prizes and additional funding for your ECS Student Chapter.

Prizes:

1st prize: $250 to the individual, $500 to the affiliated ECS Student Chapter*

2nd prize: $100 to the individual, $250 to the affiliated ECS Student Chapter*

*In the event that there is no affiliated ECS Student Chapter, this prize money will be donated to the ECS Free the Science Fund. If a report is written by more than one individual, any prize money will be shared equally between those individuals.

Submissions Open: August 8, 2016

Submissions Close: September 15, 2016 (DEADLINE EXTENDED!)

Download our poster promoting the competition to distribute on your campus.

Not interested in participating, but want to get involved? Check out the Open Access Week website for information or inspiration: http://www.openaccessweek.org/

RULES AND MORE INFORMATION 

SUBMIT NOW!