2015 kicked off with good news about Nature Publishing Group’s increased commitment towards Open Access, the launch of Frontiers’ research impact social network, Loop, and seven more cool developments in the world of Open Science and altmetrics. Read on!

Nature Publishing Group’s OA journals go CC-BY

Twenty Open Access journals published by Nature Publishing Group recently made the move to offering CC-BY by default. Previously, CC-BY-NC was the default license available for most NPG OA journals, and many authors had to pay higher article processing charges to use a CC-BY license. We applaud this move, which was one of many towards Open Access that NPG made in 2014. For more information, read Claire Calder’s recap of her team’s efforts on the Of Schemes and Memes blog.

How to pay for Gold Open Access fees, even if you’re not well-funded

Self-described “scientific have-not” Zen Faulkes recently blogged about the many strategies he uses to pay for the article processing charges (APCs) his Open Access publications incur.  They include: finding OA journals that waive APCs, petitioning his department chair, and sometimes asking co-authors at other institutions to cover the costs. It’s a great read for anyone concerned about making their work Open Access who lacks grant funding to cover the fees. Read the full list on Dr. Zen’s blog.

Elsevier acquires news monitoring service NewsFlo

Elsevier announced their acquisition of NewsFlo this month. The news monitoring service–which mines over 50,000 news outlets for mentions of research articles–will be integrated into reference management and social bookmarking site Mendeley. This partnership will pave the way for new altmetrics reports for articles and other content added to the platform. Currently, Altmetric.com is the only altmetrics aggregator that reports mainstream media mentions. More information on the acquisition can be found on TechCrunch.

Other open science & research metrics news

• Altmetrics strategy meeting recap available for all to read: In December, altmetrics researchers and organizations from around the world convened at the PLOS headquarters in San Francisco to discuss ways to improve metrics for all. A report of the meeting’s results is now available on Figshare.

• Frontiers launches new research impact social network, Loop: Loop is designed to bring together download and pageview metrics from a variety of publisher and academic websites into a researcher-centered profile. (Currently, these metrics are only sourced from Nature Publishing Group and Frontiers journals.) Researchers can follow each others’ profiles to get updates on new publications, and authors’ research networks (sourced from article co-author lists) can be easily explored. The free service plans to monetize in the future by possibly selling ads or selling its users’ data to advertisers. You can learn more about the service on the Loop website.

• The many ways in which researchers use the scientific literature (hint: it ain’t only about citations): Paleontologist Andy Farke shared how he uses articles in his day-to-day work, and (not surprisingly) “citing in his own papers” isn’t high on the list. Instead, he uses articles to inform his teaching, when reviewing manuscripts, to help prepare him for talking to the public and the media about newly published studies, and more. So why then does academia value citations over the other ways we can measure articles’ use? Read Andy’s full list on his blog.

• Impactstory Advisor of the Month, Chris Chan, on the library’s role in scholcomm innovations: We recently chatted with Chris on his work to bring ORCID to his campus, and what he thinks all librarians should do to foster the adoption of emerging scholarly communication technologies at their universities. Read the full interview on the Impactstory blog.

• New resources available for librarians interested in altmetrics: We recently published two LibGuides (one for researchers and one for librarians) that can help librarians do altmetrics outreach at their university. We’re also now hosting virtual “office hours”, where librarians can message Stacy (our Director of Marketing & Research who’s also an academic librarian) to chat and ask questions about altmetrics and Impactstory. And for those in search of altmetrics professional development opportunities, Library Juice Academy is hosting an altmetrics & bibliometrics course.

• 85% of research data is uncited & only 4-9% have altmetrics: a new study digs deep into citations and altmetrics for research data. Read the full study on Arxiv.

Want updates like these as-they-happen? Follow us on Twitter! In addition to open science and altmetrics news, you can also get Impactstory news–the only altmetrics non-profit.