How do we make new waves in open science?
Building a future for scientific research that is truly open, equal and inclusive is possible, and you have a crucial part to play.
Open Access Week 2020 takes place 19–25 October. If open science is important to you, take a look at the different ways we are working to support openness, equity and inclusion in publishing – 2020’s theme.
Roheena Anand, our Head of Open Access Journals, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated a shift towards and more demand for Open Science, with greater acceptance and uptake around Open Access and Open Science methodology more widely – for example preprints and data sharing.
“Open Access Week gives us the opportunity to reflect on the OA activities we work on, with and for our community. OA facilitates the wider dissemination of chemical knowledge, one of our core Charter objectives, so it’s fundamental to helping us achieve our mission as a Learned Society, as that knowledge advances the chemical sciences for the benefit of science and humanity.”
Things to do in Open Access Week
Enjoy OA research highlights from Royal Society of Chemistry journals, handpicked by our editorial teams.
Join in with a Desktop Seminar hosted by our newest gold OA journal, Environmental Science: Atmospheres.
Help us celebrate Chemical Science’s 10th anniversary, and explore five years’ worth of articles from around the world that are free to read, and cost the authors nothing to publish. At the latest count there are more than 6,000 articles available open access.
Journals and tools to explore
RSC Advances is one of the largest open access chemistry journals in the world, with low article processing charges (APCs), discounts, and waivers to make publishing open access achievable.
Environmental Science: Atmospheres is the newest gold OA member of our portfolio – launched to bring the wider environmental science and climate change communities together. APCs are waived until mid-2023.
The introduction of transparent peer review for RSC Chemical Biology and Environmental Science: Atmospheres offers an additional level of openness to support research integrity and reproducibility.
ChemSpider is our free chemical structure database, providing fast text and structure search access to over 92 million structures from hundreds of data sources.
ChemRxiv, the dedicated preprint server for the chemical sciences, helps you rapidly disseminate findings via a forum that is free and globally accessible. Preprints on the server have been downloaded over 3 million times so far.
Remember, you can choose to publish open access in any RSC journal, not just our gold OA collection. If your institution has Read & Publish, your article processing charges will already be paid for any of our hybrid journals. You will also have automatic access to read every paper in our journal portfolio.
Committed to supporting you
This action plan for tackling gender bias in publishing stems from our recent analysis of our own publishing processes. By recognising and promoting the biases introduced at decision points in the publishing process, we have mobilised a group of major scientific publishers to agree to a framework for improvement.
After signing DORA in July, we are making a fresh assessment of our work based on the declaration’s principles.
Join the conversation
You can add your voice to the open science debate throughout Open Access Week and beyond by following @RoySocChem on social media and tweeting with #OAWeek and #ChemEquality.