Climate Change AGU Publications Opens Science: Making Science Accessible and Equitable – GWC Mag gwcmagDecember 5, 2023065 views Editors’ Vox is a blog from AGU’s Publications Department. In 2023, the U.S. government’s Office of Science and Technology Policy announced the Year of Open Science as an initiative to increase focus on open and equitable research practices across various agencies. Globally, open science has long been advocated by policy priorities from organizations such as UNESCO through its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), SPARC, and many others. AGU joins in acknowledging 2023 as the Year of Open Science and affirms our commitment to making Earth and space sciences more accessible and transparent for years to come. In fact, we have been working for many years to make our content more accessible, equitable, and collaborative, with a focus on solving critical societal issues. Here we highlight our efforts to increase access to research and data, expand geoscience applications to communities, and increase participation in the publication process. Measuring progress towards open science Over the past five years, we’ve seen growth in open science indicators among AGU journals. Over the past five years, we’ve seen growth in open science indicators among AGU journals, as shown in Figure 1, with an increase in the proportion of: Articles published as open access in both open access journals and hybrid (subscription) journals from 20% in 2019 to 70% in 2023 year to date. Articles published with an in-text data citation. Published articles with pre-prints in ESS Open Archive. Figure 1: Proportion of articles published annually with a) immediate open access b) in-text data citation and c) corresponding pre-print in ESS Open Archive. Increasing open access content The number of articles published as immediate open access continues to grow, as shown in Figure 2. We continue to convert subscription journals to fully open access, while our publishing partner, Wiley, continues to sign Transformational Agreements with institutions around the world. As of June 2023, there are 76+ agreements covering researchers from 2,400+ institutions. Figure 2: Number of AGU journal articles published annually with immediate open access in both hybrid journals (bottom, dark blue) and open access journals (top, grey). Articles published in open access journals are referred to as “gold” open access; articles published open access in our subscription journals are called “hybrid” open access. In addition to publishing immediate open access articles, we provide access in other ways. For example, once an article is two years old, it becomes free to read, known as “bronze” open access. Also, authors may post articles to repositories before or during review, at acceptance, and after publication; these preprints and self-archived versions are referred to as “green” open access. Our policies on this type of access are explained in our Publications Policies (see “Preprints and Self-Archiving”). All open access types combined, 89% of our content published between 2017 and 2022 is free to read (as of August 2023). Figure 3 provides details on the breakdown by open type in the AGU portfolio. A high proportion of our older content is free-to-read due to our rolling open policy. Figure 3: Open access articles in AGU journals showing the proportion of each open access type as of August 2023: hybrid (blue), repository or preprint (green), open access journals (gold), free-to-read (bronze). Greatly increasing the proportion of AGU articles published immediate open access was Geophysical Research Letters’ transition to open access in 2023, as GRL accounts for 22% of AGU’s published articles. In 2024, Water Resources Research transitions to open access, and since this journal publishes 8% of AGU articles, this will further accelerate our transition to open. Any new journals we launch will be gold open access from the outset. Supporting authors with publication costs Publishers and institutions are working to make it easier for authors to publish their research open access. Transformational Agreements are an increasingly common way for publication fees to be covered. They involve a publisher, such as AGU’s partner, Wiley, working directly with institutions and consortia to pay publication fees for all affiliated authors. In 2021, 15% of author fees were paid through transformational agreements; this increased to 24% in 2022, and we’re expecting to see even more growth in articles paid through transformational agreements by the end of 2023. AGU also participates in Research4Life , which allows authors from lower-income countries to publish for free. In 2021, we provided 39 waivers to Research4Life authors; this grew to 99 in 2022. With equity at the forefront of AGU’s publishing approach, all accepted articles will be published regardless of the author’s ability to pay fees. Not all authors can rely on transformational agreements or Research4Life to support publication fees. With equity at the forefront of AGU’s publishing approach, all accepted articles will be published regardless of the author’s ability to pay fees. Our various funding support for authors includes full waivers for our open access and hybrid journals. A new open access opportunity with books Open access is not just for journals. We tested how the fully open access model could work for books through two pilots (published 2020 and 2021) and a special report. The books were a proven success with, on average, 2.5 times more online usage and 2.5 times more citations than comparable books in the same series published around the same time. In October 2023 we launched a new open access book series, GeoHorizons, in collaboration with The Geological Society. We will be commissioning new books focused on solution-based science and addressing the many challenges facing humanity and the environment, especially those related to climate change and sustainable development. Early sharing supports open science The community and preprint server that AGU shares with six other professional societies, ESS Open Archive, is yet another way for Earth and space scientists to accelerate open sharing of their work. Researchers can share accepted journal articles, book chapters, and conference posters, on the ESS Open Archive. In 2019, about 700 research outputs were added to the server; by September 2023 it had grown to almost 14,000 research outputs. This growth is shown in Figure 4. AGU authors can easily upload their journal article as a preprint to ESS Open Archive via the integrated functionality in our manuscript submission system. Figure 4: Cumulative count of Earth and Space Science Open Archive content pieces available each year. Encouraging open data and software AGU is also committed to increasing the accessibility of data and software underlying our publications. FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data furthers reproducibility, increases transparency, and allows scientists to build upon data already collected. This enables them to more effectively contribute solutions to societal issues. In January 2022, AGU began a data citation pilot that asked journal authors to deposit related data in a community-accepted repository, include a data availability statement in the Open Research section of the article, and include a citation to the deposited data in the references section, which enables creators of datasets and software to receive citations to their work. Since implementing the policy, ~99% of all research articles in AGU journals now include a data availability statement. This is shown in Figure 5, along with the increase in the frequency of data citations in-text and in the references section. We’re starting to request proper citation of data and an availability statement in AGU books too. Figure 5: Proportion of AGU journal articles published each year with a data availability statement, in-text citation to data, and reference supporting data. Geoscience supports communities and sustainable development Open science makes research more actionable, and actionable science helps communities solve problems. One way we manifest our commitment to actionable science is by hosting the Community Science Exchange, the outcome of a partnership with six other societies. The co-production of knowledge, a concept central to community science, involves communities in the research process and is explored in-depth in this Practice Report by Karen Akerlof and colleagues —the first article in a special collection on equity in co-production. The Community Science Exchange has two aspects. The peer-reviewed journal Community Science is a place for researchers and practitioners of community science to publish their research and case studies. The online Community Science Exchange Hub is a platform where anyone working in community science can share their work, offer insights, learn from others, and find people with similar interests. In 2023, AGU signed the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals Publisher’s Compact to declare our commitment to publishing more content relating to addressing the Sustainable Development Goals. We have started tracking and showcasing journal articles of relevance, whether to issues of climate, renewable energy, biodiversity, or public health. Opening and expanding participation in science Open science is inclusive science; if we’re committed to open science, we must support diversifying the voices contributing to research and the publication process. In some cases, change starts from the top: Editors and associate editors are now from more non-U.S. institutions than U.S. institutions, as shown in Figure 6, and more women are participating, as shown in Figure 7. In 2023, we reached gender parity with our editors-in-chief and the proportion of women serving as editors and associate editors also increased (gender is self-reported). Figure 6: Region of editor and associate editor institution by year active shown as a proportional of total. Figure 7: Proportion of female editors serving on AGU journals and books each year shown by role type (editor-in-chief, editor, and associate editor). Proportion calculation (denominator) includes editors and AEs with unknown gender. To expand participation among reviewers, AGU offers a co-review option in all journals. Co-reviewing allows the senior scientist invited to review to include a junior scientist, graduate student, or early career researcher in the process. AGU has logged over 700 co-reviews since the program began in 2021, which we have reported in detail in this piece. This means more voices participate in the scientific publication process while also training the next generation of reviewers. The ways in which science can be made more open and accessible are numerous and AGU continues to expand in this way beyond just removing article paywalls. Open science is access to publishing regardless of someone’s ability to pay. Open science is preprint availability. Open science is freely available data that spurs additional scientific discovery. So much of AGU’s ever-growing body of content is accessible thanks to our various policies and our transitions to open access. We will continue to work towards open and equitable science in the Earth and space science community, tracking the results of our commitment, and identifying new and innovative ways to support accessible and equitable science in our community. —Paige Wooden (pwooden@agu.org; 0000-0001-5104-8440); Jenny Lunn (0000-0002-4731-6876); Kristina Vrouwenvelder (0000-0002-5862-2502); Margaret Moerchen (0000-0003-2743-0943); Mia Ricci (0000-0002-8789-0565); Matthew Giampoala (0000-0002-0208-2738); and Brian Sedora (0000-0003-0825-5967), Publications Department, American Geophysical Union Citation: Wooden, P., J. Lunn, K. Vrouwenvelder, M. Moerchen, M. Ricci, M. Giampoala, and B. Sedora (2023), AGU Publications opens science: making science accessible and equitable, Eos, 104, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023EO235035. Published on 5 December 2023. This article does not represent the opinion of AGU, Eos, or any of its affiliates. It is solely the opinion of the author(s). Text © 2023. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited. Related