As of this month, CHORUS is providing access to and information about tens of thousands of articles reporting on federally funded research. CHORUS was also named by the US Department of Energy as part of its public-access solution. The significant progress we’ve made in the eight months since we moved into full production mode is a great foundation for CHORUS to build on for the benefit of the scholarly community. This report is a summary of our achievements during this pivotal period.
Membership
CHORUS launched last summer with the support of over 100 signatories, representing the publishers and service providers who collectively produce the vast majority of peer-reviewed journal articles. Initial development was funded by contributions from non-profit and commercial publishers, as well as publishing services organizations and businesses; during October 2014, CHORUS raised a second round of contributions to cover costs. Many thanks to those who stepped up to underwrite our launch!
By next fall, ongoing costs will be covered by modest Publisher and Affiliate Memberships (CHORUS services are free to funding agencies, researchers, academic institutions, librarians, and the public.) We are soliciting new members to meet our ambitious goal and to build greater value for the research community. We are off to a good start with the following Publisher and Affiliate Members, more than two-thirds of whom are non-profit organizations (newest members are highlighted):
AAP/Professional & Scholarly Publishing
American Institute of Physics Publishing
American Psychological Association
American Society of Clinical Oncology
American Society of Plant Biologists
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Silverchair Science + Communications
Member logos are featured at the bottom of CHORUS’ homepage, and a complete list is also available on our website. Badges are available for Publisher and Affiliate members to post on their websites. Stay tuned for more membership announcements!
Member Services
The CHORUS Technical Working Group serves as a valuable peer-support network in which innovative ideas are developed and nurtured. CHORUS recently sponsored two Technical Implementation Workshops to familiarize new and potential members with what is involved in participation. We are planning another webinar soon – look for the announcement on our website.
A Rapidly Growing Wealth of Content
Member publishers are now routinely and systematically identifying content with CrossRef’s FundRef tags, adding reuse-license information and making content publicly available on their platforms. CHORUS audits about 75,000 member articles for public-access availability, of which 24,000 are already freely accessible to the public ahead of any mandate. The information is also reported on CHORUS agency dashboards, which monitor a variety of metrics.
Agencies
CHORUS is monitoring public access and preservation/archiving arrangements for tens of thousands of journal articles reporting on research funded by:
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Environmental Protection Agency,
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Institute of Standards and Technology
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
US Agency for International Development
US Department of Health and Human Services
US Department of Homeland Security
US Department of Transportation
CHORUS is actively working with the US Department of Energy (DOE) as they implement PAGES (Public Access Gateway for Energy & Science), their public-access infrastructure that will link to content on publishers’ sites. We are also collaborating with many more agencies that are in earlier phases of development. The announcement by the National Science Foundation (NSF) last week confirmed our discussions with agency officials that they will use the PAGES infrastructure and want to work with CHORUS and other third parties to minimize author burdens and duplications of versions. CHORUS was also named by NASA for potential second- phase collaboration and, to showcase the benefits of CHORUS’ cost-effective distributed-access approach, we are in the process of setting up proof-of-concept pilots with several agencies that have initially chosen solutions other than CHORUS. CHORUS monitors and reports on US Agency Public Access Plans. Check regularly for updates.
Charitable Designation
During October, CHORUS was granted 501(c)(3) status by the US Internal Revenue Service. The designation means that we meet the rigorous standards to qualify as charity organized and operated for the public benefit. It is an important affirmation of our mission to advance public access to funded research. Our charitable status means that donations to CHORUS are tax-deductible in the US to the extent permitted by law.
Preservation Partnerships
A unique CHORUS service is to enable perpetual public-access — not simply archiving and preservation, but brightening publicly accessible content if/when it becomes unavailable. CHORUS has special agreements in place with Portico and (as of March 2015) CLOCKSS to enable Publisher Members to ensure perpetual preservation and public access.
What’s Ahead?
CHORUS is exploring bi-directional article connections to data repositories by collaborating with an array of innovative, cooperative open-data initiatives. Executive Director Howard Ratner is involved with the CrossRef–DataCite Pilot, SHARE, and the RDA-WDS Publishing Data Services Working Group, and is CHORUS is in discussions with the RMap Project, Dataverse, figshare, and Dryad. We are open to having discussions with any organization interested in collaboration, so send them our way! Other projects under development include the flagging of the public-accessibility date on search results, adding links to related data, and developing dashboard services for publishers.
CHORUS On the Road
Since the fall, CHORUS has had a presence at events sponsored by AAP/PSP, ACRL-CHOICE, AIBS, ALPSP, APE, Charleston Conference, CrossRef, the Frankfurt Bookfair, HighWire, NFAIS, National Data Service, Portico, SHARE, and. STM. Come find us at one of these upcoming events:
1-2 April, London, UK: Research Councils UK, “Unlocking the future: Open Access communication in a global research environment”
21-23 April, Washington, D.C.: STM Annual US Conference 2015, “Disruption to Eruption: Accelerating the Advance of Scholarly Communications”
15 April, Paris, France: Groupe Français de l’Industrie de l’Information, Open Access
27-29 May, Washington, D.C.: Society for Scholarly Publishing 37th Annual Meeting, “The New Big Picture: Connecting Diverse Perspectives”
17-19 June, Geneva, Switzerland: CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communications (OAI9)
14-19 July, Norfolk,VA: CESSE Annual Meeting, “Leadership in A Connected World”
