A new online open access journal from Nature Publishing Group, Scientific Reports, is now live. The journal is a primary research publication covering all areas of the natural sciences. The APC for UK articles has been set at £1,112 (from January 2012). Scientific Reports will apply to be indexed in all relevant databases and repositories, and all content will be archived in PubMed Central.

We are looking to recruit experienced developers to join the Literature Services Team at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) to help deliver UK PubMed Central. This is a great opportunity to contribute to a core resource for biomedical researchers. The positions involve a range of activities, depending on where your experience lies. We require people who can demonstrate excellence in a variety of technical skills.

Text mining features in databases are an increasingly popular way to extract useful information that could otherwise remain hidden. A new resource has become available to allow researchers to search for particular chemical compounds in biomedical literature. This task is often confounded by multiple names for particular chemicals being used in publications.

Competition in open access publishing is increasing with the launch of two similarly named online open-access journals. Open Biology (Royal Society Publishing) will start receiving submissions this July whilst Biology Open (BiO; The Company of Biologists), discussed in the previous post, is set to launch in the autumn of 2011.

The Company of Biologists has announced BIOLOGY OPEN (BiO), a new online only, Open Access journal publishing original research across all aspects of the biological sciences including cell science, developmental biology and experimental biology. Launching in Autumn 2011, BiO aims to “ provide rapid publication for peer reviewed, scientifically sound observations and valid conclusions in these allied fields.

A report published today looking at how to improve access to academic literature suggests that open access is likely to have the greatest benefits to the UK scholarly communications system. Open access, whereby research outputs are made freely accessible to the widest possible audience, is an issue to which the Wellcome Trust is firmly committed. The Trust provides funding to its researchers to cover open access publishing costs.

BMJ Open – BMJ’s new online-only, open access journal – has been launched.

A presentation by Robert Kiley (Wellcome Trust) given at the annual conference of the Association of Subscription Agents and Intermediaries that looks at the Wellcome Trust experience with the author-pays, open access model. Looking at Wellcome-funded papers published in the quarter of 2010, Kiley calculates that the average cost of papers published under the author-pays model — either through a hybrid or full open access option – was $2,367.

Wiley have announced the launch of Wiley Open Access, a new publishing programme of open access journals.  The first three titles – Microbiology Open, Brain and Behavior and Ecology and Evolution – will all launch later in 2011.

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) have announced that they will be launching a fully open access journal  – Scientific Reports – in July 2011. Funded entirely through article process charges ($1350 per published article), Scientific Reports will publish “ original research papers of interest to specialists within a given field in the natural sciences.