University of Oxford

David M. Shotton

OpenCitations is proud to be part of the launch of the Initiative for
Open Abstracts, a new cross-publisher initiative calling for the
unrestricted availability of abstracts to boost the discovery of
research.

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<p>We’re thrilled to announce the launch of the Initiative for Open
Abstracts, a new initiative that calls for unrestricted availability of
abstracts to boost the discovery of research <a
href="https://t.co/P0pnHVx7V4">https://t.co/P0pnHVx7V4</a> <a
href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/I4OA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#I4OA</a>
<a href="https://t.co/nxdyZ23fJV">pic.twitter.com/nxdyZ23fJV</a></p>
<p>— Initiative for Open Abstracts (@open_abstracts) <a
href="https://twitter.com/open_abstracts/status/1308984744080740352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September
24, 2020</a></p>
</blockquote>
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The Initiative for Open Abstracts (I4OA), launched on September 24th,
calls on all scholarly publishers to open their abstracts, and
specifically to deposit them with Crossref, in order to facilitate
large-scale access and promote discovery of critical research.

Making abstracts openly available helps scholarly publishers to maximize
the visibility and reach of their journals and books. Open abstracts
make it easier for scholars to discover, read and then cite these
publications; promotes their inclusion in systematic reviews; expands
and simplifies the use of text mining, natural language processing and
artificial intelligence techniques in bibliometric analyses; and
facilitates scholarship across all disciplines by those without
subscription access to commercial bibliographic services.

Many abstracts are already available in various bibliographic databases,
but these sources have limitations, for example because they require a
subscription, are not machine-accessible, or are restricted to a
specific discipline. I4OA thus calls on all scholarly publishers using
Crossref DOIs to make their abstracts openly available by depositing
them with Crossref. This can be done as part of established workflows
that publishers already have in place for submitting publication
metadata to Crossref.

As detailed on the I4OA web site at
[https://i4oa.org](https://i4oa.org/), 40 publishers have already agreed
to support I4OA and to make their abstracts openly available. I4OA is
also supported by 56 other stakeholders including research funders,
libraries and library associations, infrastructure providers, and open
science organizations, demonstrating the importance and relevance of
this Initiative to the scholarly community. The launch press release is
available at <https://i4oa.org/press.html#pressrelease>.

I4OA was inspired by the success of the Initiative for Open Citations
(I4OC, <https://i4oc.org/>), which encourages the submission of
references to Crossref. Since the launch of I4OC in 2017, over two
thousand scholarly publishers have chosen to make the reference lists of
their journal articles and book chapters openly available through
Crossref. I4OA aims to replicate the success of I4OC by achieving a
rapid jump in the open availability of scholarly abstracts via Crossref.

Further information may be obtained from the I4OA web site at
[[https://i4oa.org]{.underline}](https://i4oa.org/), from the I4OA
poster at <https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4047454>, by attending the
free I4OA launch webinar on October 5th 2020 at 4 pm CEST (register at
<https://tinyurl.com/i4oa-webinar>), by emailing Professor Ludo Waltman
(CWTS, Leiden University; coordinator of I4OA) at
[[openabstracts@gmail.com]{.underline}](mailto:openabstracts@gmail.com),
or by following [@open_abstracts](https://twitter.com/open_abstracts) on
Twitter.


OpenCitations is proud to be part of the launch of the Initiative for Open Abstracts, a new cross-publisher initiative calling for the unrestricted availability of abstracts to boost the discovery of research.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

The Initiative for Open Abstracts is launched