Summer 2015 has been busy for CHORUS, as we continue to gain momentum by signing on more funders, partners, and members.
On August 18th the Smithsonian Institution released their Public Access Plan, naming CHORUS as an integral part of their solution. We signed a pilot project agreement with another federal agency, which we anticipate announcing very soon. We’ve been talking with several more government funders in and outside the US, as well as with global NGOs, about how we can work together to advance sustainable, cost-effective, and accountable public access.
Earlier this summer, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with ORCID to support discoverability in scholarly communications. Close collaboration among organizations like CHORUS and ORCID, which provide services that support the flow of research communications, is vital to evolving its interoperable, scalable, and sustainable infrastructure to meet the changing needs of the scholarly community.
More Members, More Content
CHORUS currently has 36 members (31 publishers and 5 affilliates). Since our last update, CHORUS has welcomed the following new members:
American Association of Physics Teachers
American Association of Physicists in Medicine
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
Society of Exploration Geophysicists
As publishers join and implement CHORUS, more content is ingested into our system — we are currently monitoring and auditing more than 156,000 articles reporting on funded research, 30,000 of which are already publicly accessible, and more are being added on a daily basis, CHORUS reports this data via 24 agency dashboards, which also provide access to each article we monitor. In the coming weeks, we’ll be adding a live dashboard to our homepage to report on this growth as it happens.
New Developments
Continuing technological developments are another essential factor in CHORUS’ growth. An important milestone was reached on August 1st when publisher member American Physical Society (APS) released its first wave of DOE-funded research articles, making them publicly accessible to non-subscribers through CHORUS, several months ahead of the DOE’s official October 1st start date. The articles released were published over one year ago; going forward APS will release about 150 to 200 articles each month as their embargoes expire. Other CHORUS publishers will soon follow APS’ lead.
CHORUS recently updated our Technical Implementation Guide. Version 2.0 gives many more specific examples of what publishers need to do when working with the CHORUS services. We plan to publish our Open APIs in the coming weeks. We are also considering some projects to make publicly accessible content and data more discoverable, and are participating in a number of collaborative data initiatives.
Innovation and collaboration are an essential component of CHORUS’ DNA, a role that was acknowledged by our inclusion as a finalist for the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2015. If you’re going to be at the ALPSP Conference, don’t miss David Crotty’s presentation about CHORUS on Wednesday, September 9, 2015.
Building a Solid Foundation
The recent and anticipated developments further strengthen CHORUS’ ability to advance sustainable, cost-effective, and transparent public access to content reporting on funded research. To recap some earlier achievements from our inaugural year:
- Signing a participation agreement with US DOE in April 2015
- Transitioning to a self-sustaining membership business model
- Launching CHORUS Dashboard (for funders and publishers) and Search services
- Coordinating our efforts with ORCID to promote the adoption of identifiers and standards to manage access to and reporting of research outputs
- Securing 501(c)(3) charitable designation from the US Internal Revenue Service, reinforcing the public benefit of our endeavor
CHORUS On the Road
ALPSP Conference, 9-11 September 2015 (London-Healthrow)
HighWire Fall Publishers’ Meeting (invitation only), 29-30 September 2015 (Washington, DC)
NISO Training Thursday, 1 October 2015 (webinar)
STM Annual Frankfurt Conference, 12-13 October 2015 (Frankfurt)
Charleston Conference, 4-7 November 2015 (Charleston)
XUG 2015, 12 November 2015 (Cambridge, MA)
CrossRef Annual Meeting 17-18 November 2015 (Boston)
UKSG Annual Conference and Exhibition 11-13 April 2016
Stay Tuned … It’s Going to Be a Busy Fall!
We’ll be back in touch in early September with information about our upcoming Annual Meeting and Board Election.
