Celebrating six years of Wellcome Open Research
| 24 April, 2023 | admin |
The end of 2022 marked six years of publishing on Wellcome Open Research – the innovative publishing Platform launched by Wellcome to support its grantees in publishing their findings openly and transparently.
In our blog, we explore the role of Wellcome Open Research in supporting Wellcome-funded researchers around the world and some of the key publishing highlights from the last six years.
Open research: a changing landscape
Wellcome Open Research was launched when open research and open access publishing was increasingly becoming embedded in global research practices.
Globally, there were 993,000 gold open access articles published in 2017 – rising to 1.8 million in 2021 and 2022, or an 81% increase.
On Wellcome Open Research alone, the number of published papers has risen from 121 in 2017 to 363 in 2021 and 315 in 2022. Wellcome Open Research has grown in strength over the last few years, and now represents six percent of all Wellcome-funded gold OA articles, remaining one of the top venues of choice for Wellcome researchers.
While some of that may be attributed to the so-called ‘Covid research spike’ over the last couple of years, it’s also clear that open access publishing continues to gain recognition and acceptance among researchers, funders, and institutions alike.
This is supported by widespread policy changes around the world, increasingly focusing on open access and open research within the scholarly community. Most recently in the US, for example, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Memo sparked renewed conversation around open access and open science, mandating that all federally funded research should be made freely accessible without an embargo.
In 2021, the UK Research and Innovation council introduced similar changes to its policy, furthering its existing commitment to open access by requiring immediate open publishing of research and introducing new requirements for data access statements.
Highlights from six years of publishing with Wellcome Open Research
Wellcome Open Research is a key component of Wellcome’s support for open research, providing a fully open access publishing venue for all Wellcome-funded research with no author-facing fees.
Supporting 11 different article types to enable researchers to publish their work at every stage of the research project, the Platform is underpinned by open data and open peer review, with a focus on research-level metrics rather than journal impact factors to help advance changes in research assessment.
In the past six years, over 9,000 authors from 1,400 different institutions and 110 different countries have published their research with the Platform, with over 1,500 articles covering the full breadth of health research, including infectious diseases, climate and health, mental health, and more.
Authors have embraced the ability to publish their research outputs at every stage of the research journey through diverse article types, with 47% of research published as a traditional Research Article, and the other 53% made up of non-traditional article types such as Data Notes and Study Protocols.
Publishing open access has also helped amplify the reach of Wellcome-funded researchers, with over 1.6 million article views, over 164,000 article downloads, and over 17,000 article citations across the Platform, including coverage in news outlets such as the Guardian and the New York Times, and citations by international policymakers such as the World Health Organization.
Wellcome Open Research’s most-read articles
From COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the UK to malnutrition in India, articles published on Wellcome Open Research have covered a whole range of topics. Discover the five most-read articles published on the Platform since its launch:
- COVID-19 – exploring the implications of long-term condition type and extent of multimorbidity on years of life lost: a modelling study (88,000+ views, 3000+ downloads)
- A systematic review of criminal recidivism rates worldwide: 3-year update (82,000+ views, 3,000+ downloads)
- Estimating the overdispersion in COVID-19 transmission using outbreak sizes outside China (71,000+ views, 6,000+ downloads)
- What settings have been linked to SARS-CoV-2 transmission clusters? (63,000+ views, 6,000+ downloads)
- Raincloud plots: a multi-platform tool for robust data visualization (49,000+ views, 3000+ downloads)
Publish your own research with Wellcome Open Research
Wellcome Open Research will continue to evolve to meet the changing needs of Wellcome-funded researchers and the global open research landscape more widely.
If you’re ready to join the thousands of Wellcome-funded researchers already publishing with Wellcome Open Research, find out more about the Platform and submit your research today.