New Services for Scholars’ Success
Speaking of PubMed Central and the pending legislation that would make it mandatory for authors to deposit their published NIH research results in PMC…yesterday I came across the new Scholarly Communications Portal from the Washington University Becker Medical Library.
The portal aims to support the “teaching, research and scholarship efforts” of their scholars, including a new service for authors “Complying with the NIH Public Access Policy,” http://becker.wustl.edu/services/scholarly/nihpolicy.html. Along with explanatory NIH info, the service proposes “Let Becker submit your manuscript to NIHMS in compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy on your behalf as a third-party submitter.”
This PMC submission service focuses on a Becker author’s successful compliance with the NIH policy (perhaps soon to be law), which in turn disseminates the author’s research without access barriers, perhaps increasing the citation and impact of the author’s research, while facilitating new uses and interdisciplinary collaboration with the author’s research. In short, this service focuses on the author’s success.
Many libraries are developing new ways to help their scholars/authors achieve success. As you know, the scholarly communication environment is rapidly changing and if interested parties (scholars, libraries, publishers, granting agencies) keep an eye out for new services focusing on cooperative success…then the successful will weather the next decade of change.
What new service would make you more successful?
