Calls for transparency in research publishing are nothing new, whether it is transparency around costs, pricing, peer review or impact, publishers have been striving to deliver greater transparency for some time. In an open access world the need for transparency is even more important, with the introduction of Article Publication Charges (APCs) bringing further scrutiny of the academic publishing process and authors and funders demanding more information about potential publishing venues before making spending decisions. Institutions and funders also want to be able to measure the impact of the research that they are funding so the more transparent publishers can be by providing rich and varied article metrics the greater the benefits for the research community.

At Wiley we have been working hard to increase transparency across the entire research publishing process.

Increasing Engagement with Open Research Practices

Being more transparent throughout the publishing process can help to tackle issues around trust and research integrity and we are supporting this by offering a range of open research tools across the portfolio.​

​Opening up access to research data can help to improve trust in the research process; it increases opportunities for reproducibility and minimizes duplication. When data is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), the research process becomes more efficient enabling researchers to access and analyze other’s findings and reuse data to inform new findings. Approximately 800 of our journals have a data sharing policy that requires researchers to include a data availability statement (DAS) and an additional 800+ journals that encourage this.

We are striving to improve the peer review process with over 80 journals across our portfolio adopting Transparent Peer Review where authors are offered the choice of transparent peer review on submission to a journal. If their article is published, the peer reviewers’ reports, authors’ responses, and editors’ signed decisions will accompany the publication.

Registered Reports shift the emphasis of peer review away from the final outcomes of a study and onto the integrity and transparency of the study design and reporting, reducing factors that contribute to publication bias and other practices that get in the way of transparency and reproducibility. ​

​​Supporting More Equitable Research Assessment

We recently endorsed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and became an official signatory. The overarching goal of DORA is to shift emphasis away from journal-based metrics and assessment, toward article-level metrics and individual author contribution. This supports a broader, more equitable view of research impact.

CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) allows for a standardized description of each researcher’s contribution to an article. This fits our open research mission by increasing transparency about who participated in the research and acknowledgement of the role they played.​​ CRediT can also be used in innovative ways, for example, by showing who has contributed specific expertise to an article.​​

Individual article usage metrics have recently been enhanced with full text view usage made available on all articles published on Wiley Online Library from 4th January 2022 onwards. This enables authors, and their funders, to measure how often users engage with their work; an important measure of impact and reach. This complements our existing citation and Altmetric article data and pilot partnership with scite.

To further support a more equitable view of research impact we are increasing the number of journal metrics that are openly available. From February, Metrics pages for 300+ journals are going live with a selection of metrics chosen to support authors and the wider community:

• CiteScore (Scopus)
• Impact Factor (Clarivate)
• Journal Citation Indicator (Clarivate)
• Full Text Views
• Acceptance Rate
• Submission to first decision

These metrics have been selected based on accessibility and reliability, and their broad application across all subject categories, article types, and journal business models, as well as results of user surveys and competitor analysis. We believe sharing these metrics will encourage trust in journal publishing, whilst providing information that authors expect to have access to when selecting a journal. Providing journal/article level metrics has become a standard expectation for authors and these metrics play an important role in author publishing decisions; visible metrics also encourage accountability for journal performance and ultimately lead to a much-improved author experience.

We have been a long-term supporter of the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) and in 2023 we will also be opening access to article reference metadata on Wiley Online Library. This level of access and transparency, supported through a metadata deposit into Crossref, in addition to access on Wiley Online Library supports and enhances discoverability and engagement with the author’s work.

Abstracts are an important marketing and engagement tool for authors and it has long been standard to make these freely accessible to the public. In 2023, we will take a step further in our transition to open and make abstracts accessible through a partnership with the Initiative for Open Abstracts I4OA. Openly accessible abstracts via Crossref metadata deposit is yet another opportunity for authors to increase the impact of their work.

Price and Service Transparency

We are the first major publisher to participate in the Plan S Journal Comparison Service (JCS) where registered users can compare journal pricing and service data from different participating publishers. The Plan S Journal Comparison Service is yet another way that we are striving to improve transparency and the JCS allows us to increase transparency around the important services that publishers provide.

Opening up the research publishing process, improving price and service transparency, providing access to article level metrics such as usage, and publicly recognizing author and peer reviewer contributions increases trust and validates scientific outputs, supports replication, enables informed decision making and increases accountability which greatly benefits the research community and the public. We will continue to support the research community by making the publishing process more open and transparent.