Optica Publishing Group announces the launch of Optica Open

New preprint server provides free access to the latest discoveries in optics and photonics

Optica Publishing Group (formerly OSA) launched Optica Open today, a new preprint server dedicated to advancing optics and photonics around the globe. Preprints are publicly available, preliminary scholarly articles posted ahead of formal peer review and publication in a journal. Authors can conveniently transmit their Optica Open preprint submissions to an Optica Publishing Group journal or their journal submissions to the preprint server, a first for the optics and photonics community. The Optica Open site is now open for submissions.

Harnessing Figshare’s preprint server capabilities, Optica Open helps authors achieve their open science goals and establish priority of their latest research results. All posted preprints will receive a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), are citable and will be indexed by Google Scholar and Crossref. As with other preprint servers, articles posted to Optica Open are not peer reviewed, although authors may benefit from receiving feedback from their peers. Submissions are screened by subject-matter experts to ensure general relevance to optics and photonics and compliance with the basic submission requirements, including a plagiarism check with iThenticate.

“As a way to better serve the needs of the community and to further demonstrate our commitment to open science, we are excited to provide those in optics and photonics with their own platform to freely share and read the latest results in the field. Optica Open complements our world-renowned publishing portfolio and provides another option for authors to expand the reach of their work and for readers who want a one-stop destination to stay current on the latest discoveries in optics and photonics,” said Elizabeth Nolan, Optica’s Chief Publishing Officer and Deputy Executive Director.

Through a collaboration with arXiv, a research-sharing platform for physics and other fields, optics-related preprints that have been posted to arXiv are also discoverable in Optica Open. Thousands of arXiv records dating back to 2021 are already accessible in Optica Open, and new records are being added twice daily.

Another distinction for Optica Open is that it will disseminate industry white papers in addition to research articles, offering a pathway for increased exposure of technical contributions from industry to the research community.

As with Optica Publishing Group’s journals, the new preprint server is governed by the optics and photonics community. The Optica Open Advisory Board is composed of volunteers from each of Optica’s Technical Divisions.  This distinguished group of volunteers will advise Optica Publishing Group on the policies, procedures, and standards of the Optica Open preprints platform, including its scope of coverage, submission guidelines, and screening criteria.

Open Optica will be releasing updates to functionality and features throughout 2023. To learn more about Optica Open, visit https://preprints.opticaopen.org.

Cambridge University Library participates in the Optica Read & Publish agreement, a transitional agreement for open access publishing of research and review articles by Cambridge authors in participating hybrid and fully open access journals. For more information visit Open access agreements.

Online Resources for STEMM evaluation: Inspec, Inspec Analytics, Compendex, & Knovel – Tell us about your experience with access now until February 16, 2023

As part of a review of our electronic content, we are trialling access to 3 electronic resources this term. The trials will run initially from 17 January – 16 February 2023. These were identified through benchmarking with our peer institutions. We are interested to find out what you think about these resources and if/how they support your teaching, learning and research. We will use your feedback to capture academic priorities for these resources and to build a case for purchase. To take part in this, please follow the links below to try out the resources and let us know your feedback either by emailing techlib@lib.cam.ac.uk or by completing our survey

If you have any queries or questions about the trials, please contact techlib@lib.cam.ac.uk

Knovel

Knovel accelerates your discovery of answers and insights from technical reference content sourced from over 140+ providers — so you can more quickly tap into must-have resources. Instead of limiting search to narrow fields of expertise, searches in Knovel scan across the widest multidisciplinary areas, with each offering drilling down across multiple sources to deliver all relevant data, including full-text content, equations, materials and substances data, and interactive charts and graphs. Knovel offers video tutorials and a Quick Start Guide to help to introduce you to the database.

Inspec & Compendex on Engineering Village platform

Engineering Village is a specialized discovery platform where researchers can effectively search multiple engineering databases all in one place. We have trial access to:-

Compendex: Your engineering research begins here, with both broad and deep coverage of critical content. The amount of engineering-focused scholarly and technical literature in Compendex is vast and global in scope, featuring everything from the latest cutting-edge findings to historical research and innovations.

Inspec Direct: Stay up-to-date with the latest in engineering, physics and computer science research with Inspec Direct. Start your search to pinpoint relevant literature from over 20 million records, covering over 4,500 global journals and spanning more than 50 years:

You can explore the training materials available online at the getting started page. These resources provide thorough instructions on searching in Engineering Village and helpful tips for saving time and simplifying the research process.

Inspec Direct on IET platform

We are also trialling Inspec on the IET platform. ET Inspec is one of the most definitive databases for subject-specific and interdisciplinary research in the fields of engineering, physics and computer science. It contains over 20 million records of research literature, and for 50 years it’s been an essential discovery tool to numerous prestigious institutions around the world. You can explore the features of Inspec Direct through their User Guide.

Inspec Analytics

Understand your place in the global engineering research landscape, evaluate your research performance and make strategic decisions about the direction of your projects with Inspec Analytics, a dynamic tool based on the IET’s renowned Inspec database. Using powerful semantic mapping, our technology helps you identify trends and patterns in global engineering and physics research. Find out more about Inspec Analytics and its tools through the User Guide

All links are also available via the Cambridge E-Resources A-Z.

For advice, information, and help on this trial contact the Technology Libraries Team