Two community consultations, a new support system & more

[Kyle Demes]

Hi folks,

A longer note than usual, but we have  afew exciting updates to share. I've tried to keep short with links to further information.

1) Is it time to retire the OA colours?

A working group convened by our Community Advisory Board and chaired by Juan Pablo Alperin highlights how the current open access classification scheme is starting to failing and recommends replacing gold, green, hybrid and bronze with three separate dimensions: access, location and licence. Nothing changes yet. We want to know whether that direction works for the way you use OA data, especially if your policies, reporting or reimbursement workflows depend on the colours today. Five-minute form, open until November 13.
Post, report and form: blog.openalex.org/is-it-time-to-retire-the-oa-colours-tell-us-what-you-think
Webinar Tuesday October 6, 7am Pacific (10am Eastern, 3pm UK, 4pm Central Europe): zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_NbIKwVu6Q4SI83Fv5qwXxw

2) Should OpenAlex publish a novelty score?

The winner of the UK Metascience Unit's Novelty Indicators Challenge, a team from Forschungszentrum Jülich, judges how new a paper's contribution was by reading the paper and a selection of the works it cites. We are considering adding a score like this to OpenAlex. Would you use it, what for, and what would make you trust it? Five-minute form, open until November 13.
Post and form: blog.openalex.org/should-openalex-publish-a-novelty-score-a-vibe-check
Webinar Wednesday October 7, 8am Pacific (11am Eastern, 4pm UK, 5pm Central Europe): zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_EetlA-l3QgK2FvQVxE0GLg

3) New webinar: searching OpenAlex

In August, we launched new search capabilities, a visual query builder and the new OQL (OpenAlex Query Language). I will walk through them, from simple searches to complex queries you can share and rerun, including how the same query runs through the API, with plenty of time for questions.
Friday October 16, 7am Pacific (10am Eastern, 3pm UK, 4pm Central Europe): zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kyXXUNnCSuexelEYZB5wMw
OQL guide, if you want a head start: help.openalex.org/access/oql

4) A new support system

Since September 15, every request is triaged daily, and when something needs an engineering fix we link your request to it and write back when it ships. File a request at openalex.org/support, and follow or reply to it, signed in, at openalex.org/settings/tickets
We closed some older unresolved requests during the switch, so if one of yours is still a problem, please send it in again.

5) Funders are moving from the Crossref Funder Registry to ROR

We have added ROR IDs to about 7,700 funders in the past few weeks, so 26,950 of our 45,661 funders now carry one. Merging duplicate funder records and retiring unused ones comes next. Big thanks to the ROR team, and especially Adam Buttrick: ROR added around 1,000 clinical trial sponsors and several hundred Funder Registry funders to make this possible. If you work at a funder, it is worth checking your organisation's record at ror.org

6) Also worth knowing

- New API limit, live since September 14, on every plan: a request that ORs together more than 10 IDs on topics.id, primary_topic.id or concepts.id is capped at 1 request per second, with an HTTP 429 if you go faster. Split long lists into chunks of 10 or fewer.
- OA numbers moved in both directions this month. About 742,000 Elsevier Open Archive and Open Manuscript articles now count as free to read, while false OA flags came off roughly 511,000 works whose licence came from a website footer, 244,000 figshare works, 49,000 OSTI works and 55,000 Springer records. More checks on bronze OA are underway.
- About 2.7 million figshare tables, figures and supplementary files are no longer standalone works. We are also splitting up "mega-works" that had absorbed thousands of distinct records and merging duplicates, so some work IDs now redirect or no longer resolve.
- Paris users meeting, October 20 and 21: the programme and free registration are coming to this list shortly.

Thanks,
-kyle