Wiley launches content sharing across 1,700 journals

Publisher John Wiley has launched a content sharing initiative across its research portfolio, following a successful four-month trial run earlier this year.

A total of 1,700 journals in the Wiley Online Library will offer the facility, which gives authors and subscribers the facility to full-text free-to-read articles with non-subscribers, including via social media and scholarly collaboration networks. The public also gets greater access to the research when following links from selected media outlets, including The Daily Mail, The Wall Street Journal and Reuters.

Wiley will be able to track usage of the links, including how many users are sharing content, the countries the users are coming from and the most popular articles shared.

Unauthorised content sharing, breaching copyright, has been a problem across the academic publishing industry for several years. Springer Nature expanded a content sharing initiative to all its journals in March last year.

Judy Verses, Wiley’s executive vice president for research, said: “Wiley Content Sharing will provide researchers with more opportunities to collaborate and share their results, while also gaining higher visibility and recognition for their work. We understand the need for simple solutions that provide greater access to research.”  Global communications director Tom Griffin said there had been a “fantastic” response from the media. “The idea that the public can link from a news item on climate change back to the original free-to-read full-text study is very powerful,” he said. “We hope this initiative will increase the public awareness and interest in peer-reviewed research.”

The pilot project saw the sharing of 7,000 links to articles across 180 journals, from a global audience including readers in the US, Singapore and Australia, Wiley said.

Wiley Content Sharing is powered by ReadCube technology.