The Problems of Unit Costs Per Article
Every five minutes or so, someone tries to come up with a cost-per-article figure for academic publishing. Martin Paul Eve explains why he finds himself wanting to resist the temptation.
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Sweden's New Read & Publish Agreement
The Bibsam Consortium in Sweden signed a new tranformative Read & Publish agreement with academic publisher Springer Nature. It covers rights to publish in over 1,800 hybrid journals at no extra cost for the author as well as reading rights for over 2,100 journals since 1997.
Funding of Platinum Open Access Journals in the Social Sciences and Humanities
Funding of Platinum Open Access Journals in the Social Sciences and Humanities
The Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences SAHS proposes the establishment of a Platinum Open Access Fund. The funding would allow to flip and operate 15-20 scientific journals in the humanities and social sciences that are not depending on article processing charges and that are immediately open for everyone.
Politicians and R&D Funders 'Finally Pushing in Same Direction' on Science Publishing
Politicians and R&D Funders 'Finally Pushing in Same Direction' on Science Publishing
A major push by science funding agencies in Europe to make the research they back freely available at the point of publication is the world's best chance of fundamentally altering scientific publishing, says the new coordinator of Plan S, Johan Rooryck.
Transformation: The Future of Society Publishing
The release in September 2018 of Plan S has led many small and society publishers to examine their business models, and in particular ways to transform their journals from hybrids into pure Open Access (OA) titles. This paper explores one means by which a society publisher might transform.
Open-access Megajournals Lose Momentum As the Publishing Model Matures
Concerns include declining volume, slower publication, and softening citation measures.
European Commission's Open Access Envoy Joins the COAlition S Executive Steering Group
European Commission's Open Access Envoy Joins the COAlition S Executive Steering Group
Heather Paxson on a New Model for Open-access Publishing in Anthropology
Interim head of MIT Anthropology explains the plan's vision and challenges, plus progress made at an historic MIT workshop.
WHO and TDR Join COAlition S to Support Free and Immediate Access to Health Research
WHO and TDR Join COAlition S to Support Free and Immediate Access to Health Research
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) announce they are the first of the United Nations agencies to join COAlition S. This commitment will ensure that all WHO and TDS supported health research will be free to read online on the day it is published.
Mixed Reception for German Open Access Deal with Springer Nature
Springer Nature has reached an open access publishing deal with 700 German research universities, but it faces some pushback.
Financing Open-Access Publication After 2024
Co-chairs of the implementation task force of the international research-funder consortium cOAlition S clarify their position with regard to financially supporting the important transition to full open access after 2024.
More Than 700 German Research Institutions Strike Open-access Deal with Springer Nature
More Than 700 German Research Institutions Strike Open-access Deal with Springer Nature
Agreement will make thousands of German-authored papers freely available worldwide every year.
In Departure for NIH, Cancer Moonshot Requires Grantees to Make Papers Immediately Free
In Departure for NIH, Cancer Moonshot Requires Grantees to Make Papers Immediately Free
The long-standing debate over open access to research results has been marked by a geographic divide - but the divide is starting to blur.
SpringerOpen Pricing Trends 2018 - 2019
Of the 215 active journals published by SpringerOpen, 54% charge APCs. The average APC was 1,212 EUR, an increase of 8% over the 2018 average, 6 times the EU inflation rate for June 2019 of 1.3%.
Research Outputs Find a Home at IndiaRxiv
Open Access India partners with the Center for Open Science to launch IndiaRxiv on the eve of India’s 73rd Independence Day as the country joins the global march for open science.
The Impact of Open Access on Teaching-How Far Have We Come?
This article seeks to understand how far the United Kingdom higher education (UK HE) sector has progressed towards open access (OA) availability of the scholarly literature it requires to support courses of study. It uses Google Scholar, Unpaywall and Open Access Button to identify OA copies of a random sample of articles copied under the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) HE Licence to support teaching. The quantitative data analysis is combined with interviews of, and a workshop with, HE practitioners to investigate four research questions. Firstly, what is the nature of the content being used to support courses of study? Secondly, do UK HE establishments regularly incorporate searches for open access availability into their acquisition processes to support teaching? Thirdly, what proportion of content used under the CLA Licence is also available on open access and appropriately licenced? Finally, what percentage of content used by UK HEIs under the CLA Licence is written by academics and thus has the potential for being made open access had there been support in place to enable this? Key findings include the fact that no interviewees incorporated OA searches into their acquisitions processes. Overall, 38% of articles required to support teaching were available as OA in some form but only 7% had a findable re-use licence; just 3% had licences that specifically permitted inclusion in an ‘electronic course-pack’. Eighty-nine percent of journal content was written by academics (34% by UK-based academics). Of these, 58% were written since 2000 and thus could arguably have been made available openly had academics been supported to do so.
UC Faculty to Elsevier: Restart Negotiations, or else
Prominent UC faculty suspend service on editorial boards of Cell Press journals to bring publisher Elsevier back to the bargaining table.
AmeliCA Before Plan S
Open access is often discussed as a process of flipping the existing closed subscription based model of scholarly communication to an open one. However, in Latin America an open access ecosystem for scholarly publishing has been in place for over a decade.
Open Access for Monographs: Small Steps Along a Difficult Path
Since 2018, open access has also gained momentum with regards to monographs, now that a significant proportion of journal articles is already available in open access.
Big Deal Knowledge Base
This database puts libraries on a more level playing field with vendors by detailing what thousands of peer institutions have paid for journal subscription packages.
Academic Publishing Empires Need to Go
In response to the recent editorial "Open access and academic imperialism", disappointment is expressed at such a narrow and misleading interpretations of the recent attempts to make academic publishing more open.
Guest Post: Plan S Version 2 and the Cost of Quality
EMBO's Bernd Pulverer looks at the revised Plan S Implementation Guidelines.
The Plan to Mine the World's Research Papers
A giant data store quietly being built in India could free vast quantities of science for computer analysis - but is it legal?
They Know We Know They Know: Does Sci-Hub Affect Library Subscriptions?
So does Sci-Hub lead libraries to cancel journals, or doesn't it? Maybe the answer isn't a simple yes or no.
Plan S FAQs
Plan S is a manifesto for full and immediate Open Access set out by a coalition of research funders. It has been discussed a lot recently, but what, exactly, does it involve?
In Act of Brinkmanship, a Big Publisher Cuts off UC's Access to Its Academic Journals
In Act of Brinkmanship, a Big Publisher Cuts off UC's Access to Its Academic Journals
Elsevier, the world's largest publishers of academic journals, just stepped up its fight with the University of California by cutting off UC's access.
Publisher Elsevier Halts UC's Access to New Articles
Publisher Elsevier halts UC's access to new articles but UC Berkeley Library can connect readers with what they need.
Governing the Scholarly Commons: the Radical Open Access Collective - Samuel Moore
The Radical Open Access Collective (ROAC) is a community of 60+ not-for-profit presses, journals and other open access projects. One of the aims of the collective is to legitimise scholar-led publishing as an important alternative model for open access.
Rate of Growth for CC BY Articles in Fully-OA Journals Continues for OASPA Members
Rate of Growth for CC BY Articles in Fully-OA Journals Continues for OASPA Members
The Status Quo Bias and the Uptake of Open Access
In this paper the authors argue that the linguistic framing of open access by a variety of stakeholders may inhibit the uptake of open access publishing.
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