We can't believe we're looking down the barrel to March. 2020 has well and truly started with a very productive AOASG Strategic planning day at UNSW, our new host university, in Sydney. We came away from the day with some clear points of focus including ramping up our workshop series for member institutions, creating more shareable Open & FAIR resources, and working with policy makers. We will also continue our webinar series, starting in March with a discussion of plans for the year ahead.

The global coronavirus outbreak has highlighted the need for rapid open sharing of research data, publications and resources and advocacy for OA has become even more important.

We are participating in a couple of events in March that are open to all.
On Tues 17th March we will be at a workshop collocated with RDA in Melbourne in association with ARDC and COAR Addressing the challenges of building research repositories in the context of FAIR, Plan S & next generation repository techniques.
On 25th March in Sydney, we will participate in a Franklin Women event Research Sector of the Future. 

Get in touch if you'd like to join the AOASG as a member institution, suggest activities, join our communities of practice or volunteer for AOASG.

 OA moves quickly! For regular news updates, check out our Twitter account 
 

Canadian roadmap to open science launched
The Roadmap was launched by Canada's chief science advisor with ten recommendations. The vision is "To make Canadian science open to all, maximizing benefits for the well-being, health and economy of our country" and the top recommendation is that "Canada should adopt an Open Science approach to federally funded scientific and research outputs." Read more

Project to explore open access agreements in developing economies
Supported by Wellcome Trust, and led by Information Power, the new project will look at agreements between society publishers and library consortia in developing and transition economies. The European Respiratory Society, IWA Publishing, and The Company of Biologists – will work with EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) to explore whether and how OA agreements might be piloted to support a global transition to OA.   Read more.

White house call for feedback on Federally-funded research
The White House Science and Technology Policy Office and the National Science and Technology Council's Subcommittee on Open Science have put out a Request for Information on public access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications, data and code resulting from federally funded research.

UKRI draft OA proposal open for consultation
Under a draft proposal UK Research and Innovation will require all not only journal articles, but scholarly monographs, book chapters and edited collections which acknowledge its funding to be make open access from January 2024. Read more. Make a submission to the review here.

EU Researchers call for Open
Researchers from the European Council of Doctoral Candidates, Eurodoc, the Marie Curie Alumni Association, and the Young Academy of Europe are calling on the European Commission to propose legislation ensuring that researchers always retain the right to share their publicly funded, peer-reviewed research findings. This could take form of a directive establishing the non-waivable legal right for researchers to share publicly funded peer-reviewed research findings without embargo periods or other restrictions. Read more.

Update on OA switchboard project
OASPA has provided an update on the OA switchboard project which aims to facilitate the fulfillment of OA strategies across business models, policies and agreements, by connecting systems and improving the information exchange between authors, publishers, funders and institutions.  Read more. 

New Open Access Agreements for US universities
Interview with Scott Delman of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) which has signed new open access (OA) publishing agreements with four major US universities. Read more. 

PLOS and the UC announce open access publishing agreement     
To be implemented this year the University of California Libraries will automatically pay the first $1,000 of the article processing charge (APC) for all UC authors who choose to publish in a PLOS journal. Authors who do not have research funds available can request full funding of the article processing charge from the libraries. The pilot aims to show that an institutional participation model that leverages multiple funding sources, can enable a sustainable and inclusive path to full open access.  Interview with PLOS CEO about the agreement.
 

Reminder: to see a list of transformative agreements check out the ESAC registry, which includes the two agreements in Australia.

Support Open Library of Humanities - new offer!
Open Library of Humanities is now five years old. It is possible to support them as part of a consortium - see the OLH Open Consortial Offer

Mass resignations at Wiley journal
The entire editorial staff at Wiley's European Law Journal has resigned after the publisher attempted to appoint new editors-in-chief without consulting the board of editors or the advisory board. The Times Higher education blog says the academics involved in the walkout were concerned about safeguarding their academic autonomy.  Read more.  Meanwhile, Wiley has announced a new three-year license with FinELib, a Finnish consortium of higher education and research institutions, that combines an open access and subscription agreement. 

TOP Factor alternative to JIF
The Center for Open Science has launched launches TOP Factor, an alternative to journal impact factor (JIF) to evaluate qualities of journals. TOP Factor assesses journal policies for the degree to which they promote core scholarly norms of transparency and reproducibility. It's based primarily on the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, a framework of eight standards that can improve transparency and reproducibility of research such as transparency of data, materials, code, and research design, preregistration, and replication.  Read more.

New initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication
The Helsinki Initiative calls for policy-makers, leaders, universities, research institutions, research funders, libraries, and researchers to promote multilingualism in scholarly communication. Read more

Candidates sought for next SCOSS funding cycle
Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS) is searching for new potential candidates to help fund. SCOSS is requesting that the international community help identify non-profit services that help comprise essential Open Access or Open Science infrastructure, are of international significance and lack financial sustainability. Potential candidates interested in pursuing funding must fill out the SCOSS Expression of Interest by 5 p.m. CET, 11 March. Read more

 

 

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