May 2019: what's in this issue
What's new in OA & scholarly publishing in AU & NZ
What's new in OA & scholarly publishing globally
Recent writing & resources on OA
Upcoming events in OA & scholarly publishing
Another massive few weeks have passed in the world of Open Access, beginning with the Creative Commons Global Summit in Portugal, our election statement calling for the development of strategic approach to open scholarship in Australia, and the formation of Invest In Open Infrastructure (IOI) a global initiative to increase the availability and sustainability of open knowledge infrastructure.
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, our Twitter account has posts each day.
Contributions to the newsletter or the blog, especially notice of upcoming events, are welcome. Contact us here
|
|
Call for National Strategy on open scholarship
Prior to the May 18 Australian Federal election in a joint statement from AOASG & the Council of Australian University Librarians, we called on the incoming Australian government to implement a national strategy for open scholarship. Specifically, we called for the establishment of a cross-sector body charged with developing and implementing, within three years, a national action plan for open scholarship – a plan that would include recommendations for policies and funding requirements.
CAUL report on UN sustainability guidelines
The Council of Australian University Librarians has released its report which features Open Access (Goals 9, 10 & in the conclusion). Download report.
Submission to NZ Copyright review
Tohatoha Aotearoa has made a comprehensive submission to the New Zealand Government's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment Issues Paper addressing the upcoming review of the Copyright Act. You can read the full submission here.
Familiar face for Webinar #3
Former AOASG Executive Officer, Danny Kingsley will be presenting our next webinar: Impacts, consequences and outcomes of open policies in Europe.
REGISTER HERE
Australia & New Zealand punching above weight in KU
Infographic from Knowledge Unlatched to show where OA books are being published and by whom. Read more.
|
|
General news
New global Open Infrastructure Initiative announced
Invest In Open Infrastructure (IOI) was launched on May 14. This is a global initiative to increase the availability and sustainability of open knowledge infrastructure to answer the needs of today's diverse scholarly communities which are not being met by the existing largely uncoordinated scholarly infrastructure, which is dominated by vendor products that take ownership of the scholarly process and data without appropriate governance and oversight from the communities they serve.
IOI will consist of two functions, one is an assessment and recommendation framework that will regularly survey the landscape of open scholarly infrastructure with respect to its functionality, usage, health and financial needs and make funding recommendations for that infrastructure.
IOI's second function will coordinate funds to follow the recommendations of the framework. Coordinating financial resources from institutions, agencies and foundations, it will work to increase the overall funding available to emerging and critical infrastructure.
With this announcement IOI:
- Calls for feedback on aims and goals, on the website at investinopen.org.
- Invites the addition of institutional support for this initiative.
- Invites contributions to the Census of Scholarly Communication Infrastructure.
- Invites anyone to join one of our scheduled webinars which will provide a deeper dive on IOI. The first is on Tuesday, 28 May at 15:00 UTC (check the time in your timezone) Register here.
- Invites any one to register to receive further information if interested.
The initiative has been applauded by the Open Research Funders Group and is supported by the AOASG. Ginny Barbour is on the Steering Group.
Joint OA statement at São Paulo
The representatives of African Open Science Platform, AmeLICA, cOAlition S, OA2020, and SciELO met during the annual meeting of the Global Research Council in Sao Paulo where they made a joint statement generating a new momentum in the push towards universal, full and immediate Open Access.
The five initiatives jointly state that:
-
They consider that scholarly and scientific knowledge is a global public good. When generated by public funds, free access to it is a universal right.
-
They share one common ultimate objective: providing universal, unrestricted, and immediate Open Access to scholarly information, including use and re-use by humans and machines.
-
They share the belief that this common goal can be achieved through a variety of approaches.
-
They will pursue points of alignment among their approaches and ways to co-operate towards reaching the shared objective.
-
They seek an active dialogue with all stakeholders, including researchers, research funders, universities, libraries, publishers, learned societies, governments, and citizens to take into account the diversity of the global scholarly community.
LA Referencia published a document at the same time as this meeting on the current regional situation in Latin America regarding open access. Read more
Norway and Elsevier agree to National license.
The two year agreement between the seven universities and 39 research institutions represented by the Norwegian Consortium for Higher Education and Research and the publisher Elsevier provides Norwegian researchers access to articles published in Elsevier’s journals but also the opportunity to publish their results Open Access. It comes after cancellation of subscriptions earlier.
African Principles for Open Access in Scholarly Communication
These 10 principles include the need to take into consideration indigenous and traditional knowledge; that research be made available in local languages; and the need to respect and acknowledge the regional diversity of African scientific journals, institutional repositories and academic systems. Read all the principles
Great new infographic from OrcID
Highlighting the value of using unique identifiers for researchers.
Plan S
OA2020 and cOAlition S Launch Joint Statement
With their common strategy aimed at removing paywalls from published research articles, cOAlition S and OA2020 have noted that they work in synergy on both sides of the scholarly publishing chain to achieve open access in scholarly journals and alternative publishing venues. They note that one of several pathways pursued by OA2020 participants is to negotiate transformative agreements under which the funds previously spent for subscriptions are re-purposed to cover the costs associated with open access publishing. Institutions who engage in such agreements will contribute to delivering the greatest possible range in Plan S-compliant publishing options to their authors while significantly growing the proportion of research made openly available. Read full statement.
DOAJ open letter
After not commenting on Plan S & having received criticism about its approach to Social science, Humanities and Arts (SSHAs) the Directory of Open Access Journals responds with an open letter. Read more.
Publishers consider Green OA as a route to Plan S Compliance
To meet the open-access mandate, some journals are now increasingly considering green OA as their most viable route. Read more.
Preprints
Nature announces support for Preprints
Springer journals – including Nature – have announced it now encourages scientists to share preprint copies of their papers with journalists and others and that doing so wouldn’t affect how the paper is handled by the journal itself. Read more. Nature says: "We now make it clear that authors may choose any licence for preprints, including Creative Commons licences." Read statement.
New preprint server for Indian research
In a bid to increase the quality of scholarly outputs, researchers in India will soon have their own preprint repository where they can post manuscripts from any discipline. IndiaRxiv will be accepting submissions from the end of April. These can include original research, case studies, conference proceedings and data sets in English and any Indian language.
Open Book publishing
OAPEN Foundation (Netherlands) and OpenEdition (France) have announced the creation of DOAB Foundation as a joint venture between the two partners. The mission of the new foundation is to provide an independent and trustworthy Directory of Open Access Books to the academic community and the general public.
There has been some push back about Knowledge Unlatched's announcement of a new initiative called "Open Research Library".
Reports
Big Deals Survey out
The European University Association has published its Big Deals Survey Report which finds:
- Many countries are negotiating at a national level, with national steering committees and university leadership involved in negotiations
- 68 % of countries have OA policies
- The 31 consortia, representing 30 European countries reported a total annual spend of €726,350,945 on periodicals Big Deals
Open Access eBook usage data: BISG
The Book Industry Study Group has released a white paper on the issues around collecting and analysing data on Open access eBook usage. It recommends the creation of a 'data trust' to assist publishers, funders and authors with identifying impact and engagement. The paper also discusses infrastructure challenges digital books face Link to white paper.
OA & Medical publishing: white paper
This paper from International Society for Medical Publication Professionals, A multi-stakeholder discussion on open access and medical publishing, aims to provide an awareness of the options and implications of open access publishing for industry and other stakeholders in medical publishing against the backdrop of a rapidly changing landscape Link to white paper.
Upcoming report
European University Association (EUA) has commissioned a study on "Read and Publish" agreements.
|
|
Books & scholarly writing
Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing - Jonathan P. Tennant, Harry Crane, Tom Crick, Jacinto Davila, Asura Enkhbayar, Johanna Havemann, Bianca Kramer, Ryan Martin, Paola Masuzzo, Andy Nobes, Curt Rice, Bárbara Rivera-López, Tony Ross-Hellauer, Susanne Sattler, Paul D. Thacker and Marc Vanholsbeeck
“Forcing the flip?” Making Knowledge a Public Good. Conference Presentation STM US Annual Conference April 201. Ashley Farley - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Blogs we're reading
Is there a place for a Subscription Journal in an Open Access world? John Dove
|
|
40th Annual IATUL Conference at The University of Western Australia and Curtin University in Perth
REGISTER HERE |
|
Want more OA news?
We can't cover everything here! This is a curated list of items that caught our eye and/or which seem especially relevant to OA in this region. For daily updates the best source is the Open Access Tracking Project or if you prefer to be more selective, our Twitter account which has posts throughout each day.
The newsletter archive provides snapshots of key issues throughout the year. Other ways to keep in touch with discussions at AOASG include joining our community of practice calls or the listserve.
Follow us via twitter @openaccess_anz or online at http://aoasg.org.au
|
|
|
|
