July/August 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
It's been another couple of huge months in Open Access with the Plan S revised recommendations being discused globally and Neil Jacobs from Jisc appointed as Interim Programme Manager to drive it. Also in the mix, the announcement of the theme for this year's International Open Access week, to be held October 21-27, will be “Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge”. We have been on the road with meetings in Hong Kong & Sydney, workshops in Perth and a roadtrip to Armidale for more workshops. Upcoming meetings in August will be at Massey University for the New Zealand Repositories meeting, then at the University of Canterbury, and in September at Flinders University, Sydney at UNSW (including at the Sydney ResBaz) and La Trobe University. If you'd like to know more about our advocacy activities, please get in touch.
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
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Analytics of OA by country
The percentage of Australian & New Zealand OA publications is as expected in new research on correlation between regional OA policies and the number of OA publications. The paper, published in PLOS ONE, suggests a negative correlation between country per capita income and the % of OA publications, but it's a complicated picture. Australia comes out at 42.8% and New Zealand at 39.8%. Read article.
Research quality strategy: NHMRC
The NHMRC has announced its strategy on research quality. AOASG Director, Ginny Barbour is on the Steering Committee which will help drive this work on enhancing the quality of NHMRC-funded research. Read more.
CAUL lifts Stats embargo
CAUL and CONZUL members have voted to lift the embargo on open access to the most recent years of CAUL Statistics. From September this year the 2018 CAUL Statistics platform and the Pre-2018 CAUL Statistics platform will no longer restrict public access to the five most recent years’ data.
ARDC report on eResearch workforce
The report look at the current and future states of eResearch including an analysis of Scopus to see how much data-related research is happening; the professional workforce size in the Australian research sector; and the future demand for eResearch support skills. Access reports here.
AOASG on RN & MJA
AOASG Chair Martin Borchert recently spoke with Radio National's Philip Adams about Open Access and Plan S. Listen here. AOASG Director Ginny Barbour has written a Perspectives piece for the Medical Journal of Australia and appears on its latest podcast series talking about the future of the academic publishing ecosystem.
Webinar #3 well received
A constructive & vibrant discussion followed Danny Kingsley's thoughtful presentation in our latest webinar on the Impacts, consequences and outcomes of open policies in Europe. Listen here.
NGV opens access to 30,000 images
The National Gallery of Victoria has released more than 30,000 high-resolution images from their collection as part of their Open Access program. Works are available for non-commercial and educational use including books, presentations or research papers. Gallery Director, Tony Ellwood says through open access the NGV is able to reach new audiences regardless of their location and increase the accessibility of an important cultural asset. Read more and explore the collection here.
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General news
LIBER stats on OA book usage
Over 80% of surveyed LIBER libraries say they distribute Open Access books via a repository and include them in discovery services or catalogs. 40% publish OA books, or plan to do so, and 25% provide library funding to pay author fees related to OA book publishing. Read more.
Blueprint for "stepwise" approach to funder incentive schemes
The Open Research Funders Group has developed the plan to adjust their incentive schemes to more closely align with open access, open data, open science, and open research. It includes signing DORA, signing the TOP guidelines and has examples of specific language to use. Read more.
Peter Suber: "unfamiliarity and misunderstanding" continue as top obstacles to OA
In a recent interview with Santosh C. Hulagabali, OA stalwart Peter Suber candidly shares his inspiring story of his transition from philosophy to open access movement. He highlights the important role of librarians in OA as well as discussing current trends, issues and challenges of open access with special focus on Plan S, Plan U, article processing charges (APC), access issues and predatory publishing practices.
Elsevier cuts off access to the University of California & signs OA agreement with Hungary
The stand off between Elsevier and University of California continues. Elsevier has has finally cut off access to new articles for the University of California. This article explains the issues and it appears the uni will continue to have access to most of Elsevier’s catalog but recent (2019) content as well as some more obscure journals will now be accessed primarily through the inter-library loans. Elsevier's statement on the situation is here. You can fact check what you've heard about the long running standoff here. In this article Gemma Hersch from Elsevier lays out their view further in this article (NB subscription required to read). In further news, a number of academics have indicated they will not act as reviewers or editors until the issue is resolved.
Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, Elsevier and Dutch universities have extended their contract for 6 months to allow discussions to continue. Elsevier and Hungary have signed an OA agreement. Elsevier has also acquired a company that applies artificial intelligence on STM content. Read more.
New service for openaccessbutton
Billed as a new, powerfully simple library tool which delivers articles — no subscription needed, the InstantILL is a next-generation inter-library loan form that integrates with and complements existing systems to improve services, save money, and accelerate Open Access. a service. Read more or join the waiting list.
Immediate Open access required for papers funded by Cancer Moonshot program at the National Cancer Institute
This new requirement allows researchers to publish in either a fully open-access journal or a hybrid journal that publishes both free and paywalled papers. APC costs can be included in grants.
DOAJ aims to clear up myths around how it operates
Its series of mythbusing posts cover the DOAJ seal, how it makes decisions, whether it indexes predatory journals (it doesn't) and more
Open Access India partners with the Center for Open Science to launch IndiaRxiv
This is India's first preprint sever. The launch announcement states that "the preprint service will be open to all researchers and scholars of India and others who are working on issues related to India.
The EU announces a second tender for its Open Research Publishing Platform
The first one was not awarded. The new tender has raised a number of questions, discussed here by Bianca Kramer
Plan S
cOAlition S - action plan
Nine points of action have been outlined for cOAlition S. The group acknowledges there is a wide range of work to be done to implement Plan S, some of which is noted at various points in the revised implementation guidance. They have identified the following priorities for the next few months:
- Appoint an Open Access Champion who will promote Plan S to research funders and other stakeholders.
- Establish the cOAlition S Secretariat and develop a budget to take work forward.
- Convene meetings of the existing members of cOAlition S, to share insights and address challenges in implementing Plan S.
- Work together to articulate a vision for the long term future of Open Access.
- Set up a task force to develop a framework to monitor the effects of Plan S on the research and scholarly communication ecosystems.
- Set up a task force to identify where it is difficult to comply with Plan S, consider how to address these issues, and provide reliable information to researchers on how they can align with Plan S.
- Work with publishers, societies, consortia, and others to develop clearer approaches to transformative arrangements towards full and immediate Open Access.
- Work with publisher representatives and other stakeholders to define the various services (e.g., triaging, peer review, editorial work, copy editing) publishers will be asked to price.
- Begin discussions to explore the best ways to implement rights retention for authors and institutions, recognising national, disciplinary, and other differences.
Repositories
Figshare partners with NIH for permanent data sets home
Figshare, in partnership with the US National Institutes of Health, has announced the pilot launch of a new generalist data repository for all NIH-funded researchers. The curated NIH data repository is available to use now at NIH.figshare.com. Read more.
COAR & RDA agreement
The two organisations have a shared mission to improve access and use of research outputs, leading to better research and new discoveries. This agreement means they will now formally coordinate more closely on strategic initiatives of shared interest, regularly exchange information about activities, and conduct joint webinars and events to support common aims. Read more.
Reports
Mind the Gap: MIT 
MIT Press has released a comprehensive report on the current state of all available open-source software for publishing. “Mind the Gap, highlights the development and deployment of open source publishing technologies in order to aid institutions' and individuals' decision-making and project planning.
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Books & scholarly writing
The Impact of Open Access on Teaching—How Far Have We Come? Elizabeth Gadd, Chris Morrison and Jane Secker
The Economic Impacts of Open Science: A Rapid Evidence Assessment: Michael J Fell
Why we publish where we do: Faculty publishing values and their relationship to review, promotion and tenure expectations: Meredith T. Niles, Lesley A. Schimanski, Erin C. McKiernan, Juan P. Alperin
Meta-Research: Use of the Journal Impact Factor in academic review, promotion, and tenure evaluations: Erin C McKiernan,, Lesley A Schimanski, Carol Muñoz Nieves, Lisa Matthias, Meredith T Niles, Juan P Alperin
Roles and jobs in the open research scholarly communications environment: analysing job descriptions to predict future trends: Nancy Pontika
Blogs we're reading
Elsevier: "It's illegal to Sci-Hub." Also Elsevier: "We link to Sci-Hub all the time.": BoingBoing.net
FTC v. OMICS a landmark predatory publishing case: Interview with Stewart Manley Scholastica
OMICS, Publisher of Fake Journals, Makes Cosmetic Changes to Evade Detection: The Wire
For academics, what matters more: journal prestige or readership? Science - AAAS
Implementing a data policy: a how-to guide for publishers: Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association
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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
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