What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing globally General NewsNext stage of UNESCO recommendations on Open science
Intergovernmental special committee meeting related to the draft UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science will be held online, 6-7 and 10-12 May 2021 Read more
Launch of EC’s OA platform
The European Commission has officially launched Open Research Europe, the open access publishing platform for scientific articles that present the results of research funded by Horizon 2020, and soon Horizon Europe. See more
Open Access button now OA. Works
The library-owned non-profit tool maker Open Access Button has changed its name to OA.Works and expanded its activities. Their free open-source tools help make open access easy & equitable. Their tools include ShareYourPaper.org, InstantILL and Open Access Button.
UK police force issues warning about Sci_Hub
The City of London Police have issued a warning about Sci-Hub, saying that “We would urge people to not use Sci Hub, as doing so could pose a threat to their personal information and devices.” Read more
Concerns about library vendors harvesting information
SPARC have highlighted how “major library vendors—RELX and Thomson Reuters—have been building sophisticated, global systems of surveillance that include online tracking technologies, massive aggregation of user data, and the sale of services based on this tracking, including to governments and law enforcement.” Read more
IFLA launches the Global Library Publishing Map
This map documents library publishing activities among IFLA’s global membership. Read more
Plan S
Plan S open letter to researchers on the Rights Retention Strategy & publisher equivocation
The letter describes how some subscription publishers have recently put in place practices which may attempt to prevent cOAlition S funded researchers from exercising their right to make their author accepted manuscript open access immediately on publication in alignment with the rights retention strategy. Read more
Myth Busting session on RSS
Jisc is running a “myth busting” session on the plan’s Rights Retention Strategy next month. Read more
cOAlition S and hybrid journals
A short briefing highlights why why cOAlition S Organisations will not financially support the hybrid model of publishing. Read more
Support for the Subscribe to Open Model
cOAlition S has written in support of this model of open access, noting that “Using existing budget and subscription processes without imposing paywalls, S2O provides a rapid route to open access that is applicable to research from all disciplines and all countries.” Read more
Reports
OA Books report published
Academic Libraries and Open Access Books in Europe : A Landscape Study report from OPERAS. Read here
RepositoriesMilestone for LibriVoxLibriVox is a free public domain repository for audiobooks which are made available by volunteers who read, proof listen and help out with with technology. The catalogue has almost 2000 projects in 43 languages. Read more | 
