What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing in Australia & Aotearoa New Zealand
What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing globally
Recent writing & resources on OA
Upcoming events in OA & scholarly publishing
As the upcoming Australian federal election looms large, we have released a statement on what we would like to see the next Australian Government focus on in open publishing. We’re calling for investment in a diverse and equitable publishing system with three waves of investment:
- Support for immediate needs, specifically for transforming closed access journals to open access, and for the systems and technical infrastructure that underpin open scholarly publishing
- Integration with international open science initiatives, specifically by upgrades of university and subject repositories that curate open research outputs
- Investment in the future of open scholarly research including specific investment in the publication of research that is unique to Australia and support for innovative scholarly communication
Read our full statement here.
Our next webinar will be on 24 May and presented by representatives from the COPIM Project (Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs). They will discuss the challenges facing libraries seeking to support Open Access (OA) for books. Register here.
Our inaugural (members only) OA101 course will run for 4 weeks from 23 May. Read more about the course and sign up here.For regular news updates, check our Twitter account
Contributions to the newsletter or the blog, especially notice of upcoming events, are welcome. Contact us here.
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What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing in Australia & Aotearoa New Zealand
Acting ARC CEO to stay
Acting CEO of the ARC been appointed as the permanent replacement for Professor Sue Thomas who stepped down earlier this year. Ms Zielke has signed on for a five-year term. Read more.
Curtin pilot for diversity in OA book publishing
A Curtin University team of data scientists and software developers has been awarded more than $1 million for a project seeking to address a growing analytics capability gap which is putting the diversity of the scholarly book publishing system at risk. The funding is from the US-based arts & humanities focused Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Read more.
New EO for ADA & CA for ALACC
Sarah Powell has been appointed as the new Executive Officer of the Australian Digital Alliance, and Copyright Advisor for the Australian Libraries and Archives Copyright Coalition. She will be replacing Ben Rice, who is now with Universities Australia. 
Year in Review released: CAUL
Summary of the Council of University Librarians annual report has been released to showcase the substantial work done by the group in 2021. Access review here.
What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing globally
General News
LIBER announces urgent recommendations
European research library advocate LIBER has come up with four urgent recommendations for Open Access negotiations with publishers:
SCOAP3 extended by 2 years
The world’s largest disciplinary open access initiative, the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3) program, has been extended until the end of 2024. It follows a recommendation by SCOAP3’s Tender Working Group to provide members with stability during the COVID19 pandemic. The governing Council agreed that SCOAP3 provides excellent value for money when benchmarked against other initiatives, and members agreed it should be prioritised for support. Read more.
Elsevier buys Interfolio
Publishing giant Elsevier is buying systems provider Interfolio to add to its research intelligence portfolio. Interfolio is a faculty information system for 400+ HE institutions. Read more.
New COPIM website & our next webinar
The Community led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project has launched its new website. The project aims to building community-owned infrastructures to enable open access book publishing. It has just published a Report on Community Governance of Open Infrastructures. We will be speaking with two founders of the project along with other Open Book experts at our next webinar REGISTER HERE 
Open Book Collective launched
The Open Book Collective collective (part of COPIM) will bring together OA publishers, OA publishing service providers, libraries, and other research institutions to create a new, mutually supportive ecosystem for the thriving of OA book publishing. At the heart of the work will be a new platform making it quicker and easier for libraries and others to financially support different OA publishers and service providers via membership offerings. Read more.
DOAB reaches 50,000 milestone
The Directory of Open Access Books now includes over 50,000 books published in 90 languages by 560 academic book publishers. Launched in 2012, the DOAB indexes OA books and provides publication information. Read more.
ORCID and OA Switchboard collaboration
With their April 2022 release, OA Switchboard users will be able to leverage authoritative affiliation data from authors’ ORCID profiles to corroborate affiliation or organizational identifiers (such as ROR or Ringgold IDs) and ensure more accurate routing of the messages being shared between participants throughout the Open Access (OA) research cycle and publication journey, ultimately resulting in more complete and better quality metadata in the OA Switchboard messages for each article published. Read more.
New incentives for Open Science CoP in US
The Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship (HELIOS) is a cohort of colleges committed to collective action to advance open scholarship within universities. Leaders from US colleges have joined this CoP and are working to promote a more transparent, inclusive, and trustworthy research ecosystem. It was launched out of discussions convened by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable on Aligning Incentives for Open Science. Read more.
Repositories
COAR Annual report 
The 155 member Confederation of Open Access Repositories has released its 2021-2022 annual report. Download the report here.
Scopus data for arXiv member dashboard
The first, specialist Open Access repository, the Cornell University-hosted arXiv will now provide a personalised digital dashboard to members, using Scopus data. The 30 year old repository holds more then 2 millions articles and has 200+ member institutions. Read more.
Reports
Open Science and IP rights report: EU Commission
This report presents the result of a study that explores the interactions and the balance between Open Science and Intellectual Property Rights. It identifies concrete recommendations for policy makers and for IPR practitioners on the promotion of Open Science and its balance with IPR for better knowledge dissemination to the benefit of all.
Plan S
Cambridge sets up pilot rights retention scheme
The University of Cambridge has recently established a pilot rights retention scheme on an opt-in basis, with a view to informing the next revision of the University’s Open Access policy. cOAlition S spoke to Cambridge Head of Open Research Services Niamh Tumelty in this interview.
Recent writing & resources on OA
What we’re reading
Publishing Without Exclusive Rights – Peter Suber – The Journal of Electronic Publishing
I Don’t Peer-Review for Non-Open Journals, and Neither Should You – Michael P.Taylor
Libraries and Diamond Open Access – Demmy Verbeke – The Scholarly Tales blog
How does Open Science affect our publishing strategy: Kick-off debate on the future of scientific publishing – part of a Utrecht University discussion series ‘Publishing in Transition.’
The big idea: should we get rid of the scientific paper – Stuart Ritchie – The Guardian
Guest Post: Open Access and the Direction Moving Forward – A J Boston – The Scholarly Kitchen
The Open Access Tracking Project – OATP – David Hopf on the TIB blog
Upcoming events in OA & scholarly publishing
May 16-19 2022 Canberra
June 6-9 2022 Denver
17-21 October Brisbane
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 Open Access Australasia include joining our community of practice calls.
The newsletter archive provides snapshots of key issues throughout the year. Other ways to keep in touch with discussions at Open Access Australasia include joining our community of practice calls.