It is hard to believe another year is drawing to a close. 2023 has been a big one for us at Open Access Australasia; our Project Officer Janet Catterall has come on board three days a week – essentially doubling our capacity, we have run another two iterations of our OA101 course taking us to 550 participants since May 2022, and we’ve hosted another successful program of insightful events for Open Access Week. In between we’ve run a number of webinars and made submissions to numerous inquiries within the research sector. 2023 has also seen big news in open access globally with the new cOAlition S proposal for responsible publishing, and locally with Universities NZ Te Pōkai Tara releasing an Open Access Statement acknowledging the rights of Māori and other Indigenous groups to determine the appropriate avenues for their data. We also have great pleasure in announcing the University of Canberra has joined us as a new member. Without the commitment of our membership we would not be able to do what we do, and we thank all members for their continued support. Finally, we are very sad to be saying goodbye to our wonderful Project Officer, Sandra Fry, after more than 6 years at Open Access Australasia (and in its previous iteration AOASG). Sandra has been integral to every part of the organisation – from running webinars, compiling this newsletter, managing the website, being part of OA weeks and engaging with all our members and the open access community in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. We wish you all a happy and safe Christmas and will be back with all the open access news in the New Year. | |||||||||||||||||
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What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing in Australia & Aotearoa New Zealand | |||||||||||||||||
Wise words from Executive Chair Kim Tairi Tēnā koutou katoa (hello everyone) and warm pacific greetings to you as we start the countdown to a well-earned summer break. It has been another exciting year across the globe. Here are just some of the OAA highlights for 2023:
I want to thank the OAA team, Ginny, Janet and Sandra for all their work in 2023. For such a small team you continue to perform feats of magic. Special thanks to Sandra Fry, OAA Project Officer who is leaving OAA after 6.5 years for a simpler life as a full-time library liaison librarian. My thanks also to the Executive, Dimity Flanagan, David Groenewegen, Michelle Blake, Fiona Bradley and Clare Thorpe. The collective dedication, knowledge, leadership and expertise of the all these folks are deeply appreciated by me and many others. Whakawhanaungatanga (relationship building/ connections/ links/network) continues to underpin all of the work we do at OAA. Our community sustains us and we serve our community. In 2024, we want to strengthen these connections and grow our membership to ensure OAA’s sustainability for the future. We anticipate another big year in open research and are excited by the cOAlition S proposal Towards Responsible Publishing and have responded to the survey. Finally, I just want to thank you, our community for being on this waka (canoe) with us because as we know, open research is better for research and society. This whakatauaki (words of wisdom/proverb) from Te Puea Hērangi says- Mehemea ka moemoeā ahau, ko ahau anake. Mehemea ka moemoeā tātou, ka taea e tātou. If I dream, I dream alone. If we dream together, we shall achieve. Together we will achieve more in 2024. Watch this space. | |||||||||||||||||
New DORA co-chair Our own Dr Ginny Barbour has become co-chair, with Dr Kelly Cobey from the University of Ottawa, of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). DORA recognises the need to improve the ways in which researchers and the outputs of research are evaluated. They began their three-year term in November 2023. | |||||||||||||||||
OA for Oz sport research Australia’s peak sports funding agency has made open access a priority in its Recommendations for conducting Australian Institute of Sport-supported research in high performance sport. The recommendations quote famed scientist Steven Hawking’s advice that “anyone, anywhere in the world should have free, unhindered access to not just my research, but to the research of every great and enquiring mind across the spectrum of human understanding.” | |||||||||||||||||
What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing globally | |||||||||||||||||
Wiley to ditch Hindawi brand Wiley has announced it will stop using the Hindawi name and integrate the hundreds of journals it acquired in 2021 into its own name by mid-2024. The company said the Hindawi journals have been overrun by paper mills leading to mass retractions and delisting from major indexes, which have cost the company millions of dollars. Read more. | |||||||||||||||||
Rights Retention helper Our friends at SPARC have put together this useful collection of key resources on rights retention for institutions and researchers: including examples of rights retention policies, support documents and guidelines and a key reading list. | |||||||||||||||||
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NASA Open Science 101 Following our lead 🙂 on education & training in open access (FUN FACT: We’ve had 550 participants so far in our OA101 Introduction to OA course since May last year), NASA has released its free Open Science 101 curriculum to empower researchers, early career scientists, and underrepresented communities with the knowledge and tools to embrace open science practices. The five-module programme is designed to equip researchers, students and citizen scientists with the skills to navigate the principles and practices of open science. NASA’s goal is to train 20,000 scientists and researchers over the next five years. | |||||||||||||||||
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Repository network project for discoverability A new project has been launched by the US Repository Network (an initiative of SPARC with support from COAR) to improve the discoverability of articles in US repositories. The one year project involves a variety of institutions, software types and repository models and will result in concrete recommendations and best practice guidelines for machine and human discoverability of research articles. Read more. | |||||||||||||||||
Netherlands Open Science identifies priorities Open Science NL has announced its first work programme for funding over the next two years will include open science infrastructure, a national training platform for data stewards, investments in sustainable open research software and Citizen Science Hubs. It plans to focus on these five areas:
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Reports | |||||||||||||||||
OSTP report responds to Appropriations Committees In the US, the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) has published a report to US House & Senate Appropriations Committees on “financing mechanisms for open access publishing of federally funded research.”
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Blogs we’re reading | |||||||||||||||||
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Webinars we’re listening to | |||||||||||||||||
Beware & ensure rights: Webinar Arjan Schalken of UKB & Rich Schneider of University of California talk about problems with current license to publish agreements and discuss strategies to prevent publishers from abusing restrictive CC licenses and to ensure authors retain all their rights including deciding how their work is disseminated and used.
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Upcoming events in OA & scholarly publishing | |||||||||||||||||
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Open Repositories Conference 3-6 June Göteborg Sweden | |||||||||||||||||
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Open Education Global 2024 13-15 November Brisbane Australia | |||||||||||||||||
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