February 2024 Newsletter

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February 2024: What’s in this issue

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

Hoping that 2024 is off to a wonderful start for you all! Our first newsletter of 2024 comes to you on the eve of our AGM and Member Meeting to be held on February 29th. We have a panel of distinguished guests lined up to talk about Rights Retention which we know from your feedback in 2023 is on your minds. Many members have already registered – if you are a member of OAA and did not receive an invitation please contact us here.

For regular news updates, check our X account. Contributions to the newsletter or the blog, especially notice of upcoming events, are welcome. Contact us here. If this newsletter was forwarded to you and you’d like to receive it directly, please sign up.

What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing in Australia & Aotearoa New Zealand

New Open Access Toolkit for Aotearoa New Zealand Researchers.

Open Access Australasia is proud to host on our website this new OA toolkit created under the direction of the Council of Aotearoa New Zealand University Librarians (CONZUL), a committee of Universities New Zealand. The toolkit is designed for researchers in Aotearoa New Zealand’s university sector but features institution-neutral versions that can be downloaded and used by all researchers and institutions. It is licensed CC BY-SA so free to be adapted for any context, provided the authors are acknowledged and all versions are shared under the same license. It is both useful and beautiful We encourage you to take a look and share it

OA Toolkit

ARC Study Reports on Research Ownership and Academic Publishing in Australia.

Authors Kathy Bowrey, Tom Cochrane, Marie Hadley, Jill McKeough, Kylie Pappalardo and Kimberlee Weatherall present the results of their examination of the “complex interface of copyright law, university policies, academic customary practices, Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (EBA), research funder mandates and policies, the guidelines and policies that pertain to Indigenous research, and publishing contracts” in Australian research. This comprehensive exploration of a complex but all important topic is welcomed and a must-read for anyone in the field of scholarly communications in Australasia. The paper is called Managing Ownership of Copyright in Research Publications to Increase the Public Benefits from Research and is published in the Federal Law Review DOI:10.1177/0067205X231213676

Read the article

IATUL 44th International Conference to be held in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2024

The International Association of University Libraries 44th Annual Conference will be held 24-28 November in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Jointly hosted by the University of Auckland, Auckland Institute of Technology and The University of Waikato, the theme of this year’s conference is Ngā Reo o te Katoa – The Voices of All. https://www.iatul2024.org/

New Two new Australian Communities of Practice

Two new communities of practice have formed out of the Open Access Australasia/CAUL hosted Australian Scholarly Communication Community of Practice. The special interest groups each have a specific focus: one is for those working in open repository management and the other is for those involved in running diamond open access journals.The CoPs will meet every third Thursday of the month on zoom, alternating so that each group meets bimonthly. The first meeting will be the Repository CoP on March 21st, followed by the Diamond OA group on April 18th. Members of AuSCCoP will automatically receive an invite. If you are not a current member and would like to receive an invite please email info@oaustralasia.org

What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing globally

cOAlition S New Proposal Towards Responsible Publishing

At the end of 2023 cOAlition S announced a new vision for a community-based scholarly communication system, one where authors have much greater control over publishing their work, and where a much wider range of scholarly work is considered and assessed as research output. To get a quick overview of the main points try the summary but we highly recommend a close read of the full proposal.

Read the Proposal

cOAlition S continues to consult with the global research community on the principles, vision and strategies for implementation of the proposal via surveys and focus groups. Open Access Australasia attended the meeting for the Asia Pacific region at the start of the year.

UNESCO Open science outlook 1: status and trends around the world

This is the first analysis seeking to track the progress of efforts to implement the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science on a global scale.

Read Open Science Outlook 1

Creative Commons Recommended Best Practices for Better Sharing of Climate Data

Webinar March 9

Upcoming webinar on these recommendations, which are a result of collaboration between Creative Commons, government agencies, and intergovernmental organizations including ECMWF, NASA, NOAA, and the World Resources Institute. They aim to to enhance the accessibility, sharing, and reuse of open climate data to address the climate crisis.

What we’re reading

Open access research outputs receive more diverse citations

Huang, CK., Neylon, C., Montgomery, L. et al. Open access research outputs receive more diverse citations. Scientometrics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04894-0

Many studies have argued that research articles published open access receive a greater number of citations and infer that such works are more widely used. This fascinating study looks into who is citing open access articles and finds “a robust association between open access and increased diversity of citation sources by institutions, countries, subregions, regions, and fields of research, across outputs with both high and medium–low citation counts.” A highly recommended read and among the authorship are members of the team at the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative

Read Open access research outputs receive more diverse citations

Large language publishing

This thought piece by Jeff Pooley was published on Upstream, the Force11 blog, on January 2, 2024. It discusses in a comprehensive (and sometimes disturbing) way the impact that LLMs could have on the scholarly publishing landscape and the possible implications for the open access movement. Essential reading but not for the faint of heart!

Read Large Language Publishing

Lowitja Institute releases discussion paper on Indigenous Data Governance

Taking Control of Our Data: A Discussion Paper on Indigenous Data Governance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People and Communities was published by the Lowitja Institute on January 20 2024. The paper “aims to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and organisations to realise Indigenous Data Sovereignty by putting Indigenous Data Governance into practice”

Read Taking Control of our Data

2nd Diamond Access Conference Report

This is the report of the meeting held held on 25–26 October 2023 in Toluca, México.

The conference report provides an overview of the presentations and discussions that took place during the event. Key topics explored include Diamond scholarly communication infrastructure, policy development, sustainability and funding of Diamond Open Access, governance and global federation, as well as research evaluation and recognition.

Open Access Australasia held an event to coincide with this meeting, which is available on our website here.

Read the report

What we’re listening to

Open Science Talk podcast

This podcast – or audio journal – comes from the Arctic University of Norway, featuring a wide variety of guests and a diversity of topics including Open Access, Open Data, Open Research, Open Education, Citizen Science, Open Health, Open Software and more. Recent episodes cover SPARC Europe’s recent report on Right Retention policies, research assessment and “breaking up with Elsevier.”