You can tell by the amount of news from Australia and New Zealand in our latest newsletter that more than ever before, Open Access is very much on the minds of those in our research communities. Plan S, and in particular its Rights Retention Strategy, are burning issues around the world, as are questions about the fairness and long term viability of Article Processing Charges.
Scanned image East Asian Library’s pre-1912 Chinese manuscript collection UC Berkeley Library Digital Collections
The momentum isn’t just in the world of scholarly research, but as we navigate the complexities and problems of the publishing establishment, those in the GLAM world have been busily and exhaustively digitising and opening up hundreds of thousands of pictures of artifacts, documents, images and photographs for world to see, all open and accessible.
Sixth Map of Asia, Qatar National Library, 2702, in Qatar Digital Library
In our latest newsletter we highlight two such international collaborations, one created between UC Berkeley Library and China’s Sichuan University which involves the digitisation and addition of rich metadata to half a million pages (over 3 years) of some of the oldest books in history. The digitization work will capture images in high resolution, meeting or exceeding current standards for digital scholarship collections and long-term digital preservation, and be available via the Library’s Digital Collections.
The second is the celebration of the two millionth image made freely available through a collaboration which began a decade ago between the British Library and the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. All images are freely available online via the Qatar Digital Library.
These international partnerships are a testament to the global benefits to not just scholars, but to everyone, of open access.