July 2023 Newsletter

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

Forward

If you’re into tool kits this month’s newsletter is for you! We think it’s great to see so many new tools becoming available to help make the concept of open access easier to understand. From checklists to reporting tools, there’s something for everyone here. If we’ve missed one you think is useful, drop us a line and we can feature it.

We will be launching our OA Week 2023 events webpage soon. Read the launch blog and let us know if you’re planning any activities so we can feature them.

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 Data policy for University of Auckland

As of 1 July, the University of Auckland’s new Research Data Management Policy will come into force to ensure consistent management in line with:

international standards for FAIR data and open research that are increasingly required by funders, data providers and publishers
the University’s obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi and commitment to becoming a Māori data sovereignty organisation,
the CARE principles for the governance of indigenous data, including Pacific data, and
legal, ethical and protective security requirements for research data.

As we plan our events and activities for Open Access week (23 – 29 October), Chair of our OA Week planning committee, Richard White, is taking a closer look at this year’s theme of Community over Commercialisation as our guest blogger.

READ RICHARD WHITE’S BLOG

What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing globally

New OA.Report tool for funders

The developers who brought us the OA button have just released a new tool to help research funders identify the openness of their research outputs and streamline actions to improve it. The free, public OA.Reports tool has been developed in partnership with the Gates Foundation, and is already being used by other major foundations. There is also a pilot program for libraries to join the OA.Report to simplify compliance checking for OA policies.

Canada funders set to require OA

The Canadian government’s research funding organisations have announced a review of the Tri-agency Open Access Policy on Publications, with the goal of requiring immediate open and free access to all academic publications by 2025. Read more.

Flourishing of Toolkits in Open Access and Open Science

A number of new toolkits have been developed to assist in supporting different aspects of Open Science – there is something for everybody in the tools below.

The UNESCO Open Science Toolkit is designed to support implementation of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. It includes a set of guides, policy briefs, factsheets and indexes and includes checklists (see links below) specifically to support publishing, research organisations or institutions. Materials are available for reuse under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO licence.

Identifying predatory academic journals and conferences

Checklist for universities on implementing the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science

Checklist for OA publishers on implementing the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science

DOAJ & OASPA create OA journals toolkit

The Directory of Open Access Journals and the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association have worked together to create the Open Access Journals Toolkit. It provides guidance and resources to support new and established OA journals. Information includes the journal development lifecycle from creation to costs, staffing, technical & policy development, through to indexing. Materials are available for reuse under a CC-BY 4.0 licence.

The Open Climate Campaign is looking to develop open access policies with national governments, funders and environmental organisations and is inviting researchers to get involved by tapping into the researchers action kit. Read more.

Pledge to Open: Jisc and T & F book deal

A new international collective funding pilot deal, Pledge to Open, has been agreed between publisher Taylor and Francis and Jisc, the UK’s library consortium. The deal aims to publish 70 open access books on a broad range of global issues with institutions pledging support for one or more of seven interdisciplinary themed collections. Read more.

Springer Nature buys protocols.io

The protocols.io platform has been acquired by Springer Nature. Developers of the tool said “its business model, open access repository, and mission and vision will not change as a result.” Read more.

Happy 10th Anniversary for DOAB

The Directory of Open Access Books is celebrating its 10th anniversary. After starting with just 750 books in 2013 this wonderful piece of infrastructure, led by OpenEdition and OAPEN Foundation, now contains more than 68,000 OA books & book chapters in 60 languages, from more than 600 publishers. Congratulations!

Image above originally published on DOAB blog post by Silke Davidson & used under CC-BY 4.0 licence

1819 Japanese scrolls open access

A new digitisation lab at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa has made the fine details of two hand-painted scrolls openly accessible for the first time. Read more.