July 2026: 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

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

Interested in joining OAA? See our member benefits and infographic Our Value and get in touch contact@oaaustralasia.org

AuSCCoP

The group has updated their charter to more accurately reflect current practices in the CoP in consultation with OAA, CAUL and the Diamond and Repository co-conveners. The charter is now being circulated for comment and endorsement.

A watch party is being planned and if you have suggestions for speakers or topics for meetings, please send them to the co-conveners.

Members continue to contribute to the shared Glossary of scholarly communications terminology and are also invited to add their ideas for the group to the feedback form. The group next meets on August 18 at 1pm AEST 3pm NZST.

If you’re interested in knowledge sharing, exchanging ideas, and connecting with colleagues in a friendly and supportive space, you’re very welcome to join the CoP. Meeting times for 2026 are listed here.

AuSCCoP Diamond Open Access Publishing group.

The next meeting on August 20 will feature guest speakers: Hamid Jamali, Edward Luca and Simon Wakeling (CSU) with an update on their ongoing research related to journal publishing in Australia.

Mark your calendars for ‘Insights from Canada’s Library Publishing Landscape’ (CAUL, CARL and PKP Webinar) coming October 15.

Please add your diamond journal to our Australasian Diamond Discovery Hub and feel free to share resources, guidelines and websites for diamond here

We welcome all new members. Details for joining the CoP and the meeting schedule for 2026 can be found here: how to join.

AuSCCoP Repositories group

Results of Repositories survey were discussed at last meeting. The survey was undertaken to help the group understand what repository platforms and tools are used across the community and identify what’s working well and where the challenges are. The results will be presented soon to the wider community at the AuSCCoP meeting.

Next meeting: 12 pm Tuesday 15th September at 12pm AEST. More information about the Repository group, dates for 2026 and how to join.

Aotearoa Scholarly Communications CoP

This CoP consists of subgroups for open educational resources, open access, Open Journal Systems, research data management and research impact metrics. Information about all of the Aotearoa groups can now be found on OAA’s website find out more and sign up for meetings

What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing globally

OASPA’s response to proposed revisions on US grant regulations

OASPA has responded to proposed revisions to US federal grant regulations, issued by the US Office of Management and Budget, which would make publication costs, including article processing charges, ineligible under default grant rules. The wider proposal has also raised concerns about increased political oversight of grant decisions, including the possibility of grants being reviewed or interrupted on non-scientific grounds. OASPA argues that the changes could create new barriers to open access and add further uncertainty for researchers, universities, and publishers working with federally funded research.

SPARC has also commented on the proposed rule, calling for clear, no-cost pathways to public access and warning against changes that would make it harder for researchers to share federally funded work.

Consultation closed on July 13 with more than 340,000 responses.

The Netherlands’ new open access strategy: ‘scaling small’ and community-led

In a recent blog post, the Open Book Collective reflects on the Netherlands’ new open access strategy, which echoes the collective’s “scaling small” approach. The new open access strategy takes a broad view of scholarly publishing, extending beyond journal articles to include monographs, edited volumes, and book chapters. It puts community-driven publishing, institutional repositories, and the redirection of funds away from big deals at the centre of its approach, while emphasising values such as equity, digital autonomy, sustainability, and bibliodiversity.

B!SON, a recommender for open access journals.

DOAJ has published a blog post introducing B!SON, a transparent tool that helps authors find suitable open access journals by analysing manuscript details such as title, abstract and references. The post explains how B!SON uses DOAJ metadata and other open data sources to generate publisher-neutral recommendations, and how it can also support libraries and institutions in guiding researchers.

DORA co-creating a Practical Guide for Scholarly Communication

DORA, in collaboration with the Global Young Academy (GYA), will develop a new resource, “A Practical Guide to Implementing Responsible Research Assessment in Scholarly Communication.” [tentative title]. This Guide builds on DORA’s previous Practical Guides for research performing and funding organizations, and represents our next step in supporting the implementation of responsible research assessment across the research ecosystem. Focusing on scholarly communication, the Guide will explore how editorial, publishing and infrastructure practices shape research assessment and how they can be aligned with responsible, transparent, and equitable approaches. It will address areas such as editorial policies, peer review, the use of metrics, and how research outputs are communicated and evaluated.

Reports

By Katharine Szamuely and Arnout Jacobs.

Springer Nature has released a regional white paper examining how gold open access is affecting the visibility and use of Chinese research. The report finds that nearly 40% of citations to China’s 2022 gold OA articles now come from outside China, including substantial uptake in the ‘Global South’, and argues that OA articles receive more citations and downloads than comparable paywalled articles. The discussion focuses on impact and reach rather than APC costs or equity issues, and presents gold open access in largely positive terms, so readers may wish to keep that framing in mind when considering its conclusions.

What we are reading:

Research integrity and open access models: insights from Retraction Watch and OpenAlex

By Ben Rawlins

This article uses data from Retraction Watch and OpenAlex to examine how research integrity issues and retractions intersect with different open access publishing models. It finds that gold APC-funded open access now accounts for a large share of retracted articles and significant APC income, arguing that the core problem is not open access itself but the incentive structures of volume-based APC models, and calling for coordinated governance by publishers, funders, libraries and institutions to better align openness with quality and accountability.

By Cameron Neylon and Bianca Kramer.

This article explores how financial modelling can be used to plan future investments in open access and scholarly communication systems, using public data wherever possible. It describes a modelling framework applied to two library consortia (CAUL and Bibsam) to estimate the costs of different pathways to 100% open access, and shows that where consortia make detailed publishing and cost data publicly available, much richer and more transparent scenario analysis is possible—while calling on other consortia to do the same to support wider community debate and planning.

Keeping up with AI

Copyright theft is AI’s original sin- are we doomed to repeat it?

In this episode of the The Minefield from ABC Radio National, Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens host Anna Funder, Professor of Practice in Creative Writing at the University of Sydney to talk about AI and copyright, focusing on Anna Funder’s argument that training AI on creators’ work without consent or payment amounts to theft. The episode looks at what that means for writers, artists, and the broader future of copyright in Australia.