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What’s in this issueWhat’s new in OA & scholarly publishing in Australia & Aotearoa New ZealandWhat’s new in OA & scholarly publishing globallyRecent writing & resources on OAUpcoming events in OA & scholarly publishing
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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 |
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What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing in Australia & Aotearoa New Zealand |
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Advancing open scholarly communication: the role of HAL and Episciences within France’s OS strategyOAA was thrilled to host Nathalie Fargier, Director, Center for Direct Scientific Communication (CCSD) who presented an overview of open science initiatives in France, specifically showcasing HAL, the multidisciplinary open archive of French research and Episciences, a complete platform for the publication of open access diamond journals. |
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Upcoming regional conferences: |
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Registration open for Research Support Community DayHosted this year by James Cook University, the event runs from June 24 – 26, is online and is free. Check out the program and speakers. “Connect with colleagues, share ideas and build your professional network.” |
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Registration open for LIANZA 2025 ConferenceTe Rau Herenga o Aotearoa LIANZA is Aotearoa’s library association. .This year’s conference will be held September 23 – 24, 2025 at Tākina Wellington Convention and Exhibition Centre in Pōneke Wellington. Check out the program. This year’s theme is “Ko au te taiao, ko te taiao ko au – Sustaining and Changing” |
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AuSCCoP. The Australian Scholarly Communications Community of Practice (AuSCCoP) held a special event on May 22nd: ‘A Scholarly Communications landscape scan and update with Danny Kingsley‘. For those who missed it the recording is available here. Next meeting will be Thursday June 12th. More information and how to join AuSCCoP Diamond Open Access Publishing group. The next meeting will be on Thursday June 19th. Included in this meeting: Hamid Jamali, Simon Wakeling and Edward Luca will present an update from their research on the sustainability of Australian journals; Max Sullivan and Nik Crombie from Victoria University of Wellington will present a Lightning Talk: 10 Years Supporting OJS and Diamond Journals. More information about the Diamond Publishing group and how to join AuSCCoP Repositories group. The May meeting saw lively discussion after watching George MacGregor’s presentation (starts at time 16:14) on future repository infrastructure, given at the 2024 RLUK Digital Shift Forum. The next meeting is scheduled for July 17th. More information about the Repository group and how to join. Aotearoa Scholarly Communications CoP. Information about all six of the Aotearoa groups can now be found on OAA’s website find out more and sign up for meetings The subgroups will be reporting on their activities to the main CoP later in the year. |
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What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing globally |
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(c) 2019 Lotta Tomasson on flickr.com CC BY-NC 2.0 What does Trump’s call for ‘gold standard science’ really mean?A new executive order mandating “transparency, replication, and taking swift action to correct errors and punish misconduct” in order to restore “gold standard science” has just been issued from the White House. Though these are on the face of it tenets that the open research movement supports and emphasises, this article in Science finds the details to be more sinister, giving “a political appointee the power to decide when… findings need to be “corrected” and to take disciplinary action against those seen as the perpetrators of misinformation.” |
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So far there have been no obvious attempts to interfere with the execution of the Nelson Memo of 2022 which requires all US federal agencies to update their public access policies so that publications and supporting data resulting from federally funded research are made freely and immediately available to the public. Indeed the NIH has announced their updated policy will go into effect 6 months early on July 1. However, given funding and staff cuts and directives on what can be researched and funded in the US under the present administration, the open access community there remain vigilant. |
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Germany’s Plan for an Open and Independent PubMed Safety NetGermany’s National Library of Medicine (ZB MED) has launched an ambitious project to develop an open-source, internationally supported “safety net” alternative to PubMed, aiming to ensure continued, reliable access to biomedical literature if PubMed’s services are disrupted or degraded. |
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Open repositories are being profoundly impacted by AI bots and other crawlers: Results of a COAR Survey“To get a better understanding about the impact of bots and crawlers on repositories, a short survey was distributed to COAR members in April 2025…The results of the survey found that over 90% of respondents are encountering AI bots, usually more than once a week, and often leading to service disruptions. Respondents also reported using a variety of measures to minimize or stop AI bots from accessing the repository applying a mix of approaches…” |
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Updated version of the “How Equitable Is It?” tool for assessing equity in scholarly communication models“The “How Equitable Is It?” tool, designed to assess the equity of scholarly communication models, has been officially launched today in its updated version following a comprehensive review of community feedback. Originally introduced as a beta version in September 2024 at the OASPA conference, this refined version of the tool incorporates significant improvements based on input from across the scholarly publishing ecosystem.” |
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Peter Suber on science in danger: “Host your open and uncensored research in more than one place and preferably more than one country.”“In this interview with Peter Suber, the Senior Advisor on Open Access at Harvard Library and Director of the Harvard Open Access Project at the Berkman Klein Center, discusses the current alarming developments taking place in the US research landscape – and offers valuable advice to colleagues from abroad.” |
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2025 State of Open Infrastructure Report The 2025 State of Open Infrastructure report from Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) provides a comprehensive analysis of the current landscape, challenges, and future prospects for open infrastructure supporting research and scholarship worldwide. “We hope this report sparks your curiosity about the tools and systems the research community relies on and helps you to think about how your decisions line up with your vision for the future of research and scholarship.” |
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Safeguarding the future of society publishing This white paper examines the mounting challenges and opportunities facing society publishers in the scholarly communications landscape, highlighting pressures from declining revenues and the impact of AI, highlighting the need for greater collaboration and adaptability. Despite challenges, society publishers remain uniquely positioned to uphold research integrity and community trust. |
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The African Platform for Open Scholarship Advancing Diamond Open Access and InclusivityReggie Raju, Salansha Maharaj Global South authors face significant barriers to publication, including geographic, language, peer review, and editorial biases—challenges that have been compounded by high publishing fees imposed by commercial open access models. In response, the University of Cape Town’s African Platform for Open Scholarship provides free, diamond open access publishing infrastructure to support African scholarship and promote equity in scholarly communication. This paper examines how UCT is leveraging the platform, using case studies to highlight the platform’s positive impact on publishing. |
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Examining the geographic and linguistic coverage of gold and diamond open access journals in OpenAlex, Scopus and Web of Science.Marc-André Simard, Isabel Basson, Madelaine Hare, Vincent Larivière, Philippe Mongeon. The study compares the coverage of gold and diamond OA journals in OpenAlex, WoS, and Scopus by subject area, country, and language. Findings show that Diamond journals are more likely to publish in languages other than English than gold OA journals and often have a national or regional focus, especially in the social sciences and humanities. Gold OA journals are more likely to be English-only and have broader international authorship. High-income countries dominate authorship in all journal types, except diamond OA journals in the social sciences and humanities, where there is greater diversity. |
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SECURE Framework for GenAI use in Australian universitiesCharles Sturt University has developed the S.E.C.U.R.E. framework to guide university staff in making informed decisions about using GenAI software according to risk parameters. © 2025 Mark A. Bassett, Charles Sturt University. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. |
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Take Nature’s AI research test: find out how your ethics compareNature presented a series of ethical scenarios about AI use in research to over 5,000 scientists worldwide, revealing a wide range of opinions on when and how AI should be used for writing and peer review. You can now explore these same scenarios yourself to see how your views compare. This is a fun and interactive way of presenting the results of the survey, some of which are quite surprising! |
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Scholarly Communication landscape scanThis insightful presentation by Danny Kingsley, Director Library Services (Information) at Deakin, was hosted by the Australian Scholarly Communications Community of Practice (AuSCCoP) on May 22nd. |
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Research Culture Uncovered Podcast: Project Retain: open access and rights retention policies across EuropeIva Melinščak Zlodi and Jon Treadway from Project Retain talk about the SPARC Europe led project that aims to accelerate the uptake of rights retention and open licensing to enable researchers to share their work openly. It published its final report on 24 March 2025 featuring case studies from 10 European countries, including the N8 Research Partnership in the UK. |
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Upcoming events in OA & scholarly publishing |
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