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
The world of Open Access is never dull and it’s been an extremely busy time for us at Open Access Australasia. Most importantly, we welcome back Janet Catterall as Senior Project Officer. Many of you will remember Janet from her stint with us over last summer to work on a project looking at open access initiatives across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (coming soon).
If you missed our most recent webinar presented by #ebooksos co-founder Rachel Bickley you can watch it here.
At the beginning of June, we organised an Asia Pacific Regional Workshop on Equity in Open Access in collaboration with OA2020, the International Science Council and cOAlition S. Slides and videos are available here.
For regular news updates, check our Twitter 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
Te Pōkai Tara (Universities NZ) statement on OA
In May, Universities NZ —Te Pōkai Tara released an Open Access Statement on behalf of New Zealand’s eight universities. It acknowledges the rights of Māori and other indigenous groups to determine the appropriate avenues for their data, and sets out the determination of member universities to continue to pursue open access. Read the full statement.
ARC Research Review released
The review into the Australian Research Council has been released. Open Access Australasia made a submission and took part in a focus group for the review which examined the role & purpose of the Australian Research Council within the university research system. Campus Morning Mail published The ARC review team on new ways to evaluate research by review members Margaret Sheil, Susan Dodds, & Mark Hutchinson on May 31. You can download & read the full review.
A word from outgoing SCOSS Board Chair Martin Borchert
On behalf of the SCOSS Board I wish to thank Open Access Australasia and the Council of Australian University Librarians for your support and partnership with SCOSS to help sustain a diverse global open science and open access ecosystem. Thank you to Ginny, Sandra and Angus for supporting our recent webinar. Special thank you also to all the Australian and New Zealand Aotearoa funding institutions for your SCOSS pledges and into the future.
With my final term as CAUL representative on the SCOSS Board, and thus also as Chair, coming to an end in 2023, it was my last participation as a presenter in a SCOSS webinar to the ANZ community and I look forward to joining you hopefully next year as an audience participant. Thank you CAUL for the privilege to represent the ANZ community on the SCOSS Board.
If you missed the webinar presented by Martin, and CAUL Content Procurement Manager Angus Cook you can watch it here.
International Open Access Week 2023
Open Access Week 2023 is an opportunity to join together, take action, and raise awareness around the importance of community control of knowledge sharing systems. The theme for 2023 is: Community over Commercialization
We love this year’s theme and our OA Week planning Committee is already meeting regularly to ensure we have a great variety of presentations and activities on the program for Oct 23 – 29. If you have any suggestions please contact us.
What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing globally
cOAlition S to drop non-transforming journals
The Transformative Journal (TJ) model was one of the strategies cOAlition S developed to help subscription publishers transition to full and immediate Open Access, but two years into the program more than two thirds (68%) of the journals have failed to meet their OA growth targets. As such,1589 titles will lose their TJ status at the end of 2023.
Analysis of the 2022 data shows that of the 2326 titles in the TJ programme:
26 titles (1%) flipped to full OA from 1st January 2023
695 titles (30%) met or exceeded their OA growth targets and remain in the TJ programme
1589 titles (68%) failed to meet their OA growth targets and will be removed from the TJ programme.
16 other titles (1%) were removed from the programme for other reasons.
Three big publishers including Springer Nature (77%), Elsevier (63%) & ASC (56%) failed to meet the most targets. Read the full report here.
Berlin Conference calls for faster transition to OA
The 16th Berlin Open Access Conference has released its final statement calling for faster action on OA transition.
Delegations of research performing and research funding organizations from 38 nations, including ministries of education and research, funders, university and research leadership, libraries and national-level library consortia, scientists and scholars, gathered in Berlin for the meeting.
EU Council conclusions welcomed
The Council of the European Union has released its Council conclusions on high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy, and equitable scholarly publishing, particularly its concern over increasing paywall costs for scientific research and the explicit call for EU Member States to come together and support non-profit scholarly publishing models instead.
Leaders in the European research community released a joint response welcoming the Council’s conclusions and pledged to engage with the Council in its efforts to develop a non-profit scholarly communication ecosystem. Plan S has also welcomed the conclusions.
Diamond Open Access community Action Plan
Science Europe, cOAlition S, OPERAS, and the French National Research Agency have announced a roadmap to the Global Summit on Diamond Open Access from 23 to 27 October 2023 in Toluca, México. The Action Plan for Diamond Open Access launched a year ago has been endorsed by 146 organisations and 141 individuals.
The First 2023 Diamond OA Action Plan Community webinar was be held last month.
There is now also a Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication (DIAMAS) community call to develop tools and collect resources to support institutional publishers and service providers. Contribute here.
G7 Science Ministers support open science and open access
The G7 Science and Technology Ministers have issued a statement firmly prioritising Open Science – and explicitly endorsing Open Access. You can read the full text of the communique here. It affirms the ministers’ commitment to the shared values of democracy, rule of law, openness, and respect for freedom and human rights, as well as the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, including gender equality, in research and development. “The G7 supports immediate open and public access to government-funded scholarly publications and scientific data, and supports the endeavors of the scientific community to address challenges in scholarly publishing for broader sharing of appropriate scientific outputs.”
DOAJ turns 20
Celebrations for the 20 year anniversary of the Directory of Open Access Journals will be held in June, kicking off with three events encompassing the themes of Open, Global & Trusted. Register for events here and see how this very important piece of open infrastructure came into being.
$10m grant for OA Fund
The MIT Press has received a $10 million gift from the charitable foundation Arcadia to establish the Arcadia Open Access Fund. The new fund will support the MIT Press’s efforts to publish open access books and journals and help it continue to develop tools, models, and resources that make scholarship more accessible.
The charitable foundation works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage, and promote open access to knowledge.
Invest in Open Infrastructure: Final version of report on Defining Open Scholarly Infrastructure
After seeking comments & feedback, the Invest in Open Infrastructure organisation has released its report which aims to serve as a starting point to work towards a more sophisticated framework for understanding open infrastructure for research and scholarship. It hopes to build a comprehensive theoretical framework to offer structure and assistance for future projects. Read the report.
Consultation on language content in repositories
The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) is calling for input on 16 draft recommendations developed to provide good practice advices on depositing, managing, and curating multilingual and non-English language content in repositories. Consultation closes June 30. Comment on the draft recommendations here.
Four years of the Open GLAM survey
The Open GLAM survey records instances of open access policy and practice in the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) sector. More than 1424 institutions have published OA data from around the world.
Recent writing & resources on OA
Report into integrity threat from Paper Mills
A new research report from the Committee on Publication Ethics and STM has found a joint effort by publishers, funders and research institutions is needed to protect the integrity of the scholarly record from paper mills. Read the report.
Upcoming events in OA & scholarly publishing
Call for presentation abstracts – 16-20 October eResearch Australia Conference
Global Summit on Diamond Open Access – 23-27 October Toluca Mexico
Want more OA news?
We can’t cover everything here! This is a curated list of items that caught our eye and/or which seem especially relevant to OA in this region. For daily updates the best source is the Open Access Tracking Project or if you prefer, our Twitter account, which is regularly updated.
The newsletter archive provides snapshots of key issues in Open Access. Other ways to keep in touch with discussions at Open Access Australasia include joining our community of practice calls.
Follow us via twitter @openaccess_anz or online at https://oaaustralasia.org/