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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 Message from the Chair of the OAA Executive Board, Kim Tairi.Kia ora Members, After a little more than three months in the role, Mark Sutherland has decided to step down as Director of Open Access Australasia to return to “full-time” retirement. Mark is looking forward to having more time for leisure and his voluntary work, which include leadership roles in two body corporates. The OAA Executive appreciates Mark’s honesty in recognising the balance he needs. We wish him the all the best as he fully embraces retirement. We will update members on office hours and staffing shortly. In the coming weeks, the Executive Committee will reach out to schedule meetings with you to discuss OAA services, our value, and your needs as members. We look forward to hearing from you before our AGM and planning meeting in February 2025. I’m especially excited to connect with many of you in person in Aotearoa, particularly to meet Janet for the first time, as she will be presenting at IATUL. Mauri ora (good health), Kim Tairi
Chair, OAA Executive Committee |
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What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing in Australia & Aotearoa New Zealand |
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Open Access Australasia’s OA Week 2024 webinars now available to view Hope you all had a fantastic Open Access Week! Thank you to all who attended our sessions on October 22- 24. We had a great turnout and very interesting and inspiring discussions with our panellists. Thank you to all our speakers and facilitators and the OA Week 2024 Planning Committee. To view the slides and videos please visit the event page on our website or click on the individual sessions below: |
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What did your institution do for OA Week 2024? If you have a write up of your event please let us know and we can add it to our blog or if you would like us to share a video of your event please email contact@oaaustralasia.org and we will include it on our website. |
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The Benefits of Open Access graphic: a makeover and the many ways it has been re-used This graphic – the most popular reusable graphic on our website – was originally created in 2010 by Danny Kingsley and Sarah Brown under a CC BY license. Danny and Sarah have updated the graphic for 2024 (download here) Danny has written a blog, An unforeseen impact of the CC BY reach, explaining the impetus for updating the graphic and also exploring the many ways it has been used and reused over the years. |
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Meet OAA’s Executive Committee |
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This month: Deputy Chair Dimity Flanagan The work of the OAA Executive Committee is considerable but often invisible and so will now feature a committee member in each newsletter. We asked Dimity if she would share her thoughts on OAA: What is one aspect of the work that OAA does that you see as a member of the Executive Committee that people often don’t realise or appreciate? Our members may not realise how much time goes into building and maintaining international connections. OAA is the key contact point for stakeholders overseas, like SPARC and Coalition S. Open access is an international movement and we need to ensure that Australia and New Zealand are playing an active role in open access initiatives beyond our borders. We can ensure our views are reflected in surveys, reports and at conferences. Our connections also bring important speakers to the Australasian audience so that our practitioners can understand their work in the global context. What immediate benefits have you seen at your institution – the University of Melbourne- from being involved with OAA? The online course OA101 helps ensure we have a shared literacy throughout the library (and other key professional staff teams) when it comes to open access. This is so important when OA specialist teams tend to be quite small and heavily reliant on liaison teams and research offices to promote key messages into faculties. It is great to see that we will be able to further develop this shared literacy when the advanced course comes out next year. I have just got involved with the working group for the new course and it is coming along really well. How would you say staff benefit from their institutions being involved with OAA? OA Week and other OAA initiatives that require member input are absolutely phenomenal professional development opportunities. It can be difficult for many staff to find a seat on a committee at their university, OAA’s OA Week gives staff the opportunity to be involved in a planning committee with staff from across Australian and NZ institutions, helping to develop their own professional networks. It also allows them to engage with experts around the globe as they line up speakers for the events. It is worth noting that the OA Week events in the past few years have had exceptionally diverse line ups with presenters from Africa, Asia, North and South America and the Pacific. I am continually in awe of what our OAA members achieve and am always so heartened to see such high attendance numbers too. It makes all that hard work worth it! |
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In Our Language In our Language: Journal of Pacific Research (IOL) publishes existing peer reviewed and published research, reviews, poems, short stories and essays that have been directly translated (typically from English) to a Pacific language. The translation and publishing of existing research provides an ethical and culturally appropriate means of reporting back to research communities and participants (who were involved in the original research), while also offering high quality language-friendly literature for Pacific stakeholders, researchers, students, consultation groups and policy makers in their native tongue. The ‘call for papers’ is always open with papers published as ‘Online First’ publications immediately following the review and acceptance process. IOL is published by the Assistant Vice Chancellor Pacific, Office of the Vice-Chancellor, at the University of Waikato. |
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ALIA recommendations on AI literacy adopted in Committee’s interim report In a recent submission including supplementary information to the Select Committee on Adopting Artificial Intelligence, ALIA highlighted the urgent need for AI literacy for Australians. The Select Committee has adopted ALIA’s proposal, recommending “the government examine mechanisms, including education initiatives, to improve AI literacy for Australians.” |
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ALIA raises importance of ICIP, traditional knowledge and Indigenous data in AI Guardrails submission ALIA has made suggestions to ensure that Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP), traditional knowledge and Indigenous data are effectively included in the Government’s proposed AI Guardrails |
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AuSCCoP The Australian Scholarly Communications Community of Practice (AuSCCoP) next meets on November 14th at 1pm AEST/4pm NZDT. Please add your agenda items. If you would like to join the AuSCCoP and/or attend the next meeting please email contact@oaaustralasia.org AuSCCoP Diamond Open Access Publishing group. The next meeting is tentatively scheduled for December 19 2024 at 1pm AEST/4pm NZDT. More information about the Diamond Publishing group and how to join AuSCCoP Repositories group The next meeting will be held on November 21st. For more information or to sign up to the group please see the group’s webpage |
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What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing globally |
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Paper Pledge for the Planet The Paper Pledge is a global collaboration of hundreds of institutions working together to make climate change literature openly available. On 22 October 2024, COAR, EIFL, and regional, national, and institutional partners – in collaboration with the Open Climate Campaign – launched a global effort to make this critical knowledge available to the world. For more information see the website You can participate! OAA Executive Committee members from the University of Melbourne and the University of New South Wales are seeking interest from ANZ repositories. Contact dimity.flanagan@unimelb.edu.au if you would like to get involved. |
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OAPEN OA Books Toolkit Relaunch “The OAPEN Open Access Books Toolkit aims at promoting and supporting open access to academic books. It consists of short articles covering a wide range of topics relating to OA books, each including a list of sources referenced, further reading and links to definitions of key terms… the Toolkit is a unique and comprehensive resource that helps publishers and authors navigate the landscape of research funders and institutions policy.” |
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Reflections on the UNESCO Draft Dubai Declaration on OERs Consultation In a recent online consultation hosted by Antonio Martinez-Arboleda on behalf of the Knowledge Equity Network, key figures from the Open Educational Resources (OER) community came together to discuss the UNESCO Draft Dubai Declaration on OER. This blog post summarises the rich discussion, practical challenges, and follow up actions required to shape the future of OER. |
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SCOAP3 Extended for a New and Innovative Phase The SCOAP3 initiative to centrally fund open access (OA) to research articles in particle physics at no cost to authors worldwide has been extended for an additional three years, commencing in 2025. Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, SCOAP3 has funded almost 70,000 OA articles across 11 leading journals in the discipline, funded by the collective contributions of over 3,000 institutions from more than 45 countries. In its upcoming fourth phase (2025-2027), SCOAP3 will include the Open Science Incentives Mechanism, which will reward publishers based on their adoption of open science practices. |
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Public launch of the European Diamond Capacity Hub and the ALMASI Project The European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH) will hold its public launch on the 15 January 2025. The EDCH aims to strengthen the Diamond OA community in Europe by supporting European institutional, national and disciplinary capacity centres and Diamond publishers and service providers in their mission of Diamond OA scholarly publishing. The EDCH will provide these Diamond stakeholders with coordination, sustainability, training modules, technical tools, and services at scale. |
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2nd Global Summit on Diamond Open Access The theme for the Summit is Centering social justice in scholarly communication to advance research as a public good. The Summit is taking place from the 8 – 14 December 2024 in Cape Town, South Africa. Virtual attendance is possible though some of the times may be unsocial for our timezone. See Full program |
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Research Transformation: Change in the era of AI, open and impact: voices from the academic community To understand more about how the research world is transforming, what’s influencing change, and how roles are impacted, Digital Science – a technology company that focuses on supporting the scientific and research communities through innovative solutions such as Dimensions and Figshare – reached out to the research community through a global survey and in-depth interviews. |
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Open with care: Indigenous researchers and communities are reshaping how Western science thinks about data ownership by Sandeep Ravindran The article underscores the importance of respecting Indigenous data rights and the need for a more nuanced approach to data sharing that prioritizes the interests and well-being of Indigenous communities. By adopting principles like data sovereignty and engaging in meaningful community consultation, researchers and policymakers can work towards more ethical and equitable data practices. |
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What we are reading: Keeping up with AI |
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On the Vulnerability of Safety Alignment in Open-Access LLMs Jingwei Yi, Rui Ye, Qisi Chen, Bin Zhu, Siheng Chen, Defu Lian, Guangzhong Sun, , Xing Xie, Fangzhao Wu3 In this paper, we expose the vulnerabilities of safety alignment in open-access LLMs, which can significantly enhance the success rate and harmfulness of jailbreak attacks. Through reverse alignment, achieved by accessing model parameters, we show the feasibility of efficiently fine-tuning LLMs to undermine their inherent safeguards. |
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What we are watchingDeakin University OA Week 2024: Keynote address: How have we ended up here? The case for Open Science by Dr Danny Kingsley Dr Kingsley traces the evolution of open access from a community based initiative to today’s corporate capture of scholarly publishing, research ownership, assessment and ranking systems and infrastructure. Open Science offers the way forward. |
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What we are listening to |
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Sciencepod: Interview with Cyril Labbé: Detecting fraud in scientific publications: the perils and promise of AI Sabine Louët, founder of SciencePOD, had the opportunity to speak to one of the top experts in detecting problematic papers, Cyril Labbé, professor in computer science at the Grenoble Informatics Laboratory SIGMA team. |
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Upcoming events in OA & scholarly publishing |
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