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September 2025: 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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What’s new in OA & scholarly publishing in Australia & Aotearoa New Zealand |
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| Open Access Australasia celebrates OA Week 2025 Established in 2008 by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and partners, OA Week provides a platform for researchers, libraries, institutions, funders, publishers, and communities worldwide to host talks, workshops, and outreach activities promoting free, immediate, and unrestricted access to research outputs. OAA holds a week of events each year to participate in this global initiative and turn the spotlight on our region. This year we are hosting 3 webinars, each taking a different angle on the theme Who Owns Our Knowledge For more information on the webinars and speakers and to register please visit our website |
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| | | | NHMRC Action Plan for Responsible Research AssessmentThe NHMRC 2025–2030 Action Plan for RRA is a formal commitment to continuing to improve responsible research assessment. Building on existing efforts, the plan seeks to recognise a wider range of research career paths and outputs by incorporating qualitative assessment mechanisms and embracing the principles of open science. This statement is also published on the CoARA Zenodo repository |
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Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab new releaseThe Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin has released a “101 translation” of its Indigenous Knowledge Protocols for Non-Indigenous People Working with Indigenous Knowledge. The original Protocols are available at the IKS website. For those wanting to start with this newer version it can be read online or downloaded here from Tyson Yunkaporta’s Linkedin account. Maximise the embedded pdf reader to see the download arrow in the top right corner. |
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Beyond Certainty – What does ‘Discovery’ mean in an open and artificially intelligent world? Online symposium October 8th |
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“How do we make sense of the implications of current geopolitical, financial and technological volatility? What impact will all of this have on the relationship between libraries and publishers, and libraries and their users? Bringing librarians, information professionals, policy makers, and thought leaders together, the ‘Beyond Certainty Symposium’ addresses these questions.” For those interested in learning more about the topic see Danny Kingsley’s recent Upstream blog |
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Examining options for enhancing repository infrastructure in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.Location: Kelvin Grove Campus, Queensland University of Technology – Brisbane. Date: 9.00am – 4pm Friday 17 October 2025. The aim of this meeting – a free satellite event of International Data Week– is to review a variety of models including shared infrastructure for institutional repositories; discuss the potential for this type of approach in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand; and examine the various issues that must be navigated/addressed to move forward. Kathleen Shearer of COAR and Martin Borchert of UNSW/CAUL will facilitate this event hosted by Open Access Australasia, COAR, UNSW and QUT, which will feature speakers from Canada, France, Spain, Japan. |
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AuSCCoP The Australian Scholarly Communications Community of Practice (AuSCCoP) last met on September 11th. Discussion centered around AAMs, preprints and rights retention and resources on AI were shared. The group will be hosting a special Watch Party series November 17 – 19 featuring 3 sessions from OAI14. For a summary see the notes. The next meeting will be held on Thursday October 9th. More information and how to join AuSCCoP Diamond Open Access Publishing group. At the last meeting on August 21st the group heard from two OA Journal editors on their experiences, common issues and thoughts around sustainability. Summaries can be found in the groups notes. The next meeting will be held on October 16th and the group is hoping to host a watch-along session followed by discussion. Please contact the convenors with any suggestions! More information about the Diamond Publishing group and how to join. AuSCCoP Repositories group The last meeting was held on Thursday 18th September with the theme ‘Bring Out Your Dead” designed to allow members to bring to the discussion any IR issues that they are currently working on. Minting of DOIs, copyright advice for creative works, changes to OpenAlex and discontinuation of IRUS were some of the points raised and members also shared links to their institution’s IR policies and guidelines. For a summary see the meeting notes The group next meets on November 20th. 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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Report on the first consultation on the implementation of the 2021 Recommendation on Open ScienceIn adopting the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, the 194 Member States of UNESCO committed to submit, every four years, their national reports on the legislative and administrative provisions and any other measures they have taken to implement the Recommendation. |
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IFLA Statement on Contract Override (2025) The official position adopted by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) advocates for strong legal provisions ensuring that contract terms cannot override copyright exceptions and limitations that allow libraries to carry out their missions, such as providing access to knowledge and preserving materials. The statement calls for national laws to explicitly protect libraries and users from restrictions that contracts and licensing agreements—often attached to digital resources—can impose, ensuring that statutory rights for libraries (like fair use, preservation, or lending) remain valid even if a contract tries to limit or remove them. |
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by Lautaro Matas and Kathleen Shearer“Every day, researchers around the world publish knowledge in hundreds of languages…This linguistic diversity is not a side note; it is the lifeblood of global scholarship. And yet, when we go looking for that knowledge, the tools at our disposal behave as if only a handful of languages truly matter… In June 2025, COAR embarked on a project to investigate the potential of semantic multilingual searching in the context of scholarly literature and develop a proposed conceptual model that could apply this technology in repositories and their full text aggregations.” |
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DOAJ and CNPIEC collaborate to support open access journals in ChinaDOAJ is pleased to announce a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the China National Publications Import & Export (Group) Co., Ltd. (CNPIEC) to establish a joint DOAJ China Open Access Journal Pre-evaluation Working Group. The purpose of this working group is to provide greater support to Chinese journals and to promote the inclusion of high-quality open access journals from China in DOAJ. |
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How library consortia are building resilient open infrastructure in times of crisisSarah Lippincott, Lauren Collister, Katherine E Skinner, and Chrys Wu “Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) is pleased to release Open Resilience: Building Infrastructure Together (ORBIT), a landscape scan of how U.S.-based library consortia are engaging with open infrastructure (OI) to strengthen research, scholarly communication, and open science.” |
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LSE Blog: Eleonora Colangelo considers how scientific publishers can exercise ‘soft power’, through their role in managing peer-reviewed, politically neutral, and evidence-based research that responds to global challenges: “By deciding how research is shared, who can access it, and how it connects to real-world challenges, they exert soft power through the values and choices embedded in how science is communicated.” |
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How the Global South is reshaping scholarly communicationHumberto Debat, Izuchukwu Azuka Okafor, Mercury Shitindo, Olavo B Amaral, Nurul Izzati, Chandana Basu Mallick, Awika O Henry, Roseline Dzekem Dine, Carolina Santacruz-Perez Abstract: The Global South has emerged as a beacon of innovation in scholarly publishing, championing equitable and community-driven models of knowledge dissemination. Here we explore various initiatives originating from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, highlighting platforms that are free for both readers and authors. These initiatives also promote multilingualism, public funding, and non-profit, scholarly-led governance structures. We argue that the Global South’s approach offers a blueprint for a fairer, more inclusive, and more just academic publishing ecosystem |
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The Petrol Tank for AI Discovery Might be Running Dry as Publishers close access to scholarly content such as abstracts due to AI incentivesAaron Tay discusses how AI-powered academic search engines like Elicit, Consensus, and Undermind rely heavily on open scholarly metadata, especially abstracts, sourced from aggregators like OpenAlex and Semantic Scholar. It highlights a recent sharp decline in availability of abstracts from major publishers like Elsevier and Springer Nature due to their restricting access to non-Open Access content, which severely impacts AI discovery tools, literature searchability, and bibliometric research. |
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In this focus session, Miranda Bennett and Ludo Waltman explore the background and context of the Barcelona Declaration and the OA2020 Initiative, and the work of the newly formed Joint Task Force, which aims to develop practical tools and guidance to help negotiators embed open research information into their negotiation objectives. |
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Presented by Larissa Behrendt. Dr Kirsten Thorpe and Dr Monica Galassi discuss their work looking into institutions of knowledge, using archives and data to help decolonise place like galleries, libraries and museums. Historian and Bundjalung woman Dr Shauna Bostock reflects on her experiences tracing her family through the archives. |
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Upcoming events in OA & scholarly publishing |
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Kohacon2025 17 – 23 November 2025, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. |
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