Category Archives: oa.alpsp

Momentum Builds: OA Agreement Task & Finish Groups – information power

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“Over the past few months, the team at Information Power has been hard at work with our latest project. On behalf of cOAlition S and ALPSP, we have created four Task & Finish Groups and are planning two public events in order to help facilitate Open Access Agreements between Libraries/Consortia and small, independent publishers that can be used universally.

During September and October, we advertised our working groups and over 100 people signed up! This was an excellent result and was really heartening to see so many people that wanted to volunteer their valuable time and expertise to help an important project that could really benefit many people all over the world.

The first Task & Finish Group started in late September and is centred around devising a set of shared principles to underpin Open Access arrangements involving small publishers. The group has met three times so far and each meeting has been immensely successful, with lots of spirited debate and a new draft set of principles….”

ALPSP Copyright Committee responds to UKRI Open Access Policy | STM Publishing News

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“The ALPSP Copyright Committee is concerned that the announcement of the UKRI’s new open access policy will have a negative impact on progress made to date.  Limiting the opportunity for funded articles to publish in hybrid journals does not benefit learned society authors as it restricts their choice on where to publish.  Whilst many ALPSP members are investigating whether a transformative/transitional agreement may be a viable option, many learned societies have found that the complexities involved in setting up and maintaining these agreements can be extremely  difficult, particularly for smaller societies who may only publish a few journals.  This may inadvertently put these smaller publishers at a distinct disadvantage and result in their journals no longer being selected by UKRI funded authors.

Additionally, making hybrid journals fully gold open access may not be possible in the near future if there is insufficient gold open access content to include in these journals.  This could well lead to major economic difficulties for many learned and professional societies.  Finally, requiring the publication of Accepted Manuscripts with no embargo and under a CC BY licence fails to recognise the significant investment learned societies will have made in getting to that version, including in terms of peer review and related value added publishing services.  As an unintended consequence, this would dilute the Version of Record and slow the speed of transition towards open access, as publishers and societies would continue to recover their investment through subscriptions.  Ultimately, without significant additional funding being added to the ecosystem in the short term to cover this, we are very concerned about the impact of this new policy on the UK publishing industry generally and on learned societies in particular….”

ALPSP Copyright Committee Responds to UKRI Open Access Policy

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“The ALPSP Copyright Committee is concerned that the announcement of the UKRI’s new open access policy will have a negative impact on progress made to date.  Limiting the opportunity for funded articles to publish in hybrid journals does not benefit learned society authors as it restricts their choice on where to publish.  Whilst many ALPSP members are investigating whether a transformative/transitional agreement may be a viable option, many learned societies have found that the complexities involved in setting up and maintaining these agreements can be extremely  difficult, particularly for smaller societies who may only publish a few journals.  This may inadvertently put these smaller publishers at a distinct disadvantage and result in their journals no longer being selected by UKRI funded authors.

Additionally, making hybrid journals fully gold open access may not be possible in the near future if there is insufficient gold open access content to include in these journals.  This could well lead to major economic difficulties for many learned and professional societies.  Finally, requiring the publication of Accepted Manuscripts with no embargo and under a CC BY licence fails to recognise the significant investment learned societies will have made in getting to that version, including in terms of peer review and related value added publishing services.  As an unintended consequence, this would dilute the Version of Record and slow the speed of transition towards open access, as publishers and societies would continue to recover their investment through subscriptions.  Ultimately, without significant additional funding being added to the ecosystem in the short term to cover this, we are very concerned about the impact of this new policy on the UK publishing industry generally and on learned societies in particular….”

ALPSP blog: at the heart of scholarly publishing: Spotlight on Opening the Future, CEU Press / COPIM

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This year, the judges have selected a shortlist of six for the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing. Each finalist will be invited to showcase their innovation to industry peers at the ALPSP Awards session on Wednesday 15 September at the opening of the ALPSP Virtual Conference & Awards 2021. The winners will be announced on the final day of the Conference on Friday 17 September. 

In this series, we learn more about each of the finalists.

 

COPIM is an international partnership of researchers, universities, librarians, publishers and infrastructure providers working on bringing about a new OA publishing ecosystem. Their remit is to build a revenue infrastructure, and examine production workflows and metadata, experimental publishing and archiving. The project is working with colleagues across the sector to document existing, and open up new, ways of funding open access monographs.

CEU Press was established in 1993 to reflect the intellectual strengths and values of its parent institution, the Central European University, and is a leading publisher in the history of the region, communism and transitions to democracy. It is widely recognised as the foremost English-language university press dedicated to research on Central and Eastern Europe and the former communist countries. With a new Executive Chair on board in 2020 and a new Director in 2021, CEU Press enthusiastically took up the challenge to work with COPIM to help shape and pilot a new funding model, aiming to convert the Press to a fully open access monograph frontlist publisher over three years.

 

ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2021: Shortlist announced

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The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), is pleased to announce the shortlist for the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2021, sponsored by HighWire.

Applications for the annual awards were open to any new development, product, service or project which is both innovative and of significant value to scholarly communication. The winners are asked to demonstrate excellence in terms of originality, innovation, value to the community, utility and long-term viability.

The ALPSP Awards finalists for 2021 are: 

Antiracism Toolkit for Allies, Toolkits for Equity, an initiative of C4DISC
Lean Library Futures, Lean Library, a SAGE Publishing Company
Mindscape Commons, Coherent Digital
Opening the Future, CEU Press / COPIM
PLOS Community Action Publishing (CAP), PLOS
Standalone Plain Language Summary of Publication Articles (PLSP), Future Science Group.

David Sommer, Chair of the judging panel, and co-founder at Kudos commented:   
“The judging panel was pleased to receive submissions from a diverse range of organizations representing all parts of our community. We received 26 entries – slightly fewer entries than in previous years, which is understandable with the pandemic, but we are delighted to say that the standard has remained high. We congratulate everyone who have made this year’s shortlist.”

Wayne Sime, Chief Executive of ALPSP, added:
“With a wide spectrum of entries from different organizations across the world, it’s great to see that the sector is continuing to innovate and strive, even during a global pandemic. We’d like to thank the Awards Panel for reviewing all the submissions in meticulous detail, and are excited to virtually meet them all at the ALPSP Annual Conference in September.”

All the finalists will present their submission to the judges in July. They will be also invited to showcase their innovation to industry peers at the ALPSP Awards session to be held online on Wednesday 15 September at the opening of the ALPSP Virtual Conference & Awards 2021. The winners will be announced on the final day of the Conference on Friday 17 September.

Open Access agreements with smaller publishers require active cross-stakeholder alignment, report says | Plan S

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“Open Access agreements between consortia/libraries and smaller independent publishers are used worldwide increasingly since 2020, signalling a potential for further growth, highlights an independent report released today (June 9, 2021) by Information Power. The report was commissioned by cOAlition S and the Association of Learned & Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) as a follow up on the outcomes of the Society Publishers Accelerating Open access and Plan S (SPA-OPS) project, published in autumn 2019.

The report indicates that during 2020 there was a clear increase in the number of open access (OA) articles published in hybrid journals, which reverses the downward trend between 2016 – 2019, and deems likely a further increase over the next few years, partly driven by new OA agreements.

Smaller independent publishers – for example, society publishers without a larger publishing partner, university presses, library presses, and small independent commercial presses – support open science, and they would like the journal articles that they publish to be open to people all over the world. However, due to their scale, a full transition to OA is a serious challenge. A single OA agreement with an institution is much easier for a smaller independent publisher to administer than many article transactions, unless of course each library or consortium wants a different sort of agreement. Libraries and consortia invest hugely in making agreements with publishers happen; however, there can be far less awareness within these organizations of how challenging the agreements are to implement highlights the report.

Practical collaboration in a number of targeted areas is needed to align on shared principles, license language, data exchange, and workflows, followed by engagement with standards bodies, intermediaries, and platform providers to ensure these can become embedded in practice.

The transition to OA requires change on the part of all stakeholders. The report argues it is particularly crucial that active cross-stakeholder alignment focuses on enabling smaller independent publishers to transition successfully. Among other things, the authors strongly recommend funders take steps to enable universities to aggregate all their expenditure with publishers via the library. They also encourage publishers who closely link the price of OA agreements to article volume to think carefully about more equitable models….”

Open Access agreements with smaller publishers require active cross-stakeholder alignment, report says | Plan S

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“Open Access agreements between consortia/libraries and smaller independent publishers are used worldwide increasingly since 2020, signalling a potential for further growth, highlights an independent report released today (June 9, 2021) by Information Power. The report was commissioned by cOAlition S and the Association of Learned & Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) as a follow up on the outcomes of the Society Publishers Accelerating Open access and Plan S (SPA-OPS) project, published in autumn 2019.

The report indicates that during 2020 there was a clear increase in the number of open access (OA) articles published in hybrid journals, which reverses the downward trend between 2016 – 2019, and deems likely a further increase over the next few years, partly driven by new OA agreements.

Smaller independent publishers – for example, society publishers without a larger publishing partner, university presses, library presses, and small independent commercial presses – support open science, and they would like the journal articles that they publish to be open to people all over the world. However, due to their scale, a full transition to OA is a serious challenge. A single OA agreement with an institution is much easier for a smaller independent publisher to administer than many article transactions, unless of course each library or consortium wants a different sort of agreement. Libraries and consortia invest hugely in making agreements with publishers happen; however, there can be far less awareness within these organizations of how challenging the agreements are to implement highlights the report.

Practical collaboration in a number of targeted areas is needed to align on shared principles, license language, data exchange, and workflows, followed by engagement with standards bodies, intermediaries, and platform providers to ensure these can become embedded in practice.

The transition to OA requires change on the part of all stakeholders. The report argues it is particularly crucial that active cross-stakeholder alignment focuses on enabling smaller independent publishers to transition successfully. Among other things, the authors strongly recommend funders take steps to enable universities to aggregate all their expenditure with publishers via the library. They also encourage publishers who closely link the price of OA agreements to article volume to think carefully about more equitable models….”

How to enable smaller independent publishers to participate in OA agreements

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Abstract:  This work was carried out by Information Power on behalf of cOAlition S and ALPSP. The objective of this project was to measure progress on Open Access (OA) agreements since the SPA-OPS project ended in early 2020. The focus was on OA agreements between consortia/libraries and smaller independent publishers who face challenges in trying to negotiate and implement transformative OA agreements.

How to enable smaller independent publishers to participate in OA agreements

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Abstract:  This work was carried out by Information Power on behalf of cOAlition S and ALPSP. The objective of this project was to measure progress on Open Access (OA) agreements since the SPA-OPS project ended in early 2020. The focus was on OA agreements between consortia/libraries and smaller independent publishers who face challenges in trying to negotiate and implement transformative OA agreements.

Member Webinar – Transformative Agreements: Where are we now?

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“Transformative (also referred to as transitional agreements) are becoming increasingly important in the OA landscape, particularly as UKRI is due to announce the outcome of its consultation on open access in the second quarter of 2021 .

What is involved in negotiating a transformative agreement?  
What does a library look for in a transformative agreement? 
How should you manage the agreement once it is in place?…”

Virtual Training – Strategy and Pricing for Open Access Journals

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“Are you involved in developing or executing OA publishing strategy? Do you have responsibility for implementing an OA programme? Do you need to inform your strategic planning of OA with a practical perspective?

This course will equip participants with the tools and insights to inform their OA strategic thinking and decision making. It will take people through the complexities and challenges of OA, highlighting the ways in which OA publishing is deeply different to subscription publishing (and some ways that it is the same!).

The course, aimed at senior managers, is an intensive half-day looking at the strategic aspects of overseeing and developing OA journals. There will be group discussion, case studies and scenarios to prepare delegates for meeting the challenges of planning and running OA journals. We will explore the issues encountered in setting strategy, budgets and pricing; the policy and competitive landscape; and sales and marketing….”

Review of OA agreements post SPA OPS Survey

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“Thank you very much for agreeing to complete this short survey. We have been commissioned by the European Science Foundation, on behalf of cOAlition S, and ALPSP to review the progress of open access agreements around the world.

 

Transformative OA agreements are made between libraries and publishers and include both OA publishing services and reading services (if any content is paywalled). They remove the need for authors to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) or other transactional charges for their open access publishing. Many types of transformative OA agreement initiatives operate today, including Read & Publish, Subscribe to Open, Community Action Publishing, and journal flipping programs via Knowledge Unlatched, Libraria, or SCOAP3.”

NISO Voting Members Approve Work to Update Journal Article Versions (JAV)

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“The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announced today that their Voting Members have approved a new work item to update the 2008 Recommended Practice, NISO RP-8-2008, Journal Article Versions (JAV): Recommendations of the NISO/ALPSP JAV Technical Working Group. A NISO Working Group is being set up, and work is expected to begin in early 2021. 

Publication practices have changed rapidly since the publication of the original recommendations. For example, preprints have become much more important as a publication type in many disciplines, and publishers are increasingly experimenting with new ways to publish, update, and keep research alive. All of these versions of an article are important and citable, making the concept of a single ‘version of record’ less relevant. These additional processes to support public availability make the consistent assignment of DOIs to one or more versions challenging. 

The NISO JAV working group will define a set of terms for each of the different versions of content that are published, as well as a recommendation for whether separate DOIs should be assigned to them. They will address questions such as: Should there be a single DOI for an article, regardless of version? Different DOIs for each version? How are the identifiers connected and used? How do we define a version? As with all NISO output, the group’s draft recommendations will be shared for public comment before publication….”

Standards Committee Votes – 11/8/2020 – Association for Information Science and Technology | ASIS&T

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“1) Voted YES on Approval of Proposed New Work Item: Update NISO RP-8-2008, Journal Article Versions (JAV)

 

Question:

Do you approve of a Proposed New Work Item: Update NISO RP-8-2008, Journal Article Versions (JAV)?

Description:

This ballot is to approve a proposed new work item to Update NISO RP-8-2008, Journal Article Versions (JAV) [https://www.niso.org/publications/niso-rp-8-2008-jav] to take into account publication practices that have been adopted over the past 12 years, especially the increasing circulation of preprints and the application of DOIs across the landscape….”