“The focus will be on the latest in open science, open research, open data, OSTP and Europe’s cOAlition S, and look ahead to future initiatives and prospects of open access (OA) across China.
Who should attend?
This training, delivered by three scholarly experts, is aimed at scholarly publishers who are based in China. It will also be relevant to those who do business with Chinese publishers….”
“Sally Morris: Facilitated by online access, the rise of freely available preprint databases, and (partly as a publisher response to these) author-side funded free-to-read journals, has been a massive shift. According to one researcher I quizzed recently, he values both—preprints in order to get hold of the latest findings, and the published journal (whether or not free-to-read) for the fact that the article has been peer-reviewed. He does, however, resent the high author charges for publication in some of the top journals.
Josh Nicholson: Let me caveat this by saying that I have only really ever interacted with research when it was already online. I think scholarly publishing didn’t actually change so much when transitioning from print to online. I often compare Einstein’s 1916 paper predicting gravitational waves to the 2016 paper from CERN detecting gravitational waves to make this point. Despite 100?years in between publications and the transition from print to online, they look remarkably the same….
Niamh O’Connor: There are a quite a few worth noting! Enabled by the move online, we saw emergence of the Open Access (OA) movement. The initial aim of this was to ‘open’ the literature and allow everyone to access research outputs—at the time primarily articles. With the move to OA came a change in business models where instead of paying for a product (‘the journal’), payment was made for a publishing service—so aligned with the move to ‘servitization’ seen in the wider economy. Building on this, the megajournal (PLOS ONE being the first) fundamentally changed perception and practice around publication criteria. Both in terms of focus on work being ‘correct’ in the initial iteration, now on methodological and ethical rigor, and in terms of removing scope boundaries and allowing research in all fields of research to be published in a single journal. This is particularly important for interdisciplinary research.
And now we are seeing a transition to an Open Science ecosystem, explicitly acknowledging the interdependence of contributions to research and discovery. The 2021 UNESCO recommendation on Open Science ‘outlines a common definition, shared values, principles and standards for open science at the international level and proposes a set of actions conducive to a fair and equitable operationalization of open science for all’. Open Science allows and encourages us to rethink how we share and consume research to make that move from the constraints of the physical format and take advantage of the opportunities provided by a digital world—and there is a long way to go yet! …”
“Sally Morris: Facilitated by online access, the rise of freely available preprint databases, and (partly as a publisher response to these) author-side funded free-to-read journals, has been a massive shift. According to one researcher I quizzed recently, he values both—preprints in order to get hold of the latest findings, and the published journal (whether or not free-to-read) for the fact that the article has been peer-reviewed. He does, however, resent the high author charges for publication in some of the top journals.
Josh Nicholson: Let me caveat this by saying that I have only really ever interacted with research when it was already online. I think scholarly publishing didn’t actually change so much when transitioning from print to online. I often compare Einstein’s 1916 paper predicting gravitational waves to the 2016 paper from CERN detecting gravitational waves to make this point. Despite 100?years in between publications and the transition from print to online, they look remarkably the same….
Niamh O’Connor: There are a quite a few worth noting! Enabled by the move online, we saw emergence of the Open Access (OA) movement. The initial aim of this was to ‘open’ the literature and allow everyone to access research outputs—at the time primarily articles. With the move to OA came a change in business models where instead of paying for a product (‘the journal’), payment was made for a publishing service—so aligned with the move to ‘servitization’ seen in the wider economy. Building on this, the megajournal (PLOS ONE being the first) fundamentally changed perception and practice around publication criteria. Both in terms of focus on work being ‘correct’ in the initial iteration, now on methodological and ethical rigor, and in terms of removing scope boundaries and allowing research in all fields of research to be published in a single journal. This is particularly important for interdisciplinary research.
And now we are seeing a transition to an Open Science ecosystem, explicitly acknowledging the interdependence of contributions to research and discovery. The 2021 UNESCO recommendation on Open Science ‘outlines a common definition, shared values, principles and standards for open science at the international level and proposes a set of actions conducive to a fair and equitable operationalization of open science for all’. Open Science allows and encourages us to rethink how we share and consume research to make that move from the constraints of the physical format and take advantage of the opportunities provided by a digital world—and there is a long way to go yet! …”
“An Information Power Limited report, published in June 2021, identified the many challenges that smaller independent publishers1 face in transitioning to open access agreements with libraries. When transitioning fully to open access a single agreement with an institution is much easier for a smaller independent publisher to administer than multiple article transactions, but they lack the diverse revenue streams, resources, and scale of the largest publishers. Libraries and consortia also face capacity challenges as they seek to increase the number and range of publishers with whom they deal direct. In order to be inclusive and enable diversity in the research information landscape to flourish, it is essential to develop and implement shared standards. The report recommended active cross-stakeholder alignment focused on enabling these smaller independent publishers to transition successfully….”
“Smaller independent publishers, libraries, and consortia can now more easily enter into Open Access agreements thanks to a set of new tools published by cOAlition S and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP).
Commenting on the publication of the toolkit, Colleen Campbell, coordinator of the OA2020 Initiative, said: “In order to foster a diverse, open scholarly publishing landscape, libraries and consortia need to broaden the scope of their negotiation strategies to embrace smaller independent publishers, but tailoring each agreement can take considerable time and resources. Shared standards and greater automation are required, and these tools give us a sound foundation from which to build.”
The toolkit addresses this need for automation with the following materials:
A report (download or view), containing shared principles for developing an OA agreement; a data template; six example licences ready to be used and adapted as necessary; and a list of the many librarians and publishers who have contributed to the development of the toolkit.
A detailed workflow (download or view) providing an overview of the entire process, from contract negotiation to achieving compliance with funder policies and reporting to libraries….”
Smaller independent publishers, libraries, and consortia can more easily enter into Open Access agreements thanks to a set of new tools published by cOAlition S and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP). The partnership has resulted in shared principles, a data template, and example licenses and also a workflow guide.
Smaller independent publishers, libraries, and consortia can now more easily enter into Open Access agreements thanks to a set of new tools published by cOAlition S and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP).
Smaller independent publishers, libraries, and consortia can now more easily enter into Open Access agreements thanks to a set of new tools published by cOAlition S and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP).
“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….”
“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….”
“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….”
Access
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.
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 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….”