CC Needs Assessment Report on Public Domain Tools in Cultural Heritage Sector Unveils Key Insights

Today Creative Commons is proud to release our report on the Needs Assessment entitled Are the Creative Commons Public Domain Tools Fit-For-Purpose in the Cultural Heritage Sector?. From 1 January (Public Domain Day) to 15 February 2022, we ran a multilingual online survey using Google Forms to share a 50-question questionnaire in English, French and … Read More “CC Needs Assessment Report on Public Domain Tools in Cultural Heritage Sector Unveils Key Insights”

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ACS Publications commits its entire hybrid journal portfolio to become transformative journals – American Chemical Society

The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) has committed its full portfolio of more than 60 hybrid journals, which offers both open access and subscription-only content, to become Plan S-aligned transformative journals. This development represents a major step in ACS’ long-standing commitment to open science, signaling a future in which all publications are open access (OA), and ensures that more authors can continue to publish in their chosen journal.

OA Diamond Journals Study completed: Report emphasizes diversity and sustainable pathways for diamond Open Access

OPERAS is pleased to announce the publication of an in-depth report and associated recommendations arising from a study of open access journals across the world that are free for readers and authors, usually referred…

Help us get to know the open access journals and platforms that are free of charge for readers and authors

Scroll down to read this message in French, German, Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese. We are pleased to invite you to fill in a survey dedicated to gaining in-depth understanding of open access journals that…

CC Search Celebrates Its First Birthday!

At the end of April, CC Search officially celebrated its first birthday! After releasing the search tool last year on April 30, we eagerly watched as it was put to use. Now, with a year behind us and over 2.8 million users across 230 countries and territories, we’re gathering and examining search data to better … Read More “CC Search Celebrates Its First Birthday!”
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CC Search Celebrates Its First Birthday!

At the end of April, CC Search officially celebrated its first birthday! After releasing the search tool last year on April 30, we eagerly watched as it was put to use. Now, with a year behind us and over 2.8 million users across 230 countries and territories, we’re gathering and examining search data to better … Read More “CC Search Celebrates Its First Birthday!”
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cOAlition S announces price transparency requirements | Plan S

Adhering to Plan’s S key principle of transparent pricing, cOAlition S publishes today its guidance on implementing price transparency when Open Access (OA) publication fees are applied. Specifically, cOAlition S announces that from July 1st, 2022 only publishers who provide data in line with one of the two endorsed price and service transparency frameworks will be eligible to receive OA publications funds from cOAlition S members. This covers funder contributions to any model of financing open access publications including, but not limited to, non-APC journals or platforms, article processing charges (APCs), transformative agreements, and transformative journals.

Reproductions of Public Domain Works Should Remain in the Public Domain

It has come to the attention of Creative Commons that there is an increased use of CC licenses by cultural heritage institutions on photographic reproductions and 3D scans of objects such as sculptures, busts, engravings, and inscriptions, among others, that are indisputably in the public domain worldwide. A recent example is the 3000-year-old Nefertiti bust … Read More “Reproductions of Public Domain Works Should Remain in the Public Domain”

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Don’t Let Science Publisher Elsevier Hold Knowledge for Ransom

It’s Open Access Week and we’re joining SPARC and dozens of other organizations this week to discuss the importance of open access to scientific research publications. 

An academic publisher should widely disseminate the knowledge produced by scholars, not hold it for ransom. But ransoming scientific research back to the academic community is essentially the business model of the world’s largest publisher of scientific journals: Elsevier.

In February of this year, after drawn-out negotiations broke down, the University of California terminated its subscription with Elsevier. A central sticking point in these negotiations was around open access: specifically Elsevier’s refusal to provide universal open access to UC research, a problem exacerbated by skyrocketing subscription fees.

This has been an ongoing fight, not just in California. Many academics (and EFF) believe that scholarly research most effectively advances scientific progress when it is widely available to the public, and not subject to the paywalls erected by publishers. Scientific research is a driving force behind technological innovations, medical breakthroughs, and policy decisions, and the bulk of it in the U.S. is publicly funded. When libraries, universities, individuals, and even researchers themselves have to pay to access academic work, we all suffer.

Elsevier boasts profit margins in excess of 30%, much of it derived from taxpayer dollars. Academics effectively volunteer their time to publishers to write articles, conduct peer review, and sit on editorial boards, and then publishers demand ownership of the copyright and control over dissemination. Universities and other institutions fund these researchers, and a mega-publisher like Elsevier reaps the benefits while trapping all of that work behind a paywall.

In response to this outdated and deleterious system, two UCSF researchers have started a petition to boycott Elsevier, calling on all academics to refuse to publish in Elsevier journals, peer-review their articles, or sit on their editorial boards (as many already have). They’ve also written a piece calling for a wider re-imagining of the academic publishing system, that’s more in line with an open access model. A large and growing number of scholars have signed the petition already.

This is far from the first time someone has called for a boycott of Elsevier. Efforts go back to 2012 with a call to action from mathematician Timothy Gowers which led to the “The Cost of Knowledge” campaign. Since then, boycotts have extended across entire countries, across Asia, Europe, and

Ubiquity Press to Pilot Open Source Repository Services

“We’re excited to announce that we are expanding our commitment to open access by providing hosted repositories. Starting in January 2018, we will be piloting two full-featured repository systems: Hyku and Invenio. Hyku is community-developed as a turnkey Samvera application and Invenio is developed by CERN. Our repositories will be open source, cloud-based, and fully integrated with our publishing and conference systems.”