“Based on the agreed principles that I just referenced, the report is written and organized around four themes — and the findings and takeaways are different for each.
The first – “Open access as practiced globally” – is a primer on open access publishing. This will be invaluable for those working in the scholarly communications community in China as an introduction to open access as practiced globally. And, since it may be a unique report bringing what we know together so concisely, it could be useful for colleagues to read anywhere in the world. Whilst comprehensive in its coverage, it illustrates well the steady and accelerating march of Gold open access globally.
The second section – “Open access publishing in China” – includes a large amount of data on publishing activity in China and references the various policies and initiatives put in place over time to accelerate open science in the country. The highest profile journals, whether published solely by publishing houses in China or in partnership with international publishers, are similarly launching or moving at the same pace to Gold open access as we see in the global statistics. There is also what we could call a domestic publishing industry, publishing in both Chinese and English languages. The publishing models for open access for these publishers are different, as described in the report.
The third section – “Research integrity in open access publishing” – covers the major areas of this work for publishers internationally, and sets up a sort of dialogue between STM and CAST on what is happening in China. As we all know, these are critical issues and the report shows how China is grappling with many of the same problems as global publishers.
And finally, we have case examples of collaborations by some STM members with publishers, institutions, and journals in China. This is not a comprehensive directory of activity and the submissions were included as submitted. We chose a range of publishing houses to illustrate some different ways in which collaborations have been established, including commercial publishers, learned societies, and university presses. The takeaway here is that there are many exciting partnerships underway for the benefit of researchers in China and globally.”