Wiley Inks 22 Open Access Agreements across North America
Reply
Category Archives: oa.offsets
Open Voices: Malavika Legge, OASPA, on the future of Open Access publishing
“With all this focus on Open, last year, I made the move to OASPA, which has been really wonderful! At OASPA I am Program Manager, which means I’ve got the privilege of having a couple of focused projects to deliver OASPA’s mission to make Open Access better. My role is focused on two interlinked projects. One is called the OA Market where we are looking at money flows that are sustaining Open Access, so, how Open Access is being achieved from a financial/economic perspective. The second project is Equity in Open Access, which is a linked issue, because we have some concerns that the way Open Access is being delivered, as we see when we study the OA Market, is exclusive and has some equity issues….”
Guest Post – Manifesto for a New Read Deal – The Scholarly Kitchen
“Two trends in recent library-publisher relations have been the unbundling from big deals and the bundling of open access publishing onto read deals. Neither directly addresses how libraries undertake that fundamental role of brokering access to paywalled content from scholarly publishers on behalf of their communities.
Read-and-publish deals bundle a ‘publish’ component onto a preexisting ‘read’ component but, practically-speaking, little changes for the read component. And while unbundling from Big Deals does change the structure of read deals, this is not a proactive subscriptions strategy, it’s a retreat from a failed one. While neither trend offers a model for a new read deal, understanding how they shape the current terrain does help us navigate a future path.
Let’s consider the role of equity, which is gaining headway into library decision-making. Read-and-publish increases the overall number of articles published as open access through a publisher, which increases free access for readers; this increases equity. This also standardizes author-side OA publishing fees, decreasing opportunity for under-affiliated authors, which decreases equity. Some will argue that read-and-publish is good for equity, and others will argue it’s bad for equity, which is evidenced by the continued growth of read-and-publish deals as well as the continued criticism of them.
Setting that debate aside, where can energy be redirected productively? Easy. Consider less controversial frameworks that libraries operate under, such as the desire to maximize fulfillment of local users’ content needs within set budgets. Read-and-publish doesn’t necessarily do this in a ‘read’ subscription context and, unless we consider retreat from Big Deals as advancement in a different direction, the strategy vacuum left in that space is largely unfilled….
I propose that publishers make all of their paywalled content available to a partnered library’s users and, in turn, libraries pay invoices based on total usage of paywalled content at a single flat rate. (As opposed to a bespoke formula based on journal brand value and institutional classification.) Giving users the ability to read everything from a publisher is maximum coverage. Paying only for the paywalled articles that users use is maximum value….”
JULAC consortia announcement – The Company of Biologists
“The Company of Biologists is delighted to announce a new Read & Publish Open Access agreement with the Joint University Librarians Advisory Committee (JULAC) Consortium for 2023.
Corresponding authors at participating JULAC institutions in Hong Kong can publish an uncapped number of research articles immediately Open Access (OA) in our hybrid journals (Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology) plus our fully Open Access journals (Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open) without paying an article processing charge (APC). Researchers at participating institutions also benefit from unlimited access to our hybrid journals, including their full archives dating back to 1853….”
Open Access & Open Science: failure is not an option for any party | LERU
“LERU welcomes the presently developed draft Council Conclusions on “high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable scholarly publishing”, to be adopted at the Competitiveness Council meeting of 23 May 2023[1]. They take Open Access to the next stage of implementation across Europe and thus represent a key move in embedding Open Science into the European research landscape. Many LERU papers, on Open Access, Open Data and Open Science have advocated the same causes.
For LERU, it is important that the upcoming Council Conclusions recognize that the increasing costs for scholarly publishing associated with certain business models may cause inequalities in communities and actually prove to be unsustainable for research funders and universities. Many people are now aware of the increase in publishing prices and the spread of transformative agreements, a result of which is a consolidation of the oligopoly in the publishing system.
The essential problem occurs when there are no reductions in price but increases, and where the resulting coverage is low. The threat is what will happen if everything is flipped to Open Access with high APC charges, both individual and under an agreement….”
Brussels plan for rival OA platform ‘naive’ | Times Higher Education (THE)
“As anger mounts over cost of open access deals, moves to finance diamond journals and expand state-run digital platforms have divided opinion…
Calls to transform the European Union’s research repository into a “collective, non-profit, large-scale publishing service for the public good” that could rival commercial publishers have been described as “naive” and a distraction to the open-access mission by experts….
Amid growing unease over the high cost of several national open-access deals, including Springer Nature’s new three-year agreement with UK universities, the European Council was set to agree a motion that says “immediate and unrestricted open access” without author fees should become the “norm” in scholarly publishing.
The European Commission, which runs the €105 billion (£90 billion) Horizon Europe research funding scheme, should introduce funding policies to support open-access publishers that do not charge author fees, it adds. That might mean Horizon funding being tied to publication in so-called “diamond” journals, which are both free to read and publish in thanks to subsidies from universities, governments or other funders.
The memo, first presented by the Swedish presidency of the EU in February, also suggests a massive scaling-up of the EU’s open-access platform Open Research Europe (ORE), a site launched in 2021 that has fewer than 500 publications so far.
That proposal received a mixed response from the League of European Research Universities (LERU), which noted the scale of the proposed project was “massive” and a “single pan-European system is not likely to work successfully”.
Instead, the umbrella body suggested that what “Europe may really need is the development of an open, inter-connected, publicly owned infrastructure”, and urged the creation of funding calls to support university engagement with this kind of system….”
IOP Publishing and SANLiC partner to minimise OA publishing barriers in South Africa – IOP Publishing
“IOP Publishing, and the South African National Library and Information Consortium (SANLiC) have finalised a three-year transformative agreement as they work towards breaking down open access (OA) publishing barriers for researchers in the global south. The agreement, which is IOP Publishing’s first in South Africa, enables researchers at participating member institutions to publish their research openly with no costs at the point of submission. The agreement also provides reading access to IOP Publishing’s entire journal portfolio and most of its partner journals….”
Innovative new open access agreement signed between PALCI and ACS Publications – PALCI
“PALCI (Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration and Innovation) and ACS Publications are excited to announce the signing of a new open access agreement that provides participating members with full financial support for open access publication in all ACS journals, as well as complete access to ACS Publications’ journal content through the end of 2025.
Building on previous agreements with individual members of the consortium, this new agreement is one of the first to employ a new approach that leverages the strengths of various institutions to enable full open access publishing and subscription access for participating members. This enables open access publication support for authors while maintaining – and, in some cases, expanding – access to current and historical subscription content from ACS’ full range of journals….”
New Read & Publish Open Access agreement between The Company of Biologists and the IISER Consortium India | STM Publishing News
“Corresponding authors at participating IISER institutions in India can publish an uncapped number of research articles immediately Open Access (OA) in our hybrid journals (Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology) plus our fully Open Access journals (Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open) without paying an article processing charge (APC). Researchers at participating institutions also benefit from unlimited access to our hybrid journals, including their full archives dating back to 1853….”
Czech Republic Institutions (Czechelib affiliated) | Journals | Oxford Academic
“OUP and a number of Czech institutions affiliated with Czechelib have agreed a Read and Publish deal for 2023. Eligible authors from participating institutions in The Czech Republic can request use of this account to pay the Open Access charge when arranging payment in OUP’s online licensing and payment system.”
16th Berlin Open Access Conference: Together for Transformation
“16th BERLIN OPEN ACCESS CONFERENCE TOGETHER FOR TRANSFORMATION
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the seminal Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. With the 16th Berlin Open Access Conference, organized by the OA2020 Initiative and hosted by the Max Planck Society, we will return to the setting where the Berlin Declaration originated. There, we will refine and renew our approaches to achieving the vision for an open information environment in the service of science and society, with a particular focus on transformative agreements (TAs)….”
Mixed feelings emerge on Springer Nature deal with British universities
“As part of the new deal with the German-British publisher announced last month, universities will have unlimited open-access publishing in Springer and Palgrave hybrid titles, while free-to-read publishing will be available in Nature and Nature research journals, although this option will be restricted to a certain number of papers….
While the agreement would “result in real-term cost savings for all institutions” and was accepted by all universities that responded to a consultation, a large number had “significant reservations” about the deal, added Jisc….
These concerns centered on the high cost of publishing open access outside the agreement and limited transparency, particularly regarding how Springer Nature’s article-processing charges (APCs) are calculated, with gold open access for Nature priced at 8,490 pounds ($10,616). Springer Nature was one of several major publishers—along with Elsevier—which opted in November not to participate in Plan S’s Journal Comparison Service, in which journals shared information about their costs and services.
Paul Ayris, pro vice provost at University College London (libraries, culture, collections, open science) told Times Higher Education that the sector would only “grudgingly” accept the new deal because it “bakes into the system the high prices that we’ve seen with subscriptions.”…”
CfP #44: Grassroots Open Access | LIBREAS.Library Ideas
From Google’s English: “In these twenty years, Open Access has established itself as a topic from the edge of the progressive to the ubiquitous form of publication and thus also to an institutionalized field of work in libraries, scientific institutions, research sponsors and scientific publishers as well as research policy. Today we are at a point where national and federal open access strategies have been enacted, policies of sponsors and universities prescribe the publication of texts and research data according to the FAIR and CARE principles and read-and-publish agreements at national level level have become the norm. Resources were mobilized and infrastructure built – from repositories to open access transformation contracts for, among other things, access to large journal portfolios, to human resources and systems, to check compliance with Open Access requirements of scientific organizations and sponsors as well as compliance with contractual clauses. To a certain extent, and still with untapped potential, open access has become the norm in the scientific community. A normal case that costs hundreds of millions of euros and francs a year in the DACH region alone – for licenses, for personnel hours, for hardware and software. It has become an industry – one that can polemically be called “Big OA”. which costs hundreds of millions of euros and francs every year in the DACH region alone – for licenses, for staff hours, for hardware and software. It has become an industry – one that can polemically be called “Big OA”. which costs hundreds of millions of euros and francs a year in the DACH region alone – for licenses, for staff hours, for hardware and software. It has become an industry – one that can polemically be called “Big OA”.
Looking back at the Berlin Declaration and the atmosphere in which this and other declarations were written, doubts quickly arise. Is this really what Open Access should be? …
What interests us in issue #44 are these counter-movements in the area of ??Open Access. Not Big OA, but the opposite – small OA or, as we like to call it, Grassroots OA . Models that researchers themselves or libraries and other memory institutions might want to use to openly publish knowledge and data rather than discuss them. Projects that are not aimed at large profit margins, but idealistically at the dissemination and ordering of information and knowledge. Applications that may also run under the hand of the established models and therefore practically no longer appear in libraries – whose work structures are more and more oriented towards functioning within the framework of “Big OA”. …”
UK universities agree open access publishing deal with Springer Nature | Jisc
“Following a year-long negotiation led by Jisc, UK universities have agreed a new, three-year read and publish open access (OA) deal with Springer Nature.
The deal meets the sector’s requirements to reduce costs and to expedite full and immediate open access in more than 2,500 Springer Nature titles, including Nature, the Nature research journals, and the Palgrave portfolio.
It also helps researchers and their institutions meet research funders’ open access requirements.
Results of the consultation on the latest proposal from Springer Nature were conclusive, with all 110 respondents voting to accept the offer, although a large number did so ‘with significant reservations’.
There were concerns around the high cost of publishing OA outside the agreement and the limited transparency, particularly with how Springer Nature’s article processing charges (APCs) are calculated.
Comments were also raised around Springer Nature’s approach to author rights retention, given the publisher’s commitment to gold OA, which some respondents felt created barriers to equitable OA publishing worldwide….”