One of the goals of OASPA is to support the transition to a world in which open access becomes the predominant mode of publication. As we have charted in the annual statistics on the growth of open content published using various Creative Commons licenses, steady progress is being made (see for example the most recent... Read full article >

Springer Nature and Projekt DEAL, which represents nearly 700 academic institutions in Germany, have reached an understanding on the world's largest transformative Open Access agreement.

A common motivation for increasing open access to research findings and data is the potential to create economic benefits—but evidence is patchy and diverse. This study systematically reviewed the evidence on what kinds of economic impacts (positive and negative) open science can have, how these comes about, and how benefits could be maximized. Use of open science outputs often leaves no obvious trace, so most evidence of impacts is based on interviews, surveys, inference based on existing costs, and modelling approaches. There is indicative evidence that open access to findings/data can lead to savings in access costs, labour costs and transaction costs. There are examples of open science enabling new products, services, companies, research and collaborations. Modelling studies suggest higher returns to R&D if open access permits greater accessibility and efficiency of use of findings. Barriers include lack of skills capacity in search, interpretation and text mining, and lack of clarity around where benefits accrue. There are also contextual considerations around who benefits most from open science (e.g., sectors, small vs. larger companies, types of dataset). Recommendations captured in the review include more research, monitoring and evaluation (including developing metrics), promoting benefits, capacity building and making outputs more audience-friendly.

Predatory journals are spurious scientific outlets that charge fees for editorial and publishing services that they do not provide. Their lack of quality assurance of published articles increases the risk that unreliable research is published and thus ...

Lots of academics are upset by bad journals, which are often labelled “predatory.” This is maybe not a great name for them, because it impli...

Blog for the Journal of Open Source Software • https://joss.theoj.org

Deceptive publishing (aka predatory publishing) has been a growing problem for years now. What do we know about it? How should we respond?

Knowledge Unlatched used to not suck. Sad.

Beyond the multiple options for creating and disseminating open-access books in new forms, OA monograph publishing projects are driven by the value of

A Norwegian consortium has signed a new kind of subscription deal with Elsevier that includes open-access publishing -- a first for the publisher. But the new rights come at a cost.

On the surface, Plan S looks like the breaking of the scientific publishing mould. An initiative of Science Europe and Robert-Jan Smits, the European Commission’s former open access envoy, it stipulates that, by 2020, taxpayer-funded research results should be free to read immediately on publication.   It is a sharp departure – some would say threat – to the status quo.

As a leader in the global movement toward open access to publicly funded research, the University of California is taking a firm stand by deciding not to renew its subscriptions with Elsevier. Despite months of contract negotiations, Elsevier was unwilling to meet UC’s key goal: securing universal open access to UC research while containing the rapidly escalating costs associated with for-profit journals.

Taking apart the "academic freedom" argument against mandates.

Open Access mega-journals have in some academic disciplines become a key channel for communicating research. In others, however, they remain unknown. Drawing on evidence from a series of focus gro…

UPDATE 3/1/3019: T&F accepted our striking this entire section from our content agreement. So can you, at least in principle. Academic libraries acquire journals (and other kinds of content) on…

Content in Journal of Scholarly Publishing published by @utpjournals.

Authors often avoid publishing in open access journals as they are under the misconception that all open access journals charge high APCs. But what if one of the co-authors is keen on publishing open access? The reluctance of the other could then lead to a dispute between the authors. Read on to find out more.