This report explains the origins of the open access movement, gives a timeline for its development, but most importantly, Simba Information quantifies open access’ position as a fast growing subsegment of scholarly journal publishing.

In its report—Open Access Book Publishing 2020-2024—Simba reports on an open access book market that declined for the first time since tracking was initiated in 2013. It concludes that title output declined 18.7% in 2019 with 2,801 open access books published against 3,445 in 2018, according to titles listed by publication year in the Directory of Open Access Books.

Jisc, the research and education not-for-profit, is launching a new multi-content repository for storing research data and articles that will make it easier for university staff to manage the administration around open access publishing.

The new repository offers simple, cost-effective ways to manage, store and share digital research outputs, and will allow institutions to meet all Plan S mandatory requirements and other funder and publisher mandates for open scholarship.

In response to a recent blog post on the OASPA website authored by several representatives, COAR would like to underscore the critical role of Open Access repositories in accelerating innovation in scholarly communications and the adoption of Open Access and Open Science.

cOAlition S announced the release of the Journal Checker Tool (JCT) in beta. The JCT is a web-based tool which provides clear advice to researchers on how they can comply with their funder’s Plan S-aligned Open Access policy when seeking to publish in their chosen journal. The JCT is searchable by ISSN, notably. During this open testing phase, the community will have the opportunity to get acquainted with the JCT and provide feedback, so that the tool increases its readiness ahead of the implementation of Plan S in January 2021.

The recordings from the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) Online Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing 2020 are now available on YouTube. The OASPA 2020 Conference took place online on the 22 – 24 September 2020.  Slides can be found on the conference program page.

Details about next year’s conference will be available in the coming months from oaspa.org/conference.

INASP (International Network for Advancing Science and Policy) was commissioned to undertake a consultation to understand the challenges and opportunities that OA presents to Low- and Middle-Income country (LMIC) stakeholders. The implementation of and transition to OA modes of publishing involve a complex set of issues. This report provides a “read out” of the key issues for LMICs, based on consultations with 335 stakeholders, as a series of principles and building blocks to underpin UK OA policy, and to make recommendations to funders.

SPARC Europe is releasing an anticipated new report: Open Access: An Analysis of Publisher Copyright and Licensing Policies in Europe, 2020. It presents the results of a research study that was completed in the summer of 2020 and explores copyright and licensing practices amongst prominent journal publishers and OA publishers in DOAJ in Europe. Download the report.

Openness and innovation have been at the heart of Springer Nature’s business. They have been opening up research for more than 20 years – today, they publish the world’s most significant OA portfolio, with around 600 fully OA journals and the option to publish OA in 2,200 hybrid journals.

The value of open and interoperable metadata of scientific articles is increasingly being recognized, as demonstrated by the work of organizations such as Crossref, DataCite, and OpenCitations and by initiatives such as Metadata 2020 and the Initiative for Open Citations. At the same time, scientific articles are increasingly being made openly accessible, stimulated for instance by Plan S, AmeliCA, and recent developments in the US, and also by the need for open access to coronavirus literature.

In this post, the many ways in which abstracts can be used are explored, as well as the limited availability of abstracts.