Leslie Chan is Associate Director at the University of Toronto Scarborough. As one of the original signatories of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, he has been active in the experimentation and implementation of scholarly communication initiatives of varying scales around the world. He expresses his views about the internationalisation of research produced in the Global South, the current state of Open Access, and the Knowledge G.A.P project, an attempt to understand the various social justice issues related to the production and circulation of academic knowledge.

An updated analysis of Open Data and Open Science policies across Europe reports a continued increase in the growth of related policies and an increase in uptake in countries where no such policy previously existed. This report specifically examines activity across Europe between January and November 2018. The analysis delves into the types of policies in place across Europe, examining their processes of creation and some key specifics.

The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) reiterates its support for the goal of Plan S to achieve immediate Open Access to all scholarly publications from research. COAR and others in the repository community have significant concerns related to several of the requirements for repositories. Some of these might create artificial barriers to the participation of universities and other research organizations in the scholarly communication system.

Scholastica, a vanguard academic journal software and service provider with tools for peer review and open access publishing, has announced new archiving and indexing automations. Scholastica now offers automated article and metadata deposits for the Portico digital preservation archive and for the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The new automations are in line with Scholastica’s mission to modernise all areas of publishing, helping OA journal publishers do more with fewer resources.

In three position papers, China’s National Science Library (NSL), its National Science and Technology Library (NSTL) and the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), all said that they support the efforts of Plan S to transform research papers from publicly funded projects into immediate open access after publication. However, it is not yet clear when Chinese organizations will begin implementing new policies, or whether they will adopt all of Plan S’s details.

cOAlition S has recently released guidance on the implementation of Plan S. While it provides many new details about the plan, it has not provided reassurance to anxious society publishers. As a matter of fact, the cOAlition S vision of the future of scientific and scholarly publishing is in contradiction with the values and practices of most society publishers. While in theory Plan S supports “diversity of models and non APC-based outlets,” in reality such models are not presently available to society publishers. The author proposes a solution and encourages Society leadership and society members to provide feedback on Plan S and its impact on their society journal programs here: https://www.coalition-s.org/feedback/.

This study reviews content from five library and information science journals published by Taylor & Francis over a five-year period from 2012–2016, to investigate the green deposit rate. The review looks at research articles and standing columns to see if any articles were retrieved using the OA Button or through institutional repositories. Results indicate that less than a quarter of writers have chosen to make a green deposit of their articles in local or subject repositories. The discussion outlines some best practices to be undertaken by librarians, editors and Taylor & Francis to make this program more successful.

OASPA has seen an exciting recent blossoming of inter-membership collaborations, partnerships, and instances of members working alongside each other in support of common goals. In line with the October 2018 Open Access Week, OASPA is highlighting these inspiring instances of collaborative efforts of OASPA members in their work to find new solutions to making research openly accessible for all.

Two of the world’s largest biomedical research funders have backed a plan to make all papers resulting from work they fund open access on publication by 2020. Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced they were both endorsing ‘Plan S’, adding their weight to an initiative already backed by 13 research funders across Europe since its launch in September.

SPARC Europe, a division of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is sharing a document with the library community that suggests ways in which the Plan S Implementation Task Force can benefit from academic and national libraries when planning the implementation of the 10 Plan S principles. This was developed as part of an implementation guide for the Task Force delivered in October 2018.

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