The SciELO 20-years Conference was held in September 2018 in Brazil. It constitutes an important landmark in SciELO’s evolution. The conference addressed the main political, methodological and technological issues in scholarly communication, and the trends and innovations that are shaping the future of the universal openness of scholarly publishing. A major focus was made on the SciELO network, and why it is indispensable. The presentations were added to the programme. The updated priorities and advances to open science are also refered to.

Danny Kingsley, Deputy Director at Cambridge University Library, provides an overview of OASPA conference that took place in mid-September 2018.

Open Access in the European Research Area through Scholarly Communication (OPERAS) is a consortium of 36 partners from all over Europe, that is working to build a future European infrastructure. Their initial study, OPERAS‐D, revealed a variety of models among the partners influenced by national cultures. The partners’ fragmented activities also reflect the ‘bibliodiversity’ in European societies. To address this challenge, a cooperative model is to be found to enable European actors to share expertise, resources, and costs of development.

DOAJ published its strategy and objectives for 2018-2020. Most of the work undertaken during that period will be derived from 3 key focus areas: funding and sustainability, stability and scalability, education & outreach.

This paper examines Open Access (OA) self archiving policies of different Open Access Repositories (OARs) affiliated to COAR (Confederation of Open Access Repositories) as partner institutes. After presenting the methodology for analysing policy documents, key findings have been identified and highlighted. OARs are in a critical situation when policy matters are concerned. Aligning repository networks and mandates is likely to be crucial in determining future repository development. A best practice benchmark has been suggested for popularizing and strengthening OARs as national research systems.

Hybrid journals are playing an important role in the OA process. However, visibility and discoverability of OA content in hybrid journals can be problematic. The solution proposed by the JEMO Project is to include CC license information in journal’s APIs and TOC RSS feeds .

Think. Check. Submit. helps researchers identify trusted journals for their research. The team behind this initiative wants to ensure that this is as useful as possible to researchers, librarians and others around the world. The short survey about your experiences with Think. Check. Submit. will be open until 28 September 2018.

In January 2017, the UGC (University Grants Commission), a government body that regulates higher education, collated a white list of journals with the help of universities. This white list was later found to contain predatory journals. Consequently, in May 2018, the UGC reviewed it and deleted 4,305 journals. Academics suggest that besides creating a white list, the Indian government should sanction academics who publish in these journals, and change  regulations regarding government incentives to publish.

On 4 September 2018, 11 national research funding organisation, with the support of the European Commission including the European Research Council (ERC), announced the launch of cOAlition S, an initiative to make full and immediate Open Access to research publications a reality. It is built around Plan S, which consists of a statement and 10 principles.

In recent years open access (OA) publishing agreements have left a lasting impact on several aspects of the research life cycle, and on the manner in which institutions work with publishers and researchers to support the transition to OA. This article examines the Vienna University Library’s hands-on experience with OA agreements. It describes existing workflows, reviews the benefits of the various systems in place and identifies areas for improvement. Items for discussion are also proposed for organizations when negotiating OA agreements with publishers, and potential pitfalls to be avoided are highlighted.