The EU-funded project eInfraCentral Portal has recently launched the first version of a web platform dedicated to science and research. The purpose is to provide a single entry point through which research communities can search, access and compare a multitude of services provided by e-Infrastructures. This portal has been designed to make life easier for researchers, encourage partnerships across disciplines and countries and encourage European scholarly excellence.

Rick Anderson, Associate Dean for Collections and Scholarly Communication in the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah, wonders if open access (OA), and particularly Green OA, is likely to lead libraries and other customers to cancel their paid journal subscriptions. He gives his point of view on the question, summaring the issues and challenges of journals subscriptions, OA and Big Deals.

The American Theological Library Association (ATLA) is moving the Theology Cataloging Bulletin (TCB) and the ATLA Summary of Proceedings, two valued and frequently consulted resources of the ATLA membership and others, to open access. Historically, you had to be a member of ATLA to access to TCB and the Proceedings. With the shift to open access and to Open Journal System, these publications enjoy increased readership and the priorities and professional work of ATLA’s membership will be more discoverable.

A detailed report of a study performed by Science-Metrix funded by the US National Science Foundation, analyzes the situation of Open Access in the second half of 2016. This report details population-level measurements of the open access (OA) availability of publications indexed in two bibliometric databases—the Web of Science (WoS)  and Scopus. The study identified that among the countries with the highest scientific output, more than 50% of papers published between 2010 and 2014 were available in open access, with Brazil taking the lead with 75% of articles. The study also presents the citation patterns of open access articles in relation to paywalled articles.

The Joint Declaration LATINDEX–REDALYC–CLACSO–IBICT in support of the Latin American non-commercial Open Access Ecosystem was adopted on Dec. 15th, 2017 in Mexico. This declaration recommends the use of CC-BY-NC-SA license to guarantee the protection of the academic and scientific output in Open Access, and aims to create, share, maintain and preserve knowledge produced in the region.

The declaration is published in Spanish, English, Portuguese and German.

DOAJ has launched the DOAJ Best Practice Guide. It is a web resource that provides selection criteria, resources and tools for the identification of reputable open access journals to support researchers, publishers and librarians in their search of best practice and transparency standards. The Guide complements the work of the DOAJ Ambassadors as well as academics, librarians and publishers worldwide. It is based on the information provided on the For Publishers page on the DOAJ website and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.

The European Commission will fund an Open Research Publishing Platform whose aim is to offer Horizon 2020 beneficiaries a free and fast publication possibility for peer reviewed articles as well as pre-prints resulting from Horizon 2020 funding. The platform will complement the current policy in Horizon 2020 in order to balance obligations with incentives. The platform will explore many features like open peer review, next generation metrics, and access to preprints.

The attached note contains more information about this action which is foreseen to be launched in early 2018 through a public procurement process.

The Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) aims to allow free access to scholarly citation data and to build analytical services on those raw data. The initiative was launched in April 2017 and resulted in the creation of a repository called the Open Citations Corpus (OCC). David Shotton, co-Director of OCC and co-founder of I4OC, explains the milestones of the project, the results achieved so far and the barriers. He argues that publishers should ensure that all citations are included in reference lists, and should make this bibliometric data openly available in a searchable format. He calls on all stakeholders to campaign for this initiative.

The Criteria, policy and procedures for the admission and permanence of journals in the SciELO Brazil Collection were updated and become valid from January 2018. The new version contemplates advances in editorial policies related to the alignment of the SciELO Program with good practices of open science research communication. The perspective is to reinforce the contribution of SciELO journals in the social and scientific qualification of Brazilian research. The criteria aim to increase transparency, completeness, celerity and interoperability of research communication.