The nature and modalities of scientific research publications have undergone many changes during the past 4-5 decades.  Commercial houses gradually became the major players and this led to research publication system transforming into an industry and reduced to a source of earning. The author suggests the necessity  of changing the actual system, making scholarly outcome available to all instead of having authors paying for publication charges which are mechanically making life harder for researchers with low funds.

India may not have a national open access policy in place, but the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) and The University Grants Commission (UGC) have open access policies that clearly mandate researchers to deposit their papers in institutional repositories. “Open access institutional repositories are clearly lagging behind despite the mandate,” says Dr. G. Mahesh from the National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR), New Delhi, and one of the authors of this article in Current Science.

Paying to publish is an ethical issue. India is potentially spending about US$ 2.4 million annually on APCs paid to OA journals. The amount would be much more if we add APCs paid to make papers published in hybrid journals open access. It would be prudent for Indian authors to make their work freely available through interoperable repositories, a trend that is growing in Latin America and China, especially when funding is scarce. Scientists are ready to pay APC as long as institutions pay for it, and funding agencies are not ready to insist that grants provided for research should not be used for paying APC.

G. Mahesh, Head of Indian ISSN Centre, in the CSIR-National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR), explains the phenomenal increase in the number of journals seeking ISSNs, why ISSNs are being assigned to questionable journals, and NISCAIR’s endeavour to keep questionable journals at bay.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has taken up the mammoth task of preparing a white list of approved journals to curb researchers from publishing in predatory journals. The UGC notified on January 2017 a list of journals in different disciplines where researchers, scholars and teachers can publish their papers. Only papers published in the approved journals will be recognised for granting points to teachers in colleges and universities at the time of assessment for promotion.

APC data is now available for over 12,000 journals with longitudinal data going back to 2010 for selected journals.

This dataset includes information on OA journals derived from publisher websites and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). It was developed as the base for a longitudinal study on the open access APC method used by about a third of OA journals. Data gathering and analyses will continue on an ongoing basis and will be published annually. The two most critical elements for matching data and merging datasets are the journal title and ISSN.

David Crotty, the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press and Board member of the Society for Scholarly Publishing, calls into question the victimization of authors and academic incentives. Precisely, the true root of the problem is the academic career and funding system, and its lack of effort put to true evaluation and oversight. Then, the solution should come from academic institutions, as taking away the incentive for these publishing behaviors and predatory publishers  would lose the market niche they serve.

The arrival of a new preprint server for the social sciences called SocArXiv comes just after Elsevier has acquired the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), a preprint repository founded in 1994 by two researchers. SocArXiv is modelled on the physics preprint server arXiv, and describes itself as a free, open access, open source archive for social science research meant for rapid sharing of academic papers, mostly preprints. In this interview, its founder is asked if the newly reinvigorated preprint movement can gain sufficient traction, impetus, and focus to push the revolution the OA movement began in a more desirable direction.

The 15th anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) is the opportunity to take stock of collective progress. A small working group was convened to synthesize the community feedback further to an open survey, and provide updated recommendations that reflect the current state of the movement. Jean-Claude Guédon, one of the original drafters and leaders of the BOAI, provides his perspective on where the open access movement has been and where it may be headed.

Issues in four thematic areas are analysed: OA policies and mandates, EU copyright reform, new OA publishing models and open science. The level of dependence in the UK on European developments is assessed and its contribution to Brexit issues identified. To conlude, Brexit presents challenges, but also opportunities which the UK could seize. The UK needs to consolidate its current activity and leadership, and ensure that, whatever the nature of Brexit arrangements, its freedom does not lead to isolation.