Following the success of the Global Summit on Diamond Open Access, that took place on 23-27 October in Toluca, Mexico, a concluding statement has now been ratified and released outlining the collective way forward for Diamond Open Access.

Co-organised by Science Europe and their partners – Redalyc, UAEMéx, AmeliCA, UNESCO, CLACSO, UÓR, cOAlition S, OPERAS, and the French National Research Agency (ANR), this event gathered a total of 700 attendees to all three main events – the Redalyc Journal Editors International Conference, the AmeliCA Members Meeting, and the 2nd Diamond Open Access Conference.

EIFL, AJOL (African Journals Online) and WACREN (the West and Central African Research and Education Network), with support from Wellcome, are launching a three-year project that will strengthen the quality and sustainability of diamond open access (OA) publishing services across Africa while maintaining their diversity. The project will identify challenges for diamond OA publishing in Africa through community consultation and a landscape study, and issue two open calls for proposals for funding to strengthen the quality of diamond OA publishing services across the region.

SPARC released Navigating Risk in Vendor Data Privacy Practices: An Analysis of Elsevier’s ScienceDirect. The report documents a variety of data privacy practices that directly conflict with library privacy standards, and raises important questions regarding the potential for personal data collected from academic products to be used in the data brokering and surveillance products of RELX’s LexisNexis subsidiary. The report highlights why users and institutions should actively evaluate and address the potential privacy risks as this transition occurs rather than after it is complete.

This study aims to estimate the total amount of article processing charges (APCs) paid to publish open access (OA) in journals controlled by the five large commercial publishers Elsevier, Sage, Springer-Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wiley between 2015 and 2018. Among the five publishers, Springer-Nature made the most revenue from OA ($589.7 million), followed by Elsevier ($221.4 million), Wiley ($114.3 million), Taylor & Francis ($76.8 million) and Sage ($31.6 million). With Elsevier and Wiley making most of APC revenue from hybrid fees and others focusing on gold, different OA strategies could be observed between publishers.

The DOAJ team is happy to share a significant milestone: the Directory of Open Access Journals now proudly lists 20,000 journals! For 20 years, DOAJ has been at the forefront of advocating for open access and facilitating access to reliable academic research. For the DOAJ team, this milestone reflects the tremendous growth of the open access movement and their commitment to transparency and best practice in journal publishing. As the number of journals increases, so does the potential for sharing knowledge, connecting researchers, and advancing science and scholarship.

See also DOAJ’s new support model for libraries.

cOAlition S has announced the successful completion of the tender process for selecting a contractor to facilitate the consultation with the research community regarding the ‘Towards Responsible Publishing’ proposal. The tender has been awarded to Research Consulting Limited, a UK-based specialist consultancy firm focused on research and scholarly communication.

The outcomes of this consultation, and the consequent recommendations from the consulting team, expected in spring 2024, will help refine the proposal to successfully deliver an open, scholar-led communication ecosystem that removes barriers to participation for the benefit of science and society.

Japan Alliance of University Library Consortia for E-Resources (JUSTICE) and Elsevier have established a transformative agreement for advancing global access to Japan’s scholarly publications through open-access publishing.

The three-year agreement is effective from 2024 to 2026 and is the largest of its kind to date in Japan and Asia. It aims to openly share and amplify Japan’s world-class research for the benefit of society. Moreover, the read-and-publish agreement will be made available through JUSTICE to Japanese universities.

On 23 May, the Council of the EU adopted a groundbreaking set of conclusions advocating high-quality, open, trustworthy and equitable scholarly publishing. The move drew widespread support from Europe’s academic community. To facilitate the move to diamond open access in the European Research Area, Horizon Europe has funded two projects: Diamas and Craft-OA. These will develop technical services and a federated infrastructure for institutional publishers and service providers to share resources such as software, know-how and training with the community.

The Hybrid Open Access Dashboard (HOAD) is an openly available data analytics tool designed for academic libraries and their consortia. Developed at the State and University Library Göttingen and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), HOAD combines open data from Crossref, OpenAlex, and the cOAlition S Journal Checker Tool. By doing so, the dashboard illustrates the ongoing transition of hybrid journal portfolios included in transformative agreements to full open access. Throughout the dashboard, users can explore variations in open access adoption among different countries.

Hybrid Open Access Dashboard (HOAD) view on Creative Commons licences over time by publisher. 

In September 2018, a group of national research funding organizations, with the support of the European Commission, rallied behind an initiative to make research publications openly accessible to all:  Plan S. These visionary organizations came together as cOAlition S, and adopted a set of 10 principles that were intended to function as a catalyst for the accelerated transition to full and immediate Open Access. In five years, cOAlition S has grown from a dozen to a network of 28 funders. This is a good moment to reflect on what has been achieved so far, says Johan Rooryck, Executive Director of cOAlition S.