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.

La publication d’articles scientifiques en accès ouvert immédiat s’accomplit de plus en plus souvent moyennant le paiement de frais de publication. D’autres frais de publication existent, augmentent, voire sont nouvellement créés et pèsent eux aussi sur le budget de la recherche. Décryptage de ce phénomène inquiétant avec Alain Schuhl, directeur général délégué à la science au CNRS.

The project The socioeconomics of scientific publication of the French Committee for Open Science has published a study on Diamond open access journals business models. The final report presents the results by proposing four models for Diamond open access journals direct support, highlighting the parts of the publication process that could be directly funded (after identifying the various players), and specifying the technical conditions for implementing a direct funding model. The report also identifies the advantages and limitations of such models.

National-level delegations representing research communities from 38 countries across six continents gathered at the 16th Berlin Open Access Conference (B16) held from 6-7 June 2023 in Berlin, Germany. Returning to the setting of the inaugural conference in this series, which gave rise to the foundational Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003) some twenty years ago, the international B16 participants utilized the conference to refine, renew, and coordinate its approaches and strategies, with a particular focus on transformative open access negotiations with scholarly publishers.

Read the report.

Existing studies have provided estimates of the prevalence of OA publications ranging from 27.9% to 53.7%, depending on the data source and period of investigation. This paper aims at providing a comparison of the proportion of OA publishing as represented in two major bibliometric databases, Web of Science (WoS) and Dimensions, and assesses how the choice of database affects the measurement of OA across different countries. The paper concludes with a discussion of the cause and consequences of these differences, motivating the use of more inclusive databases when examining OA.

The Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) and DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) released a new Open Access Journals Toolkit. The launch of the Toolkit marks a significant milestone in the efforts of OASPA and DOAJ to promote transparency, accessibility, and inclusivity in scholarly publishing. Intended for anyone involved in journal publishing and with a strong focus on helping under-resourced journals globally, the Toolkit enables empowered and informed decision-making. It will contribute to the advancement of scholarly publishing standards and best practices.

Two new agreements between DOAJ, the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) and the Council of Atlantic Academic Libraries – Conseil des bibliothèques postsecondaires de l’Atlantique  (CAAL-CBPA), have been announced in April 2023. These agreements will provide a vital boost to the sustainability of key open access infrastructure, essential to the future of science and research in Canada and around the world.