In their editorial “Public access is not equal access”, the authors explain how the open access model can compound inequities by charging unaffordable article processing fees. They also acknowledge the perverse incentives of a business model based on volume of articles published, which has led to the proliferation of open access journals, many of which are predatory, and risks diluting the scientific literature. However, the unintended consequence of open access policies is the erosion of trust in scientific publishing standards by institutions. This is the case for Chinese institutions whose lack of confidence in the quality of open access articles risk to weaken the viability of legitimate open access journals and in turn hinder scientific research.

Consortia and publishers invest a lot of time and expertise in the negotiation process. A well-drafted read and publish contract is, however, not enough to guarantee an optimal open access publishing service. Based on lessons learned from the Association of Dutch University Libraries, the Royal Library, and the Library of the Royal Academy of Sciences (The Netherlands) aka UKB consortium, five ways to optimize open access after a signed contract are addressed here in which tooling plays a key role.

Moving from a scientific publication model in which the subscriber pays to access content to a model in which the author pays an article processing charge has the potential to affect publication quality. In subscriber-based models, journals have incentives to publish high-quality work because better articles should lead to more subscribers. In open access models based on author publication fees, the publishers make more money by publishing more articles. Quantity incentives increase while the relative importance of the quality declines. The publishing industry must work to counteract this potentially harmful incentive structure.

Launched in 2021 by cOAlition S, the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) aims to help authors use their own intellectual creation as they choose, and be compliant with their cOAlition S funder’s OA policy where this is required. Reflecting on the implementation of the strategy a year after its launch, cOAlition S Ambassador Sally Rumsey, Jisc’s OA Expert, outlines the aims of the RRS, its success to date and the potential for the wider application of the RRS across other institutions. RRS Resources for librarians may be useful to you.

OASPA is organizing a webinar on the subject, Rights Retention for Books and Book Chapters, to be held on Wednesday 23 November 2022, from 4 – 5 pm UK/UTC. The webinar will be chaired by Sally Rumsey and speakers include Lucy Barnes (Open Book Publishers), Per Pippin Aspaas (University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway) and Peter Suber (Harvard University).

Please register for free.

Increasing evidence emerges that APCs (article processing charges) impede researchers with fewer resources in publishing their research OA. This potential new barrier, called “APC-Effect”, has been examined on the level of individual authors, institutions, countries, and fields. In the study presented by both Austrian researchers, effects are largest in countries with low GDP, suggesting decreasing marginal effects of institutional resources when general levels of funding are high. Findings provide further evidence on how APCs stratify OA publishing and highlight the need for alternative publishing models.

Aix-Marseille Université, cOAlition S, and Science Europe are participating in a Horizon Europe project called ‘Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication’ (DIAMAS). The 3-year project, launched on the 1st of September 2022, receives funding in the context of the Horizon Europe call on Capacity-building for institutional open access publishing across Europe. 23 European organisations will map out the landscape of Diamond Open Access publishing in the European Research Area and develop common standards, guidelines and practices for the Diamond publishing sector. The DIAMAS project will interact closely with the global community of the ‘Action Plan for Diamond Open Access’ signatories.

The authors are analysing how for-profit publishers benefit from gold and hybrid article processing charges. This study estimates fees paid for gold and hybrid open access articles in journals published by the oligopoly of academic publishers, which acknowledge funding from the Canadian Tri-Agency. It employs bibliometric methods using data from Web of Science, Unpaywall, open datasets of article processing charges list prices as well as historical fees retrieved via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, for open access articles published mainstream between 2015 and 2018.