The incredible progress made in the past five years shows the potential of open access strategies that incorporate multiple open access routes, demonstrating that all roads, together, lead to making open the default in scholarly communication. Building on this insight, LIBER’s Urgent Recommendations for Open Access Negotiations with Publishers outline four priorities to bolster and integrate library Open Access strategies. Each recommendation comes with suggested actions to put the recommendation immediately into practice and links to additional resources that illustrate the good practice of LIBER member libraries and their partners.

In 2008 Harvard’s Faculty of Arts & Sciences voted unanimously to adopt a ground-breaking open access policy. Since then, over 70 other institutions, including other Harvard faculties, Stanford and MIT, have adopted similar policies based on the Harvard model. In 2021 the University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway (UiT) adopted an Open Access policy that came into force on 1^st January 2022. UiT members tell us about the process of creating and implementing their policy.

European University Association (EUA) has signed up to the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access which aims to promote a sustainable, community-driven Diamond Open Access (OA) scholarly communication ecosystem. Published on 2 March 2022, the document is an initiative of Science Europe, cOAlition S, OPERAS and the French National Research Agency (ANR).

The Action Plan has four priority areas: efficiency, quality standards, capacity building and sustainability, following the recommendations presented in the Open Access Diamond Journals Study. EUA and other stakeholders attended a dedicated online workshop on 2 February 2022 to discuss the draft proposal and provide input to the final Action Plan.

The Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe (CCSD) of France and the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) have announced their formal collaboration to launch a directory of open access preprint repositories. The directory will build on the outcomes of a project undertaken by the French Committee for Open Science (Preprints Platforms Project). COAR will develop a database and user interface and will host the preprint directory; CCSD will be curating the metadata records ensuring the registry remains up-to-date. The directory will be publicly available for all, and, as much as possible, will align with other related directories, such as OpenDOAR and the ASAPbio list of preprint servers.

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The creation of institutional repositories (IRs) which became common among research organisations during the first decade of the 21st century was in part a response to excessive cost increases of scientific journal subscriptions. A common aspiration was that as a key part of the open access (OA) movement, institutions would use repositories to take back ownership of their published output and provide access to those unable to afford these exorbitant subscriptions. And because journal subscriptions are mostly handled by libraries, the campus library was often a central sponsor of the IR. Nevertheless, institutional repositories have not evolved in the way they were first intended.

GDC Difusión Científica has partnered with open research publisher F1000 to create a dedicated open research publishing hub, GDC Open Research in Latin America. This Gateway will enable researchers to amplify the impact of their work and promote the principles of open research throughout Latin America and beyond.

cOAlition S is pleased to announce that work has commenced on building the Journal Comparison Service to help the research community better understand if the publishing fees they pay are commensurate with the services delivered and to gain better insight into the elements of those services. Beginning in Spring 2022, cOAlition S plans to release the Journal Comparison Service in a phased approach, starting with accepting data from publishers. The online service will be accessible to authorised users later in Summer 2022.

The theme for the International Open Access Week in 2021 was ‘Building Structural Equity’. Equity for everyone is a challenge in publishing in general. However, it is a task that needs to be dealt with for open access publishers as their business models, in general, need to include equal opportunities for authors. Equity was also the focus at the OASPA conference in September 2021. The Stockholm University Press is sharing reflections on the importance of building structural equity in open access publishing.

A new white paper published in October 2021 from Springer Nature builds on the growing body of evidence that shows that Gold open access (OA) is best for authors and researchers. This white paper presents the findings from that analysis, which show a clear advantage in reach and impact for articles published open access (OA) in hybrid journals compared to non-OA articles in the same journals, and for the first time also an advantage for full (Gold) OA articles compared to subscription articles where an earlier article version (such as an accepted manuscript or preprint) has been self-archived in an OA repository. The white paper can be read here. More information on the white paper and Springer series of OA white papers can be found here.

The new Global Open Access Portal (GOAP.info) presents access to a wide array of Open Access resources worldwide, through an advanced user interface design. GOAP.info allows users to browse dynamic Open Access contents via both a text-based search and a map-enabled country search option. The new version of GOAP.info will facilitate the advocacy for openness, sharing of contents, technologies and processes that generate information and knowledge. The new Portal includes Open Access profiles of 166 countries and highlights existing key Open Access initiatives, mandates, events and publications.

Released as a beta version, the portal will soon feature an observatory for open access policies and policy development resources. It will also provide linkages with the ROAD directory of ISSN and other similar resources on Open Access.