The Research Council of Lithuania adopted Guidelines for Open Access to Research Results on 29th February 2016. The Guidelines include open access (OA) and open research data policy that are fully aligned with the Horizon 2020 (H2020) OA mandate and Open Research Data Pilot, and the July 2012 European Commission recommendations on access to and preservation of scientific information. The newly-adopted Guidelines are based on a strong OA tradition in Lithuania and on current good practices in Europe.

Journals are facing fundamental challenges that can only be overcome through relentless innovation and a willingness to leave the security of an outdated model. There are at least 9 deficiencies in the current model that fuel the sense that journals as we have known them are approaching their final act.

Fiona Murphy’s report on Academic Publishing in Europe 11 held in Berlin in January 2016. Among the topics to be highlighted were Open Access transformation of scientific journal publishing, the need for scholarly communication infrastructures, and the role of journals in research ethics.

All the videos are online: http://river-valley.zeeba.tv/conferences/ape-2016

Jisc discussion piece around the features of academic journal markets that might promote or inhibit cost-effective progress toward the UK government’s aim of open access.

The workshop on Alternative Open Access Publishing Models organized by the European Commission in October 2015 brought together science communication specialists at its headquarters in Brussels to discuss the future of open access (OA). Here are the results of the workshop and researches.

As part of the French Digital Bill, two provisions have been adopted that will change the French researchers’ work. These provisions refer to scholarly open access publications and Text and Data Mining within an established corpus.

(article in French)

The RHS New Historical Perspectives series offers an OA model attuned to the needs of a specific discipline that also answers these basic questions about financial sustainability, licenses, and scale more decisively than speculatively.

The traditional model of peer review is based on a pre-publication evaluation system. There is increasing evidence that mistakes are becoming ever more frequent in the process of peer review.

In this first post in a five part series, the ebb and flow of the debate around the various aspects of peer review will be summarized, and how ScienceOpen is acting to attempt to resolve these issues will be demonstrated.

The French digital Republic bill was presented to MPs on 19 January, for a a public session examination. The National Union of Publishing /Syndicat National de l’Edition and the National Federation of Specialized Information Press / Fédération nationale de la presse d’information spécialisée denounced a project that would jeopardize the French Scientific Research. If the researchers and the publishing community claim for a real discussion, the government representatives assert that the economic risks have been taken into account.  [Since the publication of this article, the amendment has been adopted]   (Article in French)

Education minister Sander Dekker will push to make more journal papers free to bring the Netherlands’ presidency of the EU Council. The aim is to confront the inequality of scientific research publishing in Open Access domain and the budget they diposed to do so.