In August, PASTEUR4OA (Open Access Policy Alignment Strategies for European Union Research) published the report Assessing Readiness for Open Access Policy Implementation across Europe. This report presents a European-wide case study for assessing EU Member State’s readiness for Open Access policy implementation – and specifically for the European Commission H2020 policy. Aspects like the availability of OA infrastructure, the awareness of OA and the availability of harmonised working procedures and coordination mechanisms are analysed, providing the means to assess the situation of specific countries.

The author describes what is for him a “deceptive publisher”, and why an exhaustive list of these entities is now necessary.

EBSCO Information Services is partnering with Portico to preserve collections from its Digital Archives products. EBSCO’s Portico participation means that there will be uninterrupted access to the historical content in these collections.

Dan Penny, Head of Insights at Nature Publishing Group and Palgrave Macmillan, shares findings from the recent Author Insights Survey. The survey data is openly available and offers an extensive look into researcher perceptions and understandings of academic publishing. Few researchers are now unaware of open access. But perceptions of quality still remain a significant barrier to further OA involvement.

The meaning and the importance of citations, the main assessment tool for scholarly impact alongside anecdotes and altmetrics.

Highlights from the CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication which was held at the University of Geneva (June 17–19) to discuss current and emerging issues in the ever-changing field of scholarly communication. Among the broached topics: barriers to and the impact of OA, and the new OA tools.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research.

All the presentations, and some videos are now available in the Programme pages.

Selecting a journal to submit a manuscript to is an important decision for any researcher. To find out the factors that influence this decision for early-career researchers, a survey has been conducted among PhD students and postdocs at Max Planck Institutes across Germany.

EDP Sciences, an international STM publisher, has released information on the findings and recommendations of a working group into the peer review process.

The aim of the workshop, held in Paris in May, was to consider whether peer review is adapting to present day demands and constraints, and to consider and make recommendations to the European Physical Journal (EPJ) and its partners regarding new practices and improvements that could be made to their procedures.

The Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Committee has published the TOP Guidelines, a set of author guidelines that journals can adopt to enhance the transparency of the research they publish. These guidelines represent a concrete and actionable strategy toward improving research and publishing practices.

MOOCs, altmetrics, open peer review, open access or big data are creating opportunities for open dialogue between academics worldwide. But this wealth can also be challenging for the researchers who need to be trained to understand the communication tools but also be skilled-up to flourish in them.